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No one alive has seen a race like the 2024 presidential election. For months, if not years, many people have expected a reprise of the 2020 election, a matchup between the sitting president and a former president.

But that hasn’t prevented a crowded primary. On the GOP side, more than a dozen candidates are ostensibly vying for the nomination. Donald Trump’s lead appears prohibitive, but then again, no candidate has ever won his party’s nomination while facing four (so far) separate felony indictments. (Then again, no one has ever lost his party’s nomination while facing four separate felony indictments either.) Ron DeSantis has not budged from his position as the leading challenger to Trump, but his support has weakened, encouraging a large field of Republicans who are hoping for a lucky break, a Trump collapse, a VP nomination, or maybe just some fun travel and a cable-news contract down the road.

[David A. Graham: The first debate is Ramaswamy and the rest]

On the other side, Democratic hesitations about a second Biden term have either receded or dissolved into resignation that he’s running. But his age and the general lukewarm feeling among some voters has ensured that a decent-size shadow field still exists, just waiting in case Biden bows out for some reason. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is also running, ostensibly as a Democrat, but while employing Republican consultants and espousing fairly right-wing views. Even so, he has hit double digits in some polls.

Behind all this, the possibility of a serious third-party bid, led by either the group No Labels or some other candidate, continues to linger. It adds up to a race that is simple on the surface but strangely confusing just below it. This guide to the candidates—who’s in, who’s out, and who’s somewhere in between—serves as a road map to navigate that. It will be updated as the campaign develops, so check in regularly.

REPUBLICANS (Joe Raedle / Getty) Donald Trump

Who is he?
You know him and you love him. Or hate him. Probably not much in between.

Is he running?
Yes. Trump announced his bid to return to the White House at Mar-a-Lago in November 2022.

Why does he want to run?
Revenge, boredom, rivalry, fear of prosecution, long-standing psychological hang-ups.

[Read: Trump begins the ‘retribution’ tour]

Who wants him to run?
A big tranche of the GOP is still all in on Trump, but it’s a little hard to tell how big. Polling shows that his support among Republicans is all over the place, but he’s clearly not a prohibitive front-runner.

Can he win the nomination?
Yes, but past results are no guarantee of future success.

What else do we know?
More than we could possibly want to.

(Joe Raedle / Getty) Ron DeSantis

Who is he?
The second-term governor of Florida, DeSantis was previously a U.S. representative.

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his run in a trainwreck of an appearance with Elon Musk on Twitter Spaces on May 24.

Why does he want to run?
DeSantis offers the prospect of a synthesis of Trump-style culture war and bullying and the conservative politics of the early-2010s Republican Party.

Who wants him to run?
From the advent of his campaign, DeSantis presented the prospect of a candidate with Trump’s policies but no Trump. But his fading polling suggests that not many Republicans are interested.

[From the March 2023 issue: How did America’s weirdest, most freedom-obsessed state fall for an authoritarian governor?]

Can he win the nomination?
He doesn’t look like the Trump-toppler today that he did several months ago, but it’s possible.

(Roy Rochlin / Getty) Nikki Haley

Who is she?
Haley, the daughter of immigrants, was governor of South Carolina and then ambassador to the United Nations under Trump.

Is she running?
Yes. She announced her campaign on February 14, saying, “Time for a new generation.”

Why does she want to run?
Haley has tried to steer a path that distances herself from Trump—pointing out his unpopularity—without openly attacking him. She may also be the leading foreign-policy hawk in the field.

[Sarah Isgur: What Nikki Haley can learn from Carly Fiorina]

Who wants her to run?
Haley has lagged behind the first tier of candidates, but her strong performance in the first debate could help her.

Can she win the nomination?
Dubious.

(Dylan Hollingsworth / Bloomberg / Getty) Vivek Ramaswamy

Who is he?
A 38-year-old biotech millionaire with a sparkling résumé (Harvard, then Yale Law, where he became friends with Senator J. D. Vance), Ramaswamy has recently become prominent as a crusader against “wokeism” and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing.

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his campaign on February 21.

Why does he want to run?
“We’re in the middle of a national identity crisis,” Ramaswamy said in a somewhat-hectoring launch video. “Faith, patriotism, and hard work have disappeared, only to be replaced by new secular religions like COVIDism, climatism, and gender ideology.”

Who wants him to run?
Ramaswamy has come from nearly nowhere to poll surprisingly well—in national polls, he’s currently third (if distantly so) behind Trump and DeSantis, and he dominated the first debate.

Can he win the nomination?
Probably not. Ramaswamy no longer seems like a mere curiosity, but his slick shtick and questionable pronouncements will remain a drag on him.

(Alex Wong / Getty) Asa Hutchinson

Who is he?
Hutchinson, the formerly longtime member of Congress, just finished a stint as governor of Arkansas.

Is he running?
Yes. Hutchinson announced on April 2 that he is running. It would have been funnier to announce a day earlier, though.

Why does he want to run?
At one time, Hutchinson was a right-wing Republican—he was one of the managers of Bill Clinton’s impeachment—but as the party has changed, he finds himself closer to the center. He’s been very critical of Trump, saying that Trump disqualified himself with his attempts to steal the 2020 election. Hutchinson is also unique in the field for having called on Trump to drop out over his indictment in New York.

Who wants him to run?
Old-school, very conservative Republicans who also detest Trump.

Can he win the nomination?
Unlikely.

(David Becker / The Washington Post / Getty) Tim Scott

Who is he?
A South Carolinian, Scott is the only Black Republican senator.

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his campaign in North Charleston, South Carolina, on May 22.

Why does he want to run?
Unlike some of the others on this list, Scott doesn’t telegraph his ambition quite so plainly, but he’s built a record as a solid Republican. He was aligned with Trump, but never sycophantically attached.

Who wants him to run?
Scott’s Senate colleagues adore him. John Thune of South Dakota, the Senate minority whip, is his first highish-profile endorsement. As DeSantis stumbles, he’s gotten some attention as a possible likable Trump alternative.

Can he win the nomination?
Scott is solidly in the second tier; he’s perpetually said to be on the verge of breaking out but never quite there.

(Megan Varner / Getty) Mike Pence

Who is he?
The former vice president, he also served as the governor of Indiana and a U.S. representative.

Is he running?
Yes. He formally launched his campaign on June 7 with a video and an event in Iowa.

Why does he want to run?
Pence has long harbored White House dreams, and he has a strong conservative-Christian political agenda. His launch video is heavy on clichés and light on specifics beyond promising a kinder face for the Trump agenda.

Who wants him to run?
Conservative Christians, rabbit lovers, but not very many people overall.

[Read: Nobody likes Mike Pence]

Can he win the nomination?
It’s hard to see it happening.

(Ida Mae Astute / Getty) Chris Christie

Who is he?
What a journey this guy has had, from U.S. attorney to respected governor of New Jersey to traffic-jam laughingstock to Trump sidekick to Trump critic. Whew.

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his campaign on June 6 in New Hampshire.

Why does he want to run?
Anyone who runs for president once and loses wants to run again—especially if he thinks the guy who beat him is an idiot, as Christie clearly thinks about Trump. Moreover, he seems agitated to see other Republicans trying to run without criticizing Trump.

Who wants him to run?
Trump-skeptical donors, liberal pundits.

Can he win the nomination?
Highly doubtful.

(Todd Williamson / Getty) Doug Burgum

Who is he?
Do you even pay attention to politics? Nah, just kidding. A self-made software billionaire, Burgum’s serving his second term as the governor of North Dakota.

Is he running?
Apparently! He formally
launched his campaign on June 7 in Fargo.

Why does he want to run?
It’s tough to tell. His campaign-announcement video focuses so much on North Dakota that it seems more like a reelection push. He told a state newspaper that he thinks the “silent majority” of Americans wants candidates who aren’t on the extremes. (A wealthy outsider targeting the silent majority? Where have we heard that before?) He also really wants more domestic oil production.

