Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

DOI

10.3390/socsci14040235

Publication Title

Social Science

Volume

14

Issue

4

Pages

235 (1-19)

Abstract

The first few days of the second Trump presidency saw a flurry of executive orders targeting immigrants, the transgender community, blacks, and federal government employees. The resulting “shocks” to the system are unprecedented, causing many to question the continuation of American democracy. These actions are a few of many policy preferences developed by conservatives and captured in “Project 2025”, spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation and with the overall intent of restructuring the federal government to suit authoritarian aims. Using a theoretical framework regarding policy entrepreneurs (PEs), I argue that conservative PEs (CPEs), under the aegis of the Republican Party and a second Trump term, are encouraging a shift away from a federal democratic republic to an authoritarian regime. CPEs of interest include elected officials, think tanks, media outlets, interest groups, and political operatives; collectively, these entities constitute a network of mostly unnoticed conservative political professionals using the mechanisms of policy entrepreneurship to damage American democracy. Overall, the actions CPEs take in terms of setting the agenda, controlling the electoral process, and informing the media indicate an eventual abandonment of democratic norms, an inclination towards the establishment of an authoritarian regime, and acceptance of said regime by a significant portion of the American people.

Rights

© 2025 by the author.

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License.

Data Availability

Article states: "The original contributions presented in this study are included in the article. Further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author."

ORCID

0000-0001-8218-3047 (King)

Original Publication Citation

King, A. M. (2025). “Shocking the system” in the 21st century: Conservative policy entrepreneurs and the plan for authoritarianism in the U.S. Social Sciences, 14(4), 1-19, Article 235. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci14040235

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