Is the United States Still a Democracy?

Scholars and pundits have become increasingly concerned about the state of democracy in the United States. These concerns have intensified with the return of Donald Trump to office, as his second administration has enacted a series of reforms that place institutional checks and balances under significant strain. Against this backdrop, this contribution asks whether the United States should still be considered a democracy. We argue that during Trump's second presidency the country has not only moved toward an illiberal form of democracy but has already crossed the tipping point into competitive authoritarianism. To substantiate this claim, we first briefly review the academic debate on the conceptualization of democracy and democratic backsliding. We then apply these conceptual tools to the contemporary United States in order to demonstrate that the regime has shifted toward competitive authoritarianism. A key argument developed in this contribution is that the central problem lies less with the figure of Trump himself than with the broader transformation of the Republican Party from a mainstream conservative party into a far-right one. This transformation has profound implications for the future of U.S. democracy and underscores that, without strong mainstream right-wing parties, the survival of liberal democracy is difficult to sustain.