CAN DEMOCRACY SURVIVE?
The Retreat of Western Liberalism’ By Edward Luce, ‘How Democracies Die’ By Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky
2012 is often cited as the high point of a confident, multicultural, outward-looking UK. The faces of that Olympic year, Mo Farah, Nicola Adams, Jessica Ennis, Bradley Wiggins testimony to a grown-up society at ease with itself. Or so we thought. With hindsight, it looks like that year represented the swan song of liberal Britain, or put more harshly we were fooling ourselves. That in fact Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony represented a thin, possibly London manufactured, veneer covering a society seething with bitterness, hatred and division. Their first signs of this came in the referendum on Scottish independence, the tone of which, particularly on Twitter was exceptionally unpleasant. Much worse was to come. Brexit opened the floodgates to a torrent of xenophobic hatred, poisonous abuse and split society wide open, creating two hostile camps, Remainers and Leavers. Words and phrases like traitor, enemies of the people, citizens of nowhere, not confined to antisocial misfits living lives filled with bitter resentment in shabby bedsits but the currency of politicians and the mainstream press. This has been mirrored across the US as Trump has debased the currency of debate and the office of President.
The groundwork of this debasement both here and in the US had been taking place for many years, with Fox News in the US and the Daily Mail and Sun in the UK doing the heavy lifting. All that was needed to complete the victory of populism was the men who understood the algorithms and were able to link mass data with the psychology of manipulation. Enter Cambridge Analytica. The Channel Four expose of this, and I think it merits the word, evil outfit has provided an opportunity, albeit the smallest of windows, to take stock of the multiple attacks on our democracy and confront them. Ideally an immediate public enquiry into the funding and conduct of the Brexit referendum. Will the moment be seized? The signs are not promising. Even as I write this it has taken four days, four days after the intention was openly declared, for the Information Commissioner to obtain a warrant to search Cambridge Analytica’s premises. You think that some incriminating material might have been ‘accidentally’ erased during those four days?
The crisis of Western democracy is very great, and two recent books, amongst others, Edward Luce’s ‘The Retreat of Western Liberalism,’ and ‘How Democracies Die’ by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky,[1] seek to expose the scale of the problems we face. As Luce points out “[Western Liberalism] is far closer to collapse than we may wish to believe. It is facing its gravest challenge since the Second World War.” Luce book also provides a rather startling analysis of just how recent democracy has been the approved form of government, and just how slender are its roots and protections, even in the so-called ‘mature’ democracies. The idea that the franchise should be extended to all was thought preposterous among most of the ruling elite through most of the 19th Century, let alone that decisions of national policy should be surrendered to the populace. If the roots are thin and fragile what of the protections?
In a wide-ranging book, Ziblatt and Levitsky analyse how democracy has been destroyed from within in societies across the globe from Peru to Putin’s Russia. They reach several alarming conclusions. The most important being that written constitutions, bills of rights, and other forms of institutional checks and balances provide only limited protection against determined demagogues, particularly if they have considerable popular support. Indeed, both Luce and Ziblatt and Levitsky conclude that individual action and the willingness to overcome partisan allegiances and put the welfare of democracy above narrow party loyalties is perhaps even more important. Those who play a key role in legitimising candidates and ensuring that democratic norms are respected, Ziblatt and Levitsky call ‘gatekeepers.’ The story of Donald Trump’s rise in 2015/16 is the story of the failure of the Republican Party to place the welfare of democracy over party. In a checklist of warning signs that indicate a tendency toward authoritarian and anti-democratic conduct, condoning violence, questioning the basic fairness of the voting system, de-legitimising political opponents, to a disrespect for agreed norms and courtesies of the electoral process, Trump failed all tests. Yet despite this, the GOP facilitated the election of an anti-democratic thug. As David Frum points out in a parallel book, ‘Trumpocracy’ “The worse Trump behaved, the more frantically congressional Republicans worked to protect him.”
Luce also points to the key role played by individuals, often taking considerable personal risks, in opposing the drift toward dictatorship, pointing out that Mark Felt, Associate Director of the FBI played a far more significant role in exposing Nixon than any constitutional device or institution.[2]
Neither book is particularly encouraging, and both highlight the need for a serious discussion of the virtues, strengths and weaknesses of democracy. More clarity is needed about what exactly democracy means. For it is much more than crude majoritarianism, a sanitised version of mob rule. What are the parameters, what conduct lies outside the protection of democratic acceptability? These are not easy questions and, along with the ongoing debate about free speech, we need to start addressing them and begin to mount a counter-attack against the demagogues. For make no mistake, Anglophone democracy is not somehow magically immune from the virus of dictatorship and authoritarian rule.[3] Let us not go about finding this out the hard way.
[1]‘The Retreat of Western Liberalism’ By Edward Luce Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017 ‘How Democracies Die’ By Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky Penguin Random House Jan 2018
[2] One might add without a courageous and independent, i.e. unbeholden to super rich oligarchs, like Rupert Murdoch, with their own, often anti-democratic agenda.
[3] Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky also point to how much damage Trump has done to the democratic brand across the globe, highlighting the impact on the democratic movement in China. This damage has largely gone unremarked, though may be just as serious in the long term as the threat to our own societies.
