{"id":11101,"date":"2021-01-27T12:47:33","date_gmt":"2021-01-27T10:47:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/?p=11101"},"modified":"2021-02-15T14:39:30","modified_gmt":"2021-02-15T12:39:30","slug":"this-is-how-democracies-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/2021\/01\/this-is-how-democracies-die\/","title":{"rendered":"This is how democracies die"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Guardian<\/a><\/p>\n

By Steven Levitsky<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Daniel Ziblatt<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Blatant dictatorship \u2013 in the form of fascism, communism, or military rule \u2013 has disappeared across much of the world. Military coups and other violent seizures of power are rare. Most countries hold regular elections. Democracies still die, but by different means.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since the end of the Cold War, most democratic breakdowns have been caused not by generals and soldiers but by elected governments themselves. Like Hugo Ch\u00e1vez in Venezuela, elected leaders have subverted democratic institutions in Georgia, Hungary, Nicaragua, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box. The electoral road to breakdown is dangerously deceptive. With a classic coup d\u2019\u00e9tat, as in Pinochet\u2019s Chile, the death of a democracy is immediate and evident to all. The presidential palace burns. The president is killed, imprisoned or shipped off into exile. The constitution is suspended or scrapped.<\/p>\n

On the electoral road, none of these things happen. There are no tanks in the streets. Constitutions and other nominally democratic institutions remain in place. People still vote. Elected autocrats maintain a veneer of democracy while eviscerating its substance.<\/p>\n

Many government efforts to subvert democracy are \u201clegal\u201d, in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy \u2013 making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption or cleaning up the electoral process.<\/p>\n

Newspapers still publish but are bought off or bullied into self-censorship. Citizens continue to criticize the government but often find themselves facing tax or other legal troubles. This sows public confusion. People do not immediately realize what is happening. Many continue to believe they are living under a democracy.<\/p>\n

Because there is no single moment \u2013 no coup, declaration of martial law, or suspension of the constitution \u2013 in which the regime obviously \u201ccrosses the line\u201d into dictatorship, nothing may set off society\u2019s alarm bells. Those who denounce government abuse may be dismissed as exaggerating or crying wolf. Democracy\u2019s erosion is, for many, almost imperceptible.<\/p>\n

How vulnerable is American democracy to this form of backsliding? The foundations of our democracy are certainly stronger than those in Venezuela, Turkey or Hungary. But are they strong enough?<\/p>\n

Answering such a question requires stepping back from daily headlines and breaking news alerts to widen our view, drawing lessons from the experiences of other democracies around the world and throughout history.<\/p>\n

A comparative approach reveals how elected autocrats in different parts of the world employ remarkably similar strategies to subvert democratic institutions. As these patterns become visible, the steps toward breakdown grow less ambiguous \u2013and easier to combat. Knowing how citizens in other democracies have successfully resisted elected autocrats, or why they tragically failed to do so, is essential to those seeking to defend American democracy today. We know that extremist demagogues emerge from time to time in all societies, even in healthy democracies. The United States has had its share of them, including Henry Ford, Huey Long, Joseph McCarthy and George Wallace.<\/p>\n

An essential test for democracies is not whether such figures emerge but whether political leaders, and especially political parties, work to prevent them from gaining power in the first place \u2013 by keeping them off mainstream party tickets, refusing to endorse or align with them and, when necessary, making common cause with rivals in support of democratic candidates. Isolating popular extremists requires political courage. But when fear, opportunism or miscalculation leads established parties to bring extremists into the mainstream, democracy is imperiled.<\/p>\n