Monitoring democratic institutions through public records
The Historical Norms of U.S. Democracy
What this site is, what it claims, and how to catch us being wrong is its own page: the charter.
Every status on this site — consistent with norms, notable departure, sustained departure — measures against something. This page is what. The norms below are the long-standing rules and practices that have bound every president, whichever party held the office. Some were written into law by both parties after an abuse; others are customs presidents of both parties kept, usually because each expected to be out of power one day.
How we measure “normal” is a separate, narrower thing. The same reviewer that reads this administration's documents has read every year of the two before it, under identical instructions — and its rates for each era are published side by side in the self-tests. The norms on this page are what those comparisons exist to protect.
Democracy Monitor tracks 14 categories of government activity. None of them is about whether the current administration's policies are good or bad — that debate belongs to voters. Every one of them is about the same question: are the rules that bind every president — whichever party holds the office — still holding?
Each rule below exists because, at some point in American history, both parties agreed they did not trust the other side with unchecked power. That is the test worth applying to everything on this page: a power claimed by a president you support will be inherited, intact, by a president you oppose.
We apply the same methodology to every administration — the same AI review reads Biden-era documents and Trump-era documents under identical rules. How it works is public: methodology.
Who decides elections?
Elections only settle anything if the people running the government cannot tilt them. Two kinds of rules do that work: rules that keep election administration independent of the officials being voted on, and rules that stop the government workforce and its resources from being turned into a campaign operation for whoever is currently in charge.
Why it binds both sides: Incumbent advantage is the one advantage that compounds. If a president can direct federal agencies, prosecutors, or election administrators toward re-election, that power belongs to every future president too — including the one you fear most. Neutral election machinery is what makes it possible to vote anyone out.
What a departure looks like: Government employees pressured into campaign work; federal action timed or targeted to punish states and localities run by the other party; officials who administer elections investigated for decisions the administration dislikes.
Precedent: The Hatch Act (1939) was passed by a Democratic Congress to rein in a Democratic administration, after WPA employees were pressed into campaign work. The party in power restrained itself because both parties understood the machinery would eventually change hands.
Who controls the money and the rules?
The Constitution gives Congress — not the President — the power to tax, spend, and write law. The President proposes budgets and executes the laws Congress passes. Executive orders and agency rules are tools for carrying out laws, not for replacing them. These categories track whether that boundary is holding.
Why it binds both sides: If a president can refuse to spend money Congress appropriated, or govern by executive order where Congress declined to act, then the programs you rely on — whichever ones those are — exist only at one person's pleasure. The same power that cancels a program you oppose cancels the one you depend on, the day the office changes hands.
What a departure looks like: Appropriated funds withheld from programs the administration dislikes; policy enacted through executive action after Congress declined to pass it; independent agencies directed to reach predetermined outcomes.
Precedent: Congress passed the Impoundment Control Act (1974) after President Nixon refused to spend funds it had appropriated — and courts have enforced the same limit against presidents of both parties since. When President Biden's student-loan cancellation exceeded statutory authority, the Supreme Court blocked it (2023), and the administration complied. The rule is the same rule. Agency rules have their own long-standing discipline: the Administrative Procedure Act (1946) requires agencies to publish a proposed rule and answer public comment before it binds anyone, and presidents of both parties have governed under it for eighty years.
Who keeps the government honest?
Every large organization needs auditors, and government is the largest. Inspectors General investigate waste and abuse inside agencies. Courts decide whether government actions are legal, and their orders bind the government itself. These categories track whether the auditors stay independent and whether court orders are followed.
Why it binds both sides: Inspectors General expose scandals in administrations of both parties — that is the point of them. A president who can fire the auditors for auditing, or ignore a court ruling as optional, hands that same immunity to the next president. Court orders you agree with are only enforceable because court orders you disagree with are too.
What a departure looks like: Inspectors General removed after opening inquiries; court orders slow-walked, reinterpreted, or defied; officials suggesting that judicial rulings are advisory.
Precedent: President Truman seized the steel mills during the Korean War; the Supreme Court ruled against him (Youngstown, 1952) and he handed them back the same day. The Inspector General Act (1978) created permanent auditors after Watergate — with support from both parties, each aware the other would eventually hold the presidency.
