Democracy’s greatest achievement — creating a “big tent” for all — may have destroyed our constitutional system’s ability to adapt and govern effectively.
For over two centuries, the American experiment has weathered crises that would have toppled lesser democracies — a resilience celebrated as uniquely American. But what if this story of perpetual reinvention through adaptation has reached its limits, our Constitution stretched too thin by the democratic achievements we cherish most?
In this WhoWhatWhy podcast, Yale professor Stephen Skowronek explains his “adaptability paradox” theory: Our constitutional system functioned for centuries because it excluded many Americans, allowing a homogeneous elite to govern effectively.
When the rights revolution of the ’60s and ’70s finally attempted to include everyone, the balancing act collapsed, leaving our institutions unable to manage diverse interests with competing demands.
Skowronek also examines Donald Trump through the lens of America’s “great repudiators” — transformative presidents like Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and FDR, who rose against discredited establishments to remake American politics. Trump has claimed this mantle, but under radically different circumstances — with institutions far less capable of constraining presidential power.
Can we govern under our current Constitution without excluding anyone? Or will we need what Skowronek calls “the Jefferson alternative” — a new constitution for a new generation?
At this precarious moment, when many Americans worry whether our system can withstand the forces pulling it apart, Skowronek provides a historically-grounded framework that helps us see our present predicament in a new light.
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(As a service to our readers, we provide transcripts with our podcasts. We try to ensure that these transcripts do not include errors. However, due to a constraint of resources, we are not always able to proofread them as closely as we would like and hope that you will excuse any errors that slipped through.)
Jeff Schechtman: Welcome to the WhoWhatWhy Podcast. I’m your host Jeff Schechtman. For over two centuries, the American experiment has weathered crises that would’ve toppled lesser democracies, civil war, economic collapse, social upheaval. But each time our constitutional system has not merely survived but reinvented itself, emerging stronger through adaptation. We’ve celebrated this resilience as uniquely American, a testament to the genius of our founding document.
But what if this national story of perpetual renewal has reached its limits of adaptability if the Constitution has simply been stretched too thin? What if the very democratic achievements we most cherish, the inclusion of all Americans in our political life, have paradoxically undermined the foundations that made adaptation possible? Today we’re joined by Yale Political and Social Science professor Stephen Skowronek. He’s the author of Landmark Works on Presidential Leadership including The Politics Presidents Make.
In his forthcoming book The Adaptability Paradox, Professor Skowronek offers a provocative thesis, that the Rights Revolution of the ’60s and ’70s while fulfilling America’s highest democratic aspirations, may have disrupted the delicate constitutional balance that for generations, allowed our system to absorb and accommodate change. We’re also going to spend a little time exploring his concept of the great repudiators. Transformative presidents like Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and FDR, who rose against discredited establishments to remake American politics, and how Donald Trump has claimed this mantle under radically different circumstances.
With institutions far less capable of constraining presidential power, at this precarious moment when many Americans worry whether our constitutional system can withstand the forces pulling it apart, Professor Stephen Skowronek provides a historically grounded framework that helps us see our present predicament in a new light. One that will change assumptions across the political spectrum. Stephen Skowronek, welcome to the WhoWhatWhy Podcast.
Stephen Skowronek: Thank you.
Jeff: Thanks so much for joining us today. One of the things that you talk about in this concept of The Adaptability Paradox is that democratic institutions, that democratic exclusions acted as a ballast for our constitutional order. Talk about that idea first.
Stephen: Well, we celebrate American democracy but in fact, for most of American history, most Americans were excluded from full access to the national government’s services, and protections. And that meant that those who were included were a relatively homogeneous group, and could find ways to govern themselves. They could set up arrangements that minimized the risks of who was next in control. Over time, new groups were included. The democratization of the Constitution proceeded a pace with new groups included.
Each time new groups were included, we reorganized, reframed, reconstituted, reconstructed American government. Democratization was the driving force that prompted major reconstructions of American government. And from the beginning, I would say through the New Deal, this is how American government reinvented itself and reaffirmed its democratic commitments. Those commitments, however, were always at least through the New Deal premised on agreements about who would be excluded, and who would not have full access. That made reaching agreement among those included easier, and as you say the Rights Revolution fundamentally changed that calculus.
Jeff: And one of the ideas you talk about is that these conflicts, these problems that would arise as more people were brought into the system, that previously it kept these conflicts outside of the system. The conflicts weren’t part of the system itself.
