Question

What is happening in American politics, and what this means for American democracy?

Answer 1

The economy of USA, is facing different challenges such as low cost imports from countries like Mexico and China, global sourcing by US companies from the around the world and outsourcing reducing the jobs in the domestic  labor market. It has given ammunition to political leaders to make populist claims and promises to the people of America and play with their problems. It made the orientation of the American politics to focus upon making America great again, isolation from the rest of the world and holding every other nation responsible for the problems faced by the country. It has given a different tone to the US politics and people also buy these short term ideas. Under the cover of it, the president is also making use of executive orders to take controversial decisions that are successfully challenged in the Supreme Court.  So, there is a kind of political turmoil where the problems of the people are used by the political parties to make claims.

It means to democracy a lot in a way that it is going to create polarization among people. There will be one large class of people who buy the ideas and proposals given by leaders like Mr, Trump and another class of people who want the country to lead the world. So, it is turning out to be a majoritarianism based democracy. Though, the shape and structure will remain that of representative democracy.