Who wants him to run?
Lots of people expected a governor from the Dakotas to be a candidate in 2024, but they were looking at Kristi Noem of South Dakota. Burgum is very popular at home—he won more than three-quarters of the vote in 2020—but that still amounts to fewer people than the population of Toledo, Ohio.

Can he win the nomination?
“There’s a value to being underestimated all the time,” he has said. “That’s a competitive advantage.” But it’s even better to have a chance, which he doesn’t.

What else do we know?
He’s giving people $20 gift cards in return for donating to his campaign.

(Scott Olson / Getty) Will Hurd

Who is he?
A former CIA officer, Hurd served three terms in the House, representing a San Antonio–area district.

Is he running?
Yes. Hurd announced his campaign on June 22.

Why does he want to run?
Hurd says he has “commonsense” ideas and he is “pissed” that elected officials are dividing Americans. He’s also been an outspoken Trump critic.

Who wants him to run?
As a moderate, youngish Black Republican and someone who cares about defense, he is the sort of candidate whom the party establishment seemed to desire after the now-discarded 2012 GOP autopsy.

Can he win the nomination?
No.

(Mandel Ngan / Getty) Francis Suarez

Who is he?
Suarez is the popular second-term mayor of Miami and the president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Is he running?
No. He suspended his campaign on August 29, less than three months after his June 15 entry.

Why did he want to run?
Suarez touted his youth—he’s 45—and said in October 2022, “I’m someone who believes in a positive aspirational message. I’m someone who has a track record of success and a formula for success.”

Who wanted him to run?
Is there really room for another moderate-ish Republican in the race? Apparently not! Despite dabbling in fundraising shenanigans, Suarez failed to make the first Republican debate (or any other splash).

Could he have won the nomination?
No way.

(Drew Angerer / Getty) Larry Hogan

Who is he?
Hogan left office this year, after serving two terms as governor of Maryland.

Is he running?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Hogan ruled himself out of the GOP race on March 5, saying he was worried it would help Trump win the nomination, but he is now rumored as a potential No Labels candidate, even though such a run might hand the presidency to … Trump.

Why does he want to run?
Hogan has argued that his experience of governing a very blue state as a Republican is a model: “We’ve been really successful outside of Washington, where everything appears to be broken and nothing but divisiveness and dysfunction.”

Who wants him to run?
Dead-ender centrists.

Could he win the nomination?
No.

(John Locher / AP) Chris Sununu

Who is he?
The governor of New Hampshire, he’s the little brother of former Senator John E. Sununu and the son of former White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu.

Is he running?
No. On June 5, after weighing a campaign, he announced he would not run. Warning about the dangers of a Trump reprise, he said, “Every candidate needs to understand the responsibility of getting out and getting out quickly if it’s not working.” Points for taking his own advice!

Why did he want to run?
Sununu seems disgusted by a lot of Washington politics and saw his success in New Hampshire, a purple-blue state, as a model for small-government conservatism. He is also a prominent Trump critic.

Who wanted him to run?
Trump-skeptical Republicans, old-school conservatives.

Could he have won the nomination?
No.

(Scott Olson / Getty) Mike Pompeo

Who is he?
Pompeo, a former member of Congress, led the CIA and was secretary of state under Trump.

Is he running?
No. On April 14, Pompeo announced he wasn’t running. “This is not that time or that moment for me to seek elected office again,” he said.

Why did he want to run?
Pompeo has always been ambitious, and he seems to think he can combine MAGA proximity with a hawkish foreign-policy approach.

Who wanted him to run?
That’s not entirely clear.

Could he have won the nomination?
Maybe, but probably not.

(Misha Friedman / Getty) Glenn Youngkin

Who is he?
Youngkin, the former CEO of the private-equity Carlyle Group, was elected governor of Virginia in 2021.

Is he running?
Probably not. He said on May 1 that he wasn’t running “this year.” But he seems to be rethinking that as Ron DeSantis’s campaign sputters.

Why does he want to run?
Youngkin is a bit of a cipher; he ran largely on education issues, and has sought to tighten abortion laws in Virginia, so far to no avail.

Who wants him to run?
Rupert Murdoch, reportedly.

Can he win the nomination?
Certainly not if he isn’t running.

(Sam Wolfe / Bloomberg / Getty) Mike Rogers

Who is he?
Rogers is a congressman from Alabam—wait, no, sorry, that’s the other Representative Mike Rogers. This one is from Michigan and retired in 2015. He was previously an FBI agent and was head of the Intelligence Committee while on Capitol Hill.

Is he running?
No. He thought about it but announced in late August that he will run for U.S. Senate instead.

Why did he want to run?
He laid out some unassailably broad ideas for a campaign in an interview with Fox News, including a focus on innovation and civic education, but it’s hard to tell what exactly the goal is here. “This is not a vanity project for me,” he added, which, okay, sure.

Who wanted him to run?
It’s not clear that anyone even noticed he was running.

Could he have won the nomination?
Nope.

(Todd Williamson / Getty) Larry Elder

Who is he?
A longtime conservative radio host and columnist, he ran as a Republican in the unsuccessful 2021 attempt to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom.

Is he running?
Allegedly, yes. He announced his campaign on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show on April 20. He’s barely been heard from since.

Why does he want to run?
Glad you asked! “America is in decline, but this decline is not inevitable,” he tweeted. “We can enter a new American Golden Age, but we must choose a leader who can bring us there. That’s why I’m running for President.” We don’t have any idea what that means either.

Who wants him to run?
Impossible to say at this stage, but deep-blue California is a tough launching pad for any conservative, especially an unseasoned candidate. This recall campaign also dredged up various unflattering information about his past.

Can he win the nomination?
Having missed out on the first debate, any hope Elder had is gone.

(Todd Williamson / Getty) Rick Perry

Who is he?
Perry was a three-term governor of Texas before serving as energy secretary under Donald Trump. He’s also run for president three times: in 2012, 2016, and … I forget the third one. Oops.

Is he running?
Oh, right! The third one is 2024, maybe. He told CNN in May that he’s considering a run. Nothing’s been heard since.

Why does he want to run?
He didn’t say, but he’s struggled to articulate much of a compelling case to Republican voters beyond the fact that he’s from Texas, he looks good in a suit, and he wants to be president, gosh darn it.

Who wants him to run?
Probably no one. As Mike Pompeo already discovered, there’s not much of a market for a run-of-the-mill former Trump Cabinet member in the primary—especially one who had such a forgettable turn as secretary, mostly remembered for being dragged peripherally into both the first Trump impeachment and election subversion.

Can he win the nomination?
The third time would not be a charm.

(Joe Raedle / Getty) Rick Scott

Who is he?
Before his current gig as a U.S. senator from Florida, Scott was governor and chief executive of a health-care company that committed massive Medicare fraud.

Is he running?
The New York Times says he’s considering it, though an aide said Scott is running for reelection to the Senate. He’d be the fourth Floridian in the race.

Why does he want to run?
A Scott campaign would raise a fascinating question: What if you took Trump’s pose and ideology, but removed all the charisma and, instead of promising to protect popular entitlement programs, aimed to demolish them?

Who wants him to run?
Not Mitch McConnell.

Can he win the nomination?
lol

DEMOCRATS (Joshua Roberts / Getty) Joe Biden

Who is he?
After decades of trying, Biden is the president of the United States.

Is he running?
Yes. Biden formally announced his run on April 25.

Why does he want to run?
Biden’s slogan is apparently “Let’s finish the job.” He centered his launch video on the theme of freedom, but underlying all of this is his apparent belief that he may be the only person who can defeat Donald Trump in a head-to-head matchup.

[Read: The case for a primary challenge to Joe Biden]

Who wants him to run?
There’s the catch. Some prominent Democrats support his bid for a second term, but voters have consistently told pollsters that they don’t want him to run again.

Can he win the nomination?
Barring unforeseen catastrophe, yes. No incumbent president has lost the nomination in the modern era, and Biden has pushed through changes to the Democratic-primary process that make him an even more prohibitive favorite.

What else do we know?
Biden is already the oldest person to be elected president and to serve as president, so a second term would set more records.

