Team WP 2.3 - Testing Democracy. The United States of America in the Donald Trump Era. - Future Democracy Lab - Future Democracy Lab - Strategic Program Excellence Initiative at the Jagiellonian University

Team WP 2.3 - Testing democracy. The United States of America in the Donald Trump Era

The aim of the project is to analyze the state of democracy in the United States of America in the Donald Trump Era. We tentatively define this period as starting from Trump’s entering the 2016 GOP presidential nomination campaign until still ongoing time, when the former president has almost unlimited command on the Republican Party. In particular, we believe that since the presidential inauguration of Trump, the most important transformative figure of American politics in recent memory, American democracy – its norms, values, institutions, etc. – is under serious test, if not in trouble.

The collaborative endeavor seeks to bring together scholars from several fields, particularly law, political science, communication and media studies, as well as several other specific areas, such as clash of law and politics, federalism and democracy, social media and political communication, comparative democracy, political institutions and elections. Together, the project would aim at identifying the threats related to Trump activities vis-a-vis the the legal system, separation of powers (Posner and Vermuele 2010; Howell and Moe 2016) and establishing permanent presidential dominance over other branches of government (Calabresi and Yoo 2008; Howell 2013) federalism and intergovernmental relations (Grumbach 2022), political parties, congressional investigations, erosion of political norms (e.g. alleged corruption, lying in politics, voting suppression, etc.) with simultaneous disinformation and misinformation campaigns channelled through the social media, which we consider a potentially important element in this complex structure. Especially since American society for many years did not sufficiently appreciate the fact that social media are a space for the operation of agents whose goal was to weaken the foundations of democracy (Jankowicz, 2020). Additionally, American social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have benefited from extremists and trolls for many years, thanks to the fact that this content has generated massive engagement on these platforms (Aro, 2022). Combating disinformation which, once sown, was then spread organically, was, therefore, not in their interest.

Paweł Laidler is Professor of political science at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, lawyer and American law and politics scholar. His research focuses on the process of politicization of justice, judicialization of politics, constitutionalization of politics, and clash of law and politics. Author of books and articles on U.S. legal and political system, including the analysis of the political role of the Supreme Court of the United States and the problem of transparency and secrecy in U.S. government surveillance in the post-Snowden era. Recipient of several grants, including Sasakawa Young Leaders’ Fellowship Fund (Tokyo Foundation, 2001) and Beethoven grant (Polish and German National Science Centers, 2018), as well as Visiting Professor at the JFK Institute for North America Studies, Free University in Berlin (2015).

Iga Machnik, M.A., is a doctoral student in the Society of the Future program at Jagiellonian University’s Doctoral School in the Social Sciences. As the Copernicus Society of America fellow, she conducted research at Dickinson College (USA), worked on M.A. thesis on the impact of the commerce clause on the desegregation of places of public accommodation in the U.S. Recipient of the Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund (2025). Her main research interests focus on the U.S. federal judiciary, election laws, American South, policies of desegregation, and the clash of law and politics.

Dr. Malwina Popiołek is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Culture, Faculty of Management and Social Communication (Jagiellonian University). Her research interests focus on media and social media, misinformation/disinformation and communication technologies in the era of the information society. In 2021-2022, she was a Visiting Scholar at Utica University (USA). She is a member of editorial and scientific boards in different scientific journals, both domestic and foreign.

Prof. Jared Sonnicksen is Professor of Political Systems at the Institute of Political Science (RWTH Aachen University, Germany). His academic interests are comparative government, European and North American democracies, comparative federalism and institutional theories. Recent publications: Tensions of American Federal Democracy. Fragmentation of the State (Routledge, 2022), the co-edited volume Federal Democracies at Work. Varieties of Complex Government (University of Toronto Press, 2021), and the co-edited special issue of Politische Vierteljahresschrift/German Political Science Quarterly “Democracy and the (R)Evolution of the Right in the US and Beyond” (vol. 65(2), 2024).

Dr. Maciej Turek is political scientist, Assistant Professor at the Institute of American Studies and Polish Diaspora (Jagiellonian University). He authored and coauthored three books and co-edited three volumes on American politics institutions, and campaign elections. Dr. Turek conducted two research projects with the NCN, individual and as principal investigator. In spring 2020, he was visiting assistant professor at the University of Rochester. Recently, he co-edited a Routledge-published volume on the 2022 midterm elections in the United States, that involved 18 authors from seven countries.