My earliest political memory as a boy was overhearing my father dismissing American democracy. “The rich control everything,” he said to his buddies sitting around our kitchen table. They all seemed to agree. Everyone at the table that day was a high school graduate, a union member, and had grown up voting Democrat in Cleveland, Ohio.

It wasn’t until I arrived at college that I had the luxury of studying democracy and inequality and was able to understand who “the rich” really were. Thanks to a work-study job in my junior year, I joined a semester abroad on a ship along with 600 other students. As my taxi arrived at the dock, I was astonished to see a traffic jam of stretch limousines ahead of us. At sea, rich students played poker for pots worth over $25,000. During a stop in Cairo, one student bought three Straight Egyptian Arabian horses and shipped them home to the US. Here I had come face to face with extreme wealth—though I was yet to understand the immense political influence these riches could buy.

Years later I was confronted once again with my father’s ideas about democracy and the rich in a Yale doctoral seminar offered by Robert Dahl, one of the 20th century’s most influential scholars of American democracy. Dahl was too well informed to believe that anything remotely close to government of, by, and for the people existed in America or anywhere else.

He believed that elites were in charge. But because they disagreed with each other, and some occasionally had to compete for votes among the masses, there was division and pluralism among the powerful. Democracy was saved.

The importance of oligarchs and their influence

Perhaps so. But there was a glaring problem. Dahl focused only on “elites”—a general category of officials or public figures ranging from Joe Biden to Gandhi to Martin Luther King, whose power had nothing to do with riches. But he ignored oligarchs—a distinct group also at the top empowered by wealth, ranging from familiar figures like George Soros to recluses like Timothy Mellon.

By leaving the role of oligarchs out of the picture, Dahl could not explain how the rich wield so much political control, nor why wealth was becoming vastly more concentrated into fewer and fewer hands.

The puzzling question we must ask is: Why hasn’t two centuries of increasingly free and equal voting prevented us from becoming more unequal? The conclusion I’ve come to is this: the inability of modern democracy to address wealth inequality is not a flaw. The failure is by design.

Photo by 金 运 on Unsplash

Democracy and oligarchy

Democracy was shaped from the start to go hand in hand with oligarchy. This is surprising because we think of the two systems as opposed. When democracy goes up, oligarchy goes down, and vice versa. But the reality is that they are joined. The rich dominate us not despite democracy, but through it.

To understand how this is possible, we must think in terms of two broad realms of politics. One is vertical and involves the world of concentrated wealth. Here oligarchs share a political agenda of fighting against redistribution.

This unfolds at multiple levels over time. First, democracies were deliberately designed with institutional safeguards built in to defend oligarchs – upper chambers to block lower ones, presidents with veto powers, and supreme courts where just five people in the US can defeat literally everyone else.

Second, oligarchs deploy their wealth power directly in political contests where parties and candidates are starved for campaign resources. Long before ordinary citizens get to vote, there is a “wealth primary” through which the rich filter who can advance.

Third, since the 1960s, a multi-billion-dollar Wealth Defense Industry (WDI) arose for the sole purpose of defeating democratic attempts at redistribution like progressive taxation.  Filled with armies of lawyers, lobbyists, accountants, and wealth management professionals, the WDI coordinates oligarch support for candidates, lobbies aggressively for legislation slashing taxes on the rich and corporations, and then, for good measure, creates complex shelters and schemes to make sure almost no taxes are actually paid.

In the first oligarchic realm, where wealth is at stake, democracy serves the few—which is to say it is broken.

But there is a second realm where democracy works. This is the horizontal world of literally everything else that makes up politics and governance where the rich are not threatened. These are things like abortion, religion in politics, access to guns, gender definitions and rights, or race and ethnicity, to name just a few. Democracy is free to serve the people because oligarchs either oppose and cancel each other, or don’t care.

The blind spot on democracy and change

This is where our blind spot arises. Because democracy works for these horizontal issues among those who aren’t rich, we mistakenly assume it will also work for vertical issues like greater economic equality.

We all keep dutifully voting, marching, and attending town halls, but wealth keeps shifting upward. Whether we elect liberals or conservatives, it keeps getting worse. We hope that if more of us just show up at the polls and rallies, democracy will produce results.

That illusion is our collective blind spot—our belief that democracy, as it currently stands, will give us the change we need. What we fail to see is that we live in a peculiar system that combines democracy with oligarchy; we have equal political power as voters, but our votes must contend with the unequal wealth power of oligarchs that is built into the system.

This clashing combination is unique in political history. Explaining it and exploring what can be done about it is the core project of my new book, The Blind Spot: How Oligarchs Dominate Our Democracies.

The struggle to push oligarchy out of democracy involves familiar things like campaign finance reform. But that is far from enough. Oligarchy is so deeply woven into our democracies that only radical structural changes will have an impact.

And these are politically possible only during crises, when oligarchic power is impaired. What is needed is a deliberate “politics of preparation” for these moments so that major changes are ready when then window of opportunity opens. A scramble for ideas at the last minute will be too little, too late.

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The post How oligarchs dominate our democracies and preserve inequality first appeared on LSE United States Politics and Policy.

In this episode of The Ballpark, we speak with Dr Yu Jie, Senior research fellow on China with Chatham House. She argues that this relationship has led to a sense of besiegement by leaders in Beijing as the United States seeks to prevent China from becoming a global power.

The conversation looks at how this concern about US encirclement has impacted US-China trade relations, including China’s efforts to diversify its trading partners and supply chains and its focus on domestic economic resilience. They also discuss what China has learned from the US about how to act as a global power, and its willingness to become one – or not.

Further reading and resources

• “China’s new scientists”, Chatham House, , Dr Yu Jie, 24 July 2023 – https://www.chathamhouse.org/2023/07/chinas-new-scientists
• “How China is Preparing for America’s Next President”, Project Syndicate, Dr Yu Jie, 20 September 2024 – https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/china-prepares-next-us-president-trump-harris-by-yu-jie-2024-09
• “What China Wants”, Project Syndicate, Dr Yu Jie, 18 July 2025 – https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/china-will-pursue-own-interests-not-american-style-global-leadership-by-yu-jie-2025-07
• “3 Lessons China Learned From the United States”, Foreign Policy, Dr Yu Jie, 11 December 2025 – https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/12/11/lessons-china-learned-superpower/

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This podcast was produced by Chris Gilson and Avan Fata.

