Fear that democracy was losing its hold on the citizens
of the great democracies of North America and Western Europe was the focus of a
startling article produced by Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk: The Danger of Deconsolidation: The Democratic Disconnect. The authors
used data from World Values Surveys over the period 1995-2014 to demonstrate
that support for democratic institutions has fallen in the United States and in
Europe. In particular, they find that
those born in the period when democracy was most challenged, before and during
World War II, have the highest respect for democracy, but the subsequent
generations lose enthusiasm for it as they are further removed from this
period. This also means that younger
people view living in a democracy as being less important than do older
people. This change in attitude is
strongest in the United States. A
general discussion of their article is available here.
What is of greatest interest at this point in time is the
conclusion that citizens have grown increasingly willing to accept
non-democratic forms of government such as one led by the military or by a “strong
leader who doesn’t have to bother with parliament and elections.” Consider this conclusion by the authors.
“In the past three decades, the
share of U.S. citizens who think that it would be a ‘good’ or ‘very good’ thing
for the ‘army to rule’—a patently undemocratic stance—has steadily risen. In
1995, just one in sixteen respondents agreed with that position; today, one in
six agree. While those who hold this view remain in the minority, they can no
longer be dismissed as a small fringe, especially since there have been similar
increases in the number of those who favor a ‘strong leader who doesn’t have to
bother with parliament and elections’ and those who want experts rather than
the government to ‘take decisions’ for the country. Nor is the United States
the only country to exhibit this trend. The proportion agreeing that it would
be better to have the army rule has risen in most mature democracies, including
Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.”
The authors focus on army rule as an indicator of
acceptance of nondemocratic governance, but a related question on the surveys
addressed the acceptance of nondemocratic rule by a “strong leader.” The answer to that question is much more
relevant with Donald Trump now installed as president of the United States and
acting like one who would bypass the conventions and institutions of governance
to attain his goals.
The authors plot the percent of US responders to the
surveys who thought it would be a good thing to have a “strong leader who
doesn’t have to bother with parliament and elections.” The samples are divided into the top 30
percent by income and the bottom 70 percent.
The number satisfied with rule by army was stated to be
one in six or about 17 percent. The
number who would be satisfied with rule by a strong leader, one who doesn’t
have to bother with parliament (Congress) or elections, is around 33 percent,
or twice as high. According to these
surveys, roughly one-in three US citizens would be willing to trade our current
representative system of democracy for rule by an autocrat. Combine those people with the voters who will
vote for any Republican candidate, no matter who it might be, and is it any
wonder that Trump performed as well as he did in the recent election?
What is it about the state of our nation that would
provoke a third of its citizens to be willing to trash its constitution and over
two centuries of tradition? The authors
provide simple explanations for why the rich and the non-rich might be so
inclined. The poorer people will be
dissatisfied with their economic status and hope that the strong leader would
provide greater distribution of wealth than has been available by democratic
means. The wealthy have always had a
primal fear that the masses of lower income voters would create legislation
that would “confiscate” more of their wealth than they were willing to part
with. Consequently, they might hope for
a strong leader who would protect their assets.
Interestingly, Trump managed to promise each group what they wanted with
neither noticing the inconsistency.
The authors provide this comment on their chart.
“If we widen the historical
lens, we see that, with the exception of a brief period in the late twentieth
century, democracy has usually been associated with redistributive demands by
the poor and therefore regarded with skepticism by elites. The newfound aversion
to democratic institutions among rich citizens in the West may be no more than
a return to the historical norm.”
The rate of increase in the acceptance of autocratic rule
by the upper-income groups is rather remarkable. It is unlikely that their concern about
having their wealth confiscated by taxation ever really abated; one cannot
return to a norm that was never discarded.
Consequently, it is worth pondering other explanations for why the
acceptance of autocracy has increased within the ranks of the wealthy. For example, have the wealthy progressed over
the last century from being merely an outraged elite to being a powerful
political force whose quest for political domination inevitably leads to
autocracy? Donald Trump would provide an
example of such an elite.
Isaac William Martin provided an interesting book
profiling the activities of the wealthy over the past century as they attempted
to influence governmental actions in such a way as to protect their assets from
democratic plunder: Rich People’s Movements: Grassroots Campaigns to Untax the One Percent. The passage of the sixteenth amendment
allowing the federal government to levy an income tax—and a progressive one at
that—was viewed as a “revolutionary” development that required some sort of
response. Martin tells us that this
“response” has been continually under development over the years, taking
different forms and applying different tactics.
