Building & Sustaining Robust Liberal Democracies

1. Building & Sustaining Robust Liberal Democracies Mr. Daniel Lazar

2. Brainstorm: List the essential componentsofhealthy, functioning liberal democracies

3. Essential Components of Liberal Democracies • Free and fair elections • Competitive political parties • Tem limits • Healthy civil society • Majorityrule, minorityrights • Ruleoflaw • Checks andbalances • Transparency • Corruptioncontrol • Private propertyprotection • Free speech, press, assembly, travel, worship Rank orderthesefrommostto least essential

4. This originally appeared in the July 3, 1943 issue of The New Yorker. • We received a letter from the Writers’ War Board the other day asking for a statement on “The Meaning of Democracy.” It presumably is our duty to comply with such a request, and it is certainly our pleasure. • Surely the Board knows what democracy is. It is the line that forms on the right. It is the don’t in don’t shove. It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; it is the dent in the high hat. Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is a letter to the editor. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea which hasn’t been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad. It’s the mustard on the hot dog and the cream in the rationed coffee. Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of a morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is. • —E. B. White

5. Liberal vs. Illiberal Democraies • Illiberal democracy - a governing system WITH elections but WITHOUT civil liberties, civil society, transparency, etc. • Term coined by Zakaria in 1997 • Aka: partial democracy, low intensity democracy, ersatz democracy, procedural democracy, managed democracy, et al.  • Some debate as to whether the term muddies the waters. Illiberal democracies are not democracies.

6. Other Non-Democratic Regime Types • Theocracy: rule by religious leader(s) • Monarchy: ruledby one sovereign or one sovereign family • Oligarchy: rule by the few • Plutocracy: a form of oligarchy defined by society ruled or controlled by the small minority of the wealthiest citizens • Totalitarianism: regime completely represses human rights and liberties • All totalitarian systems are authoritarian; most authoritarian systems are not totalitarian • Authoritarian and democratic tendencies are present in virtually all nations to varying degrees, and the degree changes over time

7. The Ebband Flow of Democracy The Flow: ThreeWaves The Ebb: ThreeChallenges Assertive despotic regimes such as Russia, China repress internally and expand globally. Their audacity is encouraged by fading power, influence, and self-confidence of long-established democracies. Smaller, regional powers moving away from democracy (Venezuela, Turkey, Poland, Hungary, Philippines…) Weakening commitment to democratic and liberal values in Western societies, especially among youth. • 1828-1922: USA, France, Britain, Canada, Australia, Italy and Argentina... • Jackson to Mussolini • 29 democracies by 1919 • Post-WWII: 1962 = 36 democracies. • Post-1974: Portugal, East Asia (Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan), Latin American, Eastern Europe post-1989 →Arab Spring: The turning point on which history failed to turn. AdaptedfromHarvard‘s Samuel Huntington‘sThe Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (1991)

8. Daniel Ziblatt is Eaton Professor of Government at Harvard. Specializes in the study of Europe and the history of democracy. • Steven Levitskyis Professor of Government at Harvard. His research interests include political parties, authoritarianism and democratization, and weak and informal institutions, with a focus on Latin America. 

9. Perils of Elections • Since the end of the Cold War, most democratic breakdowns have been caused not by military coups, but by elected governments: • Georgia, Hungary, Nicaragua, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Russia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela • Hitler, Mussolini, and Chávez followed similar routes to power: • Populist demogogueswith a flair for capturing public attention • establishment politicians overlooked warning signs and empowered them • Democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box.

10. Finer Lines of the Law • Many government efforts to subvert democracy are "legal" in the sense that they are approved by legislatures or accepted by courts. • Sometimes portrayed as efforts to improve democracy: making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process. • One of the great ironies of how democracies die is that the very defense of democracy is often used as a pretext for its subversion. Would-be autocrats often use economic anxieties, natural disaster, and security threats to justify anti-democratic measures.

11. No Single Moment • Because there is no single moment--no coup, declaration of martial law, or suspension of the constitution--in which the regime obviously “crosses the line” into dictatorship, nothing may set off society’s alarm bells.

12. Democratic Norms: Unwritten Rules • Democracies have written rules (constitutions) and referees (courts). But these work best, and survive longest, in countries where written constitutions are reinforced by unwritten rules of the game. • These rules or norms serve as the soft guardrails of democracy, preventing day-to-day political competition from devolving into a no-holds-barred conflict. • Norms do not simply rely on political leaders' good character, but rather are shared codes of conduct.

13. Democratic Norms: Mutual Toleration & Forbearance • Two basic norms have preserved America’s democracy in ways we have come to take for granted: • mutual toleration - the understanding that competing parties accept one another as legitimate rivals. Recognizing that our political rivals are decent, patriotic, law-abiding citizens. Politicians' collective willingness to agree to disagree. • forbearance – politicians should exercise "patient self-control; restraint and tolerance" and restrain from exercising a legal right.

