Democracy is under pressure worldwide – and in the United States, that pressure continues to grow.  Along with attacks on democracy have also come attacks on core liberal constitutional commitments – including commitments to women’s reproductive rights and LGBTQI+ rights, and an openness to global free trade and migration pathways.

The two trends are clearly inter-related:  The same populist leaders are often at the forefront of both. Witness Orbán or Trump, and their attacks on independent courts and prosecutors, formerly independent agencies, electoral processes and migrant, reproductive and trans rights.

The erosion of democratic institutions can hasten the degradation of liberal rights and freedoms. And when countries become more insular, democracy loses an important source of resilience – global networks of support.

At the same time, the two trends are not identical. For those committed to democracy, it is important to distinguish between disagreements with liberal ideas, and disagreements with the idea of democracy itself.

Opposing the right to abortion, for example, need not mean opposing democratic constitutional ideas.  And a preference for nationalist economic and immigration policies need not equate to a preference for arbitrary, undemocratic forms of government – or depriving non-citizens of their rights without due process.

One might eventually lead to the other, as a matter of politics. But as a matter of logic, there is good reason to insist on the distinction: liberal rights and freedoms can often wax and wane, whereas the erosion of democracy will often be harder to reverse.  It is, therefore, especially important to preserve democratic structures and processes, even as we seek to use those processes to achieve our own preferred (liberal) vision and policies.

How might we maintain this distinction?  In prior work (in 2015, 2020, and 2021), we pointed to the idea of the “democratic minimum core” (‘DMC’) as one conceptual tool that may be helpful.

The DMC is an idea that, we suggest, represents a form of overlapping consensus among all reasonable political and constitutional theories as to what, at minimum, democracy entails.  Many political and constitutional theorists hold that democracy requires more to count as true constitutional democracy.  Yet almost all political and constitutional theorists agree that the protection of the DMC is a necessary – if not sufficient – condition for a true democracy.

We likewise suggest that the DMC corresponds to an overlap in the actual practices of all (or almost all) extant constitutional democracies worldwide. In this sense, the DMC is “anchored” in a form of transnational or moral-cosmopolitan consensus.

The DMC comprises three broad elements: (1) a commitment to regular, free and fair multi-party elections; (2) political rights and freedoms; and (3) a set of institutional checks and balances necessary to maintain (1) and (2).

The DMC is clearly under attack in the US today. The Trump administration is taking steps to eliminate checks on power and suppress political opposition. These measures are familiar for comparativists studying the erosion of democracy elsewhere.

The government has taken extraordinary steps to rein in dissenting voices in “knowledge institutions” like the media and universities, via the FCC, pretextual funding threats, and other means. Many governmental agencies appear to be targeting investigations of political opponents. Independent checking institutions within government, designed to shore up democratic weak points, have been pressured, neutralized, or packed by administration supporters. The President has attempted to pressure the independent Election Assistance Commission into changing voting rules, has threatened to abolish most mail-in voting, and has placed extraordinary pressure on Republican states to re-gerrymander their districts before the 2026 midterm elections. Finally, existing and threatened deployments of military force in cities may portend more overt actions.

While the lower courts have largely resisted administration steps to undermine the DMC, the Supreme Court has largely enabled them. Its formalistic decisions channeling lawsuits into less attractive forums make it harder for administration targets to claim relief. Its near-total embrace of unitary executive theory has enabled and emboldened administration attacks on independent checking institutions. And a forthcoming decision – which may gut what is left of the Voting Rights Act – may turbocharge gerrymandering across the South while sharply reducing minority representation in Congress. We fear we are witnessing the rise of what we call “abusive judicial review” – US-style, where the Supreme Court helps to undermine rather than protect the DMC.

The greatest test of the DMC is whether elections will remain free and fair in 2026, 2028 and beyond and whether institutions will resist any efforts to undermine that fairness.

For these questions to be answered in the affirmative, it will also be important that political conservatives – as well as liberals – stand up to uphold the DMC. That was the position taken by former Congresswoman Liz Cheney and some other political conservatives in the lead up to the 2024 presidential election.  But to date, too few Republicans have done so.

As well, commentary – without suppressing the obvious links between liberalism and democracy – might do a better job of disentangling progressive policy ideas, liberalism, and the DMC. While protecting all of them is an important goal, there ought to be the best chance of reaching common ground around the latter.

So, a good place for scholars and commentators to start is by embracing the idea of the DMC, both as a tool for analysis and as an ideal to uphold.