• Featured image: Photo by Adolfo Félix on Unsplash
• Note:  This podcast gives the views of the interviewee and host, and is not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, the LSE Phelan US Centre, nor the London School of Economics.

The post China under siege: how Beijing sees the United States with Dr Yu Jie | The Ballpark podcast first appeared on LSE United States Politics and Policy.

On 23 April, just hours after the shareholders of Warner Brothers approved a merger handing CNN over to Paramount, its CEO, David Ellison, hosted a Washington event “honoring the Trump White House.”

Attendees included White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, whose approval is needed for the merger, and CBS News Editor in-chief Chief Bari Weiss, who after regulatory approval is presumed to take over as Editor of the merged company. Also in attendance was Paramount’s antitrust counsel, Makan Delrahim, because what is a party to honor the President unless your antitrust counsel is in attendance? As a reward to honoring the President they had the unique opportunity to listen to him speak for an hour.

Who can fight the Paramount-CNN merger?

Concerns over both the White House’s involvement and what it would mean for the US media landscapes mean that the merger has set off the predictable round of outrage. Democratic members of Congress, who have zero jurisdiction even if they were in the Majority, are flooding talking head podiums screaming in outrage and vowing to block the merger, although of course they cannot.

The few lawyers left in the emptied offices of the Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice are pretending to review the merger as are the similarly diminished staff of the Federal Communications Commission. The leaders of both agencies are pledged to follow President Trump’s agenda, and with three Arab monarchs and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, having money in the deal the President’s agenda is clear.

Bur far away from the glitter and the network talking heads there are dozens of State Assistant Attorneys General from a wide variety of states of both political parties who are quietly doing their job. Empowered by recent victories over Ticketmaster and Nexstar, they are going through the Paramount merger, document after document. These unknown and underpaid lawyers look for the truth. If the merger is legal, they will recommend that their attorney general support it. If they believe it is illegal they will recommend killing it. They will not work without public input. Lobbyists are lining up on both sides and millions of dollars are flowing into the campaign coffers of the forty-one attorneys general who are up for election this November.

But at the end of the day assistant attorneys general will listen to both sides, talk to each other across state lines and recommend to their own attorney general (AG) what they believe to be the right thing to do, and their AGs will follow their advice. There is a word for this process: governing; and it is the hallmark of federalism.

“SALT” by Phil Murphy, CC BY-NC 2.0; Tim Larsen/ NJ Governor’s Office

How can the US return to governing itself?

Despite the hourly chronicling of the pain President Trump has visited upon our world there remains a lack of discussion as to how the United States will now move forward to govern itself. The stark truth is that it is the power of federalism and the courage of the states that form the way to begin climbing back. And frankly, we have no other option.

President Trump and his Administration know this and has made clear that no matter what the result of the midterms it will beseech both Congress and the courts to preempt state government decisions that oppose its Project 2025 agenda.

The states will fight back, and they are not starting from scratch.

For the last thirty years conservatives have undertaken a largely successful attack to constrain the federal government’s ability to address our nation’s problems. At the same time state governments – specifically state attorneys general – have learned how to successfully address national issues when the federal government has failed to act.

How state attorneys general have pushed for multistate government

State attorneys general have developed bipartisan informal, interlocking mechanisms, using investigations, lawsuits and legal claims to address issues ranging from tobacco abuse to subprime lending to opioid deaths. Vaulting over partisan differences and state lines, attorneys general became fully integrated and acted as a single nationwide government entity.

And states have leverage. The private sector cannot separate the functioning of their business based on state boundaries. The corporate community still needs the stability and uniformity that is traditionally supplied by the federal government but that will now be supplied by state governments.

Today twelve sitting Governors of both political parties were once attorneys general and at least another dozen have been strongly supportive of their attorney general in their multistate governance efforts that have gone far beyond lawsuits and into the development of national policy. These Governors know the strength of multistate cooperation to address immediate issues, and they are today quietly utilizing those skills to meet the problems faced by their citizens.

States need not defer to the federal government in areas such as environment, securities, public health, labor, civil rights, natural disaster, privacy, AI, consumer protection and so much more. It will be the states and their state constitutions who can turn the tide on multiple issues to afford the justice we all deserve.

As the late US Supreme Court Justice David Souter, himself a former state attorney general, forewarned nearly 15 years ago “And the day will come when somebody will come forward and we and the government will in effect say ‘Take the ball and run with it. Do what you have to do.’ That is the way democracy dies”.

Our problems are not insoluble. And the stakes are too high to not continue the fight to do so.

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The post In a time of federal government inaction, state attorneys general can help America fix national issues first appeared on LSE United States Politics and Policy.

The Supreme Court’s 29 April ruling in Louisiana v. Callais (2026) declared Louisiana’s congressional maps with two majority Black districts to be unconstitutional. The Court’s decision guts the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA). Section 2 of the VRA prohibited discriminatory voting practices and additional amendments allowed for the creation of majority-minority congressional districts like the two majority Black districts in Louisiana. With the 6-3 ruling, the Court’s six Republican appointees ruled that Louisiana’s second majority Black district is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The effect of this ruling is that Louisiana and other states no longer must ensure that minority communities are represented.

The gutting of the Voting Rights Act

After more than a decade of judicial attacks from the right, Louisiana v. Callais deals a final blow to the VRA. In Shelby County v. Holder (2013) the Court put an end to Section 5 of the VRA by ruling that jurisdictions with an extreme history of voter exclusion no longer had to preclear changes to their voting procedures with the federal government. Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021)also limited a provision of Section 2 by making it difficult to challenge discriminatory voting laws. Together, these three cases limit minority representation at both the voter and representative level.