Who does the government's work?
Roughly two million civil servants process Social Security checks, inspect food, forecast hurricanes, and approve medicines. Merit rules — hired for competence, fired for cause — exist so this workforce answers to the law rather than to the political fortunes of whoever is in office. This category tracks whether those rules are being dismantled.
Why it binds both sides: The alternative to a professional civil service is not a more responsive government — it is a government staffed by whoever helped the winner campaign. Merit protections are what stop a Democratic president from purging conservative employees, and a Republican president from purging liberal ones. Strip them once, and every future administration inherits a workforce it can staff with loyalists.
What a departure looks like: Career positions reclassified so employees can be fired at will; hiring screened for political loyalty rather than competence; entire offices dismissed and rebuilt around personal allegiance.
Precedent: The merit system exists because the alternative was tried. Under the spoils system, federal jobs were campaign rewards — until a rejected office-seeker assassinated President Garfield in 1881. The Pendleton Act (1883) followed, built by both parties on a simple bargain: neither trusted the other with a government of loyalists.
Who can tell you what is happening?
Self-government requires knowing what the government is doing. Two channels make that possible: a press that can report without fear of official retaliation, and public records — laws, spending data, statistics, FOIA — that anyone can check for themselves. These categories track whether those channels stay open.
Why it binds both sides: Freedom-of-information tools are used most heavily by whichever side is out of power — conservative watchdogs under Democratic presidents, liberal ones under Republicans. A government that can choose its coverage, or quietly stop publishing inconvenient data, escapes scrutiny from your side exactly when you need it.
What a departure looks like: Reporters stripped of access for unfavorable coverage; datasets and statistics quietly withdrawn; FOIA offices defunded or rules rescinded; official information replaced by official messaging.
Precedent: The Freedom of Information Act (1966) was pushed through by congressional Democrats over the objections of a Democratic president — Lyndon Johnson signed it reluctantly. It has since been the primary tool of critics of every administration, in both directions. The press side rests on the First Amendment and on custom. When the Nixon administration went to court to stop the New York Times and Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers, the Supreme Court refused (1971), the papers published, and the administration complied. After the Obama Justice Department secretly obtained Associated Press reporters' phone records (2013), the department tightened its own rules for subpoenaing journalists — a limit written by an administration against itself.
Which powers outlast the president who builds them?
Prosecutors, immigration enforcement, domestic use of the military, surveillance — these are the powers of the state at their most physical. Democracies bind them with due process and judicial review not to prevent enforcement, but because enforcement machinery, once built, transfers intact to every future administration. These categories track the guardrails, not the policy.
Why it binds both sides: Whatever you think of any particular enforcement policy, the infrastructure is the durable part: the databases, the detention capacity, the precedent that due process can be skipped when the target is unpopular enough. Powers built for a purpose you support are fully available to the next president, for purposes you may not. Due process is the rule that protects the wrongly accused — and anyone can be wrongly accused.
What a departure looks like: Prosecutions selected by politics rather than evidence; removals or detentions without hearings; troops deployed against civilians; emergency powers that never sunset.
Precedent: The pattern is bipartisan. A Democratic administration interned Japanese Americans in 1942 under emergency powers. Surveillance systems built after 9/11 under a Republican president were inherited and expanded by his Democratic successor. Each side has, at some point, regretted what the other did with machinery it helped build. Two of the guardrails are older than most readers assume. Troops have been kept out of civilian law enforcement by the Posse Comitatus Act (1878), passed after federal soldiers were posted at Southern polling places during Reconstruction; its exception, the Insurrection Act, has been invoked sparingly and by presidents of both parties — Eisenhower at Little Rock (1957), George H. W. Bush in Los Angeles (1992). And the rule that the White House does not direct prosecutions is a post-Watergate custom: after the Saturday Night Massacre (1973), Attorney General Griffin Bell limited who in the White House could speak to the Justice Department about cases (1978), and attorneys general of both parties have reissued a version of that policy since.
Everything this site reports traces back to government documents you can read yourself — every assessment links to its sources, and the full dataset is downloadable. Don't take our word for any of it. The questions readers actually ask are answered on common questions.