‘It Can Only Decline So Far’

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Volatile Compounds

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Is democracy in America really com= ing apart? Lucan Way on the challenges and sources of resi= liency in the U.S. system.

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Marek Piwnicki

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(Originally published 2022 | 0= 7.01)

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Behind the ongoing investi= gations into former U.S. President Donald Trump’s and others= ’ roles in the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot—and in the attack on Amer= ican democracy it was a part of—there’s a broader context: Acro= ss the United States, Republican-controlled state legislatures have been mo= ving to take pa= rtisan control over local elections, whether by creating local election= boards to inspect voting records or by threatening election officials with= criminal punishment for counting irregular ballots. In 2021 alone, 17 Repu= blican-controlled states passed laws restricting access to voting. For year= s, meanwhile, the Democratic and Republican parties have both been undermining competitive el= ections by drawing outlandishly shaped electoral districts designed sol= ely to give themselves comfortable majorities. At the same time, Democratic= and Republican voters have become more hostile toward one another—even more disincl= ined to live near or interact socially with one another. In recent years, m= easures of the quality of U.S. democracy have plummeted to the extent that = the research institute Freedom House now ranks the United States below Mong= olia. Where is all of this going?

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Lucan Way is a pr= ofessor of political science at the University of Toronto and the author of= three books about authoritarianism. To Way, U.S. democracy isn’t nec= essarily in decline so much as it’s entered an era of ongoing instabi= lity. Republicans’ increasing willingness to abandon democratic rules= —which now includes trying to subvert the outcome of an entire presid= ential election—has been stressing the capacity of the American democ= ratic system. But, Way says, the United States has sources of democratic st= rength that can keep it from falling into the rank of authoritarian democra= cies like Hungary or lower. What’s unclear even to Way, though, is ho= w the U.S. can ultimately bring itself out of this era of instability, give= n how much of it is grounded in existential fears among so many Republican = voters about the country and their place in it.

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Michael Bluhm: Ho= w do you understand the health of American democracy right now?

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Lucan Way: The bi= ggest challenge to it right now comes, in my view, from the fact that one o= f its two major parties has become functionally authoritarian. There are a = number of challenges, certainly, but this is the biggest. It puts the Unite= d States in the category of an unstable democracy. It puts the regime struc= ture of the United States fundamentally in question.

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This is the central node that conn= ects all the other current problems in American democratic life. Twenty yea= rs ago, saying that about the United States of America would have seemed cr= azy—but now, it’s an inescapable reality.

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Bluhm: You’= re saying that the central problem for American democracy today is located = in one of the country’s two political parties—but also that oth= er challenges connect to that central problem.

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There can be a lot of different ch= allenges on people’s minds when they think about American democracy t= hese days: polarization between the parties and their voters, for example; = or elitism in the Democratic Party; or older, structural issues, like the d= isproportionate power the U.S. Senate gives to small states or procedures i= n the Senate that make it tough for a majority to pass laws; or material is= sues, like the influence of donor money or increasing income inequality. =09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09

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Which challenges do you see as bei= ng most important?

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Way: It’s t= rue, there are a lot of these factors, and each partially explains why one = of the two major U.S. parties is willing to do what it’s doing. They = all contribute to a developing fear among Republicans that they won’t= be able to win a presidential election democratically. Now, it’s har= d to talk about this without sounding very partisan in favor of the Democra= ts—but any party that felt it couldn’t win a free and fair elec= tion might have a similar response. It’s not that Republicans are som= ehow as a whole immoral; it’s that they tend now as a whole to feel t= his growing threat to their survival as a party, and that’s part of w= hat’s behind this move into authoritarian territory, as with the resp= onse to the 2020 election.

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That response wasn’t solely = because of Trump. He pushed them over the line, but it fits with a general = crisis the Republican Party is facing. They’ve only won a popular maj= ority in one of the last eight presidential elections. They could respond t= o this by broadening their electorate, but instead, they’ve made a co= mmitment to a largely white, dominantly Christian electorate that feels a d= emographic threat from immigration—and to provoking that sense of thr= eat.

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This commitment turns everything i= n politics into an existential threat. It underlines the deep partisan pola= rization in the U.S. today. Juan Linz and other great scholars of democrati= c decline from the 1970s would say that if one side feels its whole way of = life is under threat from a loss in an election, then democracy is really i= n trouble.

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Joseph Chan

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More from Lucan Way at The Sig= nal:

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“We can’t comp= are the U.S. to a dictatorship like Russia, where elections a= re completely meaningless, or even to a place like Hungary, where elections= are meaningful but there’s really no opposition to authoritarianism = in the political system. The United States has core sources of strength in = this regard that Russia or Hungary don’t have. First, one of its two = major political parties remains committed to democratic norms and practices= , and that party is both strong and cohesive: The Democratic Party is very = well funded and no one thinks it’s in danger of splitting. Some centr= ist Democrats complain about their progressive wing, but overall, the party= is united, which is a major functional check against authoritarian tendenc= ies in the Republican Party—and which is something you don’t ha= ve in other unstable democracies. Second, American civil society is strong.= News media that hold governing powers and politicians to account are well-= established. There are all sorts of NGOs that monitor what’s going on= , can mobilize popular support, and would be very difficult to shut down. T= hird, American federalism is strong. As bad as things might get, it is whol= ly implausible that one political party is going to dominate every state. Y= ou don’t have this kind of bulwark in democracies that are truly in d= ecline.”

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“To say that U.S. de= mocracy is in decline would be a little misleading. It’= s not entirely wrong, but there’s a limit to it. U.S. democracy is de= clining, yes, but it can only decline so far, because the resilience in the= system is ultimately very powerful. Democracy in America is now unstable.&= nbsp;Instability is the best word for the condition.” =09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09

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“This is the context= for Donald Trump. He’s not a strategic genius; he just= came into the Republican Party with a political formula that could take so= me of its preexisting tendencies to a new level. Historically, many found i= t easy to believe that the Republican electorate just cared about cutting t= axes. But a large segment really cared about identity politics. That allowe= d Trump to activate a still relatively latent impulse in the Republican Par= ty to question free and fair elections that didn’t go their way; and = it allowed him to activate a relatively latent racism in the Republican Par= ty’s white, Christian base. Before Trump, Republican politicians thou= ght that they could only approach racial issues with a ‘dog whistle,&= rsquo; a notion that came from Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign. Th= e idea is that you evoke race in an indirect way that doesn’t alienat= e people who want to think of themselves as non-racist. In 1968, Nixon talk= ed about crime and ‘law and order.’ In 1980, Ronald Reagan talk= ed about ‘welfare queens.’ But Trump just came out with directl= y racist rhetoric, and it struck a vein.”

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= Continue reading ...

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