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The following excerpt is well worth consideration in light of the issues at stake in the United States:
“Why is authoritarianism not resisted more vigorously in India? …The first reason has to do with the fact that populists-turned authoritarians do nothing illegal at the start, and they adopt an incremental modus operandi. As Levitsky and Ziblatt have shown, ‘This is how democracies now die…Since the end of the Cold War, most democratic breakdowns have been caused not by generals a...

While the Trump campaign is announcing his re-election as the result of “the greatest political movement of all time,” the popular vote tells an unusual story that, if anything, undermines this narrative. I am not here to squeeze sour grapes into wine, rather I am deeply intrigued by how the recent election unfolded. In 2020 Trump lost the election after receiving 74.2 million votes. This year, he won the election with about 73 million votes. In 2020, a little over 155 million people vot...

The presidency of Donald Trump divided my family the way it has many others.[1] The day before the 2020 election, when we were still able to have candid conversations about Trump, I mentioned what I would be thinking and what I would have wanted Trump to do (or, not to do) to conduct a successful campaign and win the presidency. For some reason, this came off as critical of Trump. Indeed, I was being critical in that it seemed Trump had made plain and obvious missteps which could (and did) l...