Doug Thompson

It is way too easy for these events to happen. It’s terrifying.

To revisit the political theory ‘canon’ after immersing oneself in scholarship in history (esp. economic history), comparative politics, sociology, archaeology, and other fields is to see *everything* with new eyes.

So much of the excellent work that people in my field have done in recent years to expand our geographic horizons has been heavily dependent on scholarship in other fields that began this work much earlier.

Interdisciplinary research and even simply reading are truly transformative.

Greek & Roman historian here. Fact check: true. Ancient Mediterranean historians worth our salt don’t just read about Greeks and Romans.

Thank goodness for that! One thing I really should have mentioned is that much of the excellent work that people in my field have done in recent years to expand our geographic horizons has been heavily dependent on scholarship in other fields that began this work much earlier.

One person's rule of law is another person's lawfare. Impossible to adjudicate between these perceptions. Damn all these radical postmodernists and their post-truth moral relativism!

Once you see it, you can't unsee it.

... until we bring in data from other regions of Afro-Eurasia that were in close trade contact with W. Europe and then compare and draw connections between them to test whether W. Europe really was the sole origin of every aspect of the concept.

Spoiler alert: it wasn't (paper in process...) (fin)

An example: every political theorist *knows* that the origins of "the modern state" lie in Europe. But how can we *know* this if we *only* look for those origins in Europe? The answer is, of course, that we cannot actually know this in that way. This remains an untested hypothesis in the field...

Simply reading non-European sources is not enough. We also have to understand how ideas from different regions relate to each other and fit together--through cross-regional *comparison* and by reconstructing direct lines of interregional *connection* in the form of past learning across distance...

... even if these data are wildly unrepresentative of the phenomena under investigation. Which in my field they very often were.

Trying to overcome the deeply distorted picture of the history of political thought that this arbitrary sample enabled is *incredibly* difficult...

This was a *tiny*, wholly arbitrary sample of globally available texts, a result of pure custom and professional path dependence.

The field was a walking embodiment of the ‘streetlight effect’—a form of observational bias where the researcher only considers data that are ready to hand…

… (2) late republican/early imperial Rome (again, about a century); (3) a handful of societies that developed in the wake of the Western Empire’s collapse (almost all a millennium later, after 1500 CE); and (4) the modern settler colonial societies of North America (not S. America, Oceania, Africa)…

Until recently, my academic field—political theory/history of ideas—had a ‘canon’ that cut out the *entire* first half of the record of human political thought.

This ‘canon’ was arbitrarily drawn from 4 times and places *only*: (1) a single century in the ancient Aegean, almost all from Athens…

That book made me realize that if southern Democrats and anti-New Deal (esp. midwestern industrialist) Republicans were in the same party in 1932, the US would have probably gone fascist. By 1994, their heirs had sorted into the same party, and presto!

In other words, we all need to read this book…

Democratizing “reconstruction” moments only happen in the US when the anti-democratization party is totally excluded (1865, 1932) or when the parties are *both* internally split on “race.”

Neither is true in 2025. So what’s the path forward?

It's the only way, and Dem leaders can't give up on it, despite the murky future. How they'll respond to the imminent (b/c newly funded) expansion of coercion & detention is another variable...

Plus the media environment. Will rural GOP voters assign blame accurately for lost healthcare and recession caused by tariffs, immigration labor shock, & public sector cuts? That seems to be to be the biggest obstacle.

I agree, but It's so hard to see the path forward to building the required supermajority under current conditions.

Those constitutional moments are so contingent (on economic collapse, total wars, etc.). 2025 lacks the wrecked opposition of 1865 & 1932 & the internal party splits on "race" of 1965.

I want to be reassured, but I am not optimistic. The anti-democratization "Jim Crow refounding" took almost a century to reverse. And then the backlash against it (via partisan resorting of voters by attitudes on "race") produced the current moment. What is the path back to democracy? (fin)

So where's the pro-democratization supermajority going to come from? It's really not clear right now.

The BBB perversely attacks the well-being of its sponsors' voters. But there is no indication that those voters will assign blame accurately and switch parties in this media environment. (11/)

So, here we (very much already) are, in the 5th refounding--not one of the democratizing ones. The problem is that we're not in 1865, 1932, or 1965. The anti-democratization party is not shut out of US politics like 1865 or 1932. And both parties aren't internally split on "race" like 1965. (10/)

BUT, it shares features with the violent insurgency against the 1st Reconstruction. Today we have 1 party focused on reversing past democratization events (much like the 1870s-1890s). And the other party (so far) isn't willing or able to defend democracy (with many individual exceptions). (9/)

There were enough *pro-Civil Rights* leaders in both parties to make a majority.

Well ... that ship has sailed. The 5th "refounding" is undoing all of the previous 3 democratizing "refoundings." It can't be a return to "Jim Crow + laissez faire," à la 1900. It's something new. (8/)

The 2nd Reconstruction was different. It was obviously a democratization event (the end of Jim Crow authoritarianism plus an expansion of what we could vote for, e.g., health care in Medicare & Medicaid!).

But it was only possible because both parties were internally split about "race." (7/)

The GOP was so discredited b/c of its dogged insistence on laissez faire. Everyone could tangibly *see* that it wasn't working. Because of this, the GOP would not win consistent Congressional majorities again until the 1990s--60 yrs later (6/)

The New Deal was also a democratization event. Why? Now majorities of voters could vote for economic policies they wanted (e.g, Social Security), and there was actually the gov't administrative capacity to deliver on them.

This was only possible b/c the US was in effect a 1-party state again. (5/)

Once readmitted, Southern Democrats launched a violent insurgency against this democratization. By the 1890s, they won (after killing ~4,000 political opponents).

They were able to win because Northern Republicans didn't want to pay for security to defend the Reconstruction democracies. (4/)

1st Reconstruction was a moment of democratization--the 1st ever founding of universal male suffrage and civil rights in the South.

It was only possible (at first) b/c the 11 states of the defeated Confederacy were not yet readmitted to Congress. The US was a 1-party (GOP) country. (3/)

They are: 1) 1st Reconstruction; 2) the murder of Reconstruction by "Jim Crow" authoritarian rule (in 11 states, with federal complicity); 3) the New Deal; 4) 2nd Reconstruction (the end of "Jim Crow" authoritarianism + the Great Society).

How does 2025's "refounding" compare w/ these? (2/)