(Bill Clark / Getty) Dean Phillips

Who is he?
Phillips, a mildly unorthodox and interesting figure, is a Minnesota moderate serving his third term in the House.

Is he running?
Probably not. In an August 21 interview, he said he was unlikely to run, but would encourage other Democrats to do so. He had said in July that he was considering it.

Why does he want to run?
Phillips, who at 54 passes for young in politics, has been publicly critical of superannuated Democrats sticking around too long, and he says Biden is too old to run again.

Who wants him to run?
Although it’s true that many Democrats think Biden is too old, that doesn’t mean they’re willing to do anything about it—or that Phillips is the man they want to replace him. Although Phillips claims he has “been overwhelmed with outreach and encouragement,” this looks more like a messaging move than a serious sprint at the moment.

Can he win the nomination?
Not in 2024.

What else do we know?
His grandmother was “Dear Abby.”

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty) Kamala Harris

Who is she?
Harris is the vice president of the United States.

Is she running?
No, but if Biden were to bow out, she’d be the immediate favorite.

Why does she want to run?
One problem with her 2020 presidential campaign was the lack of a clear answer to this question. Perhaps running on the Biden-Harris legacy would help fill in the blank.

Who wants her to run?
Some Democrats are excited about the prospect of nominating a woman of color, but generally Harris’s struggles as a candidate and in defining a role for herself (in the admittedly impossible position of VP) have resulted in nervousness about her as a standard-bearer.

Can she win the nomination?
Not right now.

(Matthew Cavanaugh / Getty) Pete Buttigieg

Who is he?
Mayor Pete is Secretary Pete now, overseeing the Department of Transportation.

Is he running?
No, but he would also be a likely candidate if Biden stepped away.

Why does he want to run?
Just as he was four years ago, Buttigieg is a young, ambitious politician with a moderate, technocratic vision of government.

Who wants him to run?
Buttigieg’s fans are passionate, and Biden showed that moderates remain a force in the party.

Can he win the nomination?
Not at this moment.

(Scott Olson / Getty) Bernie Sanders

Who is he?
The senator from Vermont is changeless, ageless, ever the same.

Is he running?
No, but if Biden dropped out, it’s hard to believe he wouldn’t seriously consider another go. A top adviser even says so.

Why does he want to run?
Sanders still wants to tax billionaires, level the economic playing field, and push a left-wing platform.

Who wants him to run?
Sanders continues to have the strong support of a large portion of the Democratic electorate, especially younger voters.

Can he win the nomination?
Two consecutive tries have shown that he’s formidable, but can’t close. Maybe the third time’s the charm?

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty) Gretchen Whitmer

Who is she?
Whitmer cruised to a second term as governor of Michigan in 2022.

Is she running?
No.

Why would she want to run?
It’s a little early to know, but her reelection campaign focused on abortion rights.

Who wants her to run?
Whitmer would check a lot of boxes for Democrats. She’s a fresh face, she’s a woman, and she’s proved she can win in the upper Midwest against a MAGA candidate.

Can she win the nomination?
Not if she isn’t running.

(Lucas Jackson / Reuters) Marianne Williamson

Who is she?
If you don’t know Williamson from her popular writing on spirituality, then you surely remember her somewhat woo-woo Democratic bid in 2020.

Is she running?
Yes. Williamson announced her campaign on March 4 in D.C.

Why does she want to run?
“It is our job to create a vision of justice and love that is so powerful that it will override the forces of hatred and injustice and fear,” she said at her campaign launch. She has also said that she wants to give voters a choice. “The question I ask myself is not ‘What is my path to victory?’ My question is ‘What is my path to radical truth-telling?’ There are some things that need to be said in this country.”

Who wants her to run?
Williamson has her fans, but she doesn’t have a clear political constituency. Also, her campaign is perpetually falling part.

Can she win the nomination?
Nah.

(Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune / Getty) J. B. Pritzker

Who is he?
The governor of Illinois is both a scion of a wealthy family and a “nomadic warrior.”

Is he running?
No.

Why does he want to run?
After years of unfulfilled interest in elected office, Pritzker has established himself as a muscular proponent of progressivism in a Democratic stronghold.

Who wants him to run?
Improbably for a billionaire, Pritzker has become a darling of the Sanders-style left, as well as a memelord.

Can he win the nomination?
Not now.

(Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune / Getty) Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Who is he?
The son of a presidential candidate, the nephew of another, and the nephew of a president, Kennedy is a longtime environmental activist and also a chronic crank.

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his run on April 19.

Why does he want to run?
Running for president is a family tradition—hell, he wouldn’t even be the first Kennedy to primary a sitting Democrat. He’s running a campaign arranged around his esoteric combination of left-wing interests (the environment, drug prices) and right-wing causes (vaccine skepticism, anger about social-media “deplatforming”), but tending toward extremely dark places.

Who wants him to run?
Despite his bizarre beliefs, he’s polling in double digits against Biden—though as he has gotten deeper into anti-Semitism and conspiracies, Semafor has deemed his boomlet over.

Can he win the nomination?
Not the Democratic one.

THIRD-PARTY AND INDEPENDENT (Tom Williams / Getty) Joe Manchin

Who is he?
A Democratic U.S. senator and former governor of West Virginia, he was the pivotal centrist vote for the first two years of Joe Biden’s term. I’ve described him as “a middle-of-the-road guy with good electoral instincts, decent intentions, and bad ideas.”

Is he running?
It’s very hard to tell how serious he is. He has visited Iowa, and is being courted by No Labels, the nonpartisan centrist organization, to carry its banner. He’s shown no signs of running, and would stand no chance, in the Democratic primary.

Why does he want to run?
Manchin would arguably have less power as a third-party president than he does as a crucial swing senator, but he faces perhaps the hardest reelection campaign of his life in 2024, as the last Democrat standing in a now solidly Republican state. He also periodically seems personally piqued at Biden and the Democrats over slights perceived or real.

Who wants him to run?
No Labels would love to have someone like him, a high-profile figure who’s willing to buck his party and has policies that would appeal to voters from either party. It’s hard to imagine he’d have much of an organic base of support, but Democrats are terrified he’d siphon off enough votes to hand Trump or another Republican the win in a three-way race.

Can he win?
“Make no mistake, I will win any race I enter,” he said in April. If that is true, do not expect to see him in the presidential race.

(Frederick M. Brown / Getty) Cornel West

Who is he?
West is a philosopher, a theologian, a professor, a preacher, a gadfly, a progressive activist, an actor, a spoken-word recording-artist, an author … and we’re probably missing a few.

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his campaign on the People’s Party ticket on June 5.

Why does he want to run?
“In these bleak times, I have decided to run for truth and justice, which takes the form of running for president of the United States,” he said in his announcement video. West is a fierce leftist who has described Trump as a “neo-fascist” and Biden as a “milquetoast neoliberal.”

Who wants him to run?
West was a high-profile backer of Bernie Sanders, and it’s easy to imagine him winning over some of Sanders’s fervent fans. The People’s Party is relatively new and unproven, and doesn’t have much of a base of its own.

Can he win?
Let’s hear from Brother West: “Do we have what it takes? We shall see,” he said. “But some of us are going to go down fighting, go down swinging, with style and a smile.” Sounds like a no, but it should be a lively, entertaining campaign.

Growing up in São Paulo, Brazil, I spent many of my waking hours reading American young-adult books, rigorously studying the mechanics of American teenage life. These books weren’t always beautifully written, but I loved them all the same, the way another kid might have loved dinosaurs: I was compelled by their exoticism; their observations about proms, parking lots, and malls; their descriptions of what girls in the U.S. ate and how they lived. None of it had anything to do with me, so I was surprised when, at 16, I saw myself in Esther Greenwood, the heroine of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and a thinly veiled avatar for Plath herself. Plath’s acerbic prose paralyzed me with envy; her novel unlocked a sorrowful and rage-filled side to a language I had only experienced as functional and rigid.

