What to Read When Your Democracy Is Failing

American democracy is in crisis. But what, exactly, is the crisis? How should we think about it? And what should we do about it? I’ve read many books over the years to try to understand just these questions. So here are 13 books that I think can help us to understand this political moment better, and how we might get to the other side of it. At least, they’ve all helped me understand our political moment better. Each has influenced my thinking in an important way.

Note: The books selected for this list appear in order of their publication year.

The Semisovereign People: A Realist’s View of Democracy in America, E.E. Schattschneider (1960)

The Semisovereign People is a book about how the outcomes of politics depend fundamentally on who defines the conflicts, and how the supreme power in politics is the power to set the terms of the debate. “He who determines what politics is about runs the country,” writes Schattschneider, “Because the definition of alternatives is the choice of conflicts, and the choice of conflicts allocates power. It follows that all conflict is confusing.” Delightful for its aphoristic prose, which consistently packs great insights into small packages, it taught me to think hard about the shifting nature of conflicts in politics, how conflicts shape coalitions, and how coalitions in turn shape outcomes. Schattschneider looms as a character in Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop because he is both a foil for me in his advocacy of a strong, responsible two-party system and a guide to me in both the essential nature of political parties in a democracy, and in how to see politics as a multidimensional space of uncertainty. It was a June 2016 reading of The Semisovereign People that started me on a path toward my “Doom Loop” thinking.

American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony, Samuel P. Huntington (1981)

When I think about the broad sweep of U.S. political history and reform, I always take inspiration from this book. The reason is this: It posits a compelling 60-year cycle of reform, a cycle due to repeat again, right about now. The core of Huntington’s argument is that we are a nation founded on ideals. The problem is that these ideals can never be fully realized. This creates some obvious tensions. As Huntington explains: “In terms of American beliefs, government is supposed to be egalitarian, participatory, open, noncoercive, and responsive to the demands of individuals and groups. Yet no government can be all these things and still remain a government.” The tension lives below the surface most of the time. But every six decades or so, it erupts into the open in an outburst of “creedal passion” that looks a lot like the current political environment. Huntington's calendar places the first period of American creedal passion in the 1770s, the time of the American Revolution and the revolt against “the crown.” The next period came in the 1830s, when Jacksonian Democracy led a revolt against “the bank.” Then again in the 1900s, when Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressives led a revolt against “the interests and the system.” Then again in the 1960s, when activists revolted against the military-industrial complex. This calendar anticipates another period of creedal passion in the 2020s — which we are rapidly approaching. Re-reading Huntington, the characteristics he describes across other periods of creedal passion are uncannily resonant with the politics of today. It sure feels like we are entering another era of "creedal passion" in near-clockwork precision.

Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States, James L. Sundquist (1983)

This is one of those big books (it clocks in at 466 pages) that I read slowly and marked up intensely as I was trying to grapple with the long and complicated history of the U.S. political party system, how it got to here, and where it might be going, with lots of nuanced theorizing along the way. Though it’s hard to summarize succinctly, Dynamics of the Party System is a reference guide for understanding how political parties are not static entities, but ever-changing coalitions of actors and voters who are responding to each other and to events in real time. Thus, what can appear static on the surface reflects building tensions below the surface. Though “realignment theory” has fallen out of fashion in American political science in recent decades, it was once a kind of grand paradigm of American political development. There are plenty of hidden clues and parallels to our current state throughout the book, and those with the patience will be duly rewarded.

Tyranny of the Majority: Fundamental Fairness in Representative Democracy, Lani Guinier (1995)

Lani Guinier, who passed away this year at the age of 71, is often remembered for the controversy around her offered-and-withdrawn nomination to be Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in 1993. But the controversial views that sunk her nomination were also brilliant re-thinkings of what fair racial representation could and should look like in the United States. Guinier advocated for what she called “proportionate interest representation" — a variation on proportional representation that looked beyond the existing paradigm of majority-minority single-winner districts as the most effective and fairest way to represent minorities. The Tyranny of the Majority is a collection of her law review essays in which she developed new ideas about representation ideas that seem ever-more relevant as the Supreme Court continues to undermine the Voting Rights Act and the majority-minority district approach to fair racial representation thus rests on shakier and shakier ground.

