The Fears Democracies Hide Inside Their Stories

Political scientists spend a great deal of time studying institutions. Yet institutions alone do not explain why democracies thrive or decline. Stories do.

Every democracy carries a set of stories it tells about itself — about its founding, its enemies, its purpose, and its future. Those stories do more than decorate political life; they organize what a society is willing to remember, what it agrees to forget, and what it will rise to defend. Underneath each of them sits a fear, and the fear is often more durable than the facts.

This essay traces how that fear moves through public memory: how it is inherited, how it is managed by institutions, and how it quietly sets the boundaries of what citizens believe is politically possible.

Originally published on Substack.