How democracies die by Steven Levitsky &
Daniel Ziblatt
We know that extremist demagogues emerge from
time to time in all societies. An essential test for democracies is not whether
such figures emerge but whether political leaders and esp. Political parties
work to prevent them gaining power in the first place. Isolating popular
extremists require political courage. But when fear, opportunism or
miscalculation leads established parties to bring extremists into the
mainstream, democracy is imperiled.
Once a would be authoritarian makes to power,
democracies face a second test. Without robust norms, constitutional checks and
balance do not serve as the bulwarks of democracy we imagine them to be.
Institutions become political weapons, wielded forcefully y those who control
them against those who don’t. This is how elected autocrat subvert democracy -
packing and ‘weaponizing’ the courts and other neutral agencies, buying off the
media and the private sector for bullying them into silence. The tragic paradox
of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy’s assassins use
the very institutions of democracy - gradually subtly and even legally - to
kill it.
Two basic norms have preserved America's
checks & balance in ways we have come to take for granted; mutual
toleration or the understanding that competing parties accept one another as
legitimate rivals; and forbearance or the idea that politicians should exercise
restraint in deploying their institutional prerogatives.
The
Horse and The Stag story:
A story to explain how an authoritarian use democracy to control democracy.
A quarrel had arisen between the Horse and the Stag, so the
Horse came to a Hunter to ask his help to take revenge on the Stag. The Hunter
agreed, but said: “If you desire to conquer the Stag, you must permit me to
place this piece of iron between your jaws, so that I may guide you with these
reins, and allow this saddle to be placed upon your back so that I may keep
steady upon you as we follow after the enemy.”
The Horse agreed to the conditions, and the Hunter soon saddled
and bridled him. Then with the aid of the Hunter the Horse soon overcame the
Stag, and said to the Hunter: “Now, get off, and remove those things from my
mouth and back.”
“Not so fast, friend,” said the Hunter. “I have now got you
under bit and spur, and prefer to keep you as you are at present.”
“If you allow men to use you for your own purposes, they will
use you for theirs. A horse lets a rider mount to chase a stag. The rider keeps
the horse.”
In “The breakdown of
democratic regimes by Juan Linz, the book highlights the role of politicians,
showing how their behavior can either reinforce democracy or put it at risk.
Building on this book, we have developed a set of four behavioral warning signs
that can help us know an authoritarian when we see one.
We should worry when a
politician:
- Rejects in words or action, the democratic rules of the
game
- Denies the legitimacy of opponents
- Tolerates or encourages violence or
- Indicates a willingness to curtail the civil liberties
of opponents, including the media.
Collective abduction - the
transfer of authority to a leader who threatens democracy - usually flows from
one of two sources:
- Misguided belief that an authoritarian can be controlled
or tamed
- The authoritarian agenda overlaps sufficiently with that of mainstream politicians that abdication is desirable or at least preferable to the alternatives.
One of the great ironies of
how democracies dies is that the very defense of democracy is often used as a
pretext for its subversion. Would be autocrats often use economic crises,
natural disasters and esp. Security threats - wars, armed insurgency or
terrorist attacks - to justify anti-democratic measures.
As per the article II of the
American constitution, which lays out the formal powers of the presidency, does
not clearly define its limits. As Arthur M Schlesinger quoting it as ‘imperial
presidency.
The recent survey points to
the rise of dangerous phenomenon in American politics: intense partisan
animosity. The roots of this phenomenon lie in the long-term partisan
realignment that began to take form in the 1960s.
Republican politicians from
Newt Gingrich to Donald Trump learned that in a polarized society, treating
rivals as enemies can be useful - ad that pursuit of politics as warfare can be
appealing to those who fear they have too much to lose.
Democracy’s fate during the
reminder of Trump’s presidency will depend on several factors:
- Behavior of Republican leaders. Democratic institutions
depend crucially on the willingness of governing parties to defend them -
even against their leaders.
- Containment. Republicans who adopt passive loyalist
strategy may back the president on many issues, but draw a line at
behavior they consider dangerous.
- Congressional leaders could seek the president’s removal.
