Princeton scholar says internal governance, not just government, threatens democracy

Yale backlash over Trump settlement prompts debate on campus governance

Princeton professor and Guardian columnist Jan-Werner Müller wrote Thursday that the backlash at Yale to negotiations with the Trump administration has drawn attention to a question he said has been overlooked in discussions about American democracy: the internal governance structures of institutions themselves.

“Many of us had thought that the US possessed a robust civil society that could act as a counterweight to an overbearing government and resist authoritarian encroachments,” Müller wrote. “What few reckoned with: its institutions themselves can be run in a fairly authoritarian fashion – universities being a prime example, with deleterious consequences for democracy as a whole.”

Müller’s column, published in The Guardian, was prompted by events at Yale after news spread that the university’s leadership was negotiating a potential settlement with the Trump administration. The administration has launched a wide-ranging investigation of Yale, accusing it of discriminating against white and Asian students in admissions. Müller wrote that in the case of Harvard, it “appears that Trumpists – and Trump himself, for that matter – might have been leaking about concessions being imminent partly to put pressure on the university.”

The Tocquevillian tradition — the idea, dating to the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville’s travels in the early 19th century, that Americans’ habit of forming associations serves as a check on centralized power — has dominated the way scholars think about civil society, Müller wrote. He noted that Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam’s “bowling alone” thesis documented the decline of group membership but did not fundamentally challenge the assumption that civil society organizations are, on balance, pro-democratic forces.

Müller argued that the discussion has overlooked two factors. First, he wrote, “civil society is not by definition pro-democratic,” citing political scientist Sheri Berman’s analysis of the Weimar Republic, which had a vibrant civil society whose members were “committed anti-democrats.” He pointed to hate groups such as the Proud Boys and the Patriot Front as contemporary US examples.

Second, Müller wrote, even organizations whose members support democracy can have internal structures that concentrate authority. He cited law professor Genevieve Lakier’s observation that an organization’s internal structure “might be fairly authoritarian.” Those with a “more managerial mindset,” he wrote, “might not risk treasure and time in all-out battles with an aspiring authoritarian government.”

Müller cited legal scholars Daniel J. Hemel and David Pozen’s analysis of university governance, writing that US higher education “differs from universities in Europe in that institutions of higher learning often give ultimate authority either to politicians or powerful businesspeople and other worthies serving as trustees.” He wrote that “genuinely shared governance by a variety of stakeholders is rare; students in particular hardly ever have any real say.”

The column described a pattern of “anticipatory obedience” during Trump’s second term. Müller pointed to law firms that “caved” and to Fifa, which “toned down its anti-racism messaging in the US.” He argued that non-leaders “might sometimes just know better” than leaders, writing that the Trump administration “may well not honor its own deals” and that some deals give the Justice Department “continuous control over an institution.”

Müller noted that Yale Law School — “not necessarily known as a hotbed of progressive resistance” — is reportedly opposed to any settlement, particularly as universities that have fought the Trump administration have been vindicated in court. The effects on applicants, faculty, and alumni of a settlement, he wrote, “might be profoundly negative.”

The professor concluded that disillusionment with civil society should not lead to defeatism, pointing to Minneapolis as an example where “ordinary people have stepped up and made a difference” when elite actors failed. He wrote that one question should be high on the agenda for those considering what the US needs after Trump: “do so many institutions in civil society need to be as authoritarian as they currently are?”