Federal interventions like the VRA are imperative for minority representation, particularly in the South. In recent research Michael Greenberger of the University of Denver and I showed that federal enforcement of Black voting rights is directly connected to Black representation. We found that counties covered by Section 5 of the VRA elected substantially more Black officials than uncovered counties, but only when combined with significant Black populations. Without VRA coverage, Black population share had a minimal effect on Black officeholding. With VRA coverage, though, the relationship became strongly positive. This led to an important conclusion – federal interventions like the VRA are necessary for multiracial democracy in the South.

The passage of the VRA also led to an increase in Black representation at all levels of government. In Louisiana, for instance, Black representation increased from 111 representatives at all levels of government in 1968 to 2,004 Black representatives in 1990. That is an increase of 1,705 percent Black representatives because of the VRA. Figure 1 shows that the same can be said of Black representatives throughout the South.

Figure 1 – Number of Black representatives by year by state

Research shows that limiting the VRA impacts minority voters. The racial turnout gap, which is the gap between white and minority turnout, is higher in areas that previously had to preclear their elections. The weakening of the VRA also has consequences beyond political participation. Voters living in areas that previously had to preclear their elections are kicked off voter rolls at higher rates, limiting voters’ ability to participate in the first place. These voter roll purges are more likely to affect minority voters.

“Fight for Voting Rights Rally at the Supreme Court” by Miki Jourdan, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Louisiana v. Callais and minority representation

The effects of the recent ruling has immediately threatened minority voters and their representatives. Louisiana legislators have now pushed back US House primary elections to draw new congressional maps. In Louisiana this would mean that a state where a third of the population is Black can create congressional maps with inadequate Black representation. In Tennessee this week, lawmakers gathered for a special redistricting legislative session to rid the state of its majority Black district. While Alabama is barred from adopting a new map until after the 2030 census, lawmakers are attempting to draft a new map without majority Black districts. 

The Supreme Court ruling will affect more than Black voters and representatives. The Voting Rights Act (VRA) has been instrumental in building political power for Latinos and Asian Americans across the country. Dozens of majority-Latino districts exist in states like Arizona, California, Illinois, New Mexico, New York, and Texas. California, Hawaii, and New York are also home to majority-Asian American districts. While the weakening of the VRA will have different effects for Asian, Black, and Latino representation throughout the country, what is clear is it creates an existential threat to the ability of minority communities to elect their preferred representatives, which in many cases are representatives that look like them.

Minority representation in a post-VRA world

The new criteria that Louisiana v. Callais lays out is that unless lawmakers explicitly state that they are redistricting to hurt Asian, Black, or Latino voters, their redistricting efforts will stand. This will lead the way for significant partisan gerrymandering. Potential scenarios show this could lead to nearly total Republican control of the South. This could mean that the future of minority representation could look much like the dominance of a one-party South that existed before the passage of the VRA. In other words, the Louisiana v. Callais decision means an end to multiracial democracy in the South.

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The post The Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision is the end of multiracial democracy in the South first appeared on LSE United States Politics and Policy.

On 26 April, a gunman tried to enter a ballroom where this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner was taking place in Washington DC, which President Trump was attending. The gunman was restrained and later indicted for attempting to assassinate the president, making this at least the third assassination attempt towards Trump since the summer of 2024.

The recurrence of apparent assassination attempts against Donald Trump has brought back one of the most serious questions in democratic security: how are repeated attacks against such a heavily protected political figure still possible? At first glance, such incidents may appear to be isolated episodes driven by disturbed individuals. However, viewed through a broader analytical lens, they reveal deeper structural problems within the contemporary United States. These incidents are not only about the security of one man. They are about the changing nature of political violence, the pressures of extreme polarization, and the growing challenge posed by self-radicalized lone actors.

Modern assassination attempts rarely resemble the classic conspiracies of earlier eras. They are less likely to be directed by covert organizations or groups and more likely to emerge from individuals acting alone, driven by grievance, ideological obsession, psychological instability, or a desire for notoriety.

Why such attempts are still possible

The first explanation lies in the open character of democratic political life. American political culture still rewards visibility, accessibility, and direct engagement. Presidential candidates and former presidents appear at rallies, campaign events, sporting venues, and public gatherings. They travel frequently and remain physically present in ways that are politically necessary but operationally risky.

Even the most capable protective service cannot eliminate danger entirely under such conditions. United States Secret Service protection can reduce risk, deter attackers, and respond rapidly, but it cannot create total invulnerability for a political figure whose public exposure is constant. In security terms, the challenge is not merely protecting one person but managing a continuously shifting threat environment over months and years.

A second factor is the growing suite of tools and weapons that are available to those who would wish to do harm. Contemporary offenders do not need sophisticated networks or advanced capabilities. Commercially available firearms, vehicles, drones, publicly accessible mapping tools, and real-time information from social media all make violent action easier. A single determined individual with modest resources can create a national security emergency. This democratization of the ability to harm and disrupt has significantly changes how we think about how to protect our leaders.

Why Trump has become a repeated target

Donald Trump has a unique place in American political life because he is perceived not simply as a politician but as a symbol. For supporters, he may represent defiance of elites, nationalist renewal, or anti-establishment disruption. For opponents, he may symbolize democratic erosion, institutional damage, or cultural backlash. When political leaders become symbols rather than ordinary officeholders, emotional intensity rises sharply.

This symbolic status matters because violent actors often rationalize attacks as strikes against ideas rather than against human beings. In their minds, targeting the person is the same as targeting what they represent. Trump’s exceptional visibility magnifies this effect. Few figures in global politics command comparable levels of media attention. For an offender seeking impact, symbolism, or notoriety, he becomes an obvious focal point.

Polarization deepens the danger further. In many democracies, rivals are seen as opponents to be defeated. In today’s United States, segments of the electorate increasingly view the other side as an existential threat. Once political competition is framed in apocalyptic terms, those who are on the fringe may conclude that extraordinary measures are justified. This does not mean citizens who are polarized become violent as a group. What is does mean is that political polarization widens the pool from which unstable or extremist individuals may draw moral permission for taking violent action.

