What we don't know about "democratic backsliding" in the US
This will be a simple observation about what political science can and cannot tell you about the precise nature of our bleak situation. And yes, it is bleak, as my mid-week posts have argued. (Additionally, I think I will likely post more frequently for a while.) Of course, in laying the theoretical groundwork, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt got there first with How Democracies Die, but this morning, I have some empirical, political science-y observations about the relationship between their work, politics in the US, and what may happen going forward.
Levitsky & Ziblatt discussed a process called "democratic backsliding," in which a small-d "democratic" country moves towards authoritarianism as a demagogic, authoritarian leader amasses unilateral power with the complicity of a political party engaged in "ideological collusion." That party sees policy benefits to handing unchecked power to the demagog, so they go along with it, and the result is that the country is left with nothing but the ceremonies of democracy, and none of the underlying functions.
And they specifically addressed Trump, in the early days of him coming into power. Yet, their clearest touchstones were figures like Viktor Orban, in Hungary. That distinction is my observation for today.
The political tradition in Hungary, and the traditions of those countries that most clearly experienced democratic backsliding, have been quite different from the US. Prior to its democratization, Hungary was a Soviet satellite country. Russia itself never fully democratized. It made moves towards democracy when the Soviet Union collapsed, and then Putin erased many of those gains, but the Soviet Union was pretty much a nightmare, and a lot of the countries that were either a part of it, or fell under its direct influence, had problems democratizing.
Hungary made more progress than many, but then backslid. Yet, the basic observation is that Hungary did not have a long tradition of democracy comparable to the United States. None of the countries that experienced the kind of democratic backsliding documented by Levitsky & Ziblatt were really comparable to the US in their traditions of democracy. Canada, Western European democracies... these weren't the places where it happened.
The reason the phrase, "it can't happen here," or... It Can't Happen Here becomes a meaningful construction is that the places it has happened are places that look historically and politically different.
The political tradition of "liberal democracy," in the modern world has its roots in philosophers from across the pond, but it starts here in practice. Classical liberalism in the tradition of John Locke, going up through John Stuart Mill... that starts back East, and moves here. Implementation really does start here. "Democracy" is more weakly defined than you think. Don't be that asshole who says, "well, we're really a republic because a 'democracy' means people vote directly on policy, but a 'republic' means you vote for representatives who vote on policy." No. The term, "democracy," isn't that well-defined. Greek. Demos and -kratia. Rule by the people. It encompasses a republic, etymologically, and among political scientists, the term is either contested way more than that, or ignored entirely. See: Dahl, Robert.
Sidetrack. Never mind.
Anyway. This country has been the source of many good things, and many bad things. On the good side... you know I'm gonna start with jazz, right? I could keep going with the arts, and other cool stuff, but politics-wise, gimme Federalists 10 & 51 and the Bill of Rights over that psychopath, Karl Marx, any day. Yes, Marx was a psychopath. Have you read what he wrote? Seriously. Read that shit.
We have a 250 year tradition of democracy, though. Or at least, a 250 history that, until a few years ago, we could argue constituted movement towards democracy, with expansion of basic rights and the franchise. That's a long history. For democracy. Empires have, historically, lasted longer, but democracy doesn't have that kind of history. Sort of begs the question of its long-term viability for lack of data (right-censoring, in event history terminology), but given the data we have, the country with the longest tradition of democracy? That'd be us. US. U.S.
In Hungary, when it slides back into autocracy, it is a country with little tradition of democracy, where plenty of people still remember the Soviet Union (even if many of you readers don't), and where the institutions and processes of democracy either never or only barely took hold. What is lost?
Here? "Liberal democracy," with that term understood in the tradition of Locke and Mill rather than the modern, American definition of the word, "liberal," is so deeply ingrained in the lived experiences of citizens, and in how many of us think that you have a different situation. Note: I said, "many," not, "all." Why? Authoritarianism cannot rise to power through an electoral process without support from pro-authoritarian voters. Voters who would deny their fellow citizens rights, voters who would deny the very processes of democracy that permit an opposition to exist.
