Recently there was an interesting interview by WHYY’s FreshAir’s Dave Davies with the Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt about their new book “How Democracies Die.” I’m adding it to the collection because they echo my own memories and thoughts and these guys are scholars who can explain themselves with a degree of evidence and authority I couldn’t dream of. I’m just a witness, that’s why I’m sharing.
This is important for fully appreciating the situation we are in. Following the FreshAir quotes, I add some highlights to a Guardian article by these authors and also two reviews of their book.
Will Democracy Survive President Trump? Two New Books Aren’t So Sure By Jennifer Szalai
Rights aren’t given, they are taken and currently the oligarchs with an incredibly loud and smooth PR machine are taking as many rights as they can grasp. Democracy use it or lose it.
'How Democracies Die' Authors Say Trump Is A Symptom Of 'Deeper Problems’
January 22, 2018 | Dave Davies interviews Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
https://www.npr.org/2018/01/22/579670528/how-democracies-die-authors-say-trump-is-a-symptom-of-deeper-problems
Davies… If watching President Trump and listening to American political discourse these days makes you feel something's gone wrong, our guests today will tell you it's not your imagination. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent years studying what makes democracies healthy and what leads to their collapse. And they see signs that American democracy is in trouble.
In a new book, they argue that Trump has shown authoritarian tendencies and that many players in American politics are discarding long-held norms that have kept our political rivalries in balance and prevented the kind of bitter conflict that can lead to a repressive state. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt are both professors of government at Harvard University. Levitsky's research focuses on Latin America and the developing world. Ziblatt studies Europe from the 19th century to the present. Their new book is called "How Democracies Die.” …
In a new book, they argue that Trump has shown authoritarian tendencies and that many players in American politics are discarding long-held norms that have kept our political rivalries in balance and prevented the kind of bitter conflict that can lead to a repressive state. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt are both professors of government at Harvard University. Levitsky's research focuses on Latin America and the developing world. Ziblatt studies Europe from the 19th century to the present. Their new book is called "How Democracies Die.” …
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… the primary way in which democracies have died since the end of the Cold War, over the last 30 years or so, is at the hands of elected leaders, at the hands of governments that were often freely or close to freely elected, who then use democratic institutions to weaken or destroy democracy. …
… LEVISKY: The rules themselves, particularly in a very simple, short Constitution like that of the United States, can never get a - can never fully guide behavior. And so our behavior needs to be guided by informal rules, by norms.
And we focus on two of them in particular - what we call mutual toleration, which is really, really fundamental in any democracy, which is simply that among the major parties, there's an acceptance that their rivals are legitimate, that we may disagree with the other side. We may really dislike the other side.
But at the end of the day, we recognize publicly - and we tell this to our followers - that the other side is equally patriotic, and that it can govern legitimately. That's one.
The other one is what we call forbearance, which is restraint in the exercise of power. And that's a little bit counterintuitive. We don't usually think about forbearance in politics, but it's absolutely central. Think about what the president can do under the Constitution. …
… important to democratic life of mutual toleration and forbearance …
Davies… You know, you write that the erosion of these norms of democracy, these unwritten rules, which provide - the guardrails of democracy, in a way, that kind of protects us and keeps us on track - that they began to erode well before Donald Trump became president or was a candidate. When did it start?
LEVISKY: It's difficult to find a precise date. But we look at the 1990s and, particularly, the rise of the Gingrich Republicans. Newt Gingrich really advocated and taught his fellow Republicans how to use language that begins to sort of call into question mutual toleration, using language like betrayal and sick and pathetic and antifamily and anti-American to describe their rivals.
And Gingrich also introduced an era or helped introduce - it was not just Newt Gingrich - an era of unprecedented, at least during that period in the century, hardball politics. …
ZIBLATT: Yeah, so there's two real things that Donald - President Trump has done that make us worry. One is his politicization of the rule of law or of law enforcement intelligence. …
A second worrying thing is - that you just described as well is his continued effort to delegitimize media and the election process. …
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This is how democracies die
Defending our constitution requires more than outrage
by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
“… Since the end of the Cold War, most democratic breakdowns have been caused not by generals and soldiers but by elected governments themselves. Like Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, elected leaders have subverted democratic institutions in Georgia, Hungary, Nicaragua, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Ukraine.
Democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box. The electoral road to breakdown is dangerously deceptive. With a classic coup d’état, as in Pinochet’s Chile, the death of a democracy is immediate and evident to all. The presidential palace burns. The president is killed, imprisoned or shipped off into exile. The constitution is suspended or scrapped. …”
“When fear or miscalculation leads established parties to bring extremists into the mainstream, democracy is imperiled.”
“We know that extremist demagogues emerge from time to time in all societies, even in healthy democracies. The United States has had its share of them, including Henry Ford, Huey Long, Joseph McCarthy and George Wallace.
An essential test for democracies is not whether such figures emerge but whether political leaders, and especially political parties, work to prevent them from gaining power in the first place – by keeping them off mainstream party tickets, refusing to endorse or align with them and, when necessary, making common cause with rivals in support of democratic candidates.
Isolating popular extremists requires 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 it to power, democracies face a second critical test: will the autocratic leader subvert democratic institutions or be constrained by them? …”
“Today, however, the guardrails of American democracy are weakening. The erosion of our democratic norms began in the 1980s and 1990s and accelerated in the 2000s. By the time Barack Obama became president, many Republicans in particular questioned the legitimacy of their Democratic rivals and had abandoned forbearance for a strategy of winning by any means necessary.
Trump may have accelerated this process, but he didn’t cause it. The challenges facing American democracy run deeper. The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization – one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” (Here they leave out the religious absolutist component at the root of today’s hostile polarization.)
This is an extract from How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt,
professors of government at Harvard University, published in the UK by Viking and in the US by Crown
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Christian Caryl | January 11, 2018 | Washington Post
In case you haven’t noticed, the much-vaunted democracy of the United States of America is in a strange place right now. Its leader, President Trump, has threatened to jail yet another of his political opponents (this time former Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin) and sue the author of a critical book about his presidency — and that’s just this month. Previously, he publicly impugned the character of federal judges, described the news media as “the enemy of the American People” and demanded an oath of personal loyalty from his FBI director. He lies relentlessly and still hasn’t released his tax returns. …
Today’s parties, Levitsky and Ziblatt write, “represent not just different policy approaches but different communities, cultures, and values.” The problem is amplified by gerrymandering, polarizing cable news and social media, and Americans’ growing tendency to “self-sort” into communities of the like-minded.
So what about our storied institutions? They must be up to the task of containing this new era of partisan rancor. Levitsky and Ziblatt aren’t so sure. Their studies of democratic collapse in other places around the world show that even well-established legislatures, courts and constitutions become vulnerable when leaders — particularly “populist outsiders” — begin to violate accepted norms of political behavior. …
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Will Democracy Survive President Trump? Two New Books Aren’t So Sure
By Jennifer Szalai | January. 10, 2018 | New York Times
Jennifer begins with another book released at the same time, David Frum’s
“Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic.”
“Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic.”
“… Among Frum’s fellow Republicans who read this book, all but the most determined Trump enthusiasts should feel pin pricks of recognition and, depending on how much hypocrisy they can live with, a queasy discomfort. Frum relishes going on the attack, and he castigates members of a Republican establishment who have laid any pretensions to moral rectitude on the altar of a tax cut. …”
Half way through she turns her focus:
“On that last note, Levitsky and Ziblatt might not disagree, though in “How Democracies Die” they are more methodical and less fervid in their assessments. The most withering designation they offer for President Trump is — get ready for it — “serial norm breaker.”
Then again, Levitsky and Ziblatt are political scientists, for whom being a serial norm breaker is serious stuff indeed. Norms are what have sustained American democracy “in ways we have come to take for granted.” They identify two in particular: “mutual toleration,” or the understanding among competing parties and politicians that they are legitimate rivals rather than existential enemies; and “forbearance,” or the understanding among politicians that just because they technically have the power to do something doesn’t mean they ought to use it. The erosion of these two norms can lead to a partisan death spiral. The authors argue that Trump has tried to eviscerate both.
“How Democracies Die” is a lucid and essential guide to what can happen here. Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies have collapsed elsewhere …”
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