As candidates begin to announce their bids for the 2024 presidential election, political conversations are taking center stage. Many Americans hold democracy as a core value, but with the political polarization that can come during elections, some are left to wonder what the future of democracy in the United States will look like.
Gregg Cawley, a Political Science Professor, expressed cautious optimism about the future of American democracy. He highlighted that the ability to disagree is fundamental to democracy, and diverse perspectives are essential for its progress.
“I want students to know that if we all think alike, we don’t need politics and we don’t need democracy. So the fact that people have different opinions and arguments is part of democracy,” he said.
Jerry Fowler, an Assistant Professor at the College of Law, echoed similar sentiments, stating that mutual toleration from groups of opposing beliefs is vital to the well-being and advancement of any democratic institution.
To Fowler, mutual toleration is the concept of people being able to tolerate the existence of differing opinions. Fowler stated that when toleration is diminished, it affects the functioning of democracy.
“If one side of debate basically demonizes the other side, that’s the opposite of mutual toleration. The more and more of that happens, the less common ground there is for people in this society and it’s difficult for democracy to exist,” Fowler said.
Fowler identified mutual toleration as one of two crucial components for the future of American democracy, with the other being forbearance.
“The second thing they refer to as forbearance, where a side that can do something doesn’t necessarily do it. In other words, just because they have the power to do it, but they forebear doing it because there’s a norm or some other informal rule against it,” Fowler said.
“Having shared norms is a very important part of democracy because you can’t cover everything in the Constitution and everything covered by a law. If you don’t have forbearance then democracy is going to be weakened.”
Fowler went on to explain that legal institutions, such as the courts, play a key role in either preserving or undermining the future of democracy.
He expressed that the ideal view of legal institutions can be compromised if judges are perceived to rule based on their political affiliations, which in turn can weaken democratic institutions that rely on an impartial justice system.
“Before Chief Justice John Roberts was confirmed, he articulated the view that the role of judges and Supreme Court justices should be to call balls and strikes. In other words, to have an accepted kind of standard and decide how laws meet that standard,” Fowler said.
“If people don’t think that the judges are impartial, calling balls and strikes but are making decisions based on partisan affiliation. No matter what your partisan affiliation is, I think it undermines faith in the judicial system.”
Lauren McLane, an Associate Professor of Law, also acknowledged the impact of legal systems on democratic institutions, emphasizing the criminal legal system’s role in determining who can vote or serve on a jury.
“I believe the Supreme Court has even said at one point that next to voting the second most important way that you can participate in the democratic process is to serve as a juror,” McLane said.
Given the importance of these institutions, Fowler pointed to a study from the University of Chicago Law School that shows there’s been a gradual rise in decisions made by Supreme Court justices that were in line with the partisan beliefs of the President who appointed them.
“It’s not that we haven’t had very sharply divided courts in the past, but it hasn’t been so much along partisan lines as it is today. And so that presents a bit of a difficulty if the Supreme Court is perceived as just being another partisan institution, then that undermines, you know, faith in the judicial system,” Fowler said.
Jacquelyn Bridgeman, a Professor of Law and the Director of UW’s School of Culture, Gender, and Social Justice said that American democracy is a work in progress and that progress is not linear.
“A lot of times people think that the times in which they live are unique or special or there’s a crisis here. I’ve learned over time studying these things, and because I’m getting older, I think American democracy has always been a work in progress,” Bridgeman said.
Cawley supported this idea, noting the intensity of past political and social standoffs and suggesting there is a natural ebb and flow to the status of democracy by describing unrest that plagued the 1960’s.
“There was way more trouble in that period of time. I mean, public officials are being assassinated. President Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Bobby Kennedy, race riots, and anti war protests,” Cawley said. “From my perspective, all of that makes what’s going on in our society today, pale in comparison.”
Bridgeman also emphasized the pressing need for leadership in the U.S., and argued that future leaders will be the most significant indicator for the state of democracy for generations to come.
“The big issue going forward is we’ve got a crisis of leadership,” Beidgeman said. “And that one, I think, is going to be hard to fix. I think there’s a lot of folks that will travel down the negative path with folks that travel positive. And a lot of that’s a leadership issue, not an indicator that somebody’s got to help get that collected together,” Bridgeman said.