With a diligent thirst for knowledge, I began to understand Plath’s reputation as an archetypal mid-century American girl. The legend of Plath is inextricable from the visual mythology of postwar prosperity—white picket fences, images of John and Jackie Kennedy sailing—that developed alongside the baby boom. The Bell Jar, with its sneering descriptions of ski trips to the Adirondacks and boys who ran cross-country, offered me permission to write a certain way: intensely, cuttingly, in English. It also provided an emotional context for the East Coast culture I found so alluring, and that I’d been trying to figure out. But my teenage self missed part of the novel’s project: its effort to tear down the veneer of complacent satisfaction that enveloped the American suburban lifestyle.  

The Bell Jar first appeared in England 60 years ago, a month before the author’s suicide, under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. After a copyright battle, it was finally published in the United States in 1971 with Plath’s name on the cover. The novel begins when Esther leaves her small town in Massachusetts for New York City, having won a coveted spot for a summer job at Ladies’ Day magazine (a fictionalized version of Mademoiselle). The glitz and artifice of the fashion world shock and repel her; upon her return to the cloistered suburbs, she comes undone. The plot culminates with her suicide attempt and her stay at a mental institution, based on Plath’s own experience at the renowned McLean Hospital.

Today, the novel is seen as a poignant account of the stifling oppression of the Eisenhower years, particularly as experienced by young women. In the introduction to her recent biography, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, Heather Clark writes that The Bell Jar “exposed a repressive Cold War America that could drive even ‘the best minds’ of a generation crazy.” In life, Plath had trouble squaring her idea of herself as an ambitious writer with the expectations held for a girl like her—to marry young and start producing children. Some of the impact of her poetry emerged from this misalignment. Oft-quoted lines from her poem “Edge” read: “The woman is perfected. / Her dead / Body wears the smile of accomplishment.” Clark, parsing the image, notes, “Only a dead woman is ‘perfected.’ Not perfect, perfected––like … something controlled, without agency.”

The Bell Jar’s achievement, in turn, was to paint a portrait of America full of jagged inconsistencies. “I was supposed to be having the time of my life,” Esther declares in the first couple of pages. Described as “drinking martinis … in the company of several anonymous young men with all-American bone structures,” she embodies the mid-century’s ideal of an accomplished, educated girl—but only up to a point. At Ladies’ Day, Esther, an aspiring poet, hopes to discuss literature with her editor; instead, her goals are treated with condescension. On campus, her sense of achievement is limited to four years of pseudo-freedom that are supposed to climax in marriage to a respectable Yale medical student, for whom she is expected to “flatten out … like Mrs. Willard’s [her would-be mother-in-law] kitchen mat.” This prospect––which would assure a secure, suburban life––is an urgent threat to someone who desires the tumult of experience; it makes Esther feel “very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.”

[Read: Why Sylvia Plath still haunts American culture]

Pitted against her decaying sense of self, the overdone polish of the Northeast becomes sinister. Taut prose elucidates this feeling: Swimming far from the shore, Esther considers drowning before admitting to a self-preservation instinct (“I knew when I was beaten”). Longer, more rambling sentences describe the off-kilter beauty of the landscape, and how it corresponds to Esther’s mood: Driving to the Adirondacks, “the countryside, already deep under old falls of snow, turned us a bleaker shoulder, and as the fir trees crowded down from the gray hills to the road edge, so darkly green they looked black, I grew gloomier and gloomier.”

Writing about the novel, the critic Elizabeth Hardwick observed that “the pleasures and sentiments of youth––wanting to be invited to the Yale prom, losing your virginity––are rather unreal in a scenario of disintegration, anger, and a perverse love of the horrible.” As a teen eager to understand these signifiers of American adolescence, I was drawn to that sense of unreality, even as I responded to Esther’s frustrations with her codified environment. From the writing, I understood that the purportedly joyful rituals of growing up were attended by rage, but Plath was also gesturing at a source for this rage: the culture that created these rituals in the first place.  

The title of the novel, as readers might recall, is an image of Esther’s claustrophobia: Trapped by her surroundings and her depression alike, Esther feels as though she will always be “sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in [her] own sour air.” According to Clark’s biography, Plath considered an ending that would see Esther going to Europe, fleeing the brutality of the Northeast. It was what Plath did herself; she wrote her best work—The Bell Jar and Ariel, the poetry collection that propelled her to posthumous fame—while living in England. In this sense, The Bell Jar’s mistrust of suburban prosperity can be read as a precursor to later works that similarly explore the dark underside of small-town America; it is often paired with Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides, its influence deeply felt on the depiction of the Lisbon girls. And Esther’s description of the grimy hole in her mother’s basement, into which she crawls to attempt suicide, calls to mind the opening of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, when the camera digs under an immaculate suburban lawn to reveal the rot lurking underneath.

Plath’s writing and biography seem to indicate that what she really wanted was freedom: to be herself and to wear her contradictions on her sleeve. But that aspiration was accompanied by an obsession with emphasizing the distance between herself and others—and, by the same token, stereotyping those she was defining herself against. As the writer Janet Malcolm points out in The Silent Woman, her book about Plath’s legend and biographies, critics including Leon Wieseltier and Irving Howe have criticized Plath’s appropriation of the suffering of the Jewish people in her poetry: Through her use of Holocaust imagery in “Daddy,” she equates her individual pain to the generational trauma caused by Nazism. And in The Bell Jar, as in poems such as “Lady Lazarus,” her fetishization of difference could be a myopic way to assert her distinction from those she seemed to see as beneath her.

As such, the novel occasionally enacts the overbearing homogeneity that characterized the America Plath supposedly held in contempt. Racist imagery pervades the text: the anti-Black sentiment that emerges in her description of a Black worker in the hospital where Esther is institutionalized is particularly unsettling. In the first few pages, Esther compares her pallor to the skin of a “Chinaman,” and my own home country is a symbol of faraway exoticism: On a humid day, the rain “wasn’t the nice kind … that rinses you clean, but the sort of rain I imagine they have in Brazil.” The bell jar that descended over the suburbs seemed to come into focus for Plath only insofar as her entrapment went. She couldn’t quite look outside of herself to see how that bell jar might be suffocating for others.

[Read: The haunting last letters of Sylvia Plath]

When I first read The Bell Jar, New England was an abstract concept to me: a made-up place where the push and pull of conformity and subversion appeared to emerge in perfect clarity. Growing up in a country that idealized the American experience, I held Plath’s America at a remove. Like a Norman Rockwell painting, it stood still in time, immoveable, sentimental, and untrue. To revisit the book now, as an adult who has lived in the United States for almost a decade, is to see the idea of a romantic, preppy East Coast collapse under the harsh, more revealing light of experience. Plath’s novel didn’t materialize out of those beautiful images of coastal American adolescence; it was born of a thorny, damaging relationship with an environment that could be as cruel as it was rewarding.

In college, I fell in love with a boy from Massachusetts and went to see New England for myself. Everything looked just as I’d expected it to, even if, in the past 70 or so years, a lot had changed; not least of all the fact that, according to a University of Massachusetts at Boston report from 2020, the state is home to the second largest Brazilian population in the country. But the air in Massachusetts is thick with history, and its cunning appearance still compels. The sight of those colonial houses surrounded by maple and pine, their floors trod on by feet clad in G. H. Bass loafers, combined with the strange recognition of visiting a place I’d only ever imagined before, kept me tethered to Plath’s own descriptions. Still, as much as her legend insists that she was a prototypical all-American girl, Plath died a foreigner and an outsider. The last dinner party she ever attended, according to Clark’s biography, was at the English house of family friends from home.

It took me years to realize that no matter how diligently I studied the America I initially saw in Plath’s work, I would always be foremost a foreigner and an outsider—someone with a tormented predilection for a culture that excludes, confines, and punishes you for not fitting in. Still, I like to think that Plath wrote The Bell Jar for those who, like me and her, are seized and haunted by certain images and certain notions—even those that may, at any point, turn on us.

Lew, an outspoken supporter of Israel and former secretary of the US Treasury, holds extensive government experience.

