The effects of Donald Trump

ABSTRACT

What effect did Donald Trump have within and beyond America? This article assesses the policy impact of the President using the new layered framework for understanding the impact of political leaders, which considers their effect on the connected layers of societal structures, political institutions and policy. Firstly, the article extends the framework with a new typology of change. Secondly, it draws from the empirical articles in this volume to map his effects under the new typology and the layered approach. Trump is found to have largely acted as an accelerant for already existing causal processes in society, rather than providing a radical break with past politics in many areas. By undermining democratic institutions and encouraging hyper-partisanship within political institutions, for example, he was strengthening prevailing causal forces rather than constructing new forces. However, there were some more substantial effects such as the reversal of progress towards racial equality. In the layer of policy, he crucially failed to slow or reverse destructive pressures on the economy and public health or even fulfil major campaign promises on healthcare. Overall, Trump illustrates neither the strength nor weakness of the office of presidency, but instead the dangers of poor political leadership to citizens in America and beyond, especially in times of crisis.

KEYWORDS:

• Political leadership
• political leaders
• layered framework
• presidents
• American politics

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Andrew Sayer and Myunghee Kim for comments on an earlier draft of this article. All errors remain solely the fault of the author.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 There is a contradiction in focussing on the role of ideas, but not considering how these ideas take the form of discourses to become causally efficacious, in affecting how people think and act. It follows that critical realists should identify how these discourses become widespread, who (if anyone) creates them and for what purposes.

2 It is important to note that there are more detailed steps in the conceptual development of the structure and agency relationship in the strategic relational approach. See Jessop (2005, 48–53). This is deliberately simplified here.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Toby S. James

Toby S. James is Professor of Politics and Public Policy at the University of East Anglia. His previous books on political leadership include co-edited volumes on British Labour Leaders (Biteback, 2015) and British Conservative Leaders (Biteback, 2015). He has also published extensively on electoral integrity and is the Deputy Director of the Electoral Integrity Project. He is currently Editor-in Chief of Policy Studies.