Populist candidates are gaining ever larger shares of the
vote in a number of European countries.
Donald Trump, as a populist candidate, is now the president of the
United States. The hallmark of a populist candidate, once in power, is to weaken the
institutions of government that restrict the actions of the political leader
and protect the rights of minorities.
Trump seems to be moving full speed in that direction. Representative democracy is being weakened
and replaced by a form of slightly-restrained autocracy. Is this a brief aberration to which
democracies will respond and recover their balance, or is it an inevitable
trend that will continue to grow for the foreseeable future?
Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk argue, in their
article The Danger of Deconsolidation: The Democratic Disconnect, that we should not be overconfident and thus
complacent. History has taught us that
change can come very suddenly and we should be constantly vigilant. As an example they provide the experience of
a large German newspaper, Die Welt,
in dealing with East Germany, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) while under
Soviet control. For decades the paper
refused to recognize the integrity of the GDR and referred to it only in
quotes, “GDR,” as a way of noting its illegitimacy. When they finally decided that the GDR was
firmly established and would endure they decided to remove the quotes from GDR
references.
“On 2 August 1989, reporters
were allowed to drop the scare quotes when writing about the GDR for the first
time in the paper’s history. Three months later, the Berlin Wall fell. On 3
October 1990, the GDR ceased to exist.”
“The editors of Die Welt radically misjudged the signs
of the times. At precisely the moment when they should have realized that
support for the communist regime was dwindling, they finally reconciled
themselves to its durability. They were hardly alone. The collective failure of
social scientists, policy makers, and journalists to take seriously the possibility
that the Soviet bloc might collapse should serve as a warning. Even the
best-trained and most methodologically rigorous scholars are liable to assume
that the recent past is a reliable guide to the future, and that extreme events
are not going to happen.”
The authors argue that sufficient warning signs are
already evident to arouse our concern for the safety of our democratic
institutions.
“Three decades ago, most
scholars simply assumed that the Soviet Union would remain stable. This
assumption was suddenly proven false. Today, we have even greater confidence in
the durability of the world’s affluent, consolidated democracies. But do we
have good grounds for our democratic self-confidence? At first sight, there
would seem to be some reason for concern. Over the last three decades, trust in
political institutions such as parliaments or the courts has precipitously
declined across the established democracies of North America and Western
Europe. So has voter turnout. As party identification has weakened and party
membership has declined, citizens have become less willing to stick with
establishment parties. Instead, voters increasingly endorse single-issue
movements, vote for populist candidates, or support ‘antisystem’ parties that
define themselves in opposition to the status quo. Even in some of the richest
and most politically stable regions of the world, it seems as though democracy
is in a state of serious disrepair.”
The authors use data from World Values Surveys over the
period 1995-2014 to demonstrate that support for democratic institutions has
fallen dramatically 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 older people. This change
in attitude is strongest in the United States.
This chart illustrates the generational shift in attitudes.
The next chart presents survey data indicating that
younger voters are becoming increasingly disenchanted with democracy.
A strong democracy requires broad-based participation in
elections and other political activities.
The health of a democracy
depends not only on support for key political values such as civil rights, but
also on the active participation of an informed citizenry….This makes it all
the more troubling that there has been a long-documented withdrawal from formal
democratic participation: Since the 1960s, voter turnout has fallen and
political-party membership has plummeted in virtually all established
democracies.
This chart indicates that interest in democratic
activities has fallen in Europe as the young become less involved. The story is somewhat different in the United
States where political participation has stayed at a more nearly constant level
because older citizens have increased their participation level to partly
counteract the diminished interest of the young.
The diminished demand for strong democratic institutions
has been accompanied by an increase in those who would welcome rule by a “strongman”
or by a military takeover.
“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 define a “consolidated democracy” as one that
is firmly established and has no competing approaches to governance. They fear that the process of deconsolidation
may have begun in the United States.
Publishing their article in July, 2016, they had the United States and
the Trump campaign as evidence in support of that contention.
“In the United States, citizens
have rapidly lost faith in the political system; in early March 2016, for
example, public approval of Congress stood at a mere 13 percent. Wealthy
businessman and television personality Donald Trump, having attracted fervent
and surprisingly broad support by railing against the political system and
promising policies that would openly violate the rights of ethnic and religious
minorities, appears to have won the Republican nomination for the presidency of
the United States. Meanwhile, even mainstream political actors are increasingly
willing to violate the informal rules for the sake of partisan advantage: To
name but one example of the resulting gridlock and constitutional dysfunction,
the U.S. Senate has refused even to consider President Barack Obama’s nominee
for a vacant seat on the Supreme Court.”
As this is being written, Donald Trump has been president
for about two weeks. That has been a
period in which the nation and the world have been shaken by his autocratic
mode of operation. He has issued edict
after edict showing little respect for the press, other branches of government,
or the norms of traditional governance.
He has surrounded himself with a small group of family and advisors who
seem to owe their allegiance to him personally rather than to the nation. Trump’s Republican allies thought they could
ultimately control him and make him agree to their agenda, but they were wrong.
They have been left to cower in the background, rubberstamping just
about anything he is likely to propose.
The authors are correct in warning us that we are in a
dangerous time. Those who do not agree
with Trump and his policies seem to sense this danger and recognize that this
is not a simple case of one party replacing the other in the presidency. They have begun to mobilize as if to counter
an existential threat. Trump is an existential threat, and if he is
going to ignore the norms of political behavior then those who feel they must
not acquiesce to his policies should feel free to also ignore traditional norms
of behavior. Perhaps Trump’s threat to
our democratic institutions is enough to rouse our youth and others whose
disenchantment with the workings of democratic governance has left them disinterested
in political participation. You don’t
appreciate what you have until you see it slipping away.
Those who feel a need to hit the streets and protest
should be encouraged. Flex your
democratic muscles! Don’t ever again be indifferent to political participation.
Do whatever you must to limit Trump’s quest for power.
The interested reader might find the following article
informative:
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