Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point

by Steven Levitsky

As noted earlier, our Constitution is the hardest to amend in the democratic world. Among the thirty-one democracies examined by Donald Lutz in his comparative study of constitutional amendment processes, the United States stands at the top of the Index of Difficulty, exceeding the next-highest-scoring countries (Australia and Switzerland) by a wide margin. Not only do constitutional amendments require the approval of two-thirds majorities in both the House and the Senate, but they must be ratified by three-quarters of the states. For this reason, the United States has one of the lowest rates of constitutional change in the world. According to the U.S. Senate, there have been 11,848 attempts to amend the U.S. Constitution. But only twenty-seven of them have been successful. America’s Constitution has been amended only twelve times since Reconstruction, most recently in 1992—more than three decades ago.