“33.ZelenskyVisitsWhiteHouse.WDC.19August2025” by Elvert Barnes, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The profile of the modern political assailant

There is no single profile of a political assassin, and simplistic stereotypes are misleading. However, recurring patterns can be identified across many cases. Offenders are often individuals carrying deep personal grievances such as feelings of failure, humiliation, rejection, financial distress, or social isolation. Politics can then provide a larger narrative into which those private frustrations are projected.

Many attackers also show a desire for themselves to be significant. They may feel invisible, powerless, or irrelevant and imagine that one dramatic act will secure attention, revenge, or historical importance. In such cases, violence becomes a distorted shortcut to meaning.

Another common characteristic is identity instability. Individuals who lack coherent personal direction may attach themselves intensely to ideological causes or conspiratorial narratives. This process is often accelerated online, where algorithmic echo chambers can reinforce anger, paranoia, and simplistic moral binaries. The result is not always organized extremism in the traditional sense, but self-authorized radicalization.

Importantly, many attackers leak warning signs beforehand. These can include threatening language, obsessive online commentary, sudden weapon acquisition, stalking behaviour, or dramatic behavioural deterioration. The challenge is that such indicators are often scattered across different institutions and social circles rather than concentrated in one place.

The security challenge presented by the lone actors

Lone actors – those who commit violent acts by themselves and who are not part of an organised group – are among the most difficult threats to prevent. Traditional counterterrorism was designed largely around organizations that communicate, recruit, finance operations, and leave detectable signatures. A lone offender may do none of these things. They may radicalize privately, plan quietly, and act quickly.

Such individuals often occupy a grey zone between ideological extremism and personal pathology. Some are politically committed. Some are psychologically unstable. Some combine both elements in unpredictable ways. This ambiguity complicates law-enforcement intervention because intent can be difficult to distinguish from fantasy until the final stages.

For protective agencies, the challenge is therefore behavioural rather than purely organizational. Detecting the next threat depends increasingly on identifying patterns of obsession, fixation, leakage, and mobilization rather than infiltrating networks.

The copycat effect and how threat can spread

Repeated assassination attempts can encourage others to consider taking violent action. Extensive media coverage may unintentionally communicate that such attacks offer instant visibility and national attention. For unstable individuals seeking recognition, that signal can be powerful.

This helps explain why threats sometimes happen close together in time. One event lowers the psychological barrier for the next, and normalizes the concept of political violence as imaginable and actionable. In the digital era, offenders can also study previous attempts, learn from failures, and model their own actions accordingly.

This does not mean media reporting causes violence directly. But it does mean that high-profile attacks can function as accelerants in an already combustible environment.

A wider problem beyond Trump

Although Trump is an especially prominent target, the deeper issue extends beyond one individual. Members of Congress, governors, judges, election officials, journalists, and activists across the political spectrum have all reported heightened threats in recent years. The common denominator is not ideology alone but the broader degradation of civic restraint.

The United States therefore faces a wider phenomenon of violence that is made more likely by a climate of rage, dehumanization, and constant escalation, even when no specific figure or leader explicitly orders it. In such an environment, many people reject violence, but a small number may interpret the atmosphere as permission to take violent action

What this means for security and democracy

For security services, the response must move beyond static perimeter protection. It increasingly requires behavioural threat assessment, intelligence-sharing across agencies, the monitoring of credible leakage indicators, flexible event planning, and rapid adaptation to new technologies such as drones. Protecting democratic leaders now involves managing fluid ecosystems rather than guarding fixed spaces.

For democracy itself, repeated assassination attempts carry serious costs, damaging democratic culture, even when they are unsuccessful. Public figures may become less open to the public and less accessible, and their campaigns may be more security focused. Citizens grow accustomed to the language of violence. Conspiracy narratives multiply, and extremists may feel emboldened by the spectacle of disruption.

We can understand the repeated targeting of Donald Trump not as a string of isolated incidents, but as the product of forces that have been working together: intense polarization, symbolic politics, digital radicalization, lone-actor dynamics, and the practical limits of protecting highly visible leaders in an open society.

Most modern would-be assassins are not disciplined conspirators. They are often isolated individuals seeking meaning, revenge, fame, or emotional release through violence. That makes them especially dangerous, because they are easier to arise than to detect.

The central warning for the United States is clear. The security threat to political leaders today stems less from organized plots than from a fragmented society capable of producing actors who give themselves permission to act and believe that history can be changed through a single act of violence.

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The post Repeated assassination attempts against Donald Trump show how a polarized and fragmented society can spur lone offenders into political violence first appeared on LSE United States Politics and Policy.

Last week, the US Supreme Court declared that fixing a racially biased map is itself unconstitutional. On April 29, 2026, the Supreme Court sharply limited how states may use race to comply with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The Court ruled that Louisiana’s creation of a new majority-Black district (which had been drawn up in response to previous Circuit and Supreme Court decisions) is itself unconstitutional racial sorting. This decision, in Louisiana v. Callais, flips civil rights logic on its head: the remedy has become the violation.

What the decision means for representation

This decision will make it easier to dismantle existing majority-minority districts, where racial minorities make up most of the voting-age population. But crucially, this decision also limits how America can respond to demographic change – effectively telling mapmakers that using race to draw districts, even to correct discrimination, is off-limits. As other portions of the VRA have been overturned, and the nation becomes more diverse, Section 2 has been one of the few remaining tools for ensuring that congressional and state legislative maps evolve along with its people.

I am a scholar of American Political Development. In my research tracking every congressional map since 1789, I measure how much districts shift geographically between cycles using what I call MAPS scores. A consistent pattern emerges: when maps change least, minority representation often erodes the most. Low-change maps protect incumbents, reproduce existing patterns of underrepresentation, and generate racial representational imbalances when the growth of communities of colour are not matched by greater political opportunity. What looks like stability is often a form of racial or partisan entrenchment – a pattern I call dilutive drift – the quiet, cumulative loss of voice that happens when lines stay still while the demographics of the country change.

