UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Last fall, Robert Kagan wrote in The Washington Post that “ the United States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War.”
Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and member of the Council on Foreign Relations, will visit Penn State to present a lecture on his op-ed and what to expect in the 2022 midterm elections and beyond.
The lecture will be held at 4 p.m. on March 1 in the Katz Building auditorium or online via YouTube livestream. It is sponsored by the McCourtney Institute for Democracy, Penn State Law and the School of International Affairs.
In his op-ed, Kagan argues that a continued perpetuation of the “Big Lie” narrative that Donald Trump won the 2020 election has set the stage for a broader push to see that he wins if he runs in 2024.
He writes, “As of this spring [2021], Republicans have proposed or passed measures in at least 16 states that would shift certain election authorities from the purview of the governor, secretary of state or other executive-branch officers to the legislature.”
If these efforts are successful, he says the outcome in 2024 could be “weeks of competing mass protests across multiple states as lawmakers from both parties claim victory and charge the other with unconstitutional efforts to take power.”
Kagan’s writing caught the McCourtney Institute for Democracy’s attention last fall. Director Michael Berkman said the Institute shares some of Kagan’s concerns about the future of American democracy.
“There are few things more important to a constitutional democracy than the peaceful transition of power, which requires that the losing side see the winning side as legitimate,” Berkman said. “Kagan's op-ed identifies the potential threats this poses not only right now, but possibly for future elections.”
States United Democracy Center, a nonpartisan organization that advances free, fair and secure elections, echoes Kagan’s arguments. The organization is tracking bills that would interfere with nonpartisan election administration, as well as 2022 candidates across the country who do not accept the results of the 2020 election.
Kagan is the Stephen & Barbara Friedman Senior Fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings and a contributing columnist at The Washington Post. He is the author of “The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World” and the New York Times bestseller “The World America Made.”
For more information and registration for the lecture, visit democracy.psu.edu/events.