On January 6, 2021, the United States Capitol was stormed by supporters of  President Donald Trump who were in uproar over the electoral results following the 2020 elections. As Congress convened to count the electoral votes, Trump addressed his supporters, not too far from the White House, urging them to “patriotically” march to the Capitol. The verbal irony behind the phrase “patriotically” is that the events of January 6th represented quite the opposite of devotion to the country’s democracy. Following these events, signs of democratic backsliding emerged in the form of a polarized electorate less likely to uniformly sanction norm violations. The events of January 6th represented the start of multiple attacks on horizontal accountability, leading to a broad pattern of democratic erosion characterized by partisan loyalty over constitutional constraint. 

The polarization surrounding the 2020 election revealed a form of affective polarization through identity voting, in which voters prioritized party allegiance over procedural legitimacy. According to Levisky and Ziblatt’s book, How Democracies Die, the rise to dictatorship, authoritarianism, and populist power manifests itself through the failure of political elites to serve as gatekeepers of these institutions. Yet institutional weakness does not exist on its own; it is both shaped by and shapes citizen behavior. This type of power consolidation is bred through citizen mistrust. This framework helps explain January 6th as more than a spontaneous riot. It helped reflect a breakdown of political gatekeeping in which key political figures amplified false claims of fraud, planting doubt in institutional checks and balances. 

Since the storming of the Capitol, the United States has deteriorated in horizontal accountability considerably.  The trust of its citizens has become increasingly polarized, thus weakening vertical accountability by reducing the likelihood that voters will sanction anti-democratic behavior at the ballot box. 

 The divergence becomes clearer when examining how other democracies respond to elite controversy. In recent cases linked to the Epstein files,  European political figures have faced swift institutional and public consequences, which serve as a reinforcement of horizontal and vertical accountability.  An NPR article written by Joseph Shapiro discusses the fallout of the Epstein files in Europe, stating, “ Peter Mandelson, a prominent Labour Party figure and Britain’s ambassador to the U.S., was stripped of his position in September and resigned from the House of Lords earlier this month.” In London,  Prince Andrew, now known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, was stripped of the prince title that he had held since birth, and was also ordered to leave the Royal Lodge Residence. Examples multiply in Norway, where Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland was charged with aggravated corruption, and in France, where Culture Minister Jack Lang resigned from his position, both with ties to the Epstein files. It is true that association with the Epstein files does not prove guilt; nonetheless, the decision to remove official roles in European countries demonstrates how democratic systems can prioritize institutional integrity by creating distance between controversy and corruption, an aspect of democratic gatekeeping. 

By contrast, the United States illustrates how democratic systems can struggle to impose similar consequences when partisan incentives override institutional integrity.

The stark difference in the response to the Epstein files is revealing of the current state of democracy in the United States. In democratic theory, horizontal accountability depends on institutions, courts, legislatures,  and oversight bodies using checks and balances on one another regardless of partisan alignment. When those institutions like the Department of Justice hesitate or fracture along party lines, accountability becomes selective rather than principled. 

Such fragmentation erodes the democratic norms embedded in oversight mechanisms that are intended to safeguard electoral integrity and maintain responsiveness to citizens. We see this fragmentation amplified in decisions like Executive Order 14169, which Trump signed in  January of 2025. This order paused foreign aid for 90 days, and it included a freeze on most USAID Funding. These freezes quickly turned into suspensions, and by March 2025, Trump had terminated 83 percent of  USAID programs. 

USAID programs often support election monitoring, rule-of-law initiatives, and anti-corruption efforts. With 83 percent of  USAID programs being terminated or reconstructed, the institutional safeguards that the program offered to maintain institutional transparency vanish. In the same light, if the dismantling of oversight-oriented programs is rewarded by voters or attributed to being unnecessary, vertical accountability may also shift away from holding democratic institutions accountable. Programs like the USAID are equipped with the mechanisms to shield vulnerable areas of institutional processes. When an incumbent like Donald Trump is aiming to integrate his own initiatives over the needs of the people, it is imperative that one asks, what are those initiatives and who are they meant to serve?

Following the storming of the Capitol on January 6th, the weakening of horizontal and vertical accountability chipped away at the principles that define democracy in the United States. From the start of polarization driven by partisan loyalty in 2021, the termination of USAID in 2025, which historically served as a check and balance mechanism, to the lack of accountability in persecuting the Epstein files in 2026, the United States clearly demonstrates that it is not immune to the symptoms of democratic erosion. These events reflect sustained attacks on horizontal accountability that have deteriorated the quality of democracy that the United States was once fighting to uphold. A constructive path forward would involve reinforcing vertical accountability by adherence to democratic norms as opposed to partisan loyalty.