Broad Questions for Brettschneider

According to Putnam’s “Bowling Alone”, our social and civil relationships are deteriorating. If formal checks and balances often fail like you point out, is there any potential for growth by way of rethinking our constitutional structure? Or should we (and how should we focus on strengthening civil society (and preserve processes like forming constitutional constituencies and reclaiming democracy by enlisting recovery presidents)?


There seems to be a lot of eerily similar patterns going on throughout the history of the Presidents (restricting the right to dissent, cheat in elections, aggressively authoritarian presidents like Nixon, etc.). Is the fact that Trump was not defeated by Constitutional constituencies a telling sign that we are stuck in the same (if not worsening) patterns of history?


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