Is there a real possibility of the erosion of democratic institutions toward authoritarianism in the United States? What can the experience of other countries tell us about how such democratic backsliding might happen, and is the U.S. Constitution well equipped to prevent such authoritarian methods from working? As comparative constitutional scholars with an ongoing interest in how constitutional systems thrive and why they fail, we have a professional interest in the relationship between democratic backsliding and the U.S. Constitution. As citizens, we have abiding commitments to our democracy that makes the question important to ask and effectively answer.

At Ryan Goodman’s kind invitation, we present in this blog post some preliminary findings from a working paper entitled “How to Lose a Constitutional Democracy.” We focus here on the relationship between what we call in the paper “constitutional retrogression” and specific elements of the U.S. constitution. Using the constitutional experience of other countries as a guide to understanding democratic backsliding will, in our view, engender a better appreciation of the standing risk of such decay in the U.S. context.

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