In the spring of 1814, 25 years after the ratification of America’s Constitution, a group of 112 Norwegian men—civil servants, lawyers, military officials, business leaders, theologians, and even a sailor—gathered in Eidsvoll, a rural village 40 miles north of Oslo. For five weeks, while meeting at the manor home of the businessman Carsten Anker, the men debated and drafted what is today the world’s second-oldest written constitution.

Like America’s Founders, Norway’s independence leaders were in a precarious situation. Norway had been part of Denmark for more than 400 years, but after Denmark’s defeat in the Napoleonic Wars, the victorious powers, led by Great Britain, decided to transfer the territory to Sweden. This triggered a wave of nationalism in Norway. Unwilling to be traded away “like a herd of cattle,” as one observer at the time put it, Norwegians asserted their independence and elected the constitutional assembly that met at Eidsvoll.

Inspired by the ideals of the Enlightenment and the promise of self-government, Norway’s founders viewed the American experience as a path to follow. A few decades earlier, the Americans had done what the Norwegians now aspired to do: become independent from a foreign power. The Norwegian press had spread news of the American experiment, casting George Washington and Benjamin Franklin as heroes. Although the press didn’t always get the story right (it described the American president as a “monarch,” reported that Washington had been “appointed dictator of the United States for four years,” and referred to the vice president as a “viceroy”), many of the men at Eidsvoll were quite familiar with the workings of the American system. Christian Magnus Falsen, a prominent independence advocate who took a leading role in the constitution-writing process, even christened his son George Benjamin, after Washington and Franklin. Falsen was deeply influenced by Madison and Jefferson, too, later declaring that parts of the Norwegian constitution were based “nearly exclusively” on the American example.

[From the October 1955 issue: Norway]

Despite its flaws, the U.S. Constitution was a pioneering document. America became the first large nation to rule itself without a monarchy and instead fill its most important political offices via regular elections. Over the next century, the American Constitution served as a model for republican and democratic-minded reformers across the world.

The United States no longer seems like a good model today. Since 2016, America has experienced what political scientists call “democratic backsliding.” The country has seen a surge in political violence; threats against election workers; efforts to make voting harder; and a campaign by the then-president to overturn the results of an election—hallmarks of a democracy in distress. Organizations that track the health of democracies around the world have captured this problem in numerical terms. Freedom House’s Global Freedom Index gives countries a score from 0 to 100 each year; 100 indicates the most democratic. In 2015, the United States received a score of 90, roughly in line with countries such as Canada, France, Germany, and Japan. But since then, America’s score has declined steadily, reaching 83 in 2021. Not only was that score lower than every established democracy in Western Europe; it was lower than new or historically troubled democracies such as Argentina, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, and Taiwan.

The causes of America’s crisis are not simply a strongman and his cultlike following. They are more endemic than that. Over the past two centuries, America has undergone massive economic and demographic change—industrializing and becoming much larger, more urban, and more diverse. Yet our political institutions have largely remained frozen in place. Today, American democracy is living with the destabilizing consequences of this disjuncture.

Indeed, the problem lies in something many of us venerate: the U.S. Constitution. America’s founding document, designed in a pre-democratic era in part to protect against “tyranny of the majority,” has generated the opposite problem: Electoral majorities often cannot win power, and when they win, they often cannot govern. Unlike any other presidential democracy, U.S. leaders can become president despite losing the popular vote. The U.S. Senate, which dramatically overrepresents low-population states by giving each state equal representation regardless of population, is also frequently controlled by a party that has lost the national popular vote. And due to the Senate’s filibuster rules, majorities are routinely blocked from passing normal legislation. Finally, because the Supreme Court’s composition is determined by the president and Senate, which have often not represented electoral majorities in the 21st century, the Court has grown more and more divorced from majority public opinion. Not only does the Constitution deliver outsize advantages to partisan minorities; it has also begun to endanger American democracy. With the Republican Party’s transformation into an extremist and antidemocratic force under Donald Trump, the Constitution now protects and empowers an authoritarian minority.

America was once the standard-bearer for democratic constitutions. Today, however, it is more vulnerable to minority rule than any other established democracy. Far from being a pioneer, America has become a democratic laggard. How did this come to pass?  

Consider what happened in Norway. Though inspired by the American experience, Norway’s founding 1814 constitution was hardly revolutionary. The country remained a hereditary monarchy, and kings retained the right to appoint cabinets and veto legislation. Members of Parliament were indirectly elected by regional electoral colleges, and voting was limited to men who met certain property requirements. Urban elites also gained a powerful built-in advantage in Parliament. Norway was overwhelmingly rural in 1814: About 90 percent of the electorate lived in the countryside. Because many peasants owned land and could therefore vote, wealthy urbanites feared being overwhelmed by the peasant majority. So the constitution established a fixed 2-to-1 ratio of rural to urban seats in Parliament—a ratio that dramatically overrepresented cities, because rural residents actually outnumbered urban residents by 10 to one. This was the so-called Peasant Clause. Majority rule was further diluted by bicameralism: Norway adopted an upper legislative chamber elected not by the people but by the lower house of Parliament.

Like America’s 1789 Constitution, then, Norway’s 1814 constitution included a range of undemocratic features. In fact, early 19th-century Norway was considerably less democratic than the United States was.

Over the next two centuries, however, Norway underwent a series of far-reaching democratic reforms—all under its original constitution. Parliamentary sovereignty was established in the late 19th century, and Norway became a genuine constitutional monarchy. A 1905 constitutional reform eliminated regional electoral colleges and established direct elections for Parliament. Property restrictions on voting were suspended in 1898, and universal (male and female) suffrage came in 1913.

After 1913, Norway was a democracy. However, one major counter-majoritarian institution remained: the Peasant Clause. By the mid-20th century, urbanization had reversed the nature of the malapportionment caused by the Peasant Clause. With half of the population now living in cities, a fixed 2-to-1 rural-to-urban seat ratio had come to overrepresent rural voters. Like the U.S. Senate, then, the Peasant Clause threatened majority rule by inflating the political power of sparsely populated areas—to the benefit of conservative parties. Unlike in the United States, however, the major political parties negotiated a constitutional reform that eliminated the Peasant Clause in 1952. Norway took additional steps toward majority rule when it reduced the voting age to 18 in 1978 and eliminated its upper chamber of Parliament in 2009.

But Norway didn’t stop democratizing. As Norwegian society and global norms changed in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, constitutional and democratic rights were expanded in new ways. Indigenous minorities, for example, gained new protections in a 1988 constitutional amendment. A 1992 constitutional amendment guaranteed Norwegians the right to a healthy environment. In 2012, the constitution was amended once again, this time to abolish Norway’s official religion and guarantee equal rights to “all religious and philosophical communities.” And in 2014, Norway adopted a set of sweeping constitutional human- and social-rights protections, including the right of children to “respect for their human dignity,” the right to education, and the right to subsistence (through work or, for those who could not support themselves, government assistance). In total, Norway’s constitution was amended 316 times from 1814 to 2014.

Two centuries of reform transformed Norway into one of the most democratic countries on Earth. On Freedom House’s Global Freedom Index, most established democracies received a score above 90 in 2022. A handful of countries, including Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, and Uruguay, received a score above 95. Only three countries received a perfect score of 100: Finland, Sweden, and Norway. Freedom House scores countries on 25 separate dimensions of democracy. Norway got a perfect score on all of them.

Norway’s story of transformation is particularly impressive, but its general trajectory is not unusual. Other European political systems started in an equally undemocratic place, with numerous institutions designed to thwart popular majorities. Most of them, like Norway, were ruled by monarchies. With few exceptions, only men with property could vote. Voting was usually indirect: Citizens voted not for candidates but for local “notables”—civil servants, priests, pastors, landowners, or factory owners—who in turn selected members of parliament. And in Latin America, where founding leaders took the U.S. Constitution as a model after gaining independence in the early 19th century, all presidents were indirectly elected, via electoral colleges or legislatures, prior to 1840.

In addition, early electoral systems were skewed to favor wealthy landowners. Cities—home to Europe’s growing working classes—were often massively underrepresented in parliament compared with rural districts. In Britain’s notorious “rotten boroughs,” a few dozen voters sometimes had their very own representative.

