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A review by bucketoffish
How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future by Steven Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt
4.0
Before going into this book's arguments, let's clarify some definitions. By democracy the authors refer to not just the act of voting, but to a society where people are free to share viewpoints, co-exist, and potentially transfer power. Under this definition, a society where people can't discuss ideas freely, or one where power is unlikely to shift with public opinion, is not democratic. Similarly, they define authoritarianism not as a measure of government size, power, or policies, but rather by the suppression of opposing opinions and political leadership. I think democracy and authoritarianism are sometimes used slightly differently in the public sphere, so it's worth clarifying.
Anyway, the authors look at some instances in history where democracies have become autocracies, and try to find commonalities. They also apply these findings to recent politics in the United States. An interesting point they made is that a democracy relies on checks and balances, but can only function if those checks are rarely used. That is, different parts of government need to be strong enough to stop other branches from doing whatever they want, but these powers need to be used sparingly, so that government can actually operate. This leads to an interesting situation where the law grants powers which lawmakers have to habitually choose not to use. Thus the entire system relies on social norms and precedence more than the text of the law. I think this is demonstrated well by the fact that several other countries have had constitutions essentially copy-pasted from the United States, but nonetheless quickly became autocracies.
In the authors' opinion, democracies die when politicians start disregarding political norms, treating their opponents as enemies who must be defeated by any legal means. This starts with ignoring etiquette and framing the opposition as not only differing in opinion, but also as wrong, dangerous, corrupt, bigoted, and unfit to rule. This is further followed by using legal but dirty techniques such as obstructionism, gerrymandering, refusal to confirm political appointees, court packing, etc. It usually ends with one branch going so far off norm that they rewrite the rules of the game, making it very difficult for opponents to ever regain power. They go through a brief history of US politics, showing the increase of this behavior over the past few decades, culminating with the Trump presidency.
I think a lot of readers will probably be put off by some of the authors' suggestions, especially where they call for the major US political parties to act more as gatekeepers. It seems they pin part of the problem on the opening of party primaries to direct democracy, thus removing some of the candidate selection process of the elites. They state that since Democrats retained a superdelegate system, they were able to maintain more control over their party than Republicans, who went with a full democratic approach. They seem to pin much of the spiraling populism of the Republican party on this decision. The authors argue that to preserve democracy, political control has to be put back in the hands of elites, and not trusted fully to the people. In fact, they argue that the formation of political parties with elite gatekeepers is the only reason that US democracy has been able to survive for as long as it has.
The idea definitely has some merit in my opinion. After all, there's basically no system outside of politics where people are allowed into positions of leadership without any experience or vetting by people inside the organization. Also, direct political appeal to non-experts leads to a trend of simpler and simpler messaging, with the entire conversation devolving into insults, straw men, and conspiracy theories. But nonetheless, this suggestion is bound to be unpopular.
At this point, I don't really see political discourse in the US getting better anytime soon. The rise of social media has exacerbated the problems of hyper-partisanship, with people getting better and better at twisting or inventing facts to make their opposition look bad. There's also increasing demand for aggressive political leaders who refuse to cooperate with the other party. Democrats are talking about packing the Supreme Court and removing the filibuster if they get into power, and Republicans are floating the idea of straight-up succession. Next few years are gonna be wild, buckle up.
Anyway, the authors look at some instances in history where democracies have become autocracies, and try to find commonalities. They also apply these findings to recent politics in the United States. An interesting point they made is that a democracy relies on checks and balances, but can only function if those checks are rarely used. That is, different parts of government need to be strong enough to stop other branches from doing whatever they want, but these powers need to be used sparingly, so that government can actually operate. This leads to an interesting situation where the law grants powers which lawmakers have to habitually choose not to use. Thus the entire system relies on social norms and precedence more than the text of the law. I think this is demonstrated well by the fact that several other countries have had constitutions essentially copy-pasted from the United States, but nonetheless quickly became autocracies.
In the authors' opinion, democracies die when politicians start disregarding political norms, treating their opponents as enemies who must be defeated by any legal means. This starts with ignoring etiquette and framing the opposition as not only differing in opinion, but also as wrong, dangerous, corrupt, bigoted, and unfit to rule. This is further followed by using legal but dirty techniques such as obstructionism, gerrymandering, refusal to confirm political appointees, court packing, etc. It usually ends with one branch going so far off norm that they rewrite the rules of the game, making it very difficult for opponents to ever regain power. They go through a brief history of US politics, showing the increase of this behavior over the past few decades, culminating with the Trump presidency.
I think a lot of readers will probably be put off by some of the authors' suggestions, especially where they call for the major US political parties to act more as gatekeepers. It seems they pin part of the problem on the opening of party primaries to direct democracy, thus removing some of the candidate selection process of the elites. They state that since Democrats retained a superdelegate system, they were able to maintain more control over their party than Republicans, who went with a full democratic approach. They seem to pin much of the spiraling populism of the Republican party on this decision. The authors argue that to preserve democracy, political control has to be put back in the hands of elites, and not trusted fully to the people. In fact, they argue that the formation of political parties with elite gatekeepers is the only reason that US democracy has been able to survive for as long as it has.
The idea definitely has some merit in my opinion. After all, there's basically no system outside of politics where people are allowed into positions of leadership without any experience or vetting by people inside the organization. Also, direct political appeal to non-experts leads to a trend of simpler and simpler messaging, with the entire conversation devolving into insults, straw men, and conspiracy theories. But nonetheless, this suggestion is bound to be unpopular.
At this point, I don't really see political discourse in the US getting better anytime soon. The rise of social media has exacerbated the problems of hyper-partisanship, with people getting better and better at twisting or inventing facts to make their opposition look bad. There's also increasing demand for aggressive political leaders who refuse to cooperate with the other party. Democrats are talking about packing the Supreme Court and removing the filibuster if they get into power, and Republicans are floating the idea of straight-up succession. Next few years are gonna be wild, buckle up.