Confronting America's Democrisis
Like a wobbling top or stalled out airplane–democrisis is the point where a delicate, but seemingly stable balance is upset, leading to sudden, often violent consequences
America’s democrisis has been, and will continue to be, the number one issue facing the country and its politics, though many Americans and members of the political elite refuse to confront this reality. Many have taken heart in recent weeks that cracks have appeared in the facade of what appears, on the surface, to be the main driver of the crisis, Donald Trump and his extremist MAGA movement.
It is easy to equate all of America’s current travails with Donald Trump. But because the root causes of America’s democrisis run deeper than Trump, the crisis will probably outlive his sordid run on the political scene.
With this in mind, we have to fully understand America’s democrisis before we can address it.
A democrisis is just what is just what the portmanteau implies, a once stable democracy that has sunk into a state of dysfunction and decay, causing a strong sense of anxiety and malaise amongst the citizenry (at least those who are paying attention) and opening up new avenues for illiberal actors. Democrisis is the opposite of a stable democracy, which is characterized by robust public participation, confidence in and respect for democratic institutions, functioning free-and-fair elections, constitutional checks and balances and rule of law.
Like a wobbling top or stalled out airplane–democrisis is the point where a delicate, but seemingly stable balance is upset, leading to sudden, often violent consequences.
In a democrisis a cynical populace loses confidence and interest in vetting political candidates and defending democratic institutions, opening the door to demagogues and strongmen (or women) who, in the name of addressing a perceived national crisis, exploit popular passions, use democratic means to come to power, then subvert the rule of law to undermine civil liberties, freedoms and democracy itself.
In the state of democrisis, political leaders and parties tamper with once sacrosanct electoral procedures for short-term political gain, and decry lost elections as “rigged” rather than conceding them, eroding public confidence in free-and-fair elections.
Rather than engage in constructive debate and legislation to the benefit of their constituents, politicians waste their time with petty partisan bickering, personally attacking and even threatening their political opponents and, increasingly–the new norm in American politics–engage in partisan ‘lawfare’, the rung on the ladder just below open hostilities totally unconstrained by law.
In a democrisis the civil center starts giving way. People no longer come together, compromise and reach the accords and compromises–legal, normative and moral–which make peaceful society possible. As common ground disappears, the field is ceded to radical fringes which have no interest in upholding the democratic norms and standards of the past.
Hate-peddling extremists and conspiracy theorists rise in stature and are even welcomed into the mainstream. More extreme and violent political rhetoric stokes political violence as more and more politicians are willing to condone violence as a tool against political enemies instead of disavowing it entirely.
While it is impossible to predict how a particular democrisis will end, history demonstrates that it most commonly unleashes varying combinations of chaos and conflict along the full spectrum of intensity: protracted political instability, violent factionalism, authoritarianism and civil wars that are prone to escalating into interstate conflicts.1
Democrises do not necessarily lead automatically or instantaneously to authoritarianism, though there is a strong correlation between the two. While many countries—modern Spain, Germany, Chile, even ancient Athens, (for a brief period)—bounce back after democratic lapses, this often follows painful conflicts with a heavy cost on lives and treasure. The eventual reinstatement of democracy in these cases is no doubt cold comfort to those whose lives and livelihood are unnecessarily destroyed in the process.
The factors that led to America’s democrisis are interconnected and run deep: an increasingly diverse society with divergent and often conflicting political goals and designs for the future, political polarization, the economic erosion of the middle glass and the internet and social media are just some of the factors that are often cited. As far back as 1995 Robert Putnam, in his groundbreaking work Bowling Alone, argued that the civic engagement that, like soil to a tree, buttresses and nourishes our democracy, was eroding in America.
Undoubtedly, America moved into democrisis status with Donald Trump’s presidential election in 2016. As Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt wrote in 2018 in their seminal work How Democracies Die, Trump hit all four key indicators of authoritarian behavior: Rejection of (or weak commitment to) democratic rules of the game; denial of the legitimacy of political opponents; toleration or encouragement of violence; and, readiness to curtail civil liberties of opponents, including media.
Since Trump’s first term, many renowned institutions which track democracy world-wide, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), the Economist Intelligence Unit, the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute and Freedom House, have downgraded America’s democratic status, re-designating it with a variety of pessimistic descriptors such as “flawed” “backsliding” and “declining”, thus placing the U.S. in the company of countries such as Hungary and Slovenia.
Individuals in a country facing a democrisis have the primeval ‘fight of flight’ choice to make. The problem is that, unlike an animal in the state of nature, for the individual safely ensconced within the protective bubble of civilized society, the flight option is overwhelmingly more alluring, and even, in the short-term, rewarding. One simply disengages from disturbing political realities to immerse oneself in the Soma of the day: be it popular culture, getting ahead in life, or any other myriad forms of modern escapism. Our society is the largest and most diverse in history, producing a vast labyrinth of sub-cultural crags and crevices to hide-away in.
On the other hand, fighting eroding democracy and rising authoritarianism can seem like a futile attempt at fighting the tide. And besides, as authoritarianism tightens its grip on civil society the disincentives for resisting–social pressure, career and monetary concerns, legal risk–rise accordingly.
And for those who choose fight over flight, what options do they have? There’s no magic bullet when it comes to defending democracy. The TTPs (tactics, techniques and procedures as we used to say in the military) are as straightforward and simple as they’ve always been. Defending democracy requires education, garnering unbiased news and information, civic engagement, organization, dogged determination and, in today’s climate, a willingness to take risks in the face of illiberal actors who are in power and have no qualms about using it to threaten and coerce.
So, when it comes to defending democracy, simple doesn’t necessarily mean easy. To understand the simple, yet complex nature of the task, consider the parallels between the challenge of maintaining democracy and the challenge of maintaining our personal lives.
The basic building blocks for maintaining a healthy, stable and rewarding life are better understood than ever: physical and mental health, work and achievement, a sense of purpose, spirituality (or, to those of a secular disposition, a sense of wonder and search for knowledge about humankind and the universe–of course, the two aren’t mutually exclusive). But in spite of this, many of us, myself included, constantly struggle with achieving balance in our lives.
The same goes for democracy. The ancient Greeks first demonstrated democracy’s feasibility and dynamism (the misgivings of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle aside) but also its very human flaws and fragility.
In the modern era, for nearly 250 years America was a beacon of freedom and democracy to the entire world. We followed a well-honed democratic playbook that our founding fathers, drawing on European Enlightenment principles, had bestowed for us. And this playbook served us very well. We had cracked the code, defied the age-old boogey-man of political stasis. That’s because democracy came naturally to Americans. Or so it seemed.
The last few years have put the lie to this national myth. It wasn’t some kind of predestined fate or hard and fast law of political science that we were bound to fall into a state of democrisis, Americans chose their own course. They had a choice and were fooled twice into following a shoddy, illiberal demagogue.
Democracy is an intensely human enterprise and, as with out personal lives, is a balance that is difficult to maintain. No one is going to maintain it for us.
The first step on the road to saving our democracy is to recognize that we are in a crisis, but still have the power to shape the future. In the long-term, as a society made up of individuals, we need to take a look in the mirror, examine our values and come to terms with how got to this point.
Having said that, in the here-and-now there’s a fight on and the stakes couldn’t be higher: our very freedoms in America are in jeopardy. With this in mind, we need more foot soldiers. We need less flight and more fight.
Stephen Walt explored the causal link between political instability (revolution) and international conflict in Revolution and War.