ABSTRACT
The death of American democracy is a whodunnit, even if the crime is still in progress and the outcome is uncertain. Political parties make terrible gatekeepers, particularly when the enemy is ‘populism’. The politics of race in the United States is unique in many ways because of the country’s long association with a racialised form of slavery. The instabilities of multiculturalism stem again from the nature of political parties. Traditional political parties seem unable to arrest the death of democracy; indeed, wherever they band together to hold on to power they seem to make matters worse. Efforts to promote greater inclusiveness and to widen access to public services – no matter how well-intentioned – also seem self-defeating if the goal is to prevent political polarisation from going from bad to worse. The only way to save democracy is to start by building or rebuilding a sense of shared democratic community.
