By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

America’s Era of Violent Populism

The U.S. government is heading toward a major crisis of legitimacy—that is, a weak or even fractured consensus among the American people on whether their representatives in Washington truly deserve their allegiance. This crisis is not one that the presidential election is likely to resolve, and it may well lead to more contentious and violent politics in the coming months and years.

U.S. politics has entered an era of violent populism, with historically high levels of political violence on both the right and the left that have been growing worse for years. This trend is driven, in large part, by the country’s ongoing transition from a white majority to a white-minority society. The panic and grievances (real and imagined) that have accompanied this demographic shift help account for the meteoric rise of Donald Trump, as well as for both parties’ heightened focus on immigration.

The 2024 presidential election season has been the most violent since that of 1968—a year roiled by nationwide protests against racism at home and militarism abroad and marred by the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy, a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination. This year, there have been two assassination attempts against Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, as well as threats to election officials across the country. And if Trump loses, many Americans fear that he will disavow the results and incite violence to overturn them, as he did after the 2020 election, an effort that culminated in an insurrectionary riot at the U.S. Capitol, on January 6, 2021.

The era of violent populism is likely to continue and even worsen, with growing polarization, logjams in decision-making in Washington, and increasing risks of political upheaval. U.S. states may seek to prevent the implementation of national policies that conflict with their constituents’ views. And the country’s internal political turbulence will compromise Washington’s ability to provide leadership on the world stage.

A policeman keeping watch before a rally by former president Donald Trump, Raleigh, North Carolina, November 2024

 

A Legitimacy Crisis

As the democratic theorist David Eastman explained in 1965, legitimacy entails more than a belief that government processes are followed; it involves “a strong inner conviction of the moral validity” of the governing authority. A government is legitimate when its citizens accept that it rightfully holds and exercises power, when public institutions are free of corruption, and when state officials abide by democratic norms.

The United States was already on the verge of a legitimacy crisis before the election. According to national surveys by the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats, public confidence in American democracy has been at worrisome levels throughout 2024. Almost half of the public (45 percent of Democrats and 49 percent of Republicans) believe that “elections will not solve America’s most fundamental political and social problems.” Nearly as many (42 percent of Democrats and 55 percent of Republicans) think that “political elites, both Democrats and Republicans, are the most immoral and corrupt people in America.”

Most worrisome, the public is sharply divided on how the outcome of the election will affect democracy. Nearly nine in ten Democrats (86 percent) agree that Donald Trump is a “danger to democracy,” and two out of three Republicans say that “Kamala Harris is a danger to democracy.” Forty-four percent of Democrats and 48 percent of Republicans worry that if their preferred presidential candidate loses, “people like me will be second-class citizens.”

Put differently, many Americans are worried not just about short-term policies related to the economy, immigration, and health care but also about the durability of American democracy itself. Many are deeply concerned about the health of public institutions, and many doubt that the results of this election will be a genuine expression of the people’s will.

If recent elections are a guide, those who support the losing candidate are likely to believe that the winner is illegitimate. In a poll taken a week after the 2016 election, a third of Democrats said that they believed that Trump’s win was illegitimate. And to this day, according to poll after poll, a majority of Republicans believe that Trump was the true winner of the 2020 election.

The most worrisome scenario for this election is also the most likely: a narrow initial victory by one side that leads to weeks of recounts and court challenges, fostering suspicions about the ultimate result. The news media may declare a winner relatively soon after polls have closed, but the perceived legitimacy of the new president may begin to erode from that point onward.

 

No Way Out

Which exact pathway Washington will take toward declining legitimacy depends on which candidate is declared the winner. If Kamala Harris prevails, Trump and the right-wing media will likely allege that there has been mass voter fraud. As in the run-up to the 2020 election, they have already seeded this claim in the form of assertions and legal cases against the legitimacy of certain voters in key states. The difference is that many of Trump’s supporters have grown more skeptical and more radical over the past four years. The number of Republicans who doubt Harris’s legitimacy could be significantly higher than those who doubted Biden’s. The immediate risks of January 6–style mob violence and lone wolf attacks are significant, as more people would likely answer Trump’s calls to “fight like hell.”

Even if Trump wins the count in the Electoral College, he is still likely to lose the popular vote. And so the more fundamental charge lobbed against him will be that he does not represent the general will of the people. An absence of immediate violence following a Trump victory should not be read as a sign of smooth sailing going forward. If Trump manages to set in motion the draconian mass deportation program he has proposed, it will require the significant use of force on the part of law-enforcement authorities, which in turn could engender violent resistance. He may also follow through on his threat to deploy the U.S. military against protesters.

Many political elites will remain committed to the next president, but others will side with and reinforce those constituents who doubt the legitimacy of the new government. Far from paying a political penalty for election denialism and his role in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Trump has benefited tremendously from this behavior. Alas, this sends a dark message to future American political leaders: undermining the legitimacy of the winner pays political dividends. American democracy may eventually recover, but its biggest tests still lie ahead.

 

 

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