Most countries also had extensive legislative checks on popular majorities, including undemocratic bodies with the power to veto legislation. In Britain, the House of Lords, an unelected body composed of hereditary peers and appointees, had the authority to block most legislation. Canada also created an appointed Senate after it gained independence in 1867. Most 19th-century European political systems possessed similar upper chambers, composed of hereditary members and appointees from the crown and the Church.

Parliaments everywhere thus offered excessive protection to minority interests. An extreme example was Poland’s 18th-century Parliament, in which each deputy in the 200-member body possessed individual veto over any bill. The French political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau regarded Poland’s liberum veto (Latin for “I freely object”) as, in the words of one legal analyst, a “tyranny of the minority of one.” The system’s defenders characterized it as a “privilege of our liberty.” But it brought political life to a grinding halt. From 1720 to 1764, more than half of Poland’s parliamentary sessions were shut down by individual vetoes before any decisions were made. Unable to conduct government business or raise public funds for defense, Poland fell prey to military interventions by neighboring Russia, Prussia, and Austria, whose armies dismembered its territory, literally erasing Poland from the map for more than a century. (The dysfunctionality of the liberum veto was not lost on America’s Founders, including Alexander Hamilton, who cited Poland as an example of the “poison” of “giv[ing] a minority a negative upon the majority.”)

[From the January 1887 issue: Alexander Hamilton]

Although other countries steered clear of the liberum veto, states across Europe lacked rules to halt parliamentary debate, allowing small minorities to routinely scuttle legislative majorities. This filibuster-like behavior grew so widespread in Europe that the German legal theorist George Jellinek warned in 1904 that “parliamentary obstruction is no longer a mere intermezzo in the history of this or that parliament. It has become an international phenomenon which, in threatening manner, calls in question the whole future of parliamentary government.”

Across the West, then, early political systems placed elections and parliaments beyond the reach of popular majorities, ensuring not just minority rights but outright minority rule. In that world of monarchies and aristocracies, America’s founding Constitution, even with its counter-majoritarian features, stood out as comparatively democratic.

Over the course of the 20th century, however, most of the countries that are now considered established democracies dismantled their most egregiously counter-majoritarian institutions and took steps to empower majorities. They did away with suffrage restrictions. Universal male suffrage first came to France’s Third Republic in the 1870s. New Zealand, Australia, and Finland were pioneers of female enfranchisement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By 1920, virtually all adult men and women could vote in most of Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

Indirect elections also disappeared. By the late 19th century, France and the Netherlands had eliminated the powerful local councils that had previously selected members of parliament; Norway, Prussia, and Sweden did the same in the early 20th century. France experimented with an electoral college for a single presidential election in the late 1950s, but then dropped it. Electoral colleges gradually disappeared across Latin America. Colombia eliminated its electoral college in 1910; Chile did so in 1925; Paraguay in 1943. Brazil adopted an electoral college in 1964 under military rule but replaced it with direct presidential elections in 1988. Argentina, the last country in Latin America with indirect presidential elections, dropped its electoral college in 1994.

Most European democracies also reformed their electoral systems—the rules that govern how votes are translated into representation. Countries across continental Europe and Scandinavia abandoned first-past-the-post election systems when they democratized at the turn of the 20th century. Beginning in Belgium in 1899, Finland in 1906, and Sweden in 1907, and then diffusing across Europe, coalitions of parties from across the spectrum pushed successfully for proportional representation with multimember districts (meaning multiple members of parliament are elected from a single district) to bring parties’ share of the seats in parliament more closely in line with their share of the popular vote. Under these new rules, parties that won, say, 40 percent of the vote could expect to win about 40 percent of the seats, which, as the political scientist Arend Lijphart has shown, helps ensure that electoral majorities translate into governing majorities. By World War II, nearly all continental European democracies used some variant of proportional representation, and today 80 percent of democracies with populations above 1 million do so.

Undemocratic upper chambers were tamed or eliminated beginning, in the early 20th century, with Britain’s House of Lords. Britain experienced a major political upheaval in 1906 when the Liberal Party won a landslide election, displacing the Conservatives (or Tories), who had governed for more than a decade. The new Liberal-led government launched ambitious new social policies, which were to be paid for with progressive taxes on inherited and landed wealth. Outnumbered by more than two to one in Parliament, the Conservatives panicked. The House of Lords, which was dominated by conservative-leaning hereditary peers, came to the Tories’ rescue. Inserting itself directly into politics, the unelected upper chamber vetoed the Liberal government’s all-important tax bill of 1909.

By convention, the House of Lords could veto some legislation, but not tax bills (fights over taxation had sparked the English Civil War in the 1640s). The House of Lords nonetheless voted down the ambitious budget bill, breaking all precedent.

The Lords justified this unusual move by claiming that their chamber was a “watchdog of the constitution.” The Liberal chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, the main author of the budget bill, dismissed this, calling the House of Lords a plutocratic body—“not a watchdog” but rather the “poodle” of the Conservative Party leader. In a speech to a roaring crowd in London’s East End, the sharp-tongued Lloyd George ridiculed the aristocrats who inherited their seats in the House of Lords as “500 ordinary men, accidently chosen from among the ranks of the unemployed,” and asked why they should be able to “override the deliberate judgment of millions.”

Facing a constitutional crisis, the Liberals drew up the Parliament Act, which would strip the House of Lords of its ability to veto any legislation at all. If the House of Lords lost its veto, its Conservative members warned, political apocalypse would follow. It wasn’t just taxes they feared. They worried about other items on the Liberal-led majority’s agenda, including plans to grant Catholic Ireland greater autonomy, which Conservatives viewed as a fundamental affront to their traditional (Protestant) vision of British national identity.

Ultimately, the bill passed not only the House of Commons but also the House of Lords. It took some hardball. The Lords were persuaded after the Liberal government, with the King’s support, threatened to swamp the House of Lords by appointing hundreds of new Liberal peers to the body if it did not relent. With the bill’s passage, the House of Lords lost the ability to block laws passed by the elected House of Commons (although it could delay them). One of Britain’s most powerful counter-majoritarian institutions had been substantially weakened. And rather than trigger a crisis, the reform paved the way for the construction of a fuller, more inclusive democracy over the course of the 20th century.

Several other emerging democracies abolished their aristocratic upper chambers outright after World War II. New Zealand eliminated its House of Lords–like Legislative Council in 1950. Denmark abolished its 19th-century upper chamber in 1953 via referendum. Sweden followed suit in 1970. By the early 21st century, two-thirds of the world’s parliaments were unicameral. The result was not—as defenders of upper chambers frequently warned—political chaos and dysfunction. New Zealand, Denmark, and Sweden went on to become three of the most stable and democratic countries in the world.

Another way to democratize historically undemocratic upper chambers is to make them more representative. This was the path taken by Germany and Austria. In Germany, following World War II, West Germans wrote a new democratic constitution under the watchful eye of American occupying forces. One of the main tasks facing Germany’s constitutional designers was to revamp the country’s 19th-century second chamber, which historically was composed mostly of appointed civil servants. They considered several options. Despite the outsize role played by American occupying forces, they rejected the U.S. Senate model of equal representation for federal states. Instead, representation in the Bundesrat would be based roughly on states’ populations. So Germany’s second chamber remained in place but was made more representative. Today, the smallest German states each send three representatives to the Bundesrat, medium-size states send four representatives, and the largest states send six representatives. With this structure, Germany’s postwar framers combined principles of federalism and democracy.

Most 20th-century democracies also took steps to limit minority obstruction within legislatures, establishing a procedure—known as “cloture”—to allow simple majorities to end parliamentary debate. The term cloture originated during the early days of the French Third Republic. In the 1870s, the provisional government of Adolphe Thiers faced daunting challenges. France had just lost a war to Prussia, and the new Republican government had to contend with the revolutionary Paris Commune on the left and forces seeking to restore the monarchy on the right. The government needed to show it could legislate effectively. However, the National Assembly was renowned for its marathon debates and inaction on pressing issues. Pushed by Thiers, the assembly created a cloture motion through which a parliamentary majority could vote to rein in an otherwise endless debate.

