According to the non-profit Freedom House, there has been a steady decline in the quantity and quality of liberal democracies around the world for the past 18 years. Among the backsliders, there is no case more serious than that of the United States.
American institutions have been decaying steadily for some time, and are now at a major crisis point. Nearly a third of the electorate believes the falsehood that President Joe Biden stole the 2020 election. Polls suggest that voters would be prepared to re-elect Donald Trump, the former president who propagated this lie among supporters, resulting in an assault on the Capitol on January 6 2021 in a bid to keep him in power. That same Trump refuses to support Ukraine and recently invited Russia to attack any Nato ally that did not pay an imaginary debt for US protection. With five primary victories under his belt, and more to come on Super Tuesday next week, he is poised to be the Republican candidate. The consequences that would flow from his November re-election will affect every part of the globe.
Political decay occurs when a society’s institutions fail to adapt to changing circumstances. This has been going on for a generation, and is now culminating in an enormous crisis that will play out over the next eight months. The US system is built around a complex set of check-and-balance institutions that make it easy for minorities in politics to thwart the will of majorities. When these institutions are combined with extreme political polarisation, they create governmental paralysis and an inability to perform basic functions like passing a yearly budget.