finding this really interesting and thoughtful--also, I wonder if you are keeping it elsewhere? The internet is ephemeral and if the US is headed in a dire direction, I have to wonder about the stability of these platforms or their willingness to oblige or resist those in charge--we've already seen most platforms be happily supportive of the regime...
I appreciate your work to document your intelligent reflections as things occur. It may be grandiose for us to aspire to provide primary sources to future historians, but the process is nevertheless instructive. Thank you.
Thank you. I look forward to hearing your view on the nation's reaction to the President siding with Putin against Ukraine and perhaps also against NATO. I don't think that one can fully conceptualize the current situation without acknowledging that three of the main players are almost surely psychopaths, as defined in the DSM. Putin sees his destiny to be the ruler of a historical Russian empire. Musk also seems to think he has some destiny as a ruler. Trump seems more tired, but is still motivated by gold, land acquisition, and adulation. While all three project confidence, I don't think their intelligence is extraordinary, except perhaps in their ability to read and manipulate people.
Thank you. I kept a journal for the first six months of the pandemic, and it was eye-opening to read it later and see what I understood then, and what I missed. I look forward to continuing to read this, and reflect on past entries.
I just found your diary. Back in the ’90s, we graduate students all learned Przeworski’s finding that no democracy with a GDP per capita above $6,000 (in 1985 dollars) had ever reverted to authoritarian rule. During Trump’s rise, I reassured myself that the world’s richest country couldn’t possibly turn authoritarian. While it hasn’t happened yet, the strength of this authoritarian movement is enough to reconsider past assumptions and develop new explanations. I’ve always been interested in hearing your thoughts.
very much appreciate your making this available. I use your work in class, especially your definition of democracy. I share your feeling that it is very difficult to make sense of what is happening in the US, though I am trying--and reading what you have to say helps. Thank you.
Thank you for your diary Adam. For me it is the single most helpful thing in helping me understand what is going on over there.
Might you say something one day about how you see the likely domestic role of the US military as things unfold? Or perhaps about how you think Trump and his advisers must be seeing it? I ask because I have seen some people speculating about the US being on the road to civil war.
Your diary is a terrific record of recent events and our collective attempts to make sense of them. I read the whole thing yesterday and it gave me literal nightmares. I hope you keep writing even from abroad.
I have two specific lines of thought in response.
First, the flow of events that you describe, and that we are all witnessing in real time, leads increasingly to the inescapable conclusion that Trump and Musk intend to prevent the midterm elections from taking place. It is hard to understand their complete indifference to public opinion, even of the populist right voters who supported Trump's election, as well as their political marginalization of the Bannon right, unless Trump and Musk were already considering that they might abort the midterms. The policies that are being enacted at breakneck speed will, as even Trump admits, likely plunge the economy into a recession, one that will still be with us when voters begin to focus on the midterms in 2026. Much of Trump's support comes from lower-class voters who will be especially damaged by a recession and the probable concomitant inability to restrain inflation (stagflation, in other words). Those voters may not turn out at the midterms, but if they do, many will swing against Trump for not delivering on his core economic promises. By 2026, there is thus likely to be a groundswell of anti-Trump public opinion even from within his constituency, which will allow the Democrats to take control of the House. Nothing that Trump has said is consistent with the idea that he is willing to allow the Republications to lose the House in 2026.
The only other possible interpretation I can think of is that Trump may imagine that by then, he will have so consolidated the hold of the executive on government power that it won't matter if the Democrats take the House. But his continued expansion of executive powers to include illegal and violent repressive tactics (picking up non-citizens and detaining them, illegally deporting non-citizens as prisoners to other countries in direct defiance of judicial orders, and now moving towards warrantless entry) suggests that he will not be afraid to find an excuse to declare marshal law and prevent the midterms in the first place. And why wouldn't that be the easier move at that point, rather than doing battle with a legislative branch held by the other party?
There are various scenarios that could still prevent this outcome, but they mainly depend on a few brave Republicans in Congress and/or the military. I imagine your thinking is similar, although I would in particular like to know your thoughts on the conditions that could propel those few brave Republicans to stand up and save American democracy.
Second, you hardly discuss Trump's strategy vis-a-vis global financial and military politics and his attempt to reorganize the international arena. On this, I found Ezra Klein's interview with Gillian Tett (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/14/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-gillian-tett.html) extremely enlightening. Tett has done the hard work of mastering the apparently nearly unreadable 40-page paper, "A User's Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System," written by Stephen Miran (current Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors), where he lays out a framework for what we might call a new US strategy of military mercantilism. The basic idea, as I understand it, is using tariffs to create a new system of global alliances where we will provide military protection for countries that agree to accept tariffs on their goods coming into the US. This offers a logic -- a crazy and probably impractical logic, but a logic nonetheless -- for the use of tariffs even on our allies as a way to reorganize the international arena of financial and defense alliances.
