Amerikanische Krise und Verfassungsrecht

What role, if any, does constitutional law play in the current democratic crisis? The crisis seems to affect most established democracies. However, cross-country research suggests that it does not affect them equally. Some countries, such as the US, appear to be harder hit than others. This suggests country-specific factors that sharpen or alleviate the impact the crisis has. There is evidence in current comparative research that one important factor is a country's public institutions - not just its political system, but also the ways in which its political economy is structured, and its media system shaped. In this sense, these institutions make up democratic infrastructures: They influence to what degree a democracy is likely to be affected by the broader shifts that have brought about the crisis across countries. At the same time, it is the countries' constitutions that determine the respective shape these democratic infrastructures take. This suggests that constitutional law does indeed have a role in the way the democratic crisis plays out differently in different countries. Building on this hypothesis, the article looks closely at the ways in which the specific institutions of US constitutional law have helped to increase the impact of the crisis in the US. It first summarizes the current political science research on the nature of the larger shifts that have combined, since the 1970s, to create the current level of crisis in established democracies. It then takes a close look at the way in which US constitutional law has structured the US political economy, its media system, and its political system over the same period and asks whether the shape of these institutions - and how they have been altered - did exacerbate these larger shifts. The article finds considerable evidence that it has: In each of the three areas, constitutional law was set up and changed in a way that increased the degree to which US institutions were susceptible to the crisis' dynamics. The final section draws some tentative conclusions on what this means for Germany and the current state of its democratic infrastructures.