Democratic Erosion University Course Student Blog

Students enrolled in our course are encouraged to write for the course blog, and to read and comment on posts from students at other participating universities. The blog offers students the opportunity to analyze current events through the lens of the theory and case studies they engage with through the course.

These blogs reflect the views of the student authors, and not those of the Democratic Erosion Consortium.

Born Here, Belonging Nowhere: The Constitutional Crisis of Executive Order 14,160

The Silver Lining of American Retreat: How U.S. Disengagement from NATO Could Forge a Stronger Europe

There is a peculiar irony at the heart of what is happening to NATO right now. The United States, the alliance’s founding architect and long-time guarantor, has spent the better part of the last decade making clear that it is running out of patience with the...

Do It Anyway: Why America’s Checks & Balances Are Failing

One of the main campaign promises made by the Trump campaign was to bring prices down for everyday Americans. He promised (and failed to deliver) sweeping economic reforms, the implementation of protectionist policies, and a return to an era of “America First”...

Trump’s Challenging of the 14th Amendment: The Question of Birthright Citizenship

Feb 13, 2025 | Boston University

In the mere three weeks following his inauguration, President Donald Trump has ushered in a range of feelings across the nation regarding, what many may consider drastic,...

Blog Post 1

Feb 13, 2025 | Boston University

One reading I’d like to touch on is Chapter One of Levitsky and Ziblatt’s book, “How Democracies Die”. At first, I didn’t understand why the Aesop passage was included in...

Threats from the Arctic

Dec 11, 2020 | Suffolk University

USCGC Polar Sea at Iceberg B-15A on Jan. 29, 2001 (wikimedia; NSF/Josh Landis )USCGC Polar Star backs and rams through dense ice off the Antarctic coast, Jan. 15, 2017. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by...

The Largest Democracy on the brink of becoming an Authoritarian regime: India’s Democratice Erosion.

Dec 11, 2020 | Georgia State University, Georgia State University Perimeter College

BY Cindy Martinez India currently has one of the largest populations, with over 1.3 billion citizens. The country has over 900 million registered voters, making India the largest democracy. However,...

Guinea’s Election Violence: Threats to West African Democracy

Dec 11, 2020 | University of Georgia

The October election that took place in Guinea gave rise to a wave of polarized electorate who have been engaging in a variety of protests, riots, and other forms of civil disobedience in light of...

Cloaked in Democracy by Gideon X Melvin

Dec 11, 2020 | Georgia State University Perimeter College

So why is Zimbabwe still not a bastion for democracy? The white minority rulers were overthrown in 1979 after a guerilla uprising that cleared the way for free and fair elections and the rise of...

Sectarian Politics in Lebanon and Its Relevance to Democracy

Dec 11, 2020 | American University

Lebanon was created by colonialism, which began with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following World War 1. At the end of the war, in 1920 the League of Nations officially granted France a...

The Failure of Political Parties: Institutions As Gatekeepers in Indonesia’s Democratic System

Dec 11, 2020 | American University

Although many assume democracies die “at the hands of men with guns,” Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018) stress that there are “other ways to break a democracy”, less dramatic but equally effective, via...

Democracy in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism

Dec 11, 2020 | Sabanci University

I believe almost all the casual inferences behind Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 are investigated by your intellectual insight. There might be nothing to investigate left since most of the big...

The Art of the Smear: Georgia Senate 2020

Dec 10, 2020 | Brown University

As tensions rise leading up to the second most important election of the year, citizen discernment and polarization play a crucial role. It’s a late summer evening and I’m standing by the entrance...

The Dark Shadow of Trump’s Lawsuits

Dec 10, 2020 | University of Georgia

Over a month after the Nov. 3 2020 General Election, Donald Trump is still refusing to admit that he lost the election to president-elect Joe Biden. As recently as today, Dec. 10 2020, Trump is...