AMERICAN AUTHORITARIANISM — A LONG TIME COMING?

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In fact, “the only presidential democracy with a long history of cons utional continuity is the United States,” wrote Juan José Linz in his seminal essay, “The Perils of Presidentialism,” back in 1990.

Perhaps “American exceptionalism,” then, is less glamorous than it sounds, describing the country’s longstanding resistance to the trap other presidential systems have: ineffectiveness, conflict and a slide into authoritarianism.

Presidential systems, so the argument goes, lead to conflict between the executive and legislative branches, are inflexible because the legislature can’t easily boot the president out, create opposition rather than cooperation between political parties and encourage the election of outsider presidents.

As a result, democracy is more fragile. “The most common scholarly position,” says Professor Robert Elgie from Dublin City University, “is that young democracies would probably do best to avoid presidentialism.”

“The Trump presidency might make for a certain test of U.S. exceptionalism,” says Elgie. “Will the populist, Latin American–style logic of presidentialism apply to the U.S. in ways that it hasn’t before, or will [its] unique political culture temper the presidency, as it has in the past?”

So for the Americans fearing the slide of their presidency into authoritarianism, just know that it’s been a long time coming.

And looking at nearly 250 years of American history, the country seems, for whatever reason, to buck the global trend.

So, says Elgie, “I don’t think we need to be thinking about whether democracy in the U.S. is going to collapse just yet.”

http://www.ozy.com/politics-and-powe...a04bf10a595031

[boutons_deux]

Donald Trump doesn’t like the “archaic” Cons ution: “It’s really a bad thing for the country”

Trump calls the Cons ution "archaic," while his chief of staff is tired of the First Amendmen

the president and his chief of staff are blaming the Cons ution for their remarkably unproductive first 100 days

Trump denounced the cons utional system of checks and balances as “archaic.”

“It’s a very rough system. It’s an archaic system,” Trump said.

“It’s really a bad thing for the country.”

White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus told ABC on Sunday that

the president is thinking about amending or even abolishing the First Amendment to stifle what they consider to be unfair media criticism.

Priebus responded: “I think it’s something that we’ve looked at. How that gets executed or whether that goes anywhere is a different story.”

an observation made by Obama before the 2016 presidential election, one that was widely ridiculed by the conservative press at the time:

“If you disrespect the Cons ution by threatening to shut down the press when it doesn’t say things you like or threaten to throw your opponent in jail or discriminate against people of different faiths.

If you do that before you are elected, then what are you gonna do when you have actual power to do those things?”

http://www.salon.com/2017/05/01/dona...r-the-country/