In other words: Trump cultists. Yeah, I said it.
Adorno et al.'s original work in The Authoritarian Personality had flaws, to be sure, but updates in that tradition are as relevant as anything else today. Authoritarianism comes to power through an election because a subset of voters vote for it and the checks-and-balances fail. That would be the "ideological collusion" part of Levitsky & Ziblatt.
But what happens when the failure occurs in a country with a tradition of "liberal democracy" may be very different from what happens in a country without that tradition. Turkey is probably a slightly scarier example than Hungary, in that sense, because of the westernization imposed by Ataturk, whatever else can be said of him (which... is a lot, and a whole other can 'o worms).
So what happens here? Trump may win in November. We need to keep saying this. Under an accurate vote count, the odds would favor Biden, and let's remember that the polls favor Biden, so if you're looking for evidence of fraud, it would be a result different from the polls! That'd be a Trump victory. Nevertheless, he could win a legitimate vote count. What happens, though, if the increasingly likely scenario happens? Trump loses, and just refuses to step down? Either he challenges the result in the courts, and the Supreme Court keeps him in office, or state legislatures nullify their own votes, or something like that?
Will US citizens react as passively as Hungarian citizens have reacted to Orban's consolidation of power?
We would see mass protests. To use one of those stock phrases that Trump repeats like a machine that can't pass the Turing test: "the likes of which you've never seen."
Peaceful protests fall under the category of "civil disobedience." The question would be the extent of "civility." Uncivil disobedience is something to which I would ascribe a nonzero probability. Why? Long history of liberal democracy, in contrast with Hungary.
What happens when an autocrat blatantly, shamelessly steals an election, in front of everyone's face, in a country with a 2.5 century history of liberal democracy? I'm not actually certain that Hungary, or even Turkey really can give us guidance.
How pissed would/will you be? If you are reading this, I'm just going to assume you aren't some QAnon-spouting Trump cultist who wears a MAGA hat, but no mask based on whatever lunatic conspiracy theory is floating around Fox News today.
(Reading that, keep in mind that I hate the Democrats.)
But anyway, how pissed would/will you be? In Russia,* they basically know that Putin is dictator for life. They're never getting rid of him, nobody else has a chance, challenge him too forcefully and you run the risk of dying, and because of that, even the people who really hate that cartoonishly evil, psychopathic comic book villain (read: Trump's god) aren't going to take to the streets to protest all that much. Here? We kind of aren't used to the idea that a president is an all-powerful dictator for life who can't be removed from office. So if he steals an election, blatantly, right in front of everyone's eyes, the reaction will be different.
It could be violent.
In 2016, before election day, my worry on The Unmutual Political Blog was that Trump's refusal to concede a loss would result in his brownshirts taking to the streets and spreading violence. Now, he's President. Republicans have some crazy talking points about Hillary Clinton, but Hillary Clinton conceded in 2016. This is a point of fact that Republicans can't seem to remember. Or, they just want to lie about it.
She conceded because she lost, but the only reason it might matter if a non-incumbent loser doesn't concede is if that refusal incites violence, which wouldn't have happened anyway from Clinton's supporters. She wasn't the one stoking her supporters to violence.
Similarly, if Biden doesn't concede a loss, that wouldn't really matter. A Trump victory means he stays in office, and Biden is just a whiner, whining on the sidelines. If a sitting president refuses to concede, and refuses to transfer power, that matters. That's the end of democracy.
And if Americans don't accept that, there are two pathways. Civil disobedience, and uncivil disobedience. We saw peaceful protests begin immediately after Trump won. They fizzled, but there have been assorted protests for specific causes throughout Trump's term.
What happens when the cause is democracy itself?
This isn't Hungary. There are way too many people here with a deep attachment to "liberal democracy." Mostly, they'll be voting for Biden, because Trump stands in opposition to democracy itself. But those people exist.
That does not mean that Trump will step down, nor that Republicans will push him to the sidelines.
It means this whole thing can get very, very ugly, even aside from the intrinsic ugliness of the death of democracy.
This is beyond bad.