Stephen: Well, there were challenges. Those people who were excluded persistently challenged the system, but institutions were arranged to filter out those demands. Now, social movements over time broke through those constraints, broke through those boundaries, progressively expanding the range of those included. But at least through the New Deal, the exclusions were substantial enough so that those who were included could find a new way of governing, could agree upon new terms and conditions for governing, that they found acceptable. That’s what broke down after the 1970s.
Jeff: And as more people were brought into the system after the ’60s and ’70s, what was it that was inherent in this idea of greater power-sharing that really put the system in jeopardy?
Stephen: Well, the Constitution itself is a complicated document. It affirms democratic values, and yet it also affirms a number of other different values, different principles. Civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s did something that other movements did not do, and that is that it finally broke the back of federalism. Federalism which had kept many of these exclusions creatures of state and common law. Now, the civil rights movement I think broke the back of Federalism, but once that happened, the defenses for exclusion basically fell away.
It’s not simply that African Americans were included, but in short-order movements for the inclusion of women for other racial minorities, for disabled people, for gay people. The Rights Revolution rode the back of the Civil Rights movement largely through the dismantling of federalism as a barrier, and the nationalization of rights, the nationalization of access. Once that happened, then all of a sudden these complex principles that are embedded in the Constitution became much more contestable.
That is, they had no social ballast, they had no social content to refer to. Everyone was included. So what the separation of powers meant, what federalism meant, all of this was thrown up for grabs, and the different groups who were included now had a very difficult time figuring out how to make sense of this very complex constitutional structure.
Jeff: How much of this also stems from the fact that the groups that fought so hard to be included, particularly during the Rights Revolution in the ’60s and ’70s, really didn’t understand what they were unleashing in this regard, that didn’t understand how it would impact this constitutional order that you’re talking about? I mean, you talked about the idea that the resilience of the Constitution had come from its ability to balance, I think, as you say empowerment and containment. Talk about that.
Stephen: Every time new groups were included, the national government became more powerful. Its purview, its relevant range of governance expanded. With the Rights Revolution, the remaining barriers to what the national government could legitimately address opened wide. Now, I don’t want to say that I don’t– perhaps I should emphasize this. I’m not saying that the social movements, the expansion of rights, the nationalization of rights was misguided because it threatened constitutional boundaries, it threatened constitutional relationships.
What I’m saying is that this is the paradox of American development, that these greatest democratic achievements grew into question the sense of the Constitution. What exactly does federalism mean after rights have been nationalized after the society has been fully democratized? That’s unclear, it’s unclear. It becomes much more contestable, and there is no common sense of what these relationships mean, and what these relationships signify.
Jeff: Looking back at it from the perspective of where we are today, and taking a 30,000-foot view, might there have been any other way to include those rights, to include those left out, and do it in a way that didn’t result in some of the problems from this that we’re facing today?
Stephen: That’s a very good question. I think that the question today is, is it possible to govern under the Constitution without resort to exclusions? That is the question. Can we have a strong Constitution that serves a fully inclusive polity? That’s why I wrote the book. I mean, that is the novel question that’s posed after the 1970s and the question that we haven’t resolved.
I mean, if the answer to your question is, “Well, we’ll figure it out,” we haven’t yet figured it out. And that may be because, look, it’s a very diverse nation with a lot of different interests, with very different views of what legitimate national government is. And trying to make sense of that within this now wholly abstract constitutional frame with a jumble of principles that are competing with one another and are very hard to sort out, these problems have been magnified by democratization itself, by the greatest achievements of American democracy.
Jeff: Certainly. The founders could not have imagined the diversity that we’re trying to tack onto the Constitution today.
Stephen: Well, that’s true. I think of James Madison Federalist 10 famous argument that republics actually flourish not in small geographic areas but by extending the sphere. Extend the sphere, you bring in more interests, those interests have to contend, and what comes out of that will be a compromise, will be a general consensus. Whereas if you have a small republic, it tends to be more homogeneous, and you’ll get majority tyranny. The majority will tyrannize over the minority.
Now, Madison argued that expanding the sphere is good for democracy, [laughs] is good for Republican government. But what strikes me and what’s interesting to me is that we don’t remember, or that’s gotten much less attention, is that Madison spoke about the practical sphere. The practical sphere. How practical is this expansion? How much can the republic be expanded?
Now, Madison was thinking geographically, we might think sociologically. How much diversity can be included and still have the system work? And I think that that’s really the question, this idea of the practical sphere and how big, how inclusive is the question that’s being posed in our day.
