A healthy democracy requires a healthy center-right. Harvard political scientist Daniel Ziblatt, in his groundbreaking book Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, argues that as representatives of status quo interests, conservative parties have a major role to play in either accepting or thwarting the advance of democracy. The modern Republican Party appears to be doing the latter, abandoning many of the principles of liberal democracy in a bid for political power. This is particularly dangerous in a two-party system, in which both parties need to be able to agree on the rules of the road. To what extent do the Republican Party’s current politics represent a genuine desire for authoritarianism, and in what ways might we be misunderstanding what is happening on the right? What does this suggest about plausible futures for the GOP? And how might American democracy be impacted?

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