Liberal democracy
The most important service that Merkel and other European leaders have provided the autocratic camp, however, was their failure to confront democratic backsliding in neighbouring countries such as Hungary and Poland. 1
Longer-lasting democracies, such as that of the USA are not exempt from these challenges. This image was taken during the storming of the Capitol building in 2021. How did this happen? An extract from an article in the Foreign Affairs magazine September/October 2020 titled The Fragile Republic written by Suzanne Mettler and Robert C. Lieberman, outlines the conditions of a crisis for democracy: political polarization, conflict over who belongs in the political community, high and growing economic inequality, and excessive executive power. I
shall look at each of these conditions in turn.
In the appendix there is a graph from the Pew Research Centre investigating American Presidential approval ratings from 1953 to 2020 for each political party. They show a significant increase in polarization from 1953 to 2020. Polarization is the result of disagreement. However, it also includes a strong personal dislike of political opponents. In a 1958 survey in the United States, 72% of respondents did not express a partisan preference about whether their children should marry a Democrat or a Republican; that decreased to 45% in a 2016 survey. Liberal democracy requires tolerance of other people’s views, which is undermined by polar ization. In April 2021, laws were signed in the state of Georgia, which restrict voting access: they have been branded by critics as ‘Jim Crow 2.0’. Conflict about voting rights is a result of democracy: there needs to be a balance between voting security and voting rights, and there may be disagreements about that balance. While most disagreements are healthy for a democracy, disagreement about participation in democracy undermines confidence in democracy, as democracy is only a true democracy if it allows participation.
The Gini coefficient, which measures economic inequality, was 35.3 in 1974, and 41.4 in 2018 in the USA according to World Bank estimates. This significant rise in inequality creates dissatisfaction in democracy, which can be exploited by aspiring demagogues.
This is definitely true in the United States. The President’s power to sign or veto legislation, command the armed forces, appoint judges etc. is enshrined in the Constitution. Democracy is the will of the people, and ‘excessive executive power’ undermines democracy, and replaces it with tyranny.
Each of these conditions can undermine democracy, because as democracy advocates for the will of the people, democracy can only survive if the people want it to survive.
1 Foreign Affairs : September/October 2020 & March/April 2021.
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