“Fight for Voting Rights Rally at the Supreme Court” by Miki Jourdan, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Redistricting in Louisiana and Alabama

That’s exactly what happened in Louisiana. The state’s 2020-cycle map left just one majority-Black district in a state that is one-third Black. Over the previous decade Louisiana lost nearly 180,000 white residents and gained more than 140,000 people of color, yet many of its district lines barely budged – the legislature “followed a least-change approach and followed existing boundaries”, and the 2020-cycle version of the state’s Second District was described in “a “carbon copy” of its previous 2010-cycle iteration. A lower court found this was a violation of Section 2 and ordered the creation of a second majority-Black district to catch up to demographic reality.

The Supreme Court’s dismantling of race-conscious redistricting

But now the Supreme Court says that very remedy it prescribed less than three years ago, in Allen v. Milligan, contravenes the principle of equal protection, because “Allen did not address whether ‘race-based redistricting’ under §2 could ‘extend indefinitely into the future’ despite significant changes in conditions.” Louisiana’s argument that it was ‘forced’ into racial sorting makes the VRA remedy into a violation. The decision reframes compliance as discrimination, removing one of the few mechanisms capable of correcting dilutive drift. Callais completes a transformation that has been in train since the Court became more skeptical of race-conscious redistricting in the 1990s and 2000s, and its 2013 decision Shelby County v. Holder, when the Court struck down the federal preclearance regime for states with a history of racial discrimination in voting. The Court is dismantling tools for race-conscious redistricting.

But ignoring race altogether doesn’t make democracy fairer – it just cements the inequalities which are already built into the map. Even before last week’s decision, it was difficult to remedy dilutive drift. Maps have locked in representational imbalances, and it typically takes multiple cycles – and often litigation – to remedy voting rights violations. The Court’s 29 April decision ensures that those cycles of underrepresentation will lengthen. The Court now signals that the legal path for adapting maps to demographic change has narrowed dramatically.

• See Dr Hackett’s voting rights infographic – “Your voice and vote matters“
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The post In striking down Louisiana’s new majority-Black district, the Supreme Court’s voting rights remedy has become a violation first appeared on LSE United States Politics and Policy.

On 12 March 2026 the Phelan US Centre hosted Dr Nathalie Tocci for the event, “Donald Trump and the unmaking of Europe”. The event, chaired by Professor Peter Trubowitz, Director of the Phelan United States Centre, was part of the Phelan US Centre’s America’s Changing Role in the World lecture series. The discussion explored how Europe is responding to Donald Trump’s return to power and whether this represents a temporary disruption or a deeper structural shift in transatlantic relations.

Is Trump’s relationship with the EU: flattery and accommodation

Dr Tocci, who is Director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali and professor of practice at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, framed the discussion around a central question: does Trump represent a structural break in the relationship between Europe and the United States, or simply a temporary political episode?

According to Tocci, many European policymakers seem to have interpreted the situation as largely temporary. From the perspective of the US democratic system, presidents come and go. Economic pressures and market reactions also constrain political decisions, including those of President Trump.

In this light, Tocci argued that European leaders have often taken a cautious approach, which involves diplomatic flattery or accommodation, toward Trump to keep relations stable while Europe assesses the longer-term situation over the past two years.

However, this strategy is not without unease. European leaders remain concerned about issues such as security and regional stability, which cannot remain unaffected by US foreign policy decisions. Tocci illustrated this tension using the example of Iran. While some actors choose to remain cautious observers, others recognise that difficult geopolitical decisions must still be made. In this context, she referred to a recent remark by the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, paraphrasing that: “at the end of the day, someone is going to do the dirty work.”

When it comes to trade and economic relations, diplomatic accommodation also plays a role in managing and reducing the risks that may arise during Trump’s presidency. Tocci suggested that Europe may sometimes accept deals that are not ideal to limit potential losses.

Although Europe may have shown moments of resistance, such as in the case of Greenland, maintaining working relations with the United States remains a key strategic interest for Europe.

Europe’s structural realignment on defence and trade

While European reactions often assume Trump is a symptom of a temporary shift, Tocci notes there could be an underlying reading of structural change of European actions. Trump may be the most visible figure, but he could also be a symptom of broader shifts within American politics and in the United States’ role in the world. Europe is not unaware of these developments, and signs of structural realignment may already be emerging beneath all the flattery.

One important area is European defence. Germany, for instance, is expected to significantly increase its defence spending, potentially surpassing the combined spending of some major European partners by the end of the decade. At the EU level, proposals such as a €150 billion defence initiative also suggest a growing recognition that Europe may need to take greater responsibility for its own security. These shifts also have implications for NATO. Some operational responsibilities that were traditionally held by US commanders are gradually moving toward European leadership, reflecting a broader adjustment within the alliance.

Meanwhile, Europe is exploring new forms of cooperation beyond the transatlantic relationship with Agreements such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and closer cooperation with other middle powers.

Tocci concluded the discussion with a sober note. While Europe’s response to Trump suggests that many still see the situation as temporary, there are also signs of deeper structural change. This moment could create space for competing visions of the West to emerge. There may be cooperation between European states, but not necessarily deeper political integration. Some actors may continue to emphasise liberal international institutions, while others may move toward more nationalist or right-leaning approaches.

Watch the event recording

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The post Donald Trump and the unmaking of Europe – LSE Phelan US Centre Event Review first appeared on LSE United States Politics and Policy.

During the first year of the second Trump presidency, several academic researchers have joined an array of think tanks, research institutes, journalists, and NGOs to warn that the current administration is damaging democracy in the United States by undermining civil liberties, punishing political opposition, and attacking the foundations of free and fair elections. One way to get sense of the current state of US democracy is to ask the political scientists who study democratic breakdown and authoritarian politics if they feel that these concerns about US democracy are valid.

With this in mind, in February, I surveyed members of the American Political Science Association’s Democracy and Autocracy Section, which is the world’s largest community of researchers who study these topics. The results indicate widespread agreement that US democracy has declined significantly since the start of Trump’s second term.

How do political scientists see US democracy?

