Are Americans Ready to Abandon Madisonian Democracy?
With Lucan Way, co-author of the NYT essay: “How Will We Know When We Have Lost Our Democracy?”
This week on Outrage Overload, I’m honored to welcome Lucan Way, one of the most influential political scientists working today. If you care about the state of democracy — not just in the U.S., but globally — Lucan Way is essential listening. Alongside Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (both of How Democracies Die fame), he recently co-authored the must-read New York Times guest essay, "How Will We Know When We Have Lost Our Democracy?"
And somehow — somehow! — he agreed to come on our little show.
This conversation is a big moment for Outrage Overload. It’s one thing to talk about democratic erosion. It’s another to talk about it with the people shaping that very conversation at the highest levels.
The Slow Creep of Competitive Authoritarianism
In the NYT essay, Way, Levitsky, and Ziblatt argue that the threat to American democracy isn’t always loud and dramatic. Often, it looks like business as usual — elections still happen, courts still function — but under the surface, the rules have changed.
They describe this as competitive authoritarianism: a system in which elections are held, but the playing field is no longer level. Incumbents use state power to:
Intimidate opponents
Retaliate against critics
Undermine independent media and academia
Threaten or investigate civil society groups
The authors highlight how, under Trump, the cost of dissent began to rise — through politicized law enforcement, weaponized investigations, and targeted financial pressure. When dissent becomes dangerous, democracy is no longer functioning as designed. That’s the red flag. And they warn: silence and compliance only accelerate the erosion.
Beyond the Essay: Are Americans Ready to Give Up on Madisonian Democracy?
Here’s where I want to take the conversation further.
The essay is powerful but it doesn’t explicitly ask a question I can’t stop thinking about: Are Americans ready to abandon Madisonian democracy?
Not in a formal sense. No one is campaigning to repeal checks and balances or eliminate the Senate. But pay attention to the mood in the country and the signs are there:
Gridlock fatigue is real. People are sick of nothing getting done.
Declining trust in institutions spans both left and right.
Many Americans show increasing interest in strongman figures who promise decisive action.
And there’s a rising willingness to bend procedural norms in favor of political outcomes.
Even January 6 reflects this sentiment — not just as a riot, but as a public display of people willing to abandon process, law, and legitimacy for the sake of a preferred outcome.
The system of government that James Madison envisioned is showing its age, and many Americans — whether they admit it or not — seem increasingly open to “trying something else.” That “something else” may not be dictatorship in name. But it could be authoritarian in practice.
🎧 Listen to the conversation with Lucan Way here:
Lucan Way is not particularly optimistic about where things are headed.
As long as you have one of the two major parties that's an authoritarian party, it does not matter whatever institutional reform you do, you're going to have a situation, which is at best a kind of instability, an unstable competitive authoritarianism type situation with periods of relatively soft competitive authoritarianism followed by periods of dysfunctional democracy. And that's sort of what we're headed to right now.
- Lucan Way
What do you think? Let us know in the comments or reply directly.
– David
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It might be a stretch to believe we've even had Madisonian Democracy for some decades. Perhaps a perverted version of it thanks to a corrupt, rigged duopoly that feeds on emotional tribalism, toxic dysfunction, and low-rung thinking. I sense people do want change-- and who could blame them? The question is, are we going to be manipulated down this doom-loop into authoritarianism and failure, or, will enough people stand against this civic destruction with systemic reforms and a return to reason and civility? Now I have to listen to the interview...