Template:Did you know nominations/Democratic backsliding in the United States

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The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by SL93 (talk) 14:05, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Democratic backsliding in the United States

Created by Buidhe (talk). Self-nominated at 04:18, 28 May 2022 (UTC).

General: Article is new enough and long enough
Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems

Hook eligibility:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Within the spirit of the 7-day newness rule. Very well-sourced to academic literature, which is good given the controversial topic. No copyright concerns. I think we could justifiably explore some other possible hooks, such as:

  • ALT2 ... that the white-ethnic identity politics of the U.S. Republican Party have been cited as a vector of democratic backsliding in the United States?
  • ALT3 ... that white Americans with high levels of racial prejudice are more likely to support democratic backsliding? {{u|Sdkb}}talk 19:08, 28 May 2022 (UTC)
  • HI Skdb, thanks for reviewing the article. However, I'm not sure about ALT2 and ALT3. For ALT2, the sources would support "cause" more than "vector". The reason why Huq identifies the Supreme Court as a vector rather than a cause if voting rights (eg) were consistently upheld on the state level than federal protections might not be necessary to prevent democratic backsliding. In terms of ALT3, the studies measure support for democratic/authoritarian norms rather than democratic backsliding per se. (t · c) buidhe 19:30, 28 May 2022 (UTC)
  • Comment: IMHO subjective topics be attributed to some one/ source in the sentence itself or have some system of star mark and @ end of main page DYK mention likely hood of subjectivity and suggestion to refer to related attributions in the article. I am not limiting my suggestion for this article only Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 08:24, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
    • I wouldn't call it subjective because there are objective measures of democracy (t · c) buidhe 16:35, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
  • For a claim that seems bound to spark outrage, the name of the cited scholar should probably be attributed inline. theleekycauldron (talkcontribs) (she/they) 07:24, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
  • A few notes about the article: when speaking of "partisan gerrymandering of electoral districts", I think that not mentioning Maryland, New York or Illinois is an omission. We may find sources to find out whether Democrats have been gerrymandering to get unfair advantage alone or as a reaction to the Republicans' gerrymandering (which was definitely made on a larger scale), fearing an imbalance in the representation of the federal House, but Democrats aren't blameless in that respect. A mention of Rucho v. Common Cause is also in order wrt Roberts Court jurisprudence.
I also feel that, if possible, it's better to supplement the "has been cited" with more than one author. The nom has done a good job assembling sources but I think we need more of these in order to link judicial activism in general with democratic backsliding, or the Supreme Court specifically. This shouldn't be really a hard task given that criticism of the Supreme Court is on the rise. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 09:32, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
  • It is not just Huq making this argument with regard to the hook fact, a similar argument is made by Kaufman & Haggard 2018 and also here and probably elsewhere. As for partisan gerrymandering, if there is any RS that covers Democratic gerrymandering as a form of backsliding it could be included but I'm not aware of any such source. (t · c) buidhe 18:10, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
After 15 days, I see no new suggestions for alternate hooks. I share the concern about the more politically charged ones, although I'm sure they would improve viewership - but it seems ALT0 will do just fine on its own. Assuming ALT0, I did a bit of poking about and found ample support for the statement, including both legal and academic statements, so I'm happy that the statement is accurate. Szmenderowiecki's statement is valid though, so I have added several cites to the passage in question. I see no other concerns above, and I think ALT0 is punchy enough on its own, so I see no reason to hold this up further. Maury Markowitz (talk) 12:57, 19 June 2022 (UTC)