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.

The Trump Administration’s Attack on USAID

The Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle USAID, increase concerns about democratic backsliding as it could result in a trend with the executive undermining institutional legitimacy.

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Does Nayib Bukele Present a Compelling Challenge to Democratic Values?

Underlining political discussion here in the United States is a presumption that democracy is the best system by which we can organise civil society. I should preface that I, too, subscribe to this notion, and have not yet come across anything that could compel me to...
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DOJ Terminations

Recently, The White House Terminated multiple U.S. attorneys within the Justice Department, which in itself can be seen as executive aggrandizement considering The White House is typically not involved in the terminations, as they usually come from the Department of...
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Blog Post 1

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 the chapter: then I...

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