The survey was completed by 119 academics out of the section’s approximately 1,000 members (This response rate resembles other expert surveys). The survey respondents are a diverse group of academics with different positions, areas of interest, and work locations, but who study democratic backsliding, regime transitions, and authoritarian politics broadly defined. Roughly a third of respondents are full professors, a quarter are graduate students, and the remainder include a mix of postdoctoral researchers and professors of other ranks. The sample includes experts from every global region. Three-quarters of respondents work in the United States, with the remaining quarter based in other parts of the world.

As shown in Figure 1, nearly all respondents agreed that the United States has experienced democratic backsliding (i.e., the erosion of democratic norms and institutions) under the second Trump administration. When asked about the current US political situation, just under two percent of respondents said that the United States has experienced no backsliding or minimal backsliding since January 2025. Another 15 percent said that the United States has experienced modest democratic backsliding. The most common answer by far was that the United States has experienced significant democratic backsliding but continues to be a democracy, with 64 percent of respondents choosing this option. Finally, another 19 percent answered that backsliding had been severe enough that the United States cannot currently be classified as democratic. In other words, there is a consensus among these experts that US democracy has declined significantly under Trump’s second presidency, though most do not think this decline has – at least for now – pushed the United States into the realm of competitive authoritarianism (where parties still contest elections but the incumbent abuses their power to stifle the opposition).

Figure 1 – Experts’ assessments of US democracy

The survey also asked respondents to rate the level of democracy in thirteen countries on a 10-point scale, with 10 indicating that a country is fully democratic and one that it is not democratic at all. The countries included a mix of full democracies, full autocracies, and countries that fall somewhere in the middle. Figure 2 displays the results, where the blue bars indicate the mean rating for each country and the black dots show every individual rating from the respondents. As might be expected, China, Russia, and Egypt received low democracy scores, with mean ratings below three and a high level of agreement that these countries are authoritarian. Likewise, respondents gave high democracy scores to France, the United Kingdom, and Japan, with mean scores of eight and above and a high level of agreement that these countries are democratic.

Figure 2 – Experts’ assessments of democracy in 13 countries

The United States was not classified with this latter group of full democracies. Instead, it was rated more similarly to countries that have weak democratic institutions or have experienced recent democratic backsliding, including Mexico, South Africa, and India. These countries can be more difficult to place on the scale because of uncertainty about how much democratic institutions have weakened. Indeed, these middle countries, including the United States, show higher variation in how they were rated. However, there was a consensus that US democracy is less healthy than democracy in Japan, the United Kingdom, and France: 86 percent of respondents rated the United States lower than all three of these countries. These comparisons provide further support for the conclusion that academics studying democratic backsliding and authoritarianism broadly agree that US democracy has declined. 

“Image” by Hillel Steinberg, CC BY-SA 4.0

Will the 2026 midterm elections be free and fair?

If the Republican Party loses control of one or both houses of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections, this development could provide an opportunity to check the power of the Trump administration and impede further backsliding. Analysts have raised concerns about whether the administration will undermine the fairness of the elections or even overturn unfavourable results. When asked about their expectations of the midterms, most survey respondents assessed that they will likely be unfair, but there was little expectation of worst-case scenarios. No one in the sample said the elections will be completely free and fair; 18 percent expect they will be relatively free and fair with only minor violations; 29 percent believe they will be free but unfair due to structural factors like gerrymandering, and 47 percent expect they will be free but unfair due to major and systematic violations by the Republican Party. However, only 7 percent said the elections will be unfree and unfair due to widespread rigging, and no one in the sample expects the elections to be cancelled or ignored outright. Respondents therefore expect the elections to occur, but under conditions that disadvantage the opposition.

These negative assessments of US democracy reflect broader pessimism about the state of democracy globally. When asked about the trajectory of democracy and authoritarianism over the past decade, 58 percent of respondents said the world had become modestly more authoritarian, and 32 percent said the world had become significantly more authoritarian. These views speak to an ongoing debate in political science about whether and to what extent democracy has declined around the world.  Respondents were slightly more optimistic about the next decade, but still pessimistic overall: 46 percent expect the world to become modestly more authoritarian, 12 percent expect the world to become significantly more authoritarian, and 29 percent expect the balance between democracy and authoritarianism to remain relatively similar to what it is today.

More evidence of expert concern about the state of US democracy

It is important to be cautious about interpreting the survey as representative of the section’s members. The survey was anonymous, and I collected no demographic details to avoid the possibility that individuals could be identified. As a result, it is difficult to compare respondents’ characteristics to the full section. The percentage of US-based academics provides one benchmark, and the sample is almost exactly the same as the full section membership. This similarity gives some confidence that the sample reflects the views of the broader section relatively well. In addition, respondents’ answers did not vary significantly based on their position, location of work, or area of expertise, suggesting that these views would be similar among section members with different backgrounds. However, since respondents chose to complete the survey after being contacted via email, it is also possible that academics who are more worried about US democracy were more likely to take the survey, which could skew the results.

Nevertheless, the sample captures the views of a large group of more than 100 academics with expertise in democratic decline, regime transitions, and authoritarian politics. Their answers indicate relatively broad agreement that the US has experienced significant democratic backsliding, that its democracy is not currently comparable to full democracies like those in France, the UK, and Japan, and that the upcoming midterm elections are likely to be biased against the opposition because of systematic efforts by the Republican Party to skew the results. Insofar as these concerns align with a number of other recent assessments from various civil society organisations, they provide another important piece of evidence about the severity of ongoing threats to US democracy.

• The author would like to thank Daniel Tavana, Eddy Yeung, Josef Woldense, Lisa Fan, and Ozlem Tuncel Gurlek for their helpful feedback.
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• Note: This article gives the views of the author, and this analysis is the author’s alone and does not reflect the views of the American Political Science Association or the Democracy and Autocracy Section and is not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics. 

The post Political scientists studying democracy and autocracy think that US democracy has declined significantly first appeared on LSE United States Politics and Policy.

