Argument

An expert's point of view on a current event.

America, Welcome to the Ranks of Struggling Democracies

What needs to happen next if U.S. democracy is to survive.

Pro-Trump rioters clash with police and security forces as they storm the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6.
Pro-Trump rioters clash with police and security forces as they storm the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6.
Pro-Trump rioters clash with police and security forces as they storm the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6. ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images

Violent conflict over contested elections has plagued authoritarian and undemocratic countries around the world, as well as democracies that are troubled and threatened. On Wednesday, the United States became the newest member of this unfortunate club.

Violent conflict over contested elections has plagued authoritarian and undemocratic countries around the world, as well as democracies that are troubled and threatened. On Wednesday, the United States became the newest member of this unfortunate club.

Based on my experience working on election observation and democracy promotion in some 50 countries over the last 30-plus years, I am convinced that the chances of the United States remaining a genuine democracy may well depend on the way the country’s leaders and institutions now react. If Wednesday’s events aren’t treated as what they are—a seditious attempt to overthrow the results of a democratic election, encouraged not only by President Donald Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric and insane conspiracy theories but also by a significant number of Republican senators and members of the U.S. Congress—then I fear that this kind of disruption and political violence could escalate and one day have more success than the pro-Trump mob had with their attack on the election process.

These events have made it so obvious that it hardly bears repeating: What distinguishes a genuine democracy from a troubled or fake one is that all major candidates and parties accept the election rules and process, and that the losers accept and respect the results.

Far from accepting the results of an extremely well-run election that was not close by any means, Trump and his enablers—U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, and many others—rejected the election results and moved to overthrow them without even a hint of a legitimate basis for complaint. The violence on Wednesday at the U.S. Capitol was an entirely foreseeable result of their baseless, undemocratic, and unconstitutional challenge to the electoral process, and it constitutes a direct threat to U.S. democracy.

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Eric Bjornlund is the president of Democracy International, chair of the Election Reformers Network, and author of Beyond Free and Fair: Monitoring Elections and Building Democracy. Twitter: @ebjornlund

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