Jeff: And another overlay to that, which seems to make it more complicated, is when you think about the courts, the Supreme Court in particular, talking about originalism in this broader context.
Stephen: Yes. Well, I think it’s no accident that this idea of judicial supremacy took hold and hasn’t loosened its grip. It took hold in the Rights Revolution in the 1950s and has never loosened its grip. And the idea that the court is going to resolve these problems, that the court is going to make sense of this Constitution without a corresponding social consensus behind it, without a corresponding agreement among those participants about how to govern and what these principles mean, I think that that is fanciful.
Jeff: Are we at a stage where we have to really look at redesigning the entire process because it simply doesn’t work, the constitution doesn’t work, as you say, it is stretched too thin within the realities, the practical nature of where we are today?
Stephen: There are two alternatives. One is that we can try to do what we’ve always done, which is to adapt this Constitution, find a new way of governing that is acceptable, that resonates with all those who are participating. And the other alternative is to, I’ll call it the “Jefferson alternative,” Jefferson famously said, “You have to have a new Constitution every generation.” The Jefferson alternative, which is to start over and rethink this democracy, what kind of constitution is resonant with the democracy that we have become?
And I wrote this book to suggest that maybe this older [chuckles] tried-and-true method of development through adaptation has run its course. I don’t know, I don’t have a crystal ball, but it has been 50 years since the Rights Revolution, and we haven’t come up with an arrangement that quells or ameliorates the conflicts. And, in fact, over the past 50 years, what we see is a gradual acceleration, sharpening of these conflicts, which suggests to me that there might be a more systemic problem.
Jeff: Is another part of the problem the governance today, that the way we look at politics is not just about the process of governing and the politics of governing, but there is this whole sociocultural framework that becomes part of governance and was really never intended or really accounted for within the constitutional order?
Stephen: Well, right. You think about what was the Constitution intended to do? It was to address a limited set of commercial, financial, and security issues. Commerce, finance, and security. Well, that was fine when most people were excluded. [laughs] When you include people, the range of the government’s purview, the range of relevant topics or responsibilities expands. And those include, in fact, especially since the Rights Revolution, all of these social issues that this Constitution was not designed to address.
And that it has a very difficult time addressing because its basic structure was designed to keep those things local, keep those questions local, and limit the national government to commerce, finance, and security.
Jeff: How much of the polarization and anger, underline anger, that we see today, in your view, how much of this comes out of these conflicts, out of this paradox?
Stephen: Well, I would say a lot of it. I wouldn’t say all of it, but I would say a lot of it. That we have a government that is now responsible for, or at least held accountable for a set of social relations which were previously excluded from the federal government’s domain, and it has a very difficult time dealing with those topics.
Jeff: To what extent do entrenched interests and economic interests play a role in this today, a role that’s larger than they did before?
Stephen: I think economic interests have always played a large role. I think it’s the addition of other issues that complicate this, that are unique to our time. I think you see this disconnect playing out in the Trump administration, where a program that seems to be serving a set of economic interests is joined to an ideological thrust that is addressing the social issues. And seems to me that there’s a disconnect between those two elements that is going to be hard to reconcile.
Jeff: And maybe that’s a good jumping-off point to talk a little bit about something else you’ve written a lot about, which is this whole idea of presidents that were repudiators, and what that means, and whether we’re facing that moment again today with the Trump administration.
Stephen: Well, yes. If you think about the great political leaders in American presidential history, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, they didn’t share much in terms of personality or character. They certainly didn’t share anything in terms of ideology or constitutional vision. What they shared was a moment, a circumstance in which they came to power. All of them, all of those great political leaders arose in unwavering opposition to a widely discredited establishment. And it’s that moment in political time that seems to have elevated them to what we see in retrospect as great political leadership.
[chuckles] And needless to say, Donald Trump has constructed a world in which he’s coming to power in an unwavering implacable opposition to what he describes as a discredited establishment. Now, what did all of those previous great repudiators do? They renounced the old order, categorically. They stigmatized this defenders as hopeless adherence to a corrupted system. They appealed to a mythic past to values that were allegedly squandered in the indulgences of this wayward state. And once in office, they use that authority to repudiate their inheritance to upend long-established governing arrangements and political commitments.
I would say that if we look back historically, these have been the most creative moments in American political history, in American government and politics, but they’ve also carried considerable risks because this authority to repudiate your inheritance outright is disarming and these presidents prove uniquely difficult to control. So we have a circumstance in which I don’t think any president [chuckles] has come to power so self-consciously casting himself in this leadership posture of the great repudiator.