The 2024 presidential election had all the ingredients of a political rupture. A sitting president, Joe Biden, exited the race mid-campaign. The Democrats nominated the then Vice President, Kamala Harris, to be the first woman of color to head a major-party ticket. And Donald Trump—defeated four years earlier—returned to win a second, nonconsecutive term. Yet the most striking feature of 2024 was not discontinuity but familiarity. The same broad demographic and partisan cleavages that structured 2016 and 2020 once again organized vote choice, and the linkage between presidential and down-ballot behavior appeared tighter than many observers expected.

What did the 2024 election tell us about the American electorate?

Given this apparent lack of change in the American electorate in the face of such a significant rupture, we wanted to investigate if and when American politics experiences extraordinary changes and challenges, should we expect voters to “break” from their prior alignments—through ticket-splitting, coalition reconfiguration, or major movement across party lines? Or should we expect continuity because polarization and nationalized party brands limit how much voters change their views? The evidence from 2024 points strongly toward the second view. At the same time, continuity does not mean stasis: within hardened partisan boundaries, relatively small shifts among key groups can be decisive.

To capture that combination—a durable structure but consequential movement at the margins—we have developed the concept of a “stuck electorate.” By “stuck,” we do not mean voters are frozen or that nothing changes. We mean an overall environment in which:

1. Negative partisanship limits the pool of voters who can be persuaded to support the other side,
2. National party brands and national issues dominate political reasoning across places, and
3. Presidential politics increasingly give the primary cue for down-ballot choices—leaving less room for local distinctiveness and ticket-splitting.

In a stuck electorate, elections are often decided by narrow, targeted movements among subgroups, but those movements unfold inside boundaries that are difficult to cross.

Using multiple sources—the American National Election Studies (ANES), the Cooperative Election Study (CES), the Current Population Survey Voting and Registration Supplement (CPS), and national exit polls—we document both continuity and change across the Trump-era elections of 2016, 2020, and 2024.

What changed—and what did not

Let’s start with what did not change. Race remains the deepest fault line in American politics. Democrats continue to depend heavily on African American voters; Republicans remain overwhelmingly reliant on white voters, especially whites without college degrees. These patterns look remarkably stable across the three elections featuring Trump. Even in 2024—when Kamala Harris’ nomination carried historic symbolism—the magnitude of Black support for the Democratic ticket largely reflected long-standing coalitional reality rather than a new shift driven by the presence of a Black candidate on the top of the ticket.

Turnout patterns also underscore continuity. Participation in 2024 declined modestly from the pandemic-era high of 2020, but it remained high by postwar standards. Predictable inequalities persisted: older, wealthier, and more educated Americans voted at higher rates than younger and less advantaged groups. Meanwhile, the mechanics of participation continued to evolve—there was less voting by mail than 2020 and sustained growth in early in-person voting—without changing the underlying stratification of political voice.

Now, let’s focus on what did change—and why it matters. Two developments complicate any story that treats the electorate as “calcified.” First, Latino and Asian American voters showed meaningful movement toward the Republican ticket between 2020 and 2024. Even if some of that shift proves to be dependent on election-specific conditions, its magnitude makes it politically consequential in a closely divided system. Second, educational sorting—accumulating over decades—continued to anchor the parties’ coalitions. The shift of non-college whites toward Republicans and college-educated voters toward Democrats is not just background texture; it is a central axis of contemporary partisan conflict. In our account, these developments are not exceptions to the “stuck electorate” idea. They are part of how polarization becomes socially anchored and nationalized over time.

Trump’s brand and the nationalization of elections

A key argument we make is that Donald Trump’s political brand—defined by cultural grievance, immigration, and claims of strong leadership—helped crystallize existing alignments rather than produce a classic realignment. His durable appeal did not require inventing a new electorate. It relied on amplifying long-running trends and making them clear through a nationalized partisan identity.

This dynamic has two important consequences.

First, it narrows the space for local distinctiveness. When national cues dominate and voters process politics through party brands, the ability of candidates to cultivate localized coalitions—through personal reputation, constituency service, or district-specific accomplishments—diminishes. That’s a major shift in how elections work.

Second, it tightens the link between presidential and congressional voting. We show that down-ballot behavior is increasingly tethered to presidential preferences and national affect—especially feelings about Donald Trump. Ticket-splitting in House elections, where people vote for a different party for the presidency than they do for the House, has fallen dramatically since 2000, and by 2024 it reached extremely low levels. In practical terms, many congressional contests increasingly resemble extensions of the presidential contest, rather than independent local races.

“Vote Here sign outside Keewatin Community Center, Minnesota on Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024.” by Lorie Shaull, CC BY 2.0

Why candidates’ traits and voters feelings outperformed policy in 2024

We also examined the importance of policy considerations compared to candidates’ traits and voters’ feelings. Our results point to a pattern that is consistent with nationalization and polarization: trait-based evaluations and feelings towards parties are much more important than policy measures in predicting vote choice, even when partisanship and ideology are included. This does not imply that policy is irrelevant. It suggests that in a nationalized information environment, many voters’ political judgments are organized through their feelings about candidates and party-linked identities—channels that often subsume, shortcut, or filter policy content. The same basic pattern carries over to House vote choice, where voters’ feelings about parties are more important than policy.

The “stuck” electorate is not inert: why the margins matter

The most important implication of the “stuck electorate” framework is not that elections are becoming uncompetitive. It is that competition increasingly happens at the margins—through small shifts in subgroup composition and turnout, rather than through large-scale persuasion across party lines.

In 2024, Trump’s decisive Electoral College victory was built on narrow margins in a small set of states. That matters because it clarifies how stability and change coexist. When partisan boundaries are hard, elections can still pivot on small changes among constituencies, such as Latino and Asian American voters, or among specific gender and education subgroups in battleground states. In a closely divided system, relatively modest movements can be decisive—even if the overall structure of partisan conflict looks familiar.

What this means for 2028 and beyond

If the electorate is “stuck,” the strategic problem for parties becomes less about broad persuasion and more about coalition maintenance under the constraints we’ve outlined. For Democrats, the challenge is to sustain overwhelming margins among Black voters while preventing further erosion among Latinos and Asian Americans—and to hold together a coalition that increasingly combines racial minorities with affluent, highly educated voters. For Republicans, the question is whether incremental gains among Black and Global Majority voters can offset long-run demographic change, given the party’s continued heavy reliance on whites, particularly non-college whites.