*In Mother Russia, blog reads you! Someone's old enough to get that. And that means you remember the Soviet Union. And in Hungary, they remember Soviet control. And that's kind of my point. That, and the joy of stupid, obscure references.
Levitsky & Ziblatt discussed a process called "democratic backsliding," in which a small-d "democratic" country moves towards authoritarianism as a demagogic, authoritarian leader amasses unilateral power with the complicity of a political party engaged in "ideological collusion." That party sees policy benefits to handing unchecked power to the demagog, so they go along with it, and the result is that the country is left with nothing but the ceremonies of democracy, and none of the underlying functions.
And they specifically addressed Trump, in the early days of him coming into power. Yet, their clearest touchstones were figures like Viktor Orban, in Hungary. That distinction is my observation for today.
The political tradition in Hungary, and the traditions of those countries that most clearly experienced democratic backsliding, have been quite different from the US. Prior to its democratization, Hungary was a Soviet satellite country. Russia itself never fully democratized. It made moves towards democracy when the Soviet Union collapsed, and then Putin erased many of those gains, but the Soviet Union was pretty much a nightmare, and a lot of the countries that were either a part of it, or fell under its direct influence, had problems democratizing.
Hungary made more progress than many, but then backslid. Yet, the basic observation is that Hungary did not have a long tradition of democracy comparable to the United States. None of the countries that experienced the kind of democratic backsliding documented by Levitsky & Ziblatt were really comparable to the US in their traditions of democracy. Canada, Western European democracies... these weren't the places where it happened.
The reason the phrase, "it can't happen here," or... It Can't Happen Here becomes a meaningful construction is that the places it has happened are places that look historically and politically different.
The political tradition of "liberal democracy," in the modern world has its roots in philosophers from across the pond, but it starts here in practice. Classical liberalism in the tradition of John Locke, going up through John Stuart Mill... that starts back East, and moves here. Implementation really does start here. "Democracy" is more weakly defined than you think. Don't be that asshole who says, "well, we're really a republic because a 'democracy' means people vote directly on policy, but a 'republic' means you vote for representatives who vote on policy." No. The term, "democracy," isn't that well-defined. Greek. Demos and -kratia. Rule by the people. It encompasses a republic, etymologically, and among political scientists, the term is either contested way more than that, or ignored entirely. See: Dahl, Robert.
Sidetrack. Never mind.
Anyway. This country has been the source of many good things, and many bad things. On the good side... you know I'm gonna start with jazz, right? I could keep going with the arts, and other cool stuff, but politics-wise, gimme Federalists 10 & 51 and the Bill of Rights over that psychopath, Karl Marx, any day. Yes, Marx was a psychopath. Have you read what he wrote? Seriously. Read that shit.
We have a 250 year tradition of democracy, though. Or at least, a 250 history that, until a few years ago, we could argue constituted movement towards democracy, with expansion of basic rights and the franchise. That's a long history. For democracy. Empires have, historically, lasted longer, but democracy doesn't have that kind of history. Sort of begs the question of its long-term viability for lack of data (right-censoring, in event history terminology), but given the data we have, the country with the longest tradition of democracy? That'd be us. US. U.S.
In Hungary, when it slides back into autocracy, it is a country with little tradition of democracy, where plenty of people still remember the Soviet Union (even if many of you readers don't), and where the institutions and processes of democracy either never or only barely took hold. What is lost?
Here? "Liberal democracy," with that term understood in the tradition of Locke and Mill rather than the modern, American definition of the word, "liberal," is so deeply ingrained in the lived experiences of citizens, and in how many of us think that you have a different situation. Note: I said, "many," not, "all." Why? Authoritarianism cannot rise to power through an electoral process without support from pro-authoritarian voters. Voters who would deny their fellow citizens rights, voters who would deny the very processes of democracy that permit an opposition to exist.
In other words: Trump cultists. Yeah, I said it.
Adorno et al.'s original work in The Authoritarian Personality had flaws, to be sure, but updates in that tradition are as relevant as anything else today. Authoritarianism comes to power through an election because a subset of voters vote for it and the checks-and-balances fail. That would be the "ideological collusion" part of Levitsky & Ziblatt.
