Democracy – not just an American thing

Upon entering any book store in any major European or Northern American city, you are very likely to become overwhelmed by the immense selection of newly issued books on all things populist and illiberal. It seems that every more-or-less known scholar, political commentator, TV pundit or even active politician has their own book on Brexit, Trump, or the rule of law.  Some are simple memoirs or unstructured collections of personal observations, while others offer a vast selection of essays from authors across the political spectrum. Some are well-crafted academically and offer a solid explanatory framework to the roots of why democracy is in decay, globally speaking. Some are good at backing up their arguments with evidence and others are poorer in insight and not very well written. The vast majority of them, however, draw only on selected case studies and historical observations to sketch out universal parallels about the seemingly unavoidable and inevitable dismantling of the international liberal order. How Democracies Die, a book fresh off the printing press, by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, two renowned scholars of democracy and professors of governance at Harvard University, is sadly, no exception to these modalities. Especially when it comes to examining the differences within the global democratic camps and the different possible outcomes their failures might yield.

America first

First, however, a few sentences need to be devoted to the book’s wording, particularly the title. Levitsky and Ziblatt are off to a hopeful start, offering the reader a promise of a heterogeneous analysis of the problems that democracy is battling worldwide. By using the plural version of the word, they immediately suggest an approach which will account for diversities, regional contexts and various courses of events in each country suffering from an illiberal turn. A few pages in, however, all these hopes and illusions disappear. The reader quickly gets the impression from the very start of the book, and remains with them until the last paragraph, that the deterioration of democracy is originally (if not exclusively) an American phenomenon, just as the system in itself is a product of American statehood and political thought.

Very early on in the book the authors make a rather controversial claim that, despite numerous established democracies facing populist and semi-authoritarian politicians taking power, it was the United States of America that started the trend. They acknowledge the negative impact the quality of democracy executed by the likes of Viktor Orban, Nicolás Maduro or Boris Johnson, but they establish Donald Trump and the entire American political system as the point of reference. This argument is not only ill-suited, but simply incorrect, as evidence show numerous routine practices of modern day autocrats, ranging from partial co-optation of extremist movements to complete lack of respect towards institutions of checks and balances, have been loyally transplanted onto the American soil from Europe, Latin America and other parts of the word.

Moreover, by comparing other countries with the US, Levitzky and Ziblatt completely bypass the factor of intensity, or pace, with which a democracy gives in to (or resists) authoritarian tendencies. For instance, take the size of the mythical “centre” – the part of the electorate with moderate views, seemingly distant from both extremes of the spectrum. In each and every country the centre has a different size, composition, historical roots and strength, so it is not a universal call to make how quickly it will cease ground to illiberals. The same can be said about the various aspects of democratic institutional framework. It is nearly impossible to find an overarching rule determining the very moment democracy loses to authoritarianism. Most certainly one will not be able to do it with America as a blueprint for the whole world.

Nevertheless, Ziblatt and Levitsky are at least coherent in their analysis. Perhaps it could be described as an overly simplified class in “Democratic Downfall from a US Point of View 101”, but it is a good class nonetheless. The authors are right to extend their chronological horizon and the time span of the book by making an argument that the quality of American democracy started to deteriorate a long time ago. Blaming Trump for its dire condition and the current Republican establishment for the emergence of Trump is short-sighted. The book takes the reader on regular trips into the nascent times of the political system across the pond, highlighting the origins of many institutional features we know the US democracy to possess until today. Particularly valuable is the significant space devoted to unspoken and unwritten rules and norms that determine mutual relations between the government and the opposition. Ranging from things as prosaic as waiving to the press corps before entering Air Force One to being allowed to nominate Supreme Court judges as an outgoing president, the two Harvard professors single them out carefully and do a great job illustrating their importance to the overall results of the electoral process. Sadly, they are forced to close with an obvious, though decidedly negative conclusion, that Trump broke all of these rules, while their reestablishment will be extremely difficult in the years to come.

Eager activists

An interesting part, and one that is actually possible to somehow apply to many other democracies, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, is the downfall of political parties, which in the book’s terminology are referred to as “gatekeepers”. The label is pretty telling and immediately points to the direction in which Ziblatt and Levitsky want us to move. Political parties in their heyday served not only as pillars of the electoral process, but as efficient filters against extremists.

As structured, ever more professionalising entities, parties established their own mechanisms to verify candidates’ credentials, intellectual capacities and worldviews before allowing them on the nationwide political stage. These filters are either much less efficient today or simply non-existent, especially in the newly emerging, so-called “popular movements”, like the Italian Five Star Movement. No recruitment process, no verification, no vetting – just eager activists. This problem is frequently addressed as one of the key roots of the illiberal turn, referred to as the “demythologisation of the politician’s profession” by Cas Mudde – one of Europe’s best scholars of populism. Essentially, everyone is apt to be a politician these days, and looking at Trump it is difficult to counter that claim.

Overall, the book is an interesting scholarly read, but it does not answer the question that its title poses. It does not show how democracies die. Rather it explains the possible death of the American one. It is an outcome that is much less universal, though still undesired and tragic in its likely consequences.

Mateusz Mazzini is a doctoral candidate at the Polish Academy of Sciences, and formerly a visiting doctoral scholar at University College London. His research project focuses on the collective memory of the non-democratic past in Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America.