Revisiting the "Crane Brinton Effect": Iran, Venezuela, Syria, Gaza, and the U.S. - Part 2
Newsletter #420 - February 1, 2026
Heidi Burgess and Guy Burgess
In Newsletter 418, we revisited what we call "The Crane Brinton Effect" (which we had written about in two earlier posts, one in 2022, and the other in 2020. The effect is named after the author of the 1938 book The Anatomy of Revolution. In that book, Brinton demonstrated that bringing about a better society after a revolution is much harder than overthrowing the hated regime, and most often fails to happen. Rather, the result of most revolutions is simply the exchange of one oppressive regime for another, often worse, form of tyranny.
It is easy to think that such an observation would not apply to the United States, at least not since 1776. However, in our 2022 post, we noted that elements of the Brinton effect also apply to political revolutions in democracies, such as the U.S. As we wrote then,
As people increasingly decide that they don't trust society's existing dispute handling mechanisms (like elections and the courts) you can get widespread efforts to circumvent those institutions and the rule of law upon which they are based. This results in increasingly bitter struggles for political power in which democratic norms and taboos are abandoned in favor of increasingly dirty tricks and the increasing possibility of violence.
In the U.S., both the left and the right are already a good way down this path. On the right, it has become politically untenable to assert that President Biden fairly won the 2020 election. In fact, lack of confidence in the fairness of the electoral process has led many Republicans to refuse to commit to accepting an unfavorable outcome in the 2022 election. [The same, of course, was true of the 2024 election, but Trump clearly won that, so neither the Republicans nor the Democrats questioned that outcome. The same may not be true, however, for 2026 or 2028.] On the left, there is widespread alarm over actions being taken by Republicans that Democrats believe would make future elections unfair. In short, agreement on how to hold free and fair elections is collapsing rapidly.
The politicalization of the judiciary is another area in which trust in democratic institutions is collapsing. Increasingly extreme tactics are being used to seat judges who are selected because their judicial philosophies are expected to yield politically favorable decisions for the appointing side. Also contributing to fear and distrust is the fact that both the left and the right are trying to limit free speech to speech that they approve. The right is trying to ban books that teach progressive views on race and gender, while the left [especially under Biden] tries to repress any criticism of those views as disinformation or hate.
These and related acts are combining to shatter people's faith in the ability of democratic institutions to make wise and equitable decisions. Few people believe that their votes count, nor do they believe that their interests and needs are being listened to or addressed. The result is a giant feedback loop drawing people down, not only into increased levels of hate, but also the increased use of extra-legal power strategies that are increasingly seen as the only viable way to protect their vital interests.
As faith in democracy erodes, it is creating fertile ground for aspiring authoritarians who promise to use strong-arm tactics to protect their constituents from the increasingly dehumanized "enemy" on the other side of the political divide. This is the point where hyper-polarization transforms relatively mild calls for political revolution into something closer to the horrors imagined by Crane Brinton.
Some things have changed since we wrote that in 2022; some for the better, some for the worse. There has been considerable effort put into strengthening the public's faith in elections. Major projects and/or resources have been created by Livingroom Conversations, Interfaith America, Braver Angels, the Trust Network and other organizations working to shore up and improve U.S. democracy. Many states and communities have initiated their own projects and efforts to make their election processes, fair, transparent, and trusted.
However, confidence in our other democratic institutions is also extremely low. According to a Pew Research Center December, 2025 report, only 17% of Americans "trust the government in Washington to do what is right 'just about always' (2%) or 'most of the time' (15%), one of the lowest levels in nearly seven decades." Although Democrats' trust in the national government is only 9% (we are surprised it is that high!), Republican and Republican-leaning independents aren't all that much higher, at 25%. A poll done by YouGov in November 2025 showed that the U.S. public has some confidence in the military (54%), but their confidence in other American institutions is much lower:
The share of Americans who have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in each of the following is about one-third or less: the medical system (35%), banks (32%), public schools (32%), the church or organized religion (28%), and organized labor (26%). Even smaller shares trust each of newspapers (22%), television news (17%), and big business (14%).
Of the 15 institutions asked about, Congress is the least likely to have Americans' confidence: Only 10% say they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in it. More have that much confidence in the Supreme Court (25%) and the Presidency (30%).
38% trust the police and 21% confidence the criminal justice system. [Note: this was done before ICE killed Renee Good in Minneapolis in January of 2026.]
These startling statistics demonstrate the degree to which confidence in and support for the pillars of US democracy is collapsing — a collapse that is symptomatic of even deeper changes in the way US citizens view their society. A big part of this larger story has its origins in a complex array of ideas coming out of the left's reappraisal of US history, the rise of social justice thinking, and what Yascha Mounk calls the "identity synthesis" (what its political detractors call "woke" ideology). This is a view of US society that sees its democratic institutions as little more than a system for sugarcoating discrimination, oppression, and exploitation. This article from today's Wall Street Journal illustrates the problem. In response, the left launched what was, until this year, a highly successful political revolution aimed at overthrowing this unjust order. This campaign has included a wide range of programs that channel benefits and opportunities to the oppressed, protected classes and a series of robust, "cancel culture" mechanisms that effectively limited criticism.