Trump’s rise may itself pose
a challenge to global democracy. Between the fall of Berlin Wall and the Obama
presidency, US Governments maintained a broadly pro-democractic foreign policy.
There were numerous exceptions: wherever America's strategic interest were at
the stake, as in China, Russia, and the Middle East, democracy disappeared from
the agenda. But in much of Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, US
governments used diplomatic pressure, economic assistance, and other foreign
policy tools to oppose authoritarianism and press for democratization during
the post-cold war era. But existing and potential autocracies are likely
to be emboldened with Trump in the White House. So even if the idea of a global
democratic recession was largely a myth before 2016, the Trump presidency could
make it a reality.
Even if Democrats were to
succeed in weakening or removing Trump via hardball tactics, their victory will
be Pyrrhic. If the President were impeached without a strong bipartisan
consensus, the effect could be to reinforce and perhaps the dynamics of partisan
antipathy and norm erosion that helped bring Trump to power to being with. As
much as a third of the country would likely view Trump’s impeachment as the
machinations of a vast left-wing conspiracy - maybe even as a coup.
We should learn from our own
history. Anti-Trump forces should build a broad pro democratic coalition.
However, the fundamental problem facing American democracy remains partisan
division - one fueled not just by policy difference, but by deeper sources of
resentment, including racial and religious differences. America’s great
polarization preceded the Trump presidency and it is very likely to endure
beyond it.
Reducing polarization
requires that the Republican party be reformed., if not re-founded outright.
First up all, GOP must rebuild its own establishment. This means the
leaders should control the four key areas:
- Finance
- Grassroots organization
- Messaging and
- Candidate selection.
The Republican party has been
the main driver of the chasm between the parties. Since 2008, the GOP has at
times, behaved like an anti-system party in its obstructionism, partisan
hostility and extremism policy positions. Over the last quarter century, the
party’s leadership structure has been eviscerated - first by the rise of
well-funded outside groups (such as Americans for tax freedom, Americans for
prosperity and many others) whose fundraising prowess allowed them to more or
less dictate the policy agenda of many GOP elected officials, but also by the
mounting influence of Fox News and other right-wing media.
Republicans must marginalize extremist
elements: they must build a more diverse electoral constituency, such that the
party no longer depends on heavily on the shrinking white Christian base; and
they must find ways to win elections without appealing to white nationalism or
what Republican Arizona senator Jeff Flake calls the “sugar high of populism,
nativism and demagoguery”.
Although Democratic party has
not been the principles driver of America’s deepening polarization, it could
nevertheless play a role in reducing it. Democrats needs to win back their
elusive blue-collar voters who abandoned them in the Rust Belt, Appalachia and
elsewhere. Democrats needed to back away from their embrace of immigration and
so-called identity politics - a vaguely defined term that often encompasses the
promotion of ethnic, diversity and more recently, anti-police-violence
initiatives, such as Black Lives Matter. Democrats must reduce the
influence of ethnic minorities to win back the white working class.
As per Danielle Allen, “the
simple fact of the matter is that the world has never built a multiethnic
democracy in which no particular ethnic group is in the majority and where
political equality, social equality and economies that empower all have been
achieved”. This is America’s great challenge.
What is democracy?
“Surely the Board knows what
democracy is. It is the line that forms on the right. It is the don’t in don’t
shove. It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly
trickles; it is the dent in the high hat. Democracy is the recurrent suspicion
that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. It is
the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the
libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is a letter to the
editor. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea
which hasn’t been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad.
It’s the mustard on the hot dog and the cream in the rationed coffee. Democracy
is a request from a War Board, in the middle of a morning in the middle of a
war, wanting to know what democracy is.”
—E. B. White
Today the above vision by
White is under attack. To save our democracy, Americans need to restore basic
norms that once protected it. But we must do more than that. We must extend
those norms through the whole of a diverse society. We must make them truly
inclusive. Now those norms must be made to work in an age of racial equality
and unprecedented ethnic diversity. Few societies in history have managed to be
both multiracial and genuinely democratic. That is our challenge. It is also
our opportunity. If we meet it, America will truly be exceptional.
Books referred in this book
The breakdown of democratic
regimes by Juan Linz
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