And certainly, no president has come to power, Donald Trump in his second term with a more fully elaborated plan for how to assault, dislodge, and dismantle the institutional arrangements that anchor the old order. So this seems to me to be the issue. Donald Trump has fashioned for himself this situation that we associate with great regenerative creative acts of leadership. And the question is whether he’s going to follow in the path of these other great repudiators or whether there’s something different about his circumstance that might lead to a different outcome.
Jeff: How much of the pushback against the established order now that the things that Trump is taking political advantage of? How much of that repudiation is a function of 50 years of the growth of this paradox that we’ve talked about earlier, and the failure of government really to function within this new order of more rights and more inclusion?
Stephen: Yes. Well, I think that Trump’s authority to repudiate does in fact draw far more on this accumulating churning irresolution in governance that we’ve been experiencing since the Rights Revolution. It certainly is different from other great repudiators in the sense that his immediate inheritance doesn’t seem all that cataclysmic. Biden didn’t leave office in a crisis of governance. Donald Trump wasn’t saving us from the imminent collapse of a failed state. He’s drawing on something much deeper, something that has been gestating for a long time, this frustration with how to govern a fully inclusive polity.
Jeff: And in many ways, it’s a repudiation as much of politics as it is of culture.
Stephen: Yes, I think that that’s true. There is a mismatch though, isn’t there, between what it would take to stabilize governance in a fully inclusive polity and what Trump is doing. That is one would think that in order to stabilize governance in a fully inclusive polity, you’d have to come to some modicum of consensus among those who are now participating as to what we should be doing and how we should be doing it, but what you find in Trump is this classic great repudiator of dismantle and reconstruct. Reconstruct in a way that is not very friendly toward or very accommodating toward those who have recently been included.
Jeff: So in that sense, isn’t it really the political equivalent of originalism, of trying to throw out everything and get back to where it was, fantasy, though it may be?
Stephen: Yeah. I think this is the problem with originalism. Originalism has fostered two ideas, one stemming from the Rights Revolution, which is judicial supremacy, and the other stemming from the Reagan era, which is presidential, the unitary executive. And those two ideas are more about imposing a particular view of winners and losers than they are about accommodating and reconstructing the government in a way that ameliorates the tensions of our time.
Jeff: To what extent do you think understanding this, those things that we’ve been talking about, the repudiation, this paradox, to what extent is it critical, do you think, to understand these things in order to begin to make any progress in how we dig our way out of it if we even can?
Stephen: That’s the hope, that understanding the nature of the problem will help in solving it. Yes. That is the hope. I can’t say that at this moment, there’s a lot of room for optimism, but that is the hope.
Jeff: I guess the other part of it is, and this may be where we’re headed, dare I quote Donald Rumsfeld, but who once said that sometimes the solution to an intractable problem is a larger problem, and the case being here that maybe things have to get worse before we can begin to dig out.
Stephen: Well, that’s possible. Certainly, one thinks of, we think about the Civil Rights Revolution and how it was aided by the Cold War, that is a presence of a more ominous threat that pulls people together to change things. That’s very possible, but also not very reassuring or comforting.
Jeff: All right. Civil war and/or revolution do the same things.
Stephen: Yes. The Adaptability Paradox is not a very happy book, and it is a very sobering look at the ability to reconcile democratization with constitutional government in the United States, but I am trying to steer clear of the apocalyptic. [chuckles] I’m trying to say this is a unique circumstance. This isn’t just another one of those rough patches. There is something unique about this. There is something different. We have never tried to reconstitute the American government under conditions of full inclusion. And the question is, can we do it?
Jeff: And of course, we don’t have our own historical precedent to your point, but we don’t have any historical precedent from anywhere else either, from any other country either.
Stephen: We don’t have a lot of good examples of countries that are this, nations that are this diverse and fully inclusive and finding agreeable ways of governing.
Jeff: Stephen Skowronek, I thank you so very much for spending time with us today here on the WhoWhatWhy Podcast.
Stephen: It was great. Thank you for having me.
Jeff: Thank you. And thank you for listening and joining us here on The WhoWhatWhy Podcast. I hope you join us next week for another WhoWhatWhy Podcast. I’m Jeff Schechtman. If you like this podcast, please feel free to share and help others find it by rating and reviewing it on iTunes. You can also support this podcast and all the work we do by going to whowhatwhy.org/donate.