But what happens when the failure occurs in a country with a tradition of "liberal democracy" may be very different from what happens in a country without that tradition. Turkey is probably a slightly scarier example than Hungary, in that sense, because of the westernization imposed by Ataturk, whatever else can be said of him (which... is a lot, and a whole other can 'o worms).
So what happens here? Trump may win in November. We need to keep saying this. Under an accurate vote count, the odds would favor Biden, and let's remember that the polls favor Biden, so if you're looking for evidence of fraud, it would be a result different from the polls! That'd be a Trump victory. Nevertheless, he could win a legitimate vote count. What happens, though, if the increasingly likely scenario happens? Trump loses, and just refuses to step down? Either he challenges the result in the courts, and the Supreme Court keeps him in office, or state legislatures nullify their own votes, or something like that?
Will US citizens react as passively as Hungarian citizens have reacted to Orban's consolidation of power?
We would see mass protests. To use one of those stock phrases that Trump repeats like a machine that can't pass the Turing test: "the likes of which you've never seen."
Peaceful protests fall under the category of "civil disobedience." The question would be the extent of "civility." Uncivil disobedience is something to which I would ascribe a nonzero probability. Why? Long history of liberal democracy, in contrast with Hungary.
What happens when an autocrat blatantly, shamelessly steals an election, in front of everyone's face, in a country with a 2.5 century history of liberal democracy? I'm not actually certain that Hungary, or even Turkey really can give us guidance.
How pissed would/will you be? If you are reading this, I'm just going to assume you aren't some QAnon-spouting Trump cultist who wears a MAGA hat, but no mask based on whatever lunatic conspiracy theory is floating around Fox News today.
(Reading that, keep in mind that I hate the Democrats.)
But anyway, how pissed would/will you be? In Russia,* they basically know that Putin is dictator for life. They're never getting rid of him, nobody else has a chance, challenge him too forcefully and you run the risk of dying, and because of that, even the people who really hate that cartoonishly evil, psychopathic comic book villain (read: Trump's god) aren't going to take to the streets to protest all that much. Here? We kind of aren't used to the idea that a president is an all-powerful dictator for life who can't be removed from office. So if he steals an election, blatantly, right in front of everyone's eyes, the reaction will be different.
It could be violent.
In 2016, before election day, my worry on The Unmutual Political Blog was that Trump's refusal to concede a loss would result in his brownshirts taking to the streets and spreading violence. Now, he's President. Republicans have some crazy talking points about Hillary Clinton, but Hillary Clinton conceded in 2016. This is a point of fact that Republicans can't seem to remember. Or, they just want to lie about it.
She conceded because she lost, but the only reason it might matter if a non-incumbent loser doesn't concede is if that refusal incites violence, which wouldn't have happened anyway from Clinton's supporters. She wasn't the one stoking her supporters to violence.
Similarly, if Biden doesn't concede a loss, that wouldn't really matter. A Trump victory means he stays in office, and Biden is just a whiner, whining on the sidelines. If a sitting president refuses to concede, and refuses to transfer power, that matters. That's the end of democracy.
And if Americans don't accept that, there are two pathways. Civil disobedience, and uncivil disobedience. We saw peaceful protests begin immediately after Trump won. They fizzled, but there have been assorted protests for specific causes throughout Trump's term.
What happens when the cause is democracy itself?
This isn't Hungary. There are way too many people here with a deep attachment to "liberal democracy." Mostly, they'll be voting for Biden, because Trump stands in opposition to democracy itself. But those people exist.
That does not mean that Trump will step down, nor that Republicans will push him to the sidelines.
It means this whole thing can get very, very ugly, even aside from the intrinsic ugliness of the death of democracy.
This is beyond bad.
*In Mother Russia, blog reads you! Someone's old enough to get that. And that means you remember the Soviet Union. And in Hungary, they remember Soviet control. And that's kind of my point. That, and the joy of stupid, obscure references.
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