Britain carried out similar reforms. In 1881, Liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone pushed through a “cloture rule” that allowed a majority of members of Parliament to end debate so that Parliament could move to a vote. The Australian Parliament adopted a comparable cloture rule in 1905. In Canada, opposition minorities in Parliament had filibustered several important bills, including the Naval Aid Bill introduced by the Conservative Prime Minister Robert Borden in 1912. The bill aimed to respond to the rise of German sea power by bolstering Canada’s navy but was filibustered by the opposition Liberals for five months. The debate took a physical toll on the prime minister, who developed such severe boils that he was forced to take the floor with his “neck swathed in bandages.” The ordeal led the government to push through a cloture rule—allowing a simple majority to end debate—in April 1913.

The trend of eliminating filibusters and other supermajority rules has continued in recent decades. For much of the 20th century, Finland’s Parliament had a delaying rule under which a one-third minority could vote to defer legislation until after the next election. The rule was abolished in 1992. Denmark still has a rule in which a one-third parliamentary minority may call a public referendum on nonfinancial legislation, and if 30 percent of the adult population votes against (a high bar given low voter turnout), it is blocked. However, this rule has not been used since 1963. Iceland’s Parliament (known as the Althingi) long had an old-fashioned talking filibuster. The secretary-general of the Althingi, Helgi Bernódusson, described it as “deeply rooted in the Icelandic political culture.” Efforts to curb the filibuster were met with considerable resistance because they were viewed as threatening the “freedom of speech” of members of Parliament. In 2016, Bernódusson declared, “There are no indications at present that it will be possible to curb filibustering … The Althingi is stuck in the filibuster rut.” Three years later, however, after a record-breaking 150-hour filibuster on a European Union energy law, the Parliament curbed the filibuster through new limits on speeches and rebuttals.

Amid this broad pattern of reform is one area in which many democracies moved in a more counter-majoritarian direction in the 20th century: judicial review. Prior to World War II, judicial review existed in only a few countries outside the United States. But since 1945, most democracies have adopted some form of it. In some countries, including Austria, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, new constitutional courts were created as “guardians” of the constitution. In other countries, including Brazil, Denmark, India, Israel, and Japan, existing supreme courts were given this guardian role. One recent study of 31 established democracies found that 26 of them now possess some type of judicial review.

Judicial review can be a source of what we call “intergenerational counter-majoritarianism”—when judges appointed decades ago routinely strike down legislation backed by present-day majorities. Democracies across the world have attenuated this problem by replacing life tenure with either term limits or a mandatory retirement age for high-court justices. For example, Canada adopted a mandatory retirement age of 75 for Supreme Court justices in 1927. The law was a response to two aging justices who refused to retire, including one who became inactive in court deliberations and another whom Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King described in his diary as “senile.”

Similarly, Australia established a retirement age of 70 for High Court justices in 1977, after the 46-year tenure of Justice Edward McTiernan came to an inglorious end. McTiernan had been appointed to the court in 1930, and by the 1970s, the octogenarian’s voice was often “difficult for counsel to understand,” In 1976, McTiernan broke his hip swatting a cricket with a rolled-up newspaper at the Windsor Hotel in Melbourne. In an apparent effort to nudge him into retirement, the chief justice refused to build a wheelchair ramp in the High Court building, citing costs. McTiernan retired, and when Parliament took up the issue of establishing a retirement age, there was little opposition. Members of Parliament argued that a retirement age would help “contemporize the courts” by bringing in judges who were “closer to the people” and held “current day sets of values.”

Every democracy that has introduced judicial review since 1945 has also introduced either a retirement age or term limits for high-court judges, thereby limiting the problem of long-tenured judges binding future generations.

In sum, the 20th century ushered in the modern democratic era—an age in which many of the institutional fetters on popular majorities that were designed by pre-democratic monarchies and aristocracies were dismantled. Democracies all over the world abolished or weakened their most egregiously counter-majoritarian institutions. Conservative defenders of these institutions anxiously warned of impending instability, chaos, or tyranny. But that has rarely ensued since World War II. Indeed, countries such as Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the U.K. were both more stable and more democratic at the close of the 20th century than they were at the beginning. Eliminating counter-majoritarianism helped give rise to modern democracy.

America also took important steps toward majority rule in the 20th century. The Nineteenth Amendment (ratified in 1920) extended voting rights to women, and the 1924 Snyder Act extended citizenship and voting rights to Native Americans—although it was not until the 1965 Voting Rights Act that the United States met minimal standards for universal suffrage.

America also (partially) democratized its upper chamber. The U.S. Senate, which has been provocatively described as “an American House of Lords,” was indirectly elected prior to 1913. The Constitution endowed state legislatures, not voters, with the authority to select their states’ U.S. senators. Thus, the 1913 ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment, which mandated the direct popular election of senators, was also an important democratizing step.

Legislative elections became much fairer in the 1960s. Prior to this, rural election districts across the country contained far fewer people than urban and suburban ones. For example, Alabama’s Lowndes County, with slightly more than 15,000 people, had the same number of state senators as Jefferson County, which had more than 600,000 residents. The result was massive rural overrepresentation in legislatures. In 1960, rural counties contained 23 percent of the U.S. population but elected 52 percent of the seats in state legislatures. In state-legislative and national-congressional elections, rural minorities frequently governed urban majorities. In 1956, when the Virginia state legislature voted to close public schools rather than integrate them in the wake of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, the 21 state senators who voted for closure represented fewer people than the 17 senators who voted for integration.

From 1962 to 1964, however, a series of Supreme Court rulings ensured that electoral majorities were represented in Congress and state legislatures. Establishing the principle of “one person, one vote,” the court rulings required all U.S. legislative districts to be roughly equal in population. Almost overnight, artificial rural majorities were wiped out in 17 states. The equalization of voting power was a major step toward ensuring a semblance of majority rule in the House of Representatives and state legislatures.

A final spurt of constitutional reforms came in the 1960s and early ’70s. The Twenty-Third Amendment (ratified in 1961) gave Washington, D.C., residents the right to vote in presidential elections; the Twenty-Fourth Amendment (1964) finally prohibited poll taxes; and the Twenty-Sixth Amendment (1971) lowered the age to vote from 21 to 18.

But America’s 20th-century reforms did not go as far as in other democracies. For example, whereas every other presidential democracy in the world did away with indirect elections during the 20th century, in America the Electoral College remains intact.  

America also retained its first-past-the-post electoral system, even though it creates situations of minority rule, especially in state legislatures. The United States, Canada, and the

U.K. are the only rich Western democracies not to have adopted more proportional election rules in the 20th century.

The country’s heavily malapportioned Senate also remains intact. The principle of “one person, one vote” was never applied to the U.S. Senate, so low-population states like Wyoming continue to elect as many senators as populous states like California. As a result, states representing a mere 20 percent of American voters can elect a Senate majority. America’s state-level “rotten boroughs” persist.

America also maintained a minority veto within the Senate. Much like in legislatures in France, Britain, and Canada, the absence of any cloture rule led to a marked increase in obstructionist tactics beginning in the late 19th century. And as in Canada, the filibuster problem took on added urgency in the face of German naval threats in the run-up to World War I. But Canada, like France and Britain, put in place a majoritarian 50 percent cloture rule, while the U.S. Senate adopted a nearly insurmountable super-majoritarian 67-vote cloture rule. The threshold was lowered to three-fifths in 1975, but it remains highly counter-majoritarian. America thus entered the 21st century with a “60-vote Senate.”

Finally, unlike every other established democracy, America did not introduce term limits or mandatory retirement ages for Supreme Court justices. Today, on the Supreme Court, the justices effectively serve for life. It’s an entirely different story at the state level. Of the 50 U.S. states, 46 imposed term limits on state-supreme-court justices during the 19th or 20th century. Three others adopted mandatory retirement ages. Only Rhode Island maintains lifetime tenure for its supreme-court justices. But among national democracies, America, like Rhode Island, stands alone.

