But last week’s United States ruling may be symptomatic, some political scientists argue, of a significant change in democracy there and elsewhere. Its major institutions increasingly empower minority rule.
“Thirty-five, 40 percent of the electorate,” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard University scholar on democracy, “now can be enough, given the electoral system,” to win power.
Electoral College and Senate maps have always tilted American elections to favor certain voters over others, for instance by granting rural states outsized representation. For the first time in American history, demographic groups that tend to support one party, the G.O.P., overwhelmingly cluster in the areas that receive disproportionate voice.
As a result, Supreme Court justices are increasingly likely to be appointed by a president who lost the popular vote and confirmed by a Senate elected by a minority. Republicans won the national popular vote in only one out of the last eight presidential elections, but have appointed six of the nine current Supreme Court justices.
Understand the Texas Abortion Law
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Citizens, not the state, will enforce the law. The law effectively deputizes ordinary citizens — including those from outside Texas — allowing them to sue clinics and others who violate the law. It awards them at least $10,000 per illegal abortion if they are successful.
In democracies, a drift toward minority rule can feed a sense that power does not flow from the will of the people as a whole. Such leaders and institutions often become likelier to overrule the majority on issues important to the minority that put them in power.
At the same time, partisan combat has grown more intense, with studies finding that Republicans are likelier to breach democratic norms, including in blocking then-President Barack Obama from filling a Supreme Court vacancy in 2016.
“There’s a lot of hardball involved in creating this six out of nine conservative majority,” Dr. Levitsky said.