January 10, 2025

Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’

Erica Frantz is a leading scholars on personalist regimes, in both their democratic and their authoritarian forms and the co-author, with Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Joseph Wright, of “The Origins of Elected Strongmen: How Personalist Parties Destroy Democracy From Within.” In this conversation, it is discussed what personalist regimes are and how they operate, the personalist qualities of Trump and the signs of democratic backsliding that Frantz thinks Americans need to track in the coming weeks and years.

Listen to the full episode on The New York Times.

  • Podcast
    • April 30, 2025
    Ukraine Negotiates for its Future

    There’s been a flurry of activity on the Ukraine front this week. Over the weekend, Donald Trump briefly met with Zelensky in Rome during ceremonies for Pope Francis’ funeral....

    By Andrea Kendall-Taylor & Jim Townsend

  • Commentary
    • The Washington Quarterly
    • April 30, 2025
    A U.S. Strategy for Advancing EU Enlargement

    In 2014, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker famously declared a pause in the European Union’s enlargement. This pause is now over, after Russia’s 2022 invasion ...

    By Nicholas Lokker

  • Video
    • April 30, 2025
    The U.S. Is No Longer the Leader of the West

    Trump’s second term has dismantled the idea of the U.S. as the leader of the West and instead it’s almost “every nation for itself”, says Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center f...

    By Jim Townsend

  • Podcast
    • April 25, 2025
    Germany's New Defense Agenda

    On April 9th, Friedrich Merz, the leader of Germany’s center-right Christian Democratic Union, secured a coalition agreement with the Social Democrats following his party’s vi...

    By Andrea Kendall-Taylor & Jim Townsend

View All Reports View All Articles & Multimedia