I do not see how that strategy can be successful; indeed, thus far, it has backfired, as countries retaliate for tariffs even under the direct although improbable threat of military invasion (e.g Canada). So it seems like a crazy way to create a new international trading system. But I am eager to know your thoughts about how Trump's policies to reshape the international political economy play into his domestic agenda, and whether failure in the first may undermine his attempts at authoritarian consolidation in the latter.
Hope your travels are safe and that you keep writing! The diary is very exciting to read.
I share your puzzlement of why Trump seems not to care about the electoral consequences of his policies. Either he is convinced that he will win, because he is infallible, or he thinks elections will no longer matter in two years.
I have stayed away from international issues because I see too many imponderables. I still cannot figure out whether his tariff announcements are a bargaining tactic or a project for a different economic system. I also wonder whether and how Europe can put its act together.
All this is to say that both the political and the economic future is still highly uncertain, a sentiment that seems to be shared by the stock market.
Adam, I just saw your substack, and am pleased by the thoughtful, long-form voice of careful reason you are applying to what’s currently happening in the USA.
I have encouraging news for you: though he’s repeated the misinformation endlessly, Trump did NOT receive a majority of the vote. As the final tallies have come in, it’s clear that Trump did NOT receive 50%+ of the popular vote, and did NOT receive a sweeping mandate from voters. Instead, he has one of the slimmest margins for any president, ever, and didn’t receive a simple majority of the vote.
He loves to repeat the lie, because it makes him appear inevitable, invulnerable, on the side of The Majority.
Poppycock.
If the popular vote were called on actual turnout, the winner would have been “Did Not Vote”.
If the votes wasted on 3rd party candidates had not drained supporters, Kamala Harris would have won by more than Trumps margin of victory in the final count.
If the 18M Biden voters who voted in 2020 for Biden had supported Kamala, instead of simply failing to show up at the polls, she’d have won the popular vote by a majority.
It’s clear that the Republican Deplorable’s strategy of voter suppression, flooding the zone with disinformation, and last-minute polling place changes WORKED. He’s won on dirty tricks, but did NOT win on his merits.
Trump is a criminal, doing criminal things to stay out of jail.
The majority of Americans DO NOT APPROVE, and never did.
I will always be interested in what the author of Democracy and the Limits of Self-Government thinks about this thing going on. Also a retired poli sci guy.
Adam, birthday greetings from Berkeley! I have been regularly reading your Diary, with great interest, and, of course, consternation. One point of difference from your post this week:
Modi has a revolutionary project--to turn India into a Hindu State. This has been the chief aim of the 100-year old militant cultural organization RSS, from where he came.
First of all, thank you for sharing your reflections. I’m Chilean, and I have worked with human rights archives, so I have seen firsthand the value of documentation.
I attended your lecture at KCL about a month ago, and when you explained the conditions necessary for a democracy to successfully process conflict peacefully, I couldn’t stop thinking about Allende. Now, reflecting on Trump, it seems to me that your forecast might not come true, and violent conflict may not arise—precisely because the U.S. is not Chile.
As you know, conflict is extremely costly, especially when it is violent; those willing to engage in it must have a reasonable expectation of payoff. This calculation largely depends on a balance of power superiority, whether endogenous or exogenous. If no actor has enough power to decisively end the conflict, or if there is nothing valuable left after its conclusion, then engaging in violence becomes too costly.
In the U.S., I believe this is the case. Anyone willing to engage in violence to defeat Trump’s regime would need a real expectation of being able to end the conflict without destroying everything—and no internal or external force seems to exist with that level of power.
As long as Trump remains aligned with the established power structure (unlike Allende, who openly defied the bourgeois state), those opposing him are unlikely to possess the strength necessary to overcome the inertia of the U.S. institutionalized forces. Trump has already demonstrated his ability to successfully direct the monopoly of force for his political agenda. Even if some branches of the U.S. armed forces were willing to intervene, they would recognize that doing so would likely mean fighting against other branches, and thus would hesitate to engage.
Allende was defeated because the three branches of the Chilean armed forces (despite a few constitutionalist generals, who were murdered) ultimately never backed him, and because they were supported and encouraged by the CIA and Kissinger. In contrast, because no third party has the power or will to intervene or support Trump’s opponents (as the U.S. was for Chile and so many other countries around the world), it seems to me that Trump could successfully implement his revolution relatively peacefully—and even perpetuate himself in power.
finding this really interesting and thoughtful--also, I wonder if you are keeping it elsewhere? The internet is ephemeral and if the US is headed in a dire direction, I have to wonder about the stability of these platforms or their willingness to oblige or resist those in charge--we've already seen most platforms be happily supportive of the regime...
