Trump and the Decline of American Democracy: How Political Extremism Weakened the United States’ Global Standing

Most democracy researchers point to the late 1990s through the early 2000s as the last period when the United States was consistently viewed as one of the world’s leading democracies. During the post–Cold War era, the nation was widely regarded as a global example of constitutional government, civil liberties, institutional stability, and peaceful transfers of power.¹˒² Over the last two decades, however, international democracy indexes have documented a measurable decline in the health of American democracy, driven by rising polarization, declining trust in institutions, disinformation, growing extremism, and increasing hostility between political factions.²˒³˒⁶

That decline accelerated dramatically after Donald Trump became president in 2017.¹ While democratic erosion in the United States did not begin with Trump, many scholars and historians argue that his presidency intensified existing weaknesses in ways unprecedented in modern American history.³˒⁴ Trump regularly attacked the legitimacy of elections, undermined confidence in the press by branding unfavorable coverage “fake news,” vilified political opponents, and repeatedly portrayed independent institutions — including the courts, intelligence agencies, and even career civil servants — as enemies rather than essential checks within a constitutional system.⁴˒⁵

Perhaps most damaging was Trump’s sustained effort to convince millions of Americans that the 2020 presidential election was stolen despite the absence of evidence and despite dozens of court rulings rejecting claims of widespread fraud.⁷ Historians and democracy experts have warned that public trust in elections is one of the foundational pillars of democratic government. By repeatedly spreading false claims about election integrity, Trump weakened faith in the democratic process itself and deepened national division.⁴˒⁵ The January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol became a defining symbol of that crisis, as a mob seeking to overturn the certification of the election violently disrupted the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in modern American history.⁷

Trump’s return to office in 2025 reignited many of the same concerns among democracy scholars and international observers.³ Critics argue that renewed efforts to expand presidential authority, increase political control over federal agencies, and target perceived political enemies threaten the independence of democratic institutions and further erode constitutional norms. Many analysts believe these actions contribute to the growing international perception that the United States is no longer the stable democratic model it once claimed to be.¹˒³˒⁸

Supporters of Trump argue that his actions represent a necessary challenge to entrenched bureaucracies and partisan institutions, and they maintain that he was attempting to restore accountability, strengthen border security, and confront political bias within government and media. However, even some conservative scholars have acknowledged that democratic systems depend not only on laws and elections, but also on shared norms, respect for institutional limits, and public trust in outcomes.⁴

Most democracy indexes do not attribute America’s decline solely to one individual. The erosion of democratic trust has been building for years due to economic inequality, media fragmentation, partisan extremism, and institutional dysfunction.²˒⁶ Yet many political scientists argue that Donald Trump accelerated those trends more than any modern American president, transforming long-standing political tensions into an open crisis of democratic legitimacy whose effects continue to shape both the United States and its reputation around the world.³˒⁴˒⁵

Sources

¹ The Economist Intelligence Unit. “Democracy Index.”

² Freedom House. “Freedom in the World 2025: United States.”

³ Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute. “Democracy Reports.”

⁴ Levitsky, Steven, and Daniel Ziblatt. How Democracies Die. Crown Publishing, 2018.

⁵ Applebaum, Anne. Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism. Doubleday, 2020.

⁶ Pew Research Center. “Public Trust in Government: 1958–2024.”

⁷ U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. Final Report, 2022.

⁸ Fukuyama, Francis. Liberalism and Its Discontents. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022.