More broadly, nationalization raises the stakes for governance and representation. When congressional outcomes mirror presidential preferences tightly, local accountability and representation become harder to sustain. Electoral swings can translate more directly into institutional control, increasing volatility at the top even as mass behavior looks predictable.

How the stuck electorate has narrowed the space of electoral competition   

The 2024 election looked extraordinary—but it revealed a political system defined by structured stability: hardened partisan boundaries, nationalized cues, and coalition politics that shifts at the margins rather than through wholesale realignment. The “stuck electorate” is not a politics without movement. It is a politics in which the most consequential movement is concentrated in narrow spaces—among certain groups, in key states, and within a nationalized partisan environment that makes dramatic cross-party persuasion increasingly rare.

• This article is based on the paper, “The Stuck Electorate: Polarization, Nationalization, and the Consolidation of Party in the Trump Era” in Presidential Studies Quarterly.
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The post The “stuck electorate” of the 2024 presidential election meant small movements among groups of voters were decisive first appeared on LSE United States Politics and Policy.

The war against Iran came to a halt on its 39th day. However, a subsequent two-week truce and its extension late last week have still not seen any sign of a peace agreement with no new negotiations currently scheduled. According to Donald Trump, Iran has not abandoned its pursuit of nuclear weapons, and the United States’ move to blockade the Strait of Hormuz is a step that risks reigniting the conflict while leaving Iran’s governing structure largely unchanged.

Iran’s reformists and the conflict with the US

The US-Israel strikes and precision operations have targeted the Iranian regime’s political and military leadership. Many senior figures have been killed—elevated to what the state calls a “position of martyrdom” while others have not been granted that distinction. Strikingly, most of those eliminated belong to the hardline camp. Meanwhile, prominent so-called reformists—whether in office or not—have remained untouched. Figures such as Masoud Pezeshkian, the incumbent president, Hassan Rouhani, Mohammad Khatami, Mostafa Tajzadeh, and Mohammad Reza Aref remain alive. At the same time, Donald Trump has referred to “someone from within” and “the most respected and the leader” in Iran when discussing a post–Islamic Republic future. This suggests a preference within the Trump administration for internal alternatives over externally imposed change—actors who could emerge from within the system to stabilize the country without requiring large-scale United States involvement. This raises a consequential question: are “reformists” among those options? To understand the limits of this approach, one must first examine the nature of reformism within the Islamic Republic.

Reformists, led by Mohammad Khatami, rose to prominence in 1997 on a platform of social “moderation” and limited political openness. For many including Western observers, this signalled the possibility of gradual transformation from within. However, that expectation quickly collided with the realities of Iran’s power structure.

Real authority in the Islamic Republic lies with the Supreme Leader and is enforced through unelected institutions such as the security apparatus and clerical oversight bodies. Reformist administrations, including those of Khatami and later Hassan Rouhani, operated within these constraints, unable to control the military, shape regional strategy, or direct foreign policy. Even their so-called domestic reform agendas were routinely blocked or diluted.

Khatami himself acknowledged these limitations, at one point describing himself as “procurement staff.” Reformists have never been a stand-in to the system; they have been a component of it. Their tenure has coincided with periods of relatively social openness and diplomatic engagement with the West. But these shifts have always been reversible. On core issues, from the doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih (Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist) to strategic hostility toward the West, reformists and hardliners differ more in tone than in substance. Reformism has been less as a pathway to change and more as a mechanism of regime adaptation—a way to show flexibility to external pressure without altering its foundations.

The strategic illusion of the rise of the reformists

For US policymakers, this distinction should not be academic; it is strategic. The United States has no appetite for repeating the aftermaths of post-Saddam Iraq or post-occupation Afghanistan. Yet mistaking reformists for a credible substitute invites a different kind of failure: preserving the structure under a softer image.

For Washington, the appeal of reformists is understandable. They may present a seemingly manageable option—figures who speak the language of moderation while continue operating within known structures. For policymakers wary of chaos, this can appear to be a pragmatic middle ground between total collapse and continued confrontation. If reformists are treated as the solution to a potential power vacuum, the result would not be regime change—but cosmetic change. It would mean leaving the underlying structure intact.

“Mohammad Khatami – World Economic Forum Annual Meeting Davos 2007” by World Economic Forum, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

This is precisely the danger Donald Trump himself has hinted at when warning that Iran’s next leader could be “as bad as the previous one.” If the selection is drawn from within the same ideological and institutional framework, that outcome is likely and US misreading of political actors in other Middle Eastern contexts. What appears to be a safe and pragmatic choice may, in fact, be a strategic illusion.

The current Trump administration has repeatedly criticized previous long US interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the costly and often ineffective nation-building efforts that have followed. It has also steered clear of democracy promotion campaigns and deep involvement in internal political restructuring. Within this framework, “options inside” Iran which rely on reformists may appear as a low-cost, low-risk alternative—especially if they are assumed to include pro-Western groups opposed to the current regime. The United States does not seek another Iraq or Afghanistan. Yet avoiding one form of failure should not lead to another. Substituting hardliners with reformists—or relying on internal actors who lack real authority—would not constitute meaningful change. It would represent, at best, a recalibration of the same system.

Iran is facing a leadership crisis as Mojtaba Khamenei’s fate remains unknown, and Washington is uncertain about whom it can engage in negotiations. The Iranians, however, is exploiting this ambiguity as a tactic to buy time—prolonging the current stalemate in the hope of outlasting Donald Trump. Their calculation is that negotiations could yield more favorable terms under a potential future Democratic administration, similar to the agreement, JCPOA, they signed in 2015.

The United States should not confuse tactical moderation with structural transformation. What is at stake is not simply who governs Iran but whether the power architecture that defines its governance remains untouched, risking the loss of a rare opportunity for meaningful systemic change.

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The post Why Trump’s “reformist” hope for Iran is a strategic mirage first appeared on LSE United States Politics and Policy.