SGI 2016 | United States | Executive Summary

Executive Summary

Recent Governments Experts

SGI experts on United States

Daniel Béland

Director, Professor, McGill University

Daniel Béland is Director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada and James McGill Professor in the Department of Political Science at McGill University. He has held visiting academic positions at Harvard University, the University of Bremen, the University of Nagoya, the University of Southern Denmark, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Professor Béland currently serves as Executive Editor of the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis and President of the Research Committee 19 (Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy) of the International Sociological Association. A student of social and fiscal policy, he has published more than 20 books and 160 peer-reviewed journal articles.

Christian Lammert

Professor, FU Berlin

Christian Lammert is professor of North American politics and policy at the John F. Kennedy Institute, Freie Universität Berlin. He recieved his PhD from the Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main (2002) with a dissertation on nationalist movements in Quebec and Corsica. He has published widely on topics such as nationalism and regionalism in Quebec, social policy in the United States and the politics of health care reform in the United States. He is currently editing a handbook on the U.S. political system (VS Springer Verlag).

Martin Thunert (Coordinator)

Sr. Research Lecturer, University of Heidelberg

Martin Thunert is senior research lecturer in political science at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA) at Heidelberg University (Germany). His teaching and research focuses on North America as well as on lobbying and policy advice, transatlantic relations and U.S. foreign policy. Mr. Thunert studied in Germany, the UK and Canada, has held academic positions in Germany and the United States (University of Michigan), and has worked as a staff assistant for the late U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy. He is the co-editor of Handbuch Politikberatung (Handbook on Policy Advice) and co-founder and co-editor of ZPB Journal for Policy Advice and Political Consulting.

Improvements since
Trump years

In terms of the SGI, the United States continues to receive high scores in some areas of long-term strength, including economic policy, labor market efficiency and innovation. Compared to the situation prevailing during the Trump years, the United States performed better in 2021 in policy areas addressing social inclusion, the integration of new immigrants, elementary education, family policy, environmental protection, and fiscal sustainability.

Serious damage to
U.S. democracy

With respect to the quality of democracy, the United States continues to exhibit some strengths when it comes to ensuring generally equal political rights, fairness in candidate and party access to the ballot, and relatively balanced news media coverage. Although both parties are more or less on par in terms of campaign funding resources, accountability with respect to campaign funding has suffered as a result of growing contributions from extremely wealthy individuals. The Trump years damaged U.S. democracy in key ways and the first year of the Biden administration proved reassuring, as the Democratic president moved away from the most toxic tactics of the Trump presidency.

Divisive response
to pandemic

The COVID-19 crisis has dominated U.S. politics since March 2020. During the last year of Trump’s presidency, the federal response to the pandemic proved both divisive and confusing, as President Trump made often obscuring and untrue statements about the nature of the public health threats, while launching overtly partisan attacks against Democrats in Congress and in the states, a situation that exacerbated coordination problems stemming from federalism. In this context, racial divisions also proved central as the COVID-19 crisis stressed once again the deep inequalities reflected in both the public health situation and the healthcare system. These divisions marked the 2020 presidential campaign, during which COVID-19 became a major issue. In the end, President Trump lost but his refusal to concede and his baseless claims of massive electoral fraud undermined U.S. democracy and the ongoing response to the pandemic.

Impaired international cooperation

On the international front, President Trump’s nationalistic approach to pandemic mitigation seriously weakened cooperation with the rest of the world. This is particularly the case of his decision to have the United States withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO) in the middle of a global pandemic. By blaming China and the WHO for the crisis, President Trump attempted to deflect blame for the deeply flawed response of his administration to COVID-19.

Major shift in
discourse and policy

The first year of the Biden presidency marked a major shift in political discourse and public policy clearly apparent in the ongoing federal response to the pandemic, which is more straightforward and predictable now than under President Trump. As for President Biden’s progressive policy agenda, it faces obstacles in Congress despite the fact that both chambers of Congress are now under Democratic control. This is the case in part because the tiny Democratic majority in the Senate gives veto power to a small number of moderate Democrats who have stood in the way of major reforms such as the Built Back Better Act, which has still not been enacted. Under the Biden presidency, the institutional weight of checks and balances remains as strong as in the recent past, including during the Obama administration, from which Biden and his team are constantly drawing lessons.