democracy

What Authoritarian Voters Really Want

Aggression, Not Submission to Authority, May Be the Psychological Key to Supporters of Strongmen

Authoritarianism isn’t just a word. When the landmark study The Authoritarian Personality first gave the concept psychological depth in 1950, the memory of authoritarian movements was fresh and indelible. The intent of the new definition was to capture the many-sided extremism of those movements. “Authoritarian aggression” was defined as the tendency to “condemn, reject, and punish” cultural or moral outsiders, while authoritarian submission was a “submissive” and “uncritical” attitude toward idealized leaders of their own in-group.

In other words, for the originators of the concept, in-group leaders who condemn …

By David Smith and Eric Hanley |

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How Alexander Hamilton Fought the Tyranny of the Majority

By Shielding British Loyalists From Persecution, the Founder Elevated Principles Over Prejudice

By Kate Elizabeth Brown |

The struggles of America’s cultural outsiders to be included in the country—in the face of disparagement, exclusion, or punishment—are as old as the nation. And, as Alexander Hamilton discovered in …

How the Suffragists Used a Few Good Men to Help Get the Vote

Lampooned as Hen-Pecked Wimps, Male Supporters of Crusading Women Reinvented Themselves as Dashing Trophy Spouses

By Brooke Kroeger |

The early rap on men who found themselves married to hard-working, hard-core suffragists must have been downright humiliating. Cartoonists portrayed them as gents in tie-and-starched-collared misery, shirtsleeves up, infants in …

Trump Might Be the Best Foil American Democracy Can Have

Journalist E.J. Dionne and Rep. Colleen Hanabusa Discuss the Civic Power of the Response to a President

By Reed Johnson |

Should the Trump presidency make us more optimistic about America’s future?

E.J. Dionne—a prominent liberal pundit who is both a nationally syndicated columnist for The Washington Post and a senior fellow …

Hawaii Isn’t So Beautiful at the Ballot Box

How Did the Aloha State End up Last in the Nation in Voter Participation?

By Reed Johnson |

During Hawaii’s early days as an American state, the late U.S. Senator Daniel K. Inouye would boast about its high voter participation rate.

But since that mid-20th-century high watermark, Hawaii has …

Forget Fake News. Social Media Is Making Democracy Less Democratic.

Hyperconnectivity Allows Demagogues to Micro-Target and Manipulate the Masses

By ROGERS BRUBAKER |

Anxieties that new communications technologies and media formats would undermine democratic citizenship go back more than a century. In the late 19th century, critics worried about sensationalistic “yellow journalism”; a …


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