There are certainly valid reasons why people might subscribe to this view. The US has never truly lived up to the democratic ideal that we learned about in school (something that, in another newsletter post, we called the Grand democratic Bargain). Still, the tragedy associated with looking at US society in such a negative way is that it causes people to lose track of and fail to appreciate democracy's critically important role in preventing the kind of authoritarian tyranny that inspires Crane Brinton-type revolutions.
And, unlike the revolutions mentioned in our last newsletter, the left's political revolution is being actively contested by counter-revolutionaries on the right who want to "Make America Great Again" by rolling back the many changes that the left has brought to US society.
Thus far, we've been fortunate. This hyper-polarized conflict has yet to deteriorate into large-scale violence (though this is something that could occur quite quickly, given the depth of ongoing tensions). What is clear is that we are now in the midst of an intense struggle for control of US society — a struggle that could easily end with Donald Trump seizing authoritarian power. It is also possible that his many excesses will lead to his downfall in ways that give the progressive left, with its ruthless suppression of dissent, societal control. In either case, it seems clear that, in the U.S., the Grand democratic Bargain has collapsed and, as a society, we have now abandoned compromise and fully embraced all-out, "I'll Fight You For It" rules as the way to resolve our political disputes.
Going back to Crane Brinton, US society is at a later stage in his revolutionary process. We have made it through the left's initial revolutionary changes (which were not as widely supported as the other revolutions highlighted previously). We have now moved on to the next stage, where we are engaged in a great battle over what comes next.
This explains how Brinton applies, even though our leaders are not hated by almost everyone in the country. Rather, the President and his executive branch are only hated by half of the country. (This we are estimating, we do not have polls that ask that exact question, though the YouGov poll says only 30% have a great deal or a lot of confidence in the President.) But almost everyone distrusts Congress, and only 30% trust the Supreme Court.
Given this lack of trust, a large number of people — on both the left and the right — are talking about making major changes to American institutions. For instance, there is a lot of talk (on both the right and the left) about convening a constitutional convention to revamp the Constitution in ways that could dramatically alter the balance of power.
Beyond this, Republicans are chipping away at the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and other acts designed to aid African Americans and other people of color. They are gerrymandering as much as possible, to try to assure future elections aren't really contested, and rather are shoe-ins for Republican candidates at both the local and federal levels. Democrats are also gerrymandering wherever possible, in part as a defensive move, and no doubt, as an effort to secure as many districts as possible as firmly blue. There has also been a long-term trend toward the increasing use of executive orders and related tactics that enable the President to circumvent the system of checks and balances and act unilaterally.
All of these actions weaken the U.S. constitutional democracy in ways which cause public confidence to further erode. This erosion then leads people to support increasingly extreme confrontation strategies — strategies that further erode constitutional democracy. The result is an increasingly intense vicious circle that is a major factor in the further deterioration of democracy in the U.S.
There is, of course, an alternative to this Crane Brinton nightmare. We can rediscover the many advantages of power-with democracy, compromise, collaborative problem-solving, and evolutionary, not revolutionary change. Though it is desperately needed, this approach isn't popular right now. People working to strengthen democracy or in any way work with the other side are accused of "Fiddling While Rome Burns" or compromising with evil. Yet we urgently need to work to escape the vicious cycle of escalating hatred, distrust, and attacks. We need to cultivate a much wider understanding of the conflict dynamics that are drawing us ever closer to catastrophe, and reverse those dynamics before it becomes impossible to do so. (This is what our original post in this series, called The Great Reframing, was talking about.)
Conclusion
We would urge all of our progressive friends who want us to fight even harder to decisively defeat the MAGA right to consider the Brinton effect and the likely consequences of the ongoing struggle for social dominance. Likewise, we urge those on the right to consider what Donald Trump's pursuit of completely unchecked power is doing to our society, its place in the world, and prospects for avoiding the dystopias of war, tyranny and chaos. Somehow, we have to learn to live together in a spirit of compromise, freedom, and mutual support.
And we would hope anyone hoping to foment revolution in Iran or Venezuela and anywhere else in the world to think about the Crane Brinton effect first. Brinton isn't saying that revolutions are never appropriate, or never succeed. He just warns that it is essential that revolutionaries prepare for the challenges of governing the post-revolutionary society and wisely, equitably, and peacefully resolving the power struggles that will inevitably arise.
As we've argued repeatedly, democracy is humanity's best (and, perhaps, only effective) defense against tyranny. The fact that the United States is increasingly abandoning long-established democratic norms and institutions in favor of all-out struggles for unrestrained power and authority is extremely alarming. It is hard to see how humanity will be able to escape its ongoing dystopian slide if we can't make democracy work in places like the United States, where conditions are so favorable. We have to quit feeling sorry for ourselves and double down on the hard work of fixing things before the authoritarian grasp grows tighter.
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About the MBI Newsletters
Two or three times a week, Guy and Heidi Burgess, the BI Directors, share some of our thoughts on political hyper-polarization and related topics. We also share essays from our colleagues and other contributors, and every week or so, we devote one newsletter to annotated links to outside readings that we found particularly useful relating to U.S. hyper-polarization, threats to peace (and actual violence) in other countries, and related topics of interest. Each Newsletter is posted on BI, and sent out by email through Substack to subscribers. You can sign up to receive your copy here and find the latest newsletter here or on our BI Newsletter page, which also provides access to all the past newsletters, going back to 2017.
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