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A conversation with scholar Larry Diamond about the state of U.S. democracy.
By MAX BOOT
Washington Post May 5, 2025
With President Donald Trump now having been in office for more than 100 days, concern is growing that he is accumulating so much executive authority that American democracy is in peril. A New Yorker headline asks — in reference to “other countries” that “have watched their democracies slip away gradually” — “Is It Happening Here?” I put the question last week to one of the world’s foremost authorities on democracy. Larry Diamond is the Mosbacher senior fellow of global democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