I appreciate your work to document your intelligent reflections as things occur. It may be grandiose for us to aspire to provide primary sources to future historians, but the process is nevertheless instructive. Thank you.
Thank you. I look forward to hearing your view on the nation's reaction to the President siding with Putin against Ukraine and perhaps also against NATO. I don't think that one can fully conceptualize the current situation without acknowledging that three of the main players are almost surely psychopaths, as defined in the DSM. Putin sees his destiny to be the ruler of a historical Russian empire. Musk also seems to think he has some destiny as a ruler. Trump seems more tired, but is still motivated by gold, land acquisition, and adulation. While all three project confidence, I don't think their intelligence is extraordinary, except perhaps in their ability to read and manipulate people.
Dr. Przeworski, if you could publish each week as a separate post, that would be helpful. I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts.
Thank you. I kept a journal for the first six months of the pandemic, and it was eye-opening to read it later and see what I understood then, and what I missed. I look forward to continuing to read this, and reflect on past entries.
I just found your diary. Back in the ’90s, we graduate students all learned Przeworski’s finding that no democracy with a GDP per capita above $6,000 (in 1985 dollars) had ever reverted to authoritarian rule. During Trump’s rise, I reassured myself that the world’s richest country couldn’t possibly turn authoritarian. While it hasn’t happened yet, the strength of this authoritarian movement is enough to reconsider past assumptions and develop new explanations. I’ve always been interested in hearing your thoughts.
very much appreciate your making this available. I use your work in class, especially your definition of democracy. I share your feeling that it is very difficult to make sense of what is happening in the US, though I am trying--and reading what you have to say helps. Thank you.
Thank you for your diary Adam. For me it is the single most helpful thing in helping me understand what is going on over there.
Might you say something one day about how you see the likely domestic role of the US military as things unfold? Or perhaps about how you think Trump and his advisers must be seeing it? I ask because I have seen some people speculating about the US being on the road to civil war.
Sorry, I have no idea.
Dear Adam,
Your diary is a terrific record of recent events and our collective attempts to make sense of them. I read the whole thing yesterday and it gave me literal nightmares. I hope you keep writing even from abroad.
I have two specific lines of thought in response.
First, the flow of events that you describe, and that we are all witnessing in real time, leads increasingly to the inescapable conclusion that Trump and Musk intend to prevent the midterm elections from taking place. It is hard to understand their complete indifference to public opinion, even of the populist right voters who supported Trump's election, as well as their political marginalization of the Bannon right, unless Trump and Musk were already considering that they might abort the midterms. The policies that are being enacted at breakneck speed will, as even Trump admits, likely plunge the economy into a recession, one that will still be with us when voters begin to focus on the midterms in 2026. Much of Trump's support comes from lower-class voters who will be especially damaged by a recession and the probable concomitant inability to restrain inflation (stagflation, in other words). Those voters may not turn out at the midterms, but if they do, many will swing against Trump for not delivering on his core economic promises. By 2026, there is thus likely to be a groundswell of anti-Trump public opinion even from within his constituency, which will allow the Democrats to take control of the House. Nothing that Trump has said is consistent with the idea that he is willing to allow the Republications to lose the House in 2026.
The only other possible interpretation I can think of is that Trump may imagine that by then, he will have so consolidated the hold of the executive on government power that it won't matter if the Democrats take the House. But his continued expansion of executive powers to include illegal and violent repressive tactics (picking up non-citizens and detaining them, illegally deporting non-citizens as prisoners to other countries in direct defiance of judicial orders, and now moving towards warrantless entry) suggests that he will not be afraid to find an excuse to declare marshal law and prevent the midterms in the first place. And why wouldn't that be the easier move at that point, rather than doing battle with a legislative branch held by the other party?
There are various scenarios that could still prevent this outcome, but they mainly depend on a few brave Republicans in Congress and/or the military. I imagine your thinking is similar, although I would in particular like to know your thoughts on the conditions that could propel those few brave Republicans to stand up and save American democracy.
Second, you hardly discuss Trump's strategy vis-a-vis global financial and military politics and his attempt to reorganize the international arena. On this, I found Ezra Klein's interview with Gillian Tett (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/14/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-gillian-tett.html) extremely enlightening. Tett has done the hard work of mastering the apparently nearly unreadable 40-page paper, "A User's Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System," written by Stephen Miran (current Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors), where he lays out a framework for what we might call a new US strategy of military mercantilism. The basic idea, as I understand it, is using tariffs to create a new system of global alliances where we will provide military protection for countries that agree to accept tariffs on their goods coming into the US. This offers a logic -- a crazy and probably impractical logic, but a logic nonetheless -- for the use of tariffs even on our allies as a way to reorganize the international arena of financial and defense alliances.
