Conspiracy theories spread online are the backbone of Donald Trump’s falsehoods about his loss in the U.S. election. The real world consequences of those conspiracies have now exploded.
Clayton Besaw, University of Central Florida and Matthew Frank, University of Denver
Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol on Jan. 6, disrupting Congress’s certification of Joe Biden as president-elect. Coup experts explain this violent insurrection wasn’t technically a coup.
The 1887 Electoral Count Act spells out the process for Congress to convene and review election results on Jan. 6, and it requires both the House and Senate to uphold any challenges to Biden’s win.
After release of tape recordings in which Nixon ordered the Watergate coverup, he resigned under pressure by congressional Republicans. Today’s GOP had a different response to the Trump tape.
Donald Trump has been a populist president. Understanding populism’s roots in the US and elsewhere is essential for addressing its rise and threat to democracy.
A collapse in political legitimacy means people think the normal rules don’t apply anymore, making the world a more difficult and even dangerous place for all of us.
In Uganda, young people’s knowledge of national political institutions, and on how they would claim and advocate for their rights as citizens, was remarkably low.
Homer and Aeschylus turned to the divine to write their happy endings. But no gods are conspiring above the US, ready to swoop down and save humankind from itself.
The transition between Donald Trump and Joe Biden has formally begun, yet the outgoing president still refuses to concede. How far can he go and has such a situation been experienced in American history?
If citizens disbelieve the institutions that count ballots and the organizations that accurately report on those results, it will be impossible to agree on what a legitimate election looks like.
Brian Grodsky, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Tens of thousands of people have defied bans on gatherings to protest abortion restrictions. A scholar of democracy says the policy push during a pandemic has echoes elsewhere.
Although it’s failed to deliver democracy to citizens, Nigeria is not the collapsed and disintegrated entity which a 2005 US National Intelligence Council analysis predicted it would become by 2020.
Touré pursued a strategy he called ‘the politics of consensus’, ostensibly enabling him to work with everyone, transcend partisan divisions and advance the public interest.