Trump’s Impact on Democracy in U.S.: Statements and Actions

Due to the great diversity of regimes, conceptualization and classification became harder. Though many states share important attributes of Western democracy, many of them differ from each other. Thus analytic differentiation is needed to capture diverse forms to detect specific attributes of democracy that are missing. (Collier & Levitsky, 1997). There are some indivisible parts of democracies such as elected officials, free-fair-frequent elections, freedom of expression, alternative sources of information, associational autonomy and inclusive citizenship (Dahl, 1998). However democracy does not always brings desirable outcomes. It is not necessarily more efficient economically and not likely to appear more orderly, consensual, governable than other forms of government (Schmitter & Karl, 1991). It would be a strained interpretation to classify Trump’s U.S. as a diminished subtype; illiberal democracy for the time being. However since his election campaign, 45th President used a polarizing language regarding particular religious and ethnic groups. In the face of a judicial veto, insisting on travel ban for Muslims, allocating budget for constructing a wall on Mexico border, trying to make the Justice Department into a personal fiefdom are some of his actions that could be considered in the framework of rise of illiberal democracy. Following the withdrawal from TPP, signals in the same direction for NAFTA and TTIP are apparent. In this paper, while sticking to the theoretical framework, Trump’s speeches, actions and National Security Strategy document are analyzed to track antidemocratic tendencies and their actualization in American political life.