I do not see how that strategy can be successful; indeed, thus far, it has backfired, as countries retaliate for tariffs even under the direct although improbable threat of military invasion (e.g Canada). So it seems like a crazy way to create a new international trading system. But I am eager to know your thoughts about how Trump's policies to reshape the international political economy play into his domestic agenda, and whether failure in the first may undermine his attempts at authoritarian consolidation in the latter.
Hope your travels are safe and that you keep writing! The diary is very exciting to read.
Miriam
Miriam,
Thanks.
I share your puzzlement of why Trump seems not to care about the electoral consequences of his policies. Either he is convinced that he will win, because he is infallible, or he thinks elections will no longer matter in two years.
I have stayed away from international issues because I see too many imponderables. I still cannot figure out whether his tariff announcements are a bargaining tactic or a project for a different economic system. I also wonder whether and how Europe can put its act together.
All this is to say that both the political and the economic future is still highly uncertain, a sentiment that seems to be shared by the stock market.
Adam, I just saw your substack, and am pleased by the thoughtful, long-form voice of careful reason you are applying to what’s currently happening in the USA.
I have encouraging news for you: though he’s repeated the misinformation endlessly, Trump did NOT receive a majority of the vote. As the final tallies have come in, it’s clear that Trump did NOT receive 50%+ of the popular vote, and did NOT receive a sweeping mandate from voters. Instead, he has one of the slimmest margins for any president, ever, and didn’t receive a simple majority of the vote.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2024/12/03/nx-s1-5213810/2024-presidential-election-popular-vote-trump-kamala-harris
He loves to repeat the lie, because it makes him appear inevitable, invulnerable, on the side of The Majority.
Poppycock.
If the popular vote were called on actual turnout, the winner would have been “Did Not Vote”.
If the votes wasted on 3rd party candidates had not drained supporters, Kamala Harris would have won by more than Trumps margin of victory in the final count.
If the 18M Biden voters who voted in 2020 for Biden had supported Kamala, instead of simply failing to show up at the polls, she’d have won the popular vote by a majority.
It’s clear that the Republican Deplorable’s strategy of voter suppression, flooding the zone with disinformation, and last-minute polling place changes WORKED. He’s won on dirty tricks, but did NOT win on his merits.
Trump is a criminal, doing criminal things to stay out of jail.
The majority of Americans DO NOT APPROVE, and never did.
You should explore literature about democratic backsliding, de-democratization, and cases like Hungary after 2010, Poland under PiS rule.
He's probably familiar with all of that...
Thank you for this.
I will always be interested in what the author of Democracy and the Limits of Self-Government thinks about this thing going on. Also a retired poli sci guy.
Important work. Thank you.
Adam, birthday greetings from Berkeley! I have been regularly reading your Diary, with great interest, and, of course, consternation. One point of difference from your post this week:
Modi has a revolutionary project--to turn India into a Hindu State. This has been the chief aim of the 100-year old militant cultural organization RSS, from where he came.
Pranab Bardhan
First of all, thank you for sharing your reflections. I’m Chilean, and I have worked with human rights archives, so I have seen firsthand the value of documentation.
I attended your lecture at KCL about a month ago, and when you explained the conditions necessary for a democracy to successfully process conflict peacefully, I couldn’t stop thinking about Allende. Now, reflecting on Trump, it seems to me that your forecast might not come true, and violent conflict may not arise—precisely because the U.S. is not Chile.
As you know, conflict is extremely costly, especially when it is violent; those willing to engage in it must have a reasonable expectation of payoff. This calculation largely depends on a balance of power superiority, whether endogenous or exogenous. If no actor has enough power to decisively end the conflict, or if there is nothing valuable left after its conclusion, then engaging in violence becomes too costly.
In the U.S., I believe this is the case. Anyone willing to engage in violence to defeat Trump’s regime would need a real expectation of being able to end the conflict without destroying everything—and no internal or external force seems to exist with that level of power.
As long as Trump remains aligned with the established power structure (unlike Allende, who openly defied the bourgeois state), those opposing him are unlikely to possess the strength necessary to overcome the inertia of the U.S. institutionalized forces. Trump has already demonstrated his ability to successfully direct the monopoly of force for his political agenda. Even if some branches of the U.S. armed forces were willing to intervene, they would recognize that doing so would likely mean fighting against other branches, and thus would hesitate to engage.
Allende was defeated because the three branches of the Chilean armed forces (despite a few constitutionalist generals, who were murdered) ultimately never backed him, and because they were supported and encouraged by the CIA and Kissinger. In contrast, because no third party has the power or will to intervene or support Trump’s opponents (as the U.S. was for Chile and so many other countries around the world), it seems to me that Trump could successfully implement his revolution relatively peacefully—and even perpetuate himself in power.