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(De)Politicization as the undercurrent of the creeping autocratization in the United States I Effects on democratic institutions, processes, norms and identities

Federalism
Populism
USA
Courts
Identity
Demoicracy
POTUS
INN401
Vasiliki (Billy) Tsagkroni
Departments of Political Science and Public Administration, Universiteit Leiden
Jared Sonnicksen
RWTH Aachen University

Building: A, Floor: 2, Room: SR6

Friday 11:15 - 13:00 CEST (26/08/2022)

Abstract

Even more clearly than on January 6, 2021 itself, the year after the attack on the US Capitol has demonstrated that a new, single division – emanating from former President Trump’s ‘big lie‘ of election fraud – has come to structure the political arena in the United States. Underneath this dichotomy, common organizing principles of liberal representative democracies have begun to sway; traditional separations between branches of government and their respective functions and logics, between facts and fiction, and between issues outside and within the bounds of partisan controversy are increasingly blurred. In recent public discourse as well as scholarly analyses, the most radical and violent actions and actors and those around the former president have so far taken center stage. Yet, in order to grasp this creeping autocratization more fully, it is essential to examine the promotion and justification of a broader foundation in which major trends of deinstitutionalization, anti-liberalism and anti-science are being anchored in the political system, in the media and in society. The sister panels on “(De)Politicization as the undercurrent of the creeping autocratization in the United States“ zoom in on these developments to study them as processes of politicization and depoliticization that can strategically and significantly (re)define, (re)form, (de)stabilize and (de)legitimize the social, discursive and institutional context in which societal interactions, political conflict and decision-making can legitimately take place. This perspective also allows us to inquire into the particular knowledge(s), information or rationalities that these processes of (de)politicization rely on and that they (in)validate in turn. Against this backdrop, this panel scrutinizes potential threats to institutionalized liberal democracy by tracing continuities and changes in the relationships between and within branches of government and between the individual, societal groups and society in America. Furthermore, it analyzes and discusses how notions of governing, liberalism, democracy and identity manifest in specific policy areas today and can be related to historical precedent.

Title Details
The democratic consequences of demographic changes: Status anxieties among white Republicans and their politicization for autocratic aims View Paper Details
Let the end be legitimate: the U.S. Supreme Court, Donald Trump and constitutionalization of politics View Paper Details
Pennywise coming for democracy? How the ‘clown show‘ of private post-election audits challenges the rationality of the (neo)liberal democratic system View Paper Details