Recent threats to democracy have induced scholars to sound the alarm by employing dramatic terms more broadly, for instance by associating right-wing populism with fascism. From the pragmatic perspective advocated by David Collier and Robert Adcock in their article “Democracy and Dichotomies: A Pragmatic Approach to Choices about Concepts” (1999), this chapter criticizes this attenuation of qualitative differences and pleads for maintaining and reaffirming strict conceptual boundaries. After all, fascism constitutes a syndrome of interlocking components (“bounded whole”) that is distinct from lesser dangers such as right-wing populism and conservative authoritarianism; hybrids are rare and unviable. Careful, circumspect concept usage is crucial for accurately diagnosing democracy’s current predicament and for designing promising, effective remedies.

In this chapter, I survey major historical cases to examine different paradigms under which a disciplinary action against a Politburo member could be launched and how these paradigms were observed, abandoned, or changed over time. I find two prominent paradigms. One is a highly ideologized model developed during the Yan’an Rectification Campaign in 1941-1942. This model enables the winning party to conduct a purge of its adversaries with broad scope and impact, while reinforcing Party unity. It also has several disadvantages, including heightened social disruption, excessive purging, and the exposure of divisions in the Party leadership. The other is the de-ideologized corruption model. The paradigm shift was spurred by the political crisis of 1989, attributed at least in part to the exposure of an ideological split at the Party Center. Another reason for the shift was the introduction of the age-limit norm, which provided an alternative mechanism to facilitate peaceful exits of Politburo members in a regular and predictable manner. Under Xi Jinping's rule, the utility of the corruption model has been maximized. At the same time, the resulting power shakeup led to widespread political resentment, which, in turn, triggered the politicization of the corruption model.

At his coronation the monarch swore to preserve the peace of the kingdom, maintain the laws and customs of the realm and diligently do justice to his subjects. Upholding these tenets underpinned the successful exercise of kingship. Indeed, the quality of the king’s rule was frequently judged contemporaneously and historically by his record on justice. Yet, while the king did have personal input and was ultimately responsible for issuing legislative decrees and upholding law and order, operationally this was not something he could do on his own. The enormous task of day-to-day judicial administration was delegated to a mixture of trained judges, lawyers and royal officials, who worked alongside less specialised men of law, shire bureaucrats and a pool of borough merchants and county gentry. These assisted the crown by acting on a variety of local commissions and as constituency representatives in parliament.

The idea of textual autonomy and singularity was secured not so much by the transparency of translation but by the opacity of what was essentially untranslatable. These untranslatables might include anything from ethnographic details of local cultures to “exotic” religious or literary practices, but the central point remained that their impermeability was a necessary guarantor of textual integrity and authenticity. Across literary and legal translations like Charles Wilkins’s The Bhăgvăt-Gēētā (1785) and The Hĕĕtōpādēs of Vĕĕshnŏŏ-Sărmā (1787), Charles Hamilton’s The Hedāya, or Guide (1791), and William Jones’s Al Shirājiyyah (1792), I argue, the untranslatable emerged as a political category, as an essential ingredient of the literary sovereign. This political character of the untranslatable was eventually ratified in the sensational impeachment trial of Hastings. Analyzing the speeches and other documents from the trial, I demonstrate how the untranslatable Indian culture became the central point of contention, and how it was the autonomy of this cultural core that determined the course of colonial governance.

The chapter begins by describing the presidents relations with Congress, backed the threat of presidential vetoes on one side and impeachment on the other. It then traces the rise of the federal bureaucracy as an independent policymaker, asking whether and to what extent presidential power, rule of law norms, and bureaucratic incentives can ensure broadly democratic outcomes. The chapter concludes with a detailed discussion of the Presidents War Powers, the dynamics of wartime elections, and the Executives alarming authority to impose emergency measures without Congress.

In the decade after Warren Hastings’ departure (1785–98), his idea of conciliation encountered new and formidable opposition. He relied on the idea in his defense against impeachment in parliament, but his principal accuser, Edmund Burke, identified it with corruption. Conciliation also acquired a bad name in India, where Hastings’ acting replacement, John Macpherson, made it the watchword of his scandalous administration. Hence, it fell to Lord Cornwallis to rid the idea of its unsavoriness, as part of his attempt to restore metropolitan faith in the Company state. The governor-general’s alliance with Sir William Jones helped in this regard. In the 1790s, pressure on the Company state and on the idea of conciliation abated. Yet this was to be a temporary reprieve. Soon, both would be challenged afresh by the governor-generalship of Lord Wellesley.

