Democratic upkeep
Democracies around the world are under strain from disinformation and misinformation, economic inequality, and destabilizing populist parties/politicians. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s yearly survey of the health of democracies worldwide in 2020 found that democracies were, on average, at their lowest point since they began the project in 2006. Severe democratic backsliding has occurred in a number of former democracies including Poland, Hungary, Turkey, India, and Russia.
Democracies, like any form of government, are only as strong as the popular support they can wield. Governments, whether democratic or authoritarian, need legitimacy. Strength and repression, the ability to quell dissent, is the legitimacy of the authoritarian state. The ability to forcibly keep your society from transforming the state proves that the state monopoly on violence can be used to effectively maintain power. Likewise, advice and consent of the body politic is the legitimacy of a democracy. How much of the world’s collective democratic backsliding has to do with an inability to adapt and evolve democracy?
Democracy has never been fully tried. In a full democracy, every member of the demos would be granted full voting rights. Children would enjoy the autonomy of their own ballot. Felons would not lose their right to vote while serving their sentence nor after their time is up. The mentally infirm or less gifted would have their say as well. Non-citizens, immigrants and their children, having been accepted into society by the state, would offer their voice in the form of a democratic vote. Furthermore, access would be universal. Participation in a full democracy would be near 100%, anything less would indicate a failure in the administration of democracy.
It’s my opinion that part of the global crisis for democracy has to do with the anemic belief that democratic progress has advanced as far as necessary. The end of history marked the fall of communism and the rise of universal liberal democracy. Unfortunately it also marked the end of democratic experimentation. The United States, the victor in the Cold War against Soviet communism and oligarchy, exported democratic concepts to the former Soviety member states. In the 2000s, the US took even more dramatic steps by using the full force of military might to smash authoritarianism and bring democracy to the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq. Unfortunately, democracy proved difficult to export and even harder to impose via missile and tank. Many of the most concerning examples of democratic backsliding have occurred in the young democracies of Eastern Europe, while democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq have left those states unstable and in danger of authoritarian takeover once again.
All the while, democracy in America itself has become increasingly under threat. Since 2000, two presidents have been elected against the will of the people. The Senate has been increasingly ruled by the party which received dramatically fewer votes nationwide. The House, through the tactic of redrawing district lines, has become unevenly balanced towards one party. And the Supreme Court has been shaped to reflect a political viewpoint far from the average American voter through partisan trickery and institutional chicanery. Ballot initiatives are passed by direct vote from the people only to be overturned or negated by the politicians elected to represent them. The election of Donald Trump, by a minority of voters over the will of the majority, led to even greater democratic decay. Trump used the office to attack partisan opponents, strong-arming the Justice Department into behaving as his own personal secret police. He denigrated democratic allies in favor of illiberal strong men and authoritarians. He doubted the conclusions of his own intelligence agency, instead differing to Russia’s undemocratic president Vladimir Putin. He preemptively cast doubt on the 2016 election before forgetting his concerns after the results favored him. He preemptively cast doubt on the 2020 election, and when he lost in dramatic fashion, forced his entire party to partake in a farcical attempt to overturn the results based on non-existent fraud. His big election lie will have long lasting consequences. 75% of Republican voters believe that the 2020 election was either stolen or are unsure of its validity. While many rejoice at the return of a committed democrat to office (both small and big D), the outcomes of future elections are already cast in doubt. When one party decides that only their victories in elections are legitimate, a state is on the road to illiberal collapse.
Populists use the language of democracy to diminish democracies' strength. A populist often casts doubt on the legitimacy of elections or democratic systems because they must be controlled by the powerful ‘elite.’ In order to take back the country for the people, for the demos, the populist will have to twist some fingers, break some knuckles and show the ‘elites’ who is really in charge. Of course, in a true democracy, the elites have some level of democratic support already. To the populist, an elite is any politician who doesn’t support their cause. But in a healthy democracy, those politicians have already withstood the selection of the people through elections. The populist claims to represent true democracy while doing everything in their power to degrade actual democratic results.
The power of the populist message is often strongest in democracies that are under strain. A message of bringing the “real people” back to power wouldn’t resonate in a state with strong democratic legitimacy. After all, the people would already feel that power; they would accept the legitimacy of their votes and the results of elections as reflections of the body politic’s political will. Populists take advantage of cleavages in the democratic state: gross economic inequality, the presence of ethnic and cultural minorities, urban and rural divides, religious practices, and educational disparities. Those cleavages, whether real or perceived, can create real or perceived power imbalances which put democracies at the peril of populism.
How then should democracies fight back against populism and other illiberal forms of government? They must continue to fight for a more democratic state. This can include addressing power imbalances in society. If economic inequality allows for greater political power to those with economic power, the system must be stripped of economic electoral incentives, or money needs to be redistributed to create a more level playing field. If ethnic and cultural minorities are the cleavage, those groups must be included into democratic decision making. The constant anti-immigrant drumbeat by right-wing populism would be halted if immigrants and their children were allowed to vote as well. Demonizing a group of people has little value when they are a potential constituency. If urban and rural divides the nation, the rural need more economic support and both groups require greater cultural connection and mixing. Religions need the freedom to practice while the non-religious should not be repressed for their lack of faith or disagreement. Education opportunities should be plentiful and easily available, not only for wealthy or urban citizens, but for immigrants, the poor, and the rural.
A democracy functions because of a country’s diversity, but the starkness of those diversities can lead to the degradation of democracy. Keeping a healthy democracy requires constant maintenance of the society; constant reanalysis of democratic inclusivity. Democracy is a spectrum not a destination. The folly of the 21st century has been to believe that the fights for democracy all took place and were won in the past. Democracy, the most fragile of state systems, deserves effort on the part of states and societies. Otherwise, the democratic experiment may just be an epochal period in human history, not the end of history, just another stop on the road.
