The Framers of the American Constitution were visionaries. They designed our Constitution to endure. They sought not only to address the specific challenges facing the nation during their lifetimes, but to establish the foundational principles that would sustain and guide the new nation into an uncertain future.

In 1955, the political theorist Louis Hartz published his classic The Liberal Tradition in America, which set out an influential framework for thinking about American history.Hartz sought to explain the reasons for the weakness of the American left compared to …

A Journal of Ideas. Arguments Should We Be Saying "President Haley"? It’s very likely that the former South Carolina governor was more popular than Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.

In November 2021, then-Governor Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, a Republican, signed into law new congressional maps that would, as before, give Democrats all nine of the state’s House seats—despite the fact that roughly a third of the electorate votes Republican. That is, although they constitute o

A group of migrants enter the United States from Mexico through a hole in the border fence near Sasabe, Arizona, July 15, 2023. (Aaron Wells/Shutterstock.com)

William Galston is the Ezra Zilkha Chair and senior fellow in the Governance Studies Program at the Brookings Institution and College Park Professor at the University of Maryland. From 1993 to 1995, he served as deputy assistant to President Clinton for domestic policy. Also by this author Hold Your Fire, Dueling Democrats

Donald Trump won. What now? Here at Democracy, that’s the question that hasn't left our minds since November 6. So we asked some of the smartest thinkers and political analysts we know to examine the different facets of our new reality: Why did …

For all these reasons, we believe Americans who yearn to sustain and enhance effective democratic government must be alert to three possible threat scenarios and ways to address them proactively, as well as if the situation deteriorates.The scenarios range from a continuation of current incremental erosions to outright authoritarian takeovers.

By the time Lewis had his skull fractured by Alabama state troopers on March 7, 1965 (“Bloody Sunday”), as he and more than 500 Black Americans attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma to protest violations of Black voting and civil rights, the 25-year-old was already well known among the country’s civil rights leaders.

A myth haunts conversations about proportional representation in America. It is the belief that proportional representation requires a parliamentary system. We’re here to kill this myth. As comparative political scientists have long known, proportional …