
The Atlantic Democracy Reader
For 161 years, magazine contributors have written about the gravest dangers and darkest hours for America’s political institutions.
For 161 years, magazine contributors have written about the gravest dangers and darkest hours for America’s political institutions.
Jeffrey Rosen and Anne Applebaum—scholars of America’s past and Europe’s present—discuss our precarious moment in history and what could come next.
António Guterres confronts the “reemergence of irrationality” in global politics.
A year into the Civil War, The Atlantic’s co-founder entreated President Lincoln and the Republican-majority Congress to bring slavery to an immediate and permanent end.
Democracy has taken a beating under President Trump. Will the midterms make a difference?
As participation in civic life has dwindled, so has public faith in the country’s system of government.
The Constitution once united a diverse country under a banner of ideas. But partisanship has turned Americans against one another—and against the principles enshrined in our founding document.
In 1858, Abraham Lincoln warned that America could not remain “half slave and half free.” Today, the country remains divided by racism—and the threat is as existential as it was before the Civil War.
Political enthusiasms are running high around the country.
As anti-immigration sentiments intensified in the U.S. during World War I, Randolph S. Bourne argued for embracing cultural diversity rather than demanding assimilation.
Polarization. Conspiracy theories. Attacks on the free press. An obsession with loyalty. Recent events in the United States follow a pattern Europeans know all too well.
The Founders designed a government that would resist mob rule. They didn’t anticipate how strong the mob could become.
The laws of other countries have a bearing on America’s own, writes Stephen Breyer—and the highest court in the land needs to take heed.
Artificial intelligence could erase many practical advantages of democracy, and erode the ideals of liberty and equality. It will further concentrate power among a small elite if we don’t take steps to stop it.
In the midst of the Watergate scandal, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. considered how Richard Nixon had abused the powers of the presidency—and how constitutional order could be restored.