A Retreat from Democracy?

In the 2020 U.S. presidential election, President Trump, seeking reelection, fueled racial and partisan divisions and refused to recognize the legitimacy of the election. At the beginning of the following year, an incident even occurred where Trump supporters stormed the Capitol.  

However, in the United States, even before the emergence of Trump, there was a growing tendency to loathe and view people of opposing parties as dangerous, as social rifts such as race and class overlapped with the conflict between the two major parties. In various states, in an effort to defeat opposing factions, movements have emerged—particularly within the Republican Party—to manipulate electoral district boundaries and voting procedures, potentially undermining the institutional foundations of democracy through democratic processes themselves.  

Not limited to the United States, the attitude of viewing opposing forces as enemies based on the self-righteous view that only one's own side is correct has become noticeable in other countries in forms such as populism. In research on political regimes—the broad framework of a country's politics—it was previously common to think that once democracy stabilized, the regime would not change thereafter, and interest was focused on how to lead autocratic states to the "goal" of democracy. Now, however, there are concerns about a "retreat" from democracy even in developed nations, and the existence of non-democratic regimes that include democratic elements, such as competitive elections, is also drawing attention.  

In this way, political science requires both a deep understanding of the phenomena being studied and an attitude that seeks to explain a wide range of phenomena generally and abstractly using quantitative analysis. Based on general theory, I am also attempting to historically examine the process by which the two major parties in the United States have become ideologically polarized to clarify how democracy has fallen into a path of division and confrontation. The voracious attitude of political science, which even crosses the boundaries between the humanities and sciences in the pursuit of questions, can be said to resonate with the spirit of "jitsugaku (science)" as described by Yukichi Fukuzawa. I also strive to encourage students to become "intellectually greedy" as they encounter various ways of thinking.