Think about this today. Oh, and READ. THIS. BOOK.
How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (Crown, $26).
I know that I recommend a ton of books. More than any normal person would read, in fact. But let me be clear: This is the most important book in the last decade.
Yeah, yeah. But remember, I’m not being paid to say it.
And frankly, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt are a bit too middle-of-the-road in their politics for my tastes. But they support every claim they make with clear-cut examples from history and current events. And the things they speculate about? Many have happened in the time between when this book went to press and now.
The main claim here is that the United States is not exceptional, and what happens in other democracies can happen here.
It’s not will it happen. There are specific things we can do to prevent the failure of our democracy--including voting, which I sincerely hope you’ve done today. But it can. We have no magic powers or extra-specialness that makes our constitution unassailable while others fail.
And to prove it, Levitsky and Ziblatt have come up with some specifics about the conditions in which democracy fails.
Democracies may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders—presidents or prime ministers who subvert the very process that brought them to power. Some of these leaders dismantle democracy quickly, as Hitler did in the wake of the 1933 Reichstag fire in Germany. More often, though, democracies erode slowly, in barely visible steps.
Let’s start with the reality: Hitler won an election, too. So did Mussolini. And Hugo Chavez, down in Venezuela. Assuming that, because they are elected, our leaders can be trusted with our democracy is a delusion with a very high cost. The reality, they explain, is that most democracies in the post-WWII era have died at the polls.
The people elected leaders who then proceeded to subvert democracy, often under the guise of “improving” it. Some of these subversions include gerrymandering (to ensure single-party rule, or enough of a majority that other changes can be made at will), court-packing, and, in the absence of the ability to do those things, undermining the integrity of the checks and balance system by claiming corruption.
Sound familiar? Sure, it does.
But Levitsky and Ziblatt make clear that it’s not just one party that does this. For example, FDR tried to pack the Supreme Court--and got slapped down, hard. And while President George W. Bush first began the practice of legislating by executive directive, President Barack Obama continued it; its outrageous expansion under the current administration is just one more step along the road.
See, democracy has foes on both sides of the aisle. When “winning” or getting what one party wants becomes more important than democratic norms and constitutional procedures, democracy is in danger. These norms are, according to the authors,
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
erosion of our democratic norms began in the 1980s and 1990s and
accelerated in the 2000s.
They point specifically to the rise of cable news (specifically, FOXNews) and former Rep. Newt Gingrich’s introduction of party discipline and single-mindedness.
They also point out that the period of collegiality that we now remember fondly was the direct result of Northern politicians turning a blind eye to the use of Jim Crow to enforce white supremacy in the South, and that this decorum was bought at the price of terrible harm to Black Americans. President Lyndon Johnson’s support of the Civil Rights Act and Nixon’s “Southern strategy” blew this democratic norm apart--and rightly so--but instead of moving forward, we’ve had win-at-any-cost destruction of all the rest of our democratic norms.
We have entered a very dangerous place for democracy: “extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.”
The most dangerous place is when a
politician 1) rejects, in words or action, the democratic rules of the game, 2)
denies the legitimacy of opponents, 3) tolerates or encourages violence, and
4) indicates a willingness to curtail the civil liberties of opponents, including
The only solution, they argue, are politicians in all parties who are willing to stand up and make common cause against anti-democratic behavior, and they offer plenty of examples from our own history as well as that of other democracies--and former democracies.
Perhaps most terrifying is their use of Brazil as an example of a stable democracy, given that they went to press before the election of Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency. His rhetoric--and his political goals--are much less in line with democratic norms.
Although it is depressing, this book is recommended so highly because it puts current events in context. There is, however, one bit of context missing: Some of the pressures that the American people are experiencing right now are going to get much, much worse as climate change continues to alter the planet. For example, our current angst about refugees and migrants will only grow as those displaced by the effects of climate change seek safety.
And under those pressures, will we find the character to insist upon democracy and its norms?
All we can do is be informed and take the very first, primal action of democracy: Vote.
