The Bush administration is a case study in how a small elite representing minority interests can seize power and then use fear and nationalism in a political mobilisation to achieve authoritarian goals. When he came to power in 2000 Bush had no democratic legitimacy. He had lost the popular vote to Al Gore and had been given the presidency by a questionable Supreme Court decision to stop a vote recount in Florida. For manyconstitutional scholars, the Bush victory amounted to a “constitutional coup, an unlawful accession to power”.

Although Al Gore conceded to Bush to avoid a constitutional crisis, the presidency was tainted by illegitimacy. Given the balance of forces - the Republicans lost control of the Senate in July 2001 - many analysts expected political paralysis, hence a modest presidency in domestic and international policy.

The opposite happened. From the start the Bush White House strove to remove constraints on its sovereign action. In the domestic sphere, rather than governing from the center as expected, it engaged in adversarial politics designed to polarise society, and launched a sustained effort to reduce the rights secured by women and minorities during the 1960s and 1970s. Karl Rove, Bush’s political adviser who has now resigned, invented this strategy to mobilise and unify conservatives, fracture the Democrats and create a permanent Republican majority.