The number of Saturday’s No Kings Day protesters was estimated to be about eight million. In my previous post I said that this would suffice for the third No Kings Day to be assessed a success. Which it was. At a minimum it was among the largest public protests in American history. Given that a year ago no one had heard of such a thing as No Kings, that’s quite a feat.
However, as I also pointed out, the day’s agenda was amorphous, deliberately so. As the name “No Kings” suggests, the demonstrations were more anti-President Donald Trump than they were pro anything. Which of course raises the question of whether the protesters have enough in common effectively to promote a more precise political agenda. An agenda more expansive than dumping Trump.
At the same time as preparations for this third No Kings Day were getting into high gear, two reports confirmed what many of us suspected: that democracy is in decline not just in the United Sates but around the world.
The titles of the two reports say it all. Sweden’s V-Dem’s is named “Unraveling the Democratic Era.” And America’s Freedom House’s is named, “The Growing Shadow of Autocracy.” Freedom House found that in 2025 “global freedom declined for the 20th consecutive year.” And V-Dem found that the world has never seen as many countries that, simultaneously, are “autocratizing.” Moreover, the United States is Exhibit A. Legislative constraints on the American executive are at historic lows. And U.S. democracy overall is at the level it was more than a half century ago, before the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Which raises two questions: Why is this happening and can anything be done to reverse the trend? Our tendency has been to blame the political establishment for whatever it is that ails us. Specifically, followers have blamed democratic political leaders for what has gone wrong. And followers have imagined that getting autocratic political leaders – ones more disposed to use an iron fist than a velvet glove – will or at least might ameliorate the situations in which they find themselves.
Let’s get tell it like it is: ordinary people both in the United States and in democracies elsewhere in the world are experiencing frustration that is morphing slowly but certainly into fury. Specifically, increasingly, followers are furious that the middle class status to which they aspired seems out of reach; that affordable housing is difficult, even impossible to come by; that their college degrees are perilously close to being worthless; and that while their struggles are mounting the leadership class – those at or near the top of the heap – are enjoying lifestyles of the rich and famous.
Who constitutes the leadership class? Leaders in every sector. Most obviously in the private sector where enormous wealth is being accumulated at dizzying speeds. But in other sectors as well, including in the public one where rampant corruption increasingly seems – certainly in the United States, during the time of Trump – not the exception but the rule.
Reports such as those recently issued by V-Dem and Freedom House are as valuable as they are depressing. But they do not adequately address the root of the problem. Which is not just that democracy is in decline, but that capitalism is failing. One could in fact argue – and I do – that democracy is in decline precisely because capitalism is failing.*
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*The first chapter of my most recent book is titled, “Democracy in Decline and Capitalism in Question.” (Leadership from Bad to Worse: What Happens When Bad Festers, Oxford University Press, 2024.)