Week One: Four Threats to American Democracy
Every good course needs an overview. For that, we turn to the Miller Center on the Presidency at the University of Virginia. In a recording from this past December, Miller Center Senior Fellow Sidney Milkis interviews political scientists Suzanne Mettler of Cornell University and Robert C. Lieberman of Johns Hopkins University about their new book, Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy (St. Martin’s Press, 2020).
In the video, Mettler and Lieberman explore five moments in our history when democracy in the United States was under siege: the 1790s, the Civil War, the Gilded Age, the Depression, and Watergate. They consider the role of four stressors in those periods of peril: 1) Political polarization, 2) Conflict over who belongs as a member of the political community; 3) High and growing economic inequality; and 4) Excessive executive power. This video from the Miller Center at the University of Virginia runs 62 minutes.