Key Takeaways
- European democracies, especially the Netherlands, have ceded sovereignty to the EU in small, almost invisible steps.
- The American system, with its decentralized power and frequent elections, allows voters to translate revolt into real policy change.
- The contrast between Britain's Brexit experience and Trump's re-election illustrates this fundamental difference.
When I arrived in the Netherlands in 1992, what struck me first wasn't the weather or the language, but the unmistakable prosperity of Dutch society. Coming from a world defined by scarcity, the visible wealth of Western Europe felt like an alternate reality.
If I were to characterize what I saw in the 1990s with one word, it would be trust. Voters trusted their democracies. Elections were meaningful, but not existential. Citizens generally saw their choices reflected in policy, particularly when their party won enough seats to shape the governing agenda.
No one expected total victory; consensus was the essence of politics, a principle so deeply ingrained that many celebrated it as a defining trait of the national character.
The Quiet Erosion of Sovereignty
Over time, however, I noticed subtle shifts. These were not dramatic ruptures of the kind I had known in parts of Africa, where an election could shatter a state overnight. Europe remained peaceful and prosperous. Yet beneath that orderly exterior, developments were unfolding that would eventually redefine the relationship between citizens and the state.
The decisions that mattered most were becoming increasingly detached from the will of the people.
In the Netherlands, the country I had come to see as a sanctuary of institutional sanity, I watched a strange submission unfold. Its entry into the European Union did not come through a single clear democratic decision, but through a steady accumulation of concessions, each small enough to seem harmless on its own, yet together producing a structural change that few ever explicitly agreed to.
Sovereignty was not surrendered in a single moment, but in increments.
- The nation ceded its monetary policy to adopt the euro.
- It opened its borders under the Schengen Agreement.
- It gradually transferred more judicial authority to Brussels.
Power was transferred to a distant, impenetrable bureaucracy, insulated from the public and justified by a cold logic that no ordinary citizen could challenge. Even as a Member of Parliament, it felt as if we were participants in a system whose destination had already been decided for us.
The American Alternative: Loud, Fierce, and Responsive
When I moved to the United States in 2006, I found a political culture that bore no resemblance to what I had known before. The democratic process in America was loud, intensely adversarial, and driven by a fierce clash of opposing interests.
The scale alone was staggering. Elections were not confined to national parliaments but extended into every layer of public life: school boards, district attorneys, judges, governors, state legislators. I quickly realized that politics was a continuous, decentralized force shaping the republic itself—and I rather liked it.
A Tale of Two Revolts: Brexit vs. Trump
The strength of the American model is best understood by looking at two pivotal moments that occurred on opposite sides of the Atlantic in 2016. In that year, Britain held a referendum and America held an election.
- Britain's vote lent the establishment a bureaucratic nightmare to manage.
- America's vote handed the insurgents a presidency to wield—twice!
The British system translated revolt into paperwork; the American system translated revolt into power.
In Britain, the Leave vote was a single referendum that then collided with parliamentary rule, party discipline, and extensive international obligations. Ten years on, as anyone following British politics knows, voters did not get what they had voted for. The borders, the lighter regulation, and the economic growth never arrived; instead, the verdict was managed, renegotiated, and diluted into the same opaque, technocratic system the voters had rejected.
It was, in miniature, the very pattern I had watched unfold in the Netherlands: sovereignty conceded not in one dramatic vote but through a creeping process, largely hidden from the electorate.
In America, that same insurgent energy found expression in a federal republic where recurring elections enable voters to reaffirm—or withdraw—their mandate at regular intervals. By re-electing Trump in 2024, American voters gave permanence to what had once been dismissed as a protest. And this time, the system produced the exact trifecta that eluded Britain: tighter borders, lighter regulation, and renewed growth.
Europe's Closed Doors vs. America's Open Arena
The contrast captures my central point. Britain's revolt was absorbed, while America's was sustained. The republic offers no guarantee that voters will win on the first try, but it firmly ensures their verdict can never be buried or ignored. It keeps power contested, visible, and recoverable until a free people can translate their choice into reality.
That, more than any claim to calm or orderly perfection, is what still distinguishes the 250-year-old American republic from the world's most established democracies.
The men who gathered in Philadelphia possessed a deep, almost scriptural understanding of human nature—recognizing both its capacity for greatness and its inherent fallibility. They understood that a lasting covenant must channel conflict, not outlaw it. It is that pragmatism that keeps the American experiment responsive, turbulent, and remarkably adaptable.
While European systems increasingly manage their politics through closed-door governance, the American system keeps decision-making in the arena of public contestation. Where others demand efficiency and seamless alignment, America accepts friction, fragmentation, and outright contradiction because it knows they are the price of distributed power.
The Price of Openness
This does not mean the American system is without danger. The very openness of the system can be exploited by those who would undermine it. But what makes it vulnerable is also what makes it strong. Its willingness to tolerate deep disagreement is precisely what safeguards its power of renewal.
Indeed, one of the most remarkable features of the American republic is its capacity for self-correction. Over two and a half centuries, it has expanded the franchise, confronted internal injustices, and navigated radical economic transformations, all while preserving the foundations of constitutional rule and popular sovereignty.
To endure for another 250 years, America must ensure that neither the people nor their institutions become trapped by permanent power. Its future will be secured not by preserving every decision, but by preserving the freedom to revisit them.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Founder of the AHA Foundation, and Contributor to the Restoring the West Substack.