Traditionally, white radical Republicans like Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens have been given the main credit for the work of Reconstruction that culminated with the ratification of the 14th and 15th Amendments. This chapter shifts the focus to consider the work of Frederick Douglass and other Black activists in contesting the racist president Andrew Johnson and applying pressure to the Republicans to bring about the full citizenship and enfranchisement of African Americans. Douglass had a dramatic 1866 meeting with Andrew Johnson in the White House, and he continued to apply pressure to Johnson and the Republicans over the next several years. The chapter considers some of Douglass’s most important Reconstruction writings, including his essays in the Atlantic Monthly, his great 1867 lecture “Sources of Danger to the Republic,” and the 1881 version of his Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.

In this chapter, we review our empirical evidence for the premises of our framework through path analyses of cross-sectional data and longitudinal analyses of the deep state belief over the impeachment trial. Afterwards, we present our results on the sources of plausibility of conspiracy beliefs and the role of unfalsifiability.

This chapter addresses the ways in which the Trump administration has exemplified and accelerated a long-term trend toward democratic backsliding in the United States by undermining public sector institutions. The Trump administration has sidelined administrative expertise and scientists in many areas, selecting senior leaders whose lack of qualification is frequently matched only by their disdain for their organizational mission, and shown a willingness to push the boundaries of the law beyond its breaking point. While avoiding a direct attack on civil service legislation, the Trump administration has sought to weaken the ability of public sector unions to negotiate for benefits, punished individuals and units deemed not to be politically loyal, and weakened oversight bodies such as the Merit Systems Protection Board. All of this has been accompanied by a rhetoric of delegitimization, wherein the President and his supporters frequently invoke conspiratorial theories of deep state plots. These tendencies, and the costs that they raise, are illustrated both in President Trump’s impeachment process and a botched response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Solicitation of foreign interference in an election represents a betrayal of public trust because it threatens to undermine the people’s right of self-determination – a foundational norm of our constitutional order. Section 1 of the chapter focuses on candidate Trump’s solicitation of Russian email hacking during his speech in Florida in July of 2016 – a speech that set the tone for much of what was to come during the Trump presidency. Likewise, Section 2 focuses on an even more daring solicitation: President Trump’s solicitation of interference from Ukraine during a call with its President, Volodymyr Zelensky. Section 3 looks at the legal status of the domestic norm against soliciting foreign interference. This chapter argues that, for the removal of all doubt, Congress should pass a new statute criminalizing the solicitation of foreign involvement in elections. Section 4 responds to the argument that such a statute could not be applied against the President because doing so would conflict with the President’s constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations. Finally, Section 5 examines the ultimate remedy of impeachment as a tool for sanctioning a President who solicits foreign involvement in an election.

West Virginia is the most recent state to have changed from partisan to nonpartisan elections for its judges, with the first nonpartisan elections occurring in 2016. Impetus for change came in significant part after controversial elections for the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, one in 1988 and another in 2004. However, those controversies were not enough to produce the change; it took the capture of the West Virginia legislature by the Republican Party, which had long advocated for nonpartisan elections, to produce the 2015 legislation that made the change. Democratic legislators were divided about the change, with some voting in favor and some opposed; the Democratic governor signed the legislation. Unrelated to the change in election format, in 2018 the justices of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals became embroiled in allegations of misuse of government property and extravagant expenditures on their offices. These allegations led to three justices resigning, one of whom pled guilty to criminal charges, and a second being convicted at trial and sentenced to prison.

Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Texas, and New Hampshire differ from one another. In Pennsylvania, there were long-standing efforts by groups such as Common Cause and the League of Women Voters to get a constitutional amendment for a Missouri Plan on the ballot; however, members of the legislature from both parties have not been supportive of the effort. In Minnesota, the decision in Republican Party of Minnesota v. White prompted concern that judicial elections would become politicized. However, the fact that no such politicization has happened, combined with the lack of interest in making such a change among Republican legislators, has meant that little has happened. In Texas, a push for a constitutional amendment implementing the Missouri Plan system was made by some Republican members of the Texas Supreme Court. However, the plan provoked little interest from the Republican-dominated legislature. In New Hampshire, where there are no popular judicial elections, a series of scandals plus conflict between the state supreme court and the legislature led to unsuccessful efforts to impose a nominating commission requirement and/or senate confirmation.