are rare in American history, although political crises are frequent. A test of a successful constitution is whether it can successfully manage and resolve political crises within its boundaries. Constitutional cycles Balkin argues that America's constitutional system evolves through the interplay between three cycles: the rise and fall of dominant political parties, the waxing and waning of political polarization, and alternating episodes of constitutional rot and constitutional renewal. Balkin explains that America's politics seems especially fraught because America is nearing the end of the Republican Party's long political dominance, is at the height of a long cycle of political polarization, and is suffering from an advanced case of constitutional rot. Balkin argues that America is in a Second Gilded Age, and predicts that it is slowly moving toward a second Progressive Era. Freedom of speech and democratic culture Balkin's work on the First Amendment argues that the purpose of the free speech principle is to promote what he calls a democratic culture. The idea of democratic culture is broader than a concern with democratic deliberation or democratic self-government, and emphasizes individual freedom, cultural participation and mutual influence. A democratic culture is one in which ordinary individuals can participate in the forms of culture that in turn help shape and constitute them as persons. Balkin argues that free speech on the Internet is characterized by two features: "routing around" media gatekeepers, and "glomming on"—non-exclusive appropriation of cultural content that is melded with other sources to create new forms of culture. These distinctive features of Internet speech, he argues, are actually features of speech in general and thus lead to a focus on democratic participation in culture. Balkin argues that protection of freedom of speech in the digital age will increasingly rely less on judge-made doctrines of the First Amendment and more on legislation, administrative regulation, and technological design. He argues that we have moved beyond the traditional dyadic model of free expression in which nation states regulated the speech of their citizens. Instead, digital speech involves a pluralist model. In the pluralist model, territorial governments continue to regulate speech directly. But they also attempt to coerce or co-opt owners of digital infrastructure to regulate the speech of others. This is "new school" speech regulation. Digital infrastructure owners, and especially social media companies, now act as private governors of speech communities, creating and enforcing various rules and norms of the communities they