He told UOL that it is not certain that the courts will contain Trump. “It is very difficult to predict. The cuts are likely to brake or block some of these decisions. But not all. And another aspect is that the cuts move slowly. Even if not all Trump decisions eventually survive, he can break the state. From the slow cuts, another question is whether Trump will comply with the decisions of the cuts. “
But this conclusion is in frank disagreement with its diagnosis in a recent book with Daniel Ziblatt that American democracy is threatened by counter -length institutions (which). Among them are the electoral college, a powerful supreme, the strong bicameralism, quorums qualified in the Senate, and a very robust federalism. These institutions would, claim, allow the white elite to maintain the status quo before the prospect of being minority in the future.
Now, this is not what: Trump was elected at both the electoral college and the popular vote, and the Republicans are majority in the two houses of Congress. What’s more, minorities – lactines and blacks – increased the vote in Trump between 2016 and 2024.
Let us then move on to your prognosis that the institutions will not contain Trump. The first part of the argument concerns the indifference of public opinion in reality: “It triggered an energetic defense of democracy by the American Estabishment, but its return to office was received with remarkable indifference. Many politicians, commentators, media figures and leaders Business that saw Trump as a threat now treat these concerns as exaggerated – “.
In fact, the more solid democracies the more confident citizens in their institutions. He studied 43 democracies between 1962 and 2018 and showed that the greater the experience with democracy, the greater the indifference to threats to democracy by the incumbent. And it showed that when a country becomes more democratic, paradoxically support for democracy in public opinion decreases; and that when it increases its liberal (counter -lating) component, a tendency arises.
This “thermostat effect” is based on research in 135 countries over a period of 20 years. In a dissertation defended at UFPE, Alan Cavalcanti extended the analysis of these authors and found new and strong evidence that previous democratic experience implies greater support for democracy.
Thus, indifference was already expected in a long -lived democracy. Empirical evidence suggests that after the honeymoon it is more likely to reaction both in public opinion and in terms of the effects of “checks and balances”. The first test is congressional elections in 2026. The second is already underway: federalism and courts – levistky’s in his book for its counter -lating effects. It is a matter of time. The decisive question: What if Trump does not abide by court decisions? Those who hold the sword are the Armed Forces who in more than two centuries have never violated legality.
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