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ISSN 2816-1971

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Iain Rommel and Neel Vanvari

Separation of Powers, adieu? US Democracy and Trump 2.0

The results of the 2024 US Elections not only secured Donald Trump a second non-consecutive term as President, but also saw the Republican Party consolidate its grip on power with majorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives. With an existing conservative majority in the Supreme Court, the strength of the country's democratic institutions, and their design, may very well be challenged in the next four years.

Photo credit: AFP/Jim Watson

On November 6th 2024, Donald Trump was re-elected as the 47th President of the United States. Trump secured the 270 electoral college votes by flipping all seven swing states- Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Arizona. As a result, Trump has secured a second non-consecutive term in the White House, a record formally held by President Grover Cleveland (1885-1889 and 1893-1897).

 

Unlike the 2016 and 2020 elections, President Trump won the popular vote along with the electoral college as Kamala Harris only secured 47.5% of the popular vote and Trump won 51% of the popular vote. President Trump’s resounding victory was demonstrated in the fact that out of all counties which have nearly complete results, more than 90% shifted in Trump’s favour. Trump improved on his 2020 margin in 2,367 counties and his margin only decreased in 240 counties. Trump won counties which had not only voted for him in 2016 and 2020, but also won several Democratic leaning counties. The Republican Party also won back control of the US Senate, and the GOP may be on track to secure the most amount of Senate seats which the party has won since 2004. The Republicans also appear to be on the verge of winning back control of the US House of Representatives as the party has won 212 seats so far. With Trump and the Republicans clinching the ‘trifecta’ and winning back the Presidency, the Senate and the House of Representatives, what does this election result mean for US democracy and touted principles of the American political system?

 

It is vital to remember that while the executive and legislature are now both held by Republicans, the US Supreme Court is also Republican leaning. The Supreme Court is now made up of a 6 to 3 Republican-appointed conservative majority. More crucially, there exists emerging evidence that the Supreme Court—an institution that in principle was designed to function independently—is becoming increasingly ‘polarized.’ Meaning, almost a quarter of all decisions in 2021 were cases that demonstrated polarization—defined as decisions in which all Republican-appointed voting justices are in one decision group and all Democrat-appoint justices are on the other side of the decision.

 

The American system of government is structured on the basis of separation of powers as well as checks and balances. The intention of this constitutional design was to prevent any singular branch of government from concentrating power in excess. However, whether the system of checks and balances, as envisioned by the founding fathers of the US still works in a polarised atmosphere is a question which warrants examination. For example, given the conservative majority of the Supreme Court, coupled with Republican control of the executive and legislature, what remains uncertain is the Constitutional strength of the separation of powers to function as designed.

 

The function of the Supreme Court is to operate within the framework of the separation of powers. Since the US Supreme Court also has the powers of judicial review through its fuction of interpreting laws and deeming them to be ‘constitutional’, the US Supreme Court effectively serves as a ‘veto player’, along with the legislature and the executive. Consequently, the Supreme Court is then in a position to either limit or potentially expand the power of the other two branches, thus providing a ‘check and balance’ on the executive and legislative branches. How this will manifest with each branch falling under Republican and conservative ideological control is yet to be seen in today’s polarised America.

 

The current political atmosphere in the United States is not only marked by a rise in authoritarian tendencies, but is also undergoing a period of intense polarisation, negative partisanship, and hyper-partisanship. In effect, democratic norms of behaviour like forbearance and mutual toleration have gradually been eroded over time and exacerbated during the first Trump term. In a replacement of these norms, intense polarisation has eroded some of the guardrails needed in democratic systems to prevent the excesses and undermining of institutions by political actors.

 

While constitutional engineering and institutional design can address some of these excesses by self-interested political actors, institutions are only as good as the political actors who inhabit them and are committed to safeguarding the norms and principles of these pillars of the state. The first Trump term and his MAGA movement demonstrated the wanton disregard for and the de-legitimation of institutions of the state. This is demonstrated by the fact that this is a period wherein the confidence of Americans in their institutions is said to be historically low.

 

While it is the case that US institutions have displayed a certain rigidity at reforming and may be antiquated for functioning effectively in the 21st century, Trump’s MAGA movement has turned institutions of the state into a conveyor belt of opportunities to fulfil its own political excesses. Further still, the MAGA movement has been unabashed in calling into question those institutions and processes which stand in the way- such as the “witch hunt” Russia investigation, “illegal mail-in ballots” and even the United States Congress for not “overturning the election.”

 

This disregard for institutions becomes even more acute in the tussle between individual self-interest and self-restraint. ‘Trumpism’ captures this aspect of political ambition and personal excesses manifesting themselves as self-interest in every aspect. Mike Pence, conversely, in his decision to refuse Trump’s demand of overturning the election in the Senate in 2021, chose self-restraint, but only just. When self-interest triumphs over self-restraint, as Trumpism has consistently done, institutions although present, are not involved. The failure to imagine the consequences of unabated self-interest of political actors enveloping institutions and cutting them out of the process despite their presence has left US democracy perilously hanging by a thread. Indeed, this disregard for institutions by self-interesed political actors may further deepen during a Trump 2.0 administration. Trump’s recent statements pressuring GOP Senate leadershiphopefuls to permit him to make recess appointments and subsequently bypassing the Senate appointments confirmation process is an indication that institutions may be sidelined by self-interested institutional actors.

 

This, consequentially, creates further mistrust of institutions in an environment of negative partisanship and polarisation. The Trump Insurrection at the Capitol has shown that US democracy is not immune to the experience of other countries and is balancing in a precipice.  

 

With this decisive Trump victory in the White House and a concrete Republic foothold in Congress, several observers have already noted that America is headed for an ‘authoritarian’ style of governance. Trump has already made statements proclaiming his desire to be a dictator “only on day one” and has threatened to prosecute Democrats, lawyers or others whom he accuses of voter fraud in his second term. In addition, he publicly signaled his intention to carry out the ‘largest deportation drive’ in US history and vowed to dramatically decrease the size of the bureaucracy. Therefore, would the courts restrain Trump from carrying out his purge of dissidents and “revenge against the democrats”? The US today is going through a period wherein political actors are polarised and this polarisation is being reflected in the institutions controlled by these actors. This, combined with negative-partisanship and hyper partisanship, result in ‘zero sum’ outcomes where political actors have little incentive to engage in self-restraint. Over time, the guardrails associated with democratic norms—compromise, mutual toleration, and forbearance—begin to erode. This may indeed become the legacy of the Trump 2.0 administration and will have significant consequences for the health of US democracy and its institutional resilience for decades.


DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of IIPA and this platform.

 
Authors

Iain A. Rommel is a Master of International Relations and Diplomacy candidate at the Univeristy of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. His current research pertains to democratic backsliding and autocratisation, and American judicial politics and polarisation.

 

Neel Vanvari is a research fellow at the Institute for Indo-Pacific Affairs and is a PhD candidate at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. He researches on political economy, Indian politics and comparative politics with a focus on South Asia. 

 

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