It is now 12 score and 10 years that our Founders “brought forth a new nation,” as Abraham Lincoln put it at Gettysburg in 1863. That nation was dedicated to the idea that self-governance was possible, but only within the context of a carefully crafted system of checks and balances that placed limits on power. The Founders were not naive about the fragility of democracy or the relationship between domestic health and foreign power. Madison, Jefferson, and Hamilton shared a conviction that republican self-governance would be America’s most durable strategic asset. They built institutions accordingly: not perfect institutions, but ones designed to outlast any single leader, resist any single faction, and carry forward the accumulated expertise and judgment that democratic statecraft requires. Democracy in Peril Two hundred and fifty years on, those institutions are under a threat of the kind our Founders feared most. For myriad reasons, the United States has become so polarized that we are now more likely to identify as members of one political side or the other than to identify simply as Americans, aware of the unique privileges such identity grants. Across the political spectrum, our leadership is more inclined to point out what divides us than what binds us together. A consistent and reputable body of polling data shows The world is in a democratic recession. Can Americans work together to repair our democracy and fight back the global rise of competitive authoritarianism? BY JENNIFER L. DAVIS Jennifer Davis is the Knott Distinguished Professor of Practice at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, where she focuses on democracy and diplomacy. She retired in 2025 as a Senior FSO, having served in the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration; at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations; in Türkiye, Colombia, Belgium, and Mexico; as the executive assistant to Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry; and as the special assistant to Secretary Condoleezza Rice. Unfinished Work: Why a Healthy Democracy Is Essential to Our Foreign Policy 20 JULY-AUGUST 2026 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL FOCUS ON THE U.S. IN THE WORLD AT 250
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