Elections as Instruments of Democracy: Majoritarian and Proportional Visions, G. Bingham Powell (2000)

Many Americans equate democracy with majority rule: Whoever gets the most votes wins. But what about the minority? How much say should they have? One obvious challenge to majority rule is that majorities can be narrow. Why should a party or candidate with 50.1 percent support get 100 percent of the power? And if majorities are narrow, what are they really based on? In simple majoritarian theory, elections are mandates, and governing parties can be held accountable for their performance. But in practice, it’s far more complicated. As Powell explains, “The concentrated, majoritarian approach views elections as mechanisms for tight control, with election outcomes determining directly the makeup of the policymakers who will make all policies between elections. The dispersed influence counterpart emphasizes the representation of all points of view brought into an arena of shifting policy coalitions.” Elections as Instruments of Democracy is a detailed guide to why the “dispersed influence” model of proportional representation is superior in generating representative and responsive government, and why the majoritarian model rarely delivers on its promises. After detailed analysis of cross-country performance, the results are clear. Proportional systems represent majorities more effectively than so-called “majoritarian” systems, which actually make it easy for minorities to control everything by taking over one of the two major parties. For those who want to understand these competing models of representation, both in theory and representation, Powell’s book is the best starting point.

On the Side of the Angels: An Appreciation of Parties and Partisanship, Nancy Rosenblum (2008)

Political parties are the essential institutions of modern mass democracy. They shape and organize politics, they connect and mobilize citizens, and they make governing possible. These are points that I make repeatedly. On the Side of Angels is more than a book-length version of this argument. It is an all-encompassing historical and theoretical framework for understanding the indispensable nature of political parties for democracy, and the single-best book on the subject. It’s the longest book on this list (600 pages), but there’s so much fascinating history of the development of the idea of political parties, and in particular, how hard it was (and still is for many) to understand that (at least some) partisan division is necessary to make electoral democracy work. On a personal level, more than anyone else, I owe my interest in political science to Professor Rosenblum. As an undergraduate at Brown, I took a political science class from her in my junior year. I was an English major as an undergrad. But a fire was lit in that classroom. It has never stopped burning.

A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective, Steven L. Taylor, Matthew Søberg Shugart, Arend Lijphart, and Bernard Grofman (2014)

American democracy is weird. Really weird. But for most Americans, it’s the only system we know, so it seems normal to us. But between the combination of a two-party system (a true rarity among advanced democracies), a uniquely powerful and uniquely malapportioned Senate, strong judicial review, and of course, everyone’s favorite oddity, the Electoral College, the United States is a true outlier, with a particularly idiosyncratic counter-majoritarian version of democracy, one that is, of course, creaking under the current circumstances. In some ways, this is hardly surprising. The United States has the world’s oldest still-operating constitution, and also the most difficult to amend. We are operating with some ancient governing technologies, while democracies around the world have been innovating and improving representative government ever since. For anyone who wants understanding of the many ways in which democracy can operate, this book is full of revelations. For me, it was one of those mind-blowing books I consumed in a weekend, and then went back to re-read immediately.

Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government, Chris Achen and Larry Bartels (2016)

Much analysis of American politics proceeds from a feel-good assumption that elections should and can be meaningful events that truly empower the people. Therefore, if democracy has gone wrong, it’s merely because our voters are too uninformed, our candidates are too corrupt, our political discourse is too awash in lies. Like political science, good-government reformers pursued an idealized world of informed voters making meaningful independent choices that could give them actual power. Achen and Bartels call this “the folk theory of democracy.” And bad news for those who want to feel good about democracy: It’s completely wrong. To Achen and Bartels, all the familiar good-government reforms — more participation, better civic education, a more responsible media — represent mountains of wasted good intention that will never lead to more responsive government. The most obvious flaw of the folk theory is that it expects far too much out of citizens: “Can ordinary people, busy with their lives and with no firsthand experience of policy making or public administration, do what the theory expects them to do?” Of course not. “Mostly,” Achen and Bartels write, “they identify with ethnic, racial, occupation, religious or other sorts of groups, and often — whether through group ties or hereditary loyalties — with a political party.” Maybe this is fine, and we shouldn’t expect otherwise. Again, political parties can do important work. But because we can’t seem to accept this more limited vision of what democracy is capable of, we constantly try to tinker with it and improve it in ways that go against how real (not idealized) human people, with real (not idealized) humans engage in real (not idealized politics). This important dose of realism is an essential guide in how I think about political reform. I take our limits as evolved primates with Paleolithic impulses seriously. I don’t wish to transcend them. I wish to work with them.

The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker, Kathy Cramer (2016)

One of my most memorable experiences of 2016 was a long cab ride I took with Kathy Cramer from Ithaca, NY to the Syracuse, NY airport. We were on our way back from a conference at Cornell University. As we drove, she began asking the driver questions. This was the first enthusiastic Trump supporter I encountered, and as Kathy drew out his story, I marveled at what a great interviewer and listener she was. So it was no surprise to me (though still a revelation) to read her new book shortly upon my return. For six years, Cramer drove around rural Wisconsin to listen as voters there reasoned through a complex world, in which economic conditions and rural identity were not distinct conditions but part of the same story, with a narrative shaped by conservative politicians who played on urban resentments — first Scott Walker, later Donald Trump. Long before seemingly every political writer journeyed outside their metropole to explain the November election, Cramer was doing the hard work of giving careful heed to the rumbling grievances of the periphery. Spending some time in the rural parts of the key battleground state of Wisconsin offers its own unique insights, and appropriate pessimism. “My fear is that democracy will always tend toward a politics of resentment,” admits Cramer, “in which savvy politicians figure out ways to amass coalitions by tapping into our deepest and most salient social divides: race, class, culture, and place.” Like Democracy for Realists, it helps to complicate the simple folk theory of voters as rational actors who would “make all the right choices” if only they had the right facts and appreciates that we all process politics through our communities and our identities and our lived experiences in ways that don’t neatly comport with liberal, good government idealism.

The Increasingly United States: How and Why American Political Behavior Nationalized, Daniel J. Hopkins (2018)

Perhaps the most important trend of the last four decades is the nationalization of American politics. That is, the extent to which voters and politicians are far more oriented towards national, as opposed to local, issues. It’s a story that goes alongside hyper-partisan polarization, and is also a key reason why hyper-partisan polarization is so difficult to reverse — because the variety of local political cultures is the thing that kept national politics relatively flexible and fluid. The nationalization of U.S. politics is at odds with ways our voting rules (lots and lots of local elections, district-based representation) envision a much more place-based democracy, in which geography (not parties, or other group affiliations) forms the core of representation. “Like customers choosing between Burger King and McDonald’s,” Hopkins writes, “voters today are faced with very similar choices irrespective of where they live.” This means very little local accountability, too, which fuels a nationalization-polarization spiral. Though it is tempting here to see more localism as a solution, the thrust of nationalization makes for a big here-to-there problem. Still, if you want to understand U.S. politics, you need to understand how much our political imagination has gone from local to national over several decades. This is the book to do it.

Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity, Lilliana Mason (2018)

Polarization is a confusing topic, because it can mean many things, some of which are bad, some less bad. But polarization is not just a measure of distance between political parties. It can also be a measure of distance between people, and how that distance impacts how people see each other and their politics. Uncivil Agreement is a book about what happens when the political world gets divided into two warring tribes, with no overlap. The central contribution of the book is to show that partisan sorting isn’t just a consequence of identity — it also creates identity. This is critical, because, as Mason observes, “Identities themselves have psychological effects of their own.” This book helped me tremendously in understanding the social-psychological elements of politics, and in particular, how dangerous a binary us-against-them politics could be, and why it was not likely to resolve on its own. But, as Mason notes repeatedly, when group identities are overlapping, not binary, social harmony is far more likely. The more teams, the more peace, because allegiances are always shifting. This is a key reason why I think a multiparty system would be much better.

Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide, Jonathan Rodden (2019)

“Gerrymandering” is one of the most widely-cited problems with American democracy, and is often blamed as the cause of everything bad. Underlying this assessment is a claim that if it weren’t for “gerrymandering” we’d have more competitive House districts, and less extreme politics. If only it were so simple. The mistake of this simple claim is that it leaves out geography, and in particular geographic sorting. In the U.S. system of winner-take-all electoral districts, where voters live is extremely consequential. The party that spreads its voters out more efficiently has a natural advantage. As U.S. politics has polarized along urban-rural lines, and Democrats and Republicans more and more live in separate places, fewer districts are naturally safe for one party or the other. And the party of the cities (the Democrats) has paid an electoral penalty by concentrating its voters into lopsided urban districts. Gerrymandering is only part of the story. In the UK, which also has single-member districts, the urban party has suffered a similar penalty. But this book is not just about cities or left parties losing out. It’s also about the extent to which single-member districts reinforce urban-rural divides in a nationalized polity, and pit rural against urban interests, bundling all issues together into one giant geographic fight. Thus, Rodden argues that in proportional European democracies, “urban-rural polarization has been less intense. While parties of the right have abandoned cities in Britain and North America, such parties have been quite successful in many European cities, and European center-right governments almost always contain urban representatives.” Rodden is one of the rare political scientists who think seriously about geography. Too often, we treat the national electorate as a whole. But elections in the United States are not really national. U.S. elections are many single-winner local and state elections, happening simultaneously. Thus, where citizens live, and how they are distributed throughout the country, becomes incredibly important. Once you understand how the single-winner district system both reifies and reinforces divisive geographic hyper-partisan polarization, the single-winner district becomes impossible to defend.

Citizenship in Hard Times: How Ordinary People Respond to Democratic Threat, Sara Wallace Goodman (2022)

One standard response to the crisis of democracy is a call for “more civic education!” This is all well and good. But what if we don’t agree on what it means to be a good citizen anymore? While many recent and important books on the decline of democracy center political elites and broad socio-economic trends, Citizenship in Hard Times focuses on citizenship as “the foundational institution for democratic stability.” Citizens can respond to democratic threats, but the challenges are two-fold. First, “good” citizenship can have many different components. And if competing groups emphasize different aspects of citizenship, we may not even agree collectively on the basic values of citizenship. This is especially likely in a polarized two-party system, in which citizenship becomes subsumed into partisanship. In this comparative study of the U.S., U.K., and Germany, Goodman finds that in Germany, with a vibrant multiparty system, citizens have shared understandings of citizenship across parties — but in the U.S. and U.K., which have majoritarian, binary party systems, partisanship is closely tied to divided conceptions of good citizenship. As Goodman explains, “in zero-sum, two-party majoritarian systems make everything about winning and losing. Thus, political threats also become about winning or losing, and citizens update conceptions of good citizenship in kind. In positive-sum, multiparty consensus systems, where parties regularly compromise and build coalitions, winning and losing is more diffuse so it is not as costly for even incumbent power holders to respond.” This is a helpful corrective to the claim that a simple civics lesson can solve much bigger problems, since the content of the lesson itself is contested. But it is also empowering, because it means that we as citizens can decide what citizenship should be. Goodman joined me on a recent episode of the Politics in Question podcast, and we ended the discussion on a relatively optimistic note — that maybe by just being a good neighbor and caring about one’s community, we can all be better citizens. And that’s a start.

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