Political Culture in the Age of Trump

The Trump presidency alone is a topic of considerable public discussion and debate. Yet, Donald Trump signals much more than the behavior of a single person. He is a symptom and not the sole cause a greater malaise gripping the republic. Albert P. Melone argues that the Trump phenomenon is an instance of the rise of mass society and the decline of pluralist democracy. He points out that yesteryear’s Madisonian pluralist paradigm of democracy no longer aptly describes and explains the American political world as it now exists. By substituting the conceptual framework of mass society for the pluralism model, the author points the way to a more powerful and convincing explanation of the Trump phenomenon.