On November 12th, 2024, one week after President Trump’s decisive electoral victory in which he also outright won the popular vote, the Chicago Center on Democracy, an organization within the University of Chicago, released an official response decrying President Trump as “a leader who winks at autocratic actions,” “[promises] retribution against political opponents,” and has “a democracy-eroding agenda.”
Written by Professor Susan Stokes, a Professor of Political Science at the College and the Director of the Chicago Center on Democracy, the statement first describes a survey that found bipartisan sentiments among American voters of democracy being at risk. Then, in service of answering why so many voters believe this, the statement first defines what democracy is, saying: “The most compact definition, favored by many political scientists, is that it is political system in which the leadership is chosen in free and fair elections, in which nearly all adult citizens have the right to vote… in democratic elections, the governing party can be defeated and, when it is, it will step aside and allow the peaceful transition of power to the opposition.”
Using this definition of democracy, the statement then asserts that President Trump is the reason behind bipartisan fears of democracy being at risk. First, it asserts that “Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread fraud, in three subsequent presidential elections, have stirred distrust among a large swath of the electorate.” Then, it also asserts that “When, on January 6, 2021, a violent mob, egged on by the losing candidate, attempted to stop the transfer of power, the status of the United States as a democracy hung by a thread.”
Next, the statement presents additional characteristics of democracy and then accuses Trump of intending to breach all these essential democratic features in his term (lacking citations). In response to the first stated characteristic of democracy that “government agencies are not used to monitor, attack, or punish political opponents,” it alleges that “Trump promised retribution against political opponents whom he viewed as having crossed him.” Then, in response to the second stated characteristic of democracy that “government does not interfere with journalists or news organizations”, it alleges that the “President-elect continued to savage [the press] with epithets and entertained the idea of journalists being targeted by armed assailants.”
The statement by the director of the Chicago Center on Democracy also cites proposals within Project 2025 to warn of Trump’s term, despite Project 2025 explicitly not being part of President Trump’s policy agenda. While admitting that the current federal administrative state is “not perfect, certainly,” the statement attacks policies that would allow the democratically elected president to fire unelected federal bureaucrats as turning a “modern institution” into a “patronage machine” and “[taking] us back to a bloated bureaucracy resembling Italy’s in the post-War decades and several South American states today.”
Finally, to give optimism to those committed to undermining the democratically elected president in the name of “protecting democracy,” the Chicago Center on Democracy concludes: “there are opportunities for all of us to contribute to the resilience of democracy in the United States. Journalists can investigate, bar associations can punish, social scientists can analyze, and civil society groups can report and litigate. However weakened the tools these groups have for enforcing democracy, we proceed at our own peril if we fail to wield them bravely and skillfully.”
When asked for comment, Stokes described the broader nature of her piece beyond President Trump’s election, stating: “The essay grows out of a broad project about democratic erosion, cases in which presidents and prime ministers aggrandize their powers and greatly undermine executive accountability. Political scientists have developed careful procedures to distinguish instances of erosion from more conventional muscle-flexing by elected chief executives. The essay reports my understanding and application of that literature.”
Furthermore, Stokes claimed that her professional work in exploring the erosion of democracy does not pertain to specific political ideologies: “I find democratic erosion to have been undertaken, worldwide, by leaders with a range of ideological positions. Some presidents and prime ministers who undermine their democracies are leftists, some are rightists.” As evidence for this, Stokes cites her research into the anti-democratic practices of leftist Former-Mexican President Obrador, but did not reference an instance in which the Biden/Harris administration or the Democratic party were scrutinized by the Center.
Lastly, Stokes recited the values of the Chicago Center on Democracy: “A core mission of the Chicago Center on Democracy is to use research and discussion to support democracy worldwide. The preservation and strengthening of democracy is thus at the core of our activities, from research to teaching to community-building.”