This paper examines how electoral losers respond to election outcomes, a cornerstone of democratic theory in which regime legitimacy depends on the consent of the losers. Empirically, we focus on Spain, a highly polarized democracy that experienced protests during the 2023 government formation process. We analyse the factors that erode citizens’ willingness to accept electoral defeat, with particular attention to political polarization and its attitudinal consequences. The paper also explores whether electoral loss contributes to the emergence of illiberal attitudes among voters.

The term “un-American” has been wielded as a powerful tool throughout US history, from Jefferson’s vision of the early Republic to the Trump era, yet no objective definition has ever been universally agreed upon. For the first time, George Lewis’s Un-Americanism offers a long history of this term, tracing what it has meant to whom through close looks at the most prominent contests for control of its definition and deployment.

In both the United States and France, each side of the legal battle over same-sex marriage and parenthood relied heavily on experts. Despite the similarity of issues, however, lawmakers in each country turned to different sets of authorities: from economists and psychoanalysts to priests and ordinary people. They even prized different types of expertise—empirical research in the United States versus abstract theory in France.

On January 17, 1893, American businessmen Sanford Dole and Lorrin Thurston led a coup against the Hawaiian monarchy with the aid of the U.S. military and active involvement from members of President William Harrison’s cabinet. In light of federal backing, the group expected rapid passage of an annexation treaty. However, the treaty failed due to opposition from Southern Democrats, and further hurting the annexation cause, President Grover Cleveland, a staunch anti-imperialist, soon took office. For nearly six years, the newly established Hawaiian Republican remained in a state of limbo.

To observers across the political spectrum, American politics appears increasingly divided. Long-standing divisions of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and rural-urban ​remain powerful, but a more fundamental split may now be emerging between those who support the existing democratic order and those who do not. In this event, Robert Lieberman will analyse what today’s political cleavages mean for the future of American democracy, and place current conditions in a broader historical and comparative perspective.

Professor Sarson will deliver a talk about his new book on the Declaration of Independence followed by comments from Patrick Griffin.

How reading the Declaration of Independence as a document of history explains its intended meaning.