In particular, the emergence of the Tea Party after the 2008 election
can be viewed as another phase in this strategy.
Martin begins with a description of the Tea Party
demonstrations that took place on tax day, April 15, 2010. Hundreds of thousands of people turned out to
issue demands that were designed to assist the wealthy in becoming wealthier.
“….they united in expressing
hostility toward the taxation of income and wealth. Spokespeople for the demonstrators demanded,
among many other things, an end to progressive income tax rates, a permanent
repeal of the estate tax, an extension of temporary income tax cuts for the
richest Americans, and a constitutional amendment that would require a
supermajority vote in Congress to increase any tax on anyone, for any purpose,
ever. Protesters held up picket signs
denouncing taxes and the redistribution of wealth. Many asserted that the government was
redistributing resources from the rich to the poor, and objected that this was
unfair to the rich.”
Martin informs us that earlier there was something called
the “T Party.”
“In September 4, 1962, hundreds
of conservative activists crowded into the Wilshire Ebell Theater in Los
Angeles for a protest meeting that they called the California T Party. These protestors were unusually well-heeled
and unusually radical. They were there
to support a constitutional amendment that would outlaw all federal taxation of
income and inherited wealth, and would further require the federal government
to sell off virtually all of its assets in order to pay for a massive, one-time
transfer of wealth to the richest Americans.”
This was not just a one-off event. It was hoped to be the kickoff to a powerful
national movement.
“There were two more California
T Parties that week, followed by a national gathering in Chicago two weeks
later, at which activists from around the country met, sang protest songs, and
attended workshops on grass roots organizing for income tax repeal.”
Wealthy people gathering to sing protest songs is a bit
difficult to imagine today, but Martin indicates that this was not too
surprising in the 1960s. The wealthy
quickly learned that they could not get their way just by demanding what they
wanted. Looking around for a better
strategy would likely lead them to consider the success of the civil rights
movement and the techniques applied there.
The movements of the wealthy had to take on the tone of ones that would
be of benefit to all of society rather than just to themselves.
Over time they would become more sophisticated and more
politically astute in campaigning for their objectives. Eliminating the hated estate became a
campaign to avoid the “death tax,” an approach that would find sympathetic
response from all income levels.
Lowering levels of taxation morphed into campaigns for a constitutionally
imposed balanced budget amendment.
Having a balanced budget requirement would seem reasonable to a large
number of people with varied economic backgrounds. Nevertheless, the government budget would
have to be cut when hard times hit and tax revenue fell. When better times returned, it would be easy
to argue against increased spending and use any increase in revenue to retire
debt or lower taxes. Who could argue
against that? The net result would be
that government—and its need for tax revenue— would grow progressively smaller.
One might look at these movement goals and think that the
efforts were failures, but the net result was that much of their economic
philosophy has been absorbed as gospel by the current version of the Republican
Party. In fact, Martin claims, the
lesson learned from these campaigns was that the most effective strategy for
them was to take over a political party—which they did.
“Rich people’s movements have
been thoroughly institutionalized and thereby tamed. Many former activists are now well entrenched
in the Republican Party and its allied think tanks, and their tactics are now
correspondingly oriented toward inside lobbying. Some movement goals remain unrealized only
because they are nigh unachievable.”
He then leaves the reader with this warning.
“Rich people’s movements have a
permanent place in the American political bestiary. As long as one of our great political parties
is allied with the radical rich, it is safe to predict that rich people’s
movements will continue to influence public policy in ways that preserve—and
perhaps even increase—the extremes of inequality in America.”
Martin wrote before the arrival of Donald Trump on the
scene. One suspects that he might
recognize that the acceptance by the Republican elite of the autocratic tone of
Trump’s campaign and his first weeks in office was a natural extension of the
Party’s long term political evolution.
Controlling a party is not an assurance of success. Having a “strong leader” willing to destroy
political norms and undermine political institutions in order to get his way
can appear to be much more efficient than the messiness of politics in a
democracy.
The rise in acceptance of autocratic rule by the
wealthy—from this perspective—is driven by the growing disappointment with the
gains obtained from merely having control of one of the political parties in a
democratic form of government. When
Donald Trump came along, there were a lot of people willing to buy what he was
selling.
We are indeed living in interesting times.
The interested reader might also find the following
articles to be informative:
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