Paul Starr
Paul Starr is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, and professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and the Bancroft Prize in American history, he is the author of eight books, including Entrenchment: Wealth, Power, and the Constitution of Democratic Societies (Yale University Press, May 2019).
Recent Articles
The Republican Health-Care Unraveling
Part I
Mar 22, 2017
This is the first part of a two-part article. The full version appears in the Spring 2017 issue of The American Prospect under the title: “The Republican Health-Care Unraveling: Resist Now, Rebound Later.” This is the “resist” part. Subscribe here to the magazine. Imagine if Donald Trump had been a genuine populist and followed through on his repeated promises to provide health insurance to everybody and take on the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. Populists in other countries have done similar things, and Trump might have consolidated support by emulating them. Of course, Trump’s promises about health care weren’t any more genuine than his promises about Trump University. But even if he had been in earnest, he would have still faced a problem. Unlike right-wing populists elsewhere, Trump did not come to power with a party of his own or well-developed policies. He came tethered to the congressional Republicans, entirely dependent on them to...
Who Are We Americans Now?
And who will we become under Trump?
Dec 19, 2016
This article appears in the Winter 2017 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here . “That’s not who we are,” Barack Obama often says when appealing to Americans to oppose illiberal policies such as torturing prisoners, barring immigrants on the basis of their religion, and denying entry to refugees. But now that Americans have elected a president who has called for precisely those policies, Obama’s confidence about who we are may seem misplaced. Questions about the defining values of our common nationality have haunted us before at critical moments in American history, and now they do again: In the wake of Donald Trump’s election, what does it mean to be an American? Will Trump and Republican rule change not just how the world sees us but our self-understanding? National elections create a picture of a people, and they send a signal about changes the voters want. The picture and the signal may be distorted and subject to interpretation, but...
When an Election Damages Democracy
American democracy faces the risk of systemic harm in 2016.
Oct 18, 2016
This article, written in September, appears under the title "When Elections Fail" in the Fall 2016 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here . One of the great advantages of liberal democracy is the potential for self-correction. If an election works out badly, the next one offers an opportunity to make a better choice, and in the meantime constitutional guarantees keep the winners from abusing their power. But sometimes elections fail so disastrously as to threaten irremediable damage to a society’s foundations. The United States faces that risk this year. Systemically damaging election failure can happen in several ways. Elections may be rigged or manipulated and, even when they haven’t been, the suspicion that they have may impair a new government’s legitimacy and create a constitutional crisis. Elections can fail when they put strongmen in power who have no respect for constitutional norms and threaten democratic institutions. They can fail when the...
What Is Hillary Clinton’s Agenda?
She’s had so much to say on so many issues that voters may not know what she wants to accomplish.
Jun 20, 2016
This article appeared in the Summer 2016 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here . It is misleading, some observers have rightly pointed out, to treat the 2016 election as a contest between two candidates who are equally serious about policy. Donald Trump has been on both sides of many issues, contradicting himself from one day to the next. On occasion, he has given a speech written by advisers on a subject like energy where he seemed as surprised by the text as the audience was. He has a core of symbolically important positions on such issues as immigration, but otherwise his views are murky. Much of what he says about foreign or domestic problems is all impulse and no thought, so when his impulse momentarily changes, his positions change too. For Hillary Clinton, however, substance actually does matter. Her seriousness defines her. We have not reached the stage of gender equality when a woman candidate for president could get away with being as subject to changing...
Trump’s Nomination Will Shake Confidence in American Democracy
We already had reasons to worry about democracy. Now we have one more.
May 04, 2016
With his victory in Indiana yesterday, Donald Trump is now, as he claims, the “presumptive” Republican presidential nominee. Although the polls indicate he’ll likely lose to Hillary Clinton, the election is half a year away, and a lot can happen in between. The consequences of Trump’s becoming president would be momentous for both America and the world. It would change forever the way we think about democracy—and the way the world thinks about America. In fact, his nomination alone will have a deep impact even if he ultimately loses. A major-party nomination legitimizes a candidate’s views as worthy of fair consideration. As a “birther” doubting Barack Obama’s citizenship, Trump could be treated as a crank. In the early stages of the primary campaign, his statements about Mexicans and Muslims could be regarded as the wild fulminations of a candidate who would surely be rejected by his party in the end. When his followers attacked...
