Resilience Research
An enormous number of books and articles have been written about democratic backsliding over the past 15 years. There is much less written about the resilience of democracy. We emphasise the importance of examining the sources of resilience in light of the current strains on democratic systems. At a time of global crisis, the rise of an undemocratic right, and a general decline of public confidence in liberal democracy, it is also urgent to analyse the strategies and actions that can make democracies more resilient. These are some of the reasons why TODA set up this research subgroup in the spring of 2025. The research into democratic resilience will focus on different regions of the world. Particularly on: North America, Latin America, India, Europe, and South East Asia.
The Impact of Trump 2.0 on Global Democracy
We begin our series on “Democratic Resilience” with analyses of the current state of US democracy. Trump’s policies are currently leading to a hollowing out of the country’s democratic institutions and democratic culture. The questions arise: how resilient are those democratic institutions, how stable is the country’s political culture, how are the economic and cultural elites of society reacting, and last but not least, what role does the demos, the people, play? Will US democracy survive as a constitutional and liberal system? What impact will internal developments in the world’s most powerful country have on the rest of the world? These and other questions will be published and discussed here over the coming months.
-
The US in 2024: An Election That Worked and a Democracy That Doesn’t
This policy brief examines the divisive, hyper-polarized, us-or-them way politics is viewed in the United States. One test of a democracy is whether or not the voters get to choose their leaders. While, at this most basic level, the 2024 US presidential election was a success, it’s easy to understand why both sides view contemporary…
·
-
Massively Parallel Problem Solving and Democracy Building: An Ongoing Response to the Threats to Democracy in the U.S.
This report introduces “massively parallel problem solving and democracy building”, the notion that the “solution” to failing democracy comes in the form of hundreds of thousands of different people and organizations, each working on their own little “thing,” which together add up to a massive societal response to all the various challenges democracy faces…
·
-
What is Democratic Resilience and How Can We Strengthen It?
This Policy Brief explores the concept of resilience which has risen to become a key concept in science and society. As a scientific concept, resilience is, on the one hand, an analytical category that seeks to grasp empirically “what is”…
·