14. Democratic Norms • Think of democracy as a pickup basketball game that we want to keep a playing indefinitely… • To ensure future games, players must refrain from incapacitating the other team or antagonizing them to such a degree that they refuse to play again tomorrow. • So although individuals play to win, they must do so with a degree of restraint.

15. Cultural & Ideological Schisms • 1960 political scientists ask Americans how they would feel if their child married someone who identified with another political party. • 4% of Democrats and 5% of Republicans reported they would be "displeased”. • In 2010: 33% of Democrats and 49% of Republicans reported feeling "somewhat or very unhappy”, at the prospect of interparty marriage. • 2016 Pew survey fund that 49% of Republicans and 55% of Democrats say the other party makes them feel "afraid“.

16. Defining Deviancy Down • Humans have a limited ability to cope with people behaving in ways that depart from shared standards. • Moynihan observed that when unwritten rules are repeatedly violated, societies have a tendency to "define deviancy down"—to shift the standard. What was once seen as abnormal becomes normal. • The Overton Window shifts drastically (the range of ideas tolerated in public discourse)

17. Collective abdication • Collective abdication: transfer of authority to a leader who threatens democracy. Usually flows from one of two sources: • Misguided belief that an authoritarian can be controlled or tamed. • What UW-Madison sociologist Ivan Ermakoff calls "ideological collusion" in which the authoritarian's agenda overlaps sufficiently with that of mainstream politicians that collusion with the authoritarian is preferable to the alternatives.

18. Political Parties as Gatekeepers • An essential test for democracies is not whether authoritarian figures emerge but whether political leaders, and especially political parties, work to prevent them from gaining power in the first place in what Nancy Bermeo at Oxford calls "distancing." Pro-democratic parties may engage in distancing by: • rooting out extremists in the grassroots of their own ranks. • keeping would-be authoritarians off party ballots. • avoiding alliances with antidemocratic parties and candidates.

19. Political Economy “The intensity of partisan animosities in America today reflects the combined effect not only of growing ethnic diversity but also of slowed economic growth, stagnant wages in the bottom half of the income distribution, and rising economic inequality. Today's racially tinged partisan polarization reflects the fact that ethnic diversity surged during a period (1975 to the present) in which economic growth slowed, especially for those at the bottom end of the income distribution. For many Americans, the economic changes of the last few decades have brought decreased job security, longer working hours, fewer prospects for upward mobility, and, consequently, a growth in social resentment. Resentment fuels polarization.”

20. Democracy is Demanding As Harvard political scientist Danielle Allen writes: “The simple fact of the matter is that the world has never built a multiethnic democracy in which no particular ethnic group is in the majority and where political equality, social equality and economies that empower all have been achieved.”

21. Four Key Indicators of Authoritarian Behavior: 1. Rejection of (or weak commitment to) democratic rules of the game * Do they reject the Constitution or express a willingness to violate it? * Do they suggest a need for antidemocratic measures, such as canceling elections, violating or suspending the Constitution, banning certain organizations, or restricting basic civil or political rights? * Do they seek to use (or endorse the use of) extra-constitutional means to change the government, such as military coups, violent insurrections, or mass protests aimed at forcing a change in the government? * Do they attempt to undermine the legitimacy of elections, for example, by refusing to accept credible electoral results?

22. Four Key Indicators of Authoritarian Behavior: 2. Denial of the legitimacy of political opponents * Do they describe their rivals as subversive, or opposed to the existing constitutional order? * Do they claim that their rivals constitute an existential threat, either to national security or to the prevailing way of life? * Do they baselessly describe their partisan rivals as criminals, whose supposed violation of the law (or potential to do so) disqualifies them from full participation in the political arena? * Do they baselessly suggest that their rivals are foreign agents, in that they are secretly working in alliance with (or the employ of) an enemy government?

23. Four Key Indicators of Authoritarian Behavior:3. Toleration or encouragement of violence * Do they have any ties to armed gangs, paramilitary forces, militias, guerrillas, or other organizations that engage in illicit violence? * Have they or their partisan allies sponsored or encouraged mob attacks on opponents? * Have they tacitly endorsed violence by their supporters by refusing to unambiguously condemn it and punish it? * Have they praised (or refused to condemn) other significant acts of political violence, either in the past or elsewhere in the world?

24. Four Key Indicators of Authoritarian Behavior:4. Readiness to curtail civil liberties of opponents, including media * Have they supported laws or policies that restrict civil liberties, such as expanded libel or defamation laws or laws restricting protest, criticism of the government, or certain civic or political organizations? * Have they threatened to take legal or other punitive action against critics in rival parties, civil society, or the media? * Have they praised repressive measures taken by other governments, either in the past or elsewhere in the world?