The United States, once a democratic innovator, now lags behind. The persistence of our pre-democratic institutions as other democracies have dismantled theirs has made America a uniquely counter-majoritarian democracy at the dawn of the 21st century. Consider the following:

America is the only presidential democracy in the world in which the president is elected via an electoral college, rather than directly by voters. Only in America, then, can a president be “elected against the majority expressed at the polls.” America is one of the few remaining democracies that retains a bicameral legislature with a powerful upper chamber, and it is one of an even smaller number of democracies in which a powerful upper chamber is severely malapportioned because of the “equal representation of unequal states” (only Argentina and Brazil are worse). Most important, it is the world’s only democracy with both a strong, malapportioned Senate and a legislative-minority veto (the filibuster). In no other democracy do legislative minorities routinely and permanently thwart legislative majorities. America is one of the few established democracies (along with Canada, India, Jamaica, and the U.K.) with first-past-the-post electoral rules that permit electoral pluralities to be manufactured into legislative majorities and, in some cases, allow parties that garner fewer votes to win legislative majorities. America is the only democracy in the world with lifetime tenure for Supreme Court justices. All other established democracies have either term limits, a mandatory retirement age, or both.

One reason America has become such an outlier is that, among the world’s democracies, the U.S. Constitution is the hardest to change. In Norway, a constitutional amendment requires a supermajority of two-thirds support in two successive elected Parliaments, but the country has no equivalent to America’s extraordinarily difficult state-level ratification process. According to the constitutional scholars Tom Ginsburg and James Melton, the relative flexibility of the constitution allows Norwegians to “update the formal text in ways that keep it modern.” Americans are not so fortunate.

Of the 31 democracies examined by the political theorist Donald Lutz in his comparative study of constitutional-amendment processes, the United States stands at the top of his Index of Difficulty, exceeding the next-highest-scoring countries (Australia and Switzerland) by a wide margin. Not only do constitutional amendments require the approval of two-thirds majorities in both the House and the Senate; they must be ratified by three-quarters of the states. For this reason, the United States has one of the lowest rates of constitutional change in the world. According to the U.S. Senate, 11,848 attempts have been made to amend the U.S. Constitution. But only 27 of them have been successful. America’s Constitution has been amended only 12 times since Reconstruction, most recently in 1992—more than three decades ago.

This has important consequences. Consider the fate of the Electoral College. No other provision of the U.S. Constitution has been the target of so many reform initiatives. By one count, there have been more than 700 attempts to abolish or reform the Electoral College over the past 225 years. The most serious push during the 20th century came in the 1960s and ’70s, a period that saw three “close call” presidential elections (1960, 1968, and 1976), in which the winner of the popular vote very nearly lost the Electoral College.  

In 1966, Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments, proposed a constitutional amendment to replace the Electoral College with direct presidential elections. Americans were on board. A 1966 Gallup poll found 63 percent support for abolishing the Electoral College. That year, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce polled its members and found them nine to one in favor of the reform. In 1967, the prestigious American Bar Association added its endorsement, calling the Electoral College “archaic, undemocratic, complex, ambiguous, indirect, and dangerous.”

Bayh’s proposal was given a boost by the 1968 election, in which George Wallace’s strong third-party performance nearly threw the race into the House of Representatives. A shift of just 78,000 votes in Illinois and Missouri would have cost Nixon his Electoral College majority and left the outcome to the House, where Democrats held a majority. The result frightened leaders of both parties, who began to rally behind Bayh’s proposal.

By 1969, the movement to abolish the Electoral College “seemed unstoppable.” Newly elected President Richard Nixon backed the initiative. So did Democratic Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, Republican Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, House Minority Leader Gerald Ford, and key legislators such as Walter Mondale, Howard Baker, and George H. W. Bush. Constitutional reform was backed by business (the Chamber of Commerce) and labor (AFL-CIO), the American Bar Association, and the League of Women Voters.

In September 1969, the House of Representatives passed the proposal to abolish the Electoral College 338–70—far more than the two-thirds necessary to amend the Constitution. As the proposal moved to the Senate, a Gallup poll showed that 81 percent of Americans supported the reform. A New York Times survey of state legislators found that 30 state legislatures were ready to pass the amendment, six others were undecided, and six were slightly opposed (38 states would be needed for ratification). Abolition seemed well within reach.

[Read: The secret to beating the Electoral College]

But the U.S. Senate killed the reform. Like so many times in the past, opposition came from the South and sparsely populated states. Senator James Allen of Alabama declared, “The Electoral College is one of the South’s few remaining political safeguards. Let’s keep it.” The longtime segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond promised to filibuster the bill, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chair James Eastland, another segregationist, “slow-walked it through the Judiciary Committee,” delaying it by nearly a year. When a cloture vote was finally held on September 17, 1970, 54 senators voted to end debate—a majority, but well short of the two-thirds needed to end the filibuster. When a second cloture vote was held 12 days later, 53 senators voted for it. The bill died before it ever came up for a vote.

Bayh reintroduced his Electoral College reform bill in 1971, 1973, 1975, and 1977. In 1977, following yet another “close call” election, the proposal got some traction. The new president, Jimmy Carter, backed the initiative, and a Gallup poll found that 75 percent of Americans supported it. But the bill was delayed and then, once again, filibustered in the Senate. When a cloture vote was finally held in 1979, it garnered only 51 votes. Afterward, The New York Times reported that supporters of Electoral College reform “conceded privately that they stood little chance of reviving the issue unless a president was elected with a minority of the popular vote or the nation came disturbingly close to such a result.” As it turned out, reform supporters were wildly overoptimistic. Two presidents have been elected with a minority of the popular vote during the early 21st century, and yet the Electoral College still stands.

Our excessively counter-majoritarian Constitution is not just a historical curiosity. It is a source of minority rule. The Constitution has always overrepresented sparsely populated territories, favoring rural minorities, but because both major parties had urban and rural wings throughout most of American history, this rural bias had only limited partisan consequences. This changed in the 21st century. For the first time, one party (the Republicans) is based primarily in small towns and rural areas while the other party (the Democrats) is based largely in urban areas. That means that our institutions now systematically privilege the Republicans. The Republican Party won the popular vote in only one presidential election from 1992 to 2020—a span of nearly three decades. But thanks to the Electoral College, Republicans occupied the presidency for nearly half of that time.

In the U.S. Senate, Republican senators not once represented a majority of Americans from 2000 to 2022, but they nevertheless controlled the Senate for half of this period. As often as not during the 21st century, then, the party with fewer votes has controlled the Senate.

In 2016, the Democrats won the national popular vote for the presidency and the Senate, but the Republicans nonetheless won control of both institutions. A president who lost the popular vote and senators who represented a minority of Americans then proceeded to fill three Supreme Court seats, giving the Court a manufactured 6–3 conservative majority. This is minority rule.

What makes the situation so dangerous is that this privileged partisan minority has abandoned its commitment to democratic rules of the game. In other words, the Constitution is protecting and empowering an authoritarian partisan minority.

But that Constitution appears nearly impossible to reform.

To escape this predicament, we must begin to think differently about the country’s founding document and about constitutional change itself—more like the Founders thought about it and more like Norwegians think about their own constitution today. In 1787, just after the Philadelphia Convention, George Washington wrote, “The warmest friends and best supporters the Constitution has, do not contend that it is free from imperfections; but found them unavoidable.” He went on to write that the American people

can, as they will have the advantage of experience on their side, decide with as much propriety on the alterations and amendments which are necessary as ourselves. I do not think we are more inspired, have more wisdom, or possess more virtue, than those who will come after us.

Born of compromise and improvisation, the U.S. Constitution is not a sacred text. It is a living embodiment of the nation. Throughout our history, from the passage of the Bill of Rights to the expansion of suffrage to the civil-rights reforms of the 1960s, Americans have worked to make our system more democratic. But that work has stalled over the last half century. It is essential to reawaken the dormant American tradition of democratic constitutional change. Doing so will enable America to realize its unfinished promise of building a democracy for all—and perhaps be a model for the world.

This article was adapted from Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky’s forthcoming book, Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point.

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