This paper considers the early lineage of assumptions, current in both the public sphere and the academy, that the United States was safe from capture by an authoritarian populist figure because of some combination of long-standing democratic institutions and a supportive civic culture. It analyzes the arguments of three influential European commentators—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877), James Bryce (1838–1922), and Moisei Ostrogorski (1854–1919)—who studied American democracy during the period in which a new species of one-man rule, generally known as “Caesarism” and originally associated with the regime of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, was thought to be an inherent threat to liberal democracy. For different reasons, all judged that the United States, through a confluence of fortuitous circumstances, distinctive institutions, and national character, was largely immune to Caesarism. After considering their arguments for this alleged immunity, and especially the nature of the connection between institutions and national character, the article concludes with a discussion of how these earlier analyses might inform how we think about fears of democratic reversal in the United States in the age of Trumpism.

本文考虑了公共领域和学术界流行的早期假设，即由于长期存在的民主制度和支持性的公民文化的某种结合，美国不会被威权民粹主义人物俘虏。它分析了三位有影响力的欧洲评论家——沃尔特·白芝浩 (Walter Bagehot, 1826–1877)、詹姆斯·布莱斯 (James Bryce) (1838–1922) 和莫伊塞·奥斯特罗戈尔斯基 (Moisei Ostrogorski) (1854–1919) 的论点——他们研究了美国民主，在此期间，一种新的民主制度出现了。人治，通常被称为“凯撒主义”，最初与路易-拿破仑·波拿巴的政权有关，被认为是对自由民主的内在威胁。出于不同的原因，所有人都认为，美国通过偶然的环境、独特的制度和民族性格的融合，基本上不受凯撒统治的影响。在考虑了他们对这种所谓的豁免权的论点，尤其是制度与国民性格之间联系的性质之后，本文最后讨论了这些早期的分析如何影响我们如何看待美国在这个时代对民主逆转的恐惧特朗普主义。