Our constitutional democracies are in crisis, but what kind of crisis are we experiencing? A crisis of executive aggrandizement, populism or authoritarianism? Is President Trump merely another president consolidating power in the executive branch, a populist rabble-rouser, a wannabe authoritarian or perhaps all three? My belief is that these symptoms point to a deeper problem: we are actually experiencing a crisis of statecraft, which is partly being fuelled by the decline of our legislatures.

In a constitutional democracy, legitimate political authority is generated and sustained through effective statecraft that reconciles the tensions between the politics of support and the politics of power. Whereas the politics of support concerns winning and maintaining popular support to hold office, the politics of power reflects the inherent constraints on any government, such as temporal, geographical, technological, economic limits, and forces beyond the control of men. For example, consider the inherent limits on the Trump administration to manage oil prices and inflation following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz or the Bush administration's failure to handle the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina or the fact that, due to geography, Britain’s closest trading partner will always be Europe rather than Australia, regardless of what Brexiteers argue. The politics of support must always bow to those hard realities reflected by the politics of power.

Statecraft is about governing well—making choices that reconcile tensions and steering the people to understand what can and cannot realistically be achieved. It is always hard and depends as much on luck as on skill, but it is clear that over the last twenty years, our political class has failed to rise to the challenge. It does not matter whether a constitutional democracy relies on a majoritarian or proportional electoral system, a parliamentary or presidential arrangement, or whether it is governed by technocrats, moderates, populists, or authoritarians. No one seems able to pursue a viable and sustainable form of statecraft anymore, and the legitimacy of our constitutional democracy is eroding as a consequence.

Advocates of executive aggrandizement, populist politics, and authoritarianism contend that by bypassing the checks and balances imposed by the legislative branch and concentrating power in the executive branch, the executive will be able to respond to complex problems more effectively and efficiently. However, bypassing the legislative branch and concentrating power in the executive branch has paradoxically made it more difficult to reconcile the politics of support with the inherent limits of the politics of power. The legislature is the conduit through which the politics of support and power are reconciled; it is where electoral promises are hammered out into viable laws through deliberation and compromise. By diminishing and bypassing the legislative branch, we have simply made statecraft more difficult.

Long before the current crisis, many constitutional democracies had already reduced the power and influence of their legislative branches by shifting important decision-making responsibilities to the executive and judiciary. This was routinely justified as necessary because the executive could respond more effectively to challenges and because the judiciary would better protect individual rights. This is not, however, an American-specific response to an often-dysfunctional US Congress, the shortcomings of the Madisonian separation of powers, or a strong societal commitment to constitutionalism; similar trends have occurred in European states with functional legislatures and weaker commitments to constitutionalism. The current push to concentrate power with the executive is simply a harder-ball variant of this trend. 

We are already living with the damaging consequences. As the authority of legislatures to decide core political, moral, and economic issues has diminished,  citizens increasingly perceive their legislative representatives as unable or unwilling to address their concerns, resulting in low levels of public trust and electoral turnout. Recent polling shows that public trust in legislatures has sharply declined across numerous constitutional democracies, compared with other institutions of government, including the United States Congress, the German Bundestag, the French National Assembly, the Italian Parliament, and the UK Westminster Parliament. As turnout has declined, established political parties have intensified their competition, leading to a more polarised struggle for the remaining voters. If all power resides in the executive, then capturing the executive branch becomes the primary focus of elections. Moreover, because the executive branch does not accommodate opposition or institutionalize debate in the way a legislature does, each election has begun to be seen as an existential battle for the country's future rather than an ongoing, less intense game of repeated play.

Consequently, political actors and parties, regardless of whether they are populist or authoritarian, have been perversely incentivized to make wildly unrealistic promises to mobilize their core bases. Once in power, however, reconciling these promises, designed solely to secure the politics of support, with the hard realities imposed by the politics of power proves difficult, if not impossible, resulting in policy failures and political disillusionment. Far from breaking the cycle, populists and aspiring authoritarians merely repeat the cycle in a more extreme fashion, with bolder promises and even bolder failures and disappointments.

The one way to break this cycle is to restore the power and legitimacy of the legislative branch. Yet, as Justice Gorsuch rightly highlighted in the recent tariff judgment, “retrieving a lost power is no easy business.” In the US, the president's veto is an obvious problem. However, even in a parliamentary system such as the UK, the executive may informally veto attempts to diminish its powers through its exclusive control over the parliamentary agenda. Vetoes aside, polarisation and short-termism disincentivise both moderate and populist politicians from relinquishing executive power.

The challenge is twofold: first, as Frances E. Lee contends, we must remind ourselves why legislatures matter to our constitutional democracies, as well as reconceive politics as a long-term shared game. Second, we need policies to re-strengthen the legislative branch within the separation of powers. Reforms vary by state but may include promoting greater judicial respect for legislative intent, reducing procedural rules that promote dysfunction, or fostering procedural rules to promote deliberation, compromise, and oversight for broader support. These are no easy tasks, but constitutional democracy is impossible without a healthy legislative branch.