How Democracies Die

by Steven Levitsky

Southern Democrats’ ideological proximity to conservative Republicans reduced polarization and facilitated bipartisanship. But it did so at the great cost of keeping civil rights—and America’s full democratization—off the political agenda.

The GOP had trampled on a basic democratic norm—in effect, stealing a Supreme Court seat—and gotten away with it.

his leadership helped to establish “politics as warfare” as the GOP’s dominant strategy.

Rather than ushering in a new era of tolerance and cooperation, the Obama presidency was marked by rising extremism and partisan warfare.

Although the Tea Party framed its mission in terms of such traditional conservative ideas as limited government, low taxes, and resistance to health care reform, its opposition to Obama was far more pernicious. The difference? The Tea Party questioned President Obama’s very right to be president.

By the end of the Obama presidency, many Republicans embraced the view that their Democratic rivals were anti-American or posed a threat to the American way of life. This was dangerous territory. Such extremism encourages politicians to abandon forbearance. If Barack Obama is a “threat to the rule of law,” as Senator Ted Cruz claimed, then it made sense to block his judicial appointments by any means necessary.

As both voters and their elected representatives clustered into increasingly homogeneous “camps,” the ideological differences between the parties grew more marked.

the two parties are now divided over race and religion—two deeply polarizing issues that tend to generate greater intolerance and hostility than traditional policy issues such as taxes and government spending.

the changing media landscape had a stronger impact on the Republican Party. Republican voters rely more heavily on partisan media outlets than do Democrats. In 2010, 69 percent of Republican voters were Fox News viewers.

Unlike the Democratic Party, which has grown increasingly diverse in recent decades, the GOP has remained culturally homogeneous. This is significant because the party’s core white Protestant voters are not just any constituency—for nearly two centuries, they comprised the majority of the U.S. electorate and were politically, economically, and culturally dominant in American society.

Because strict voter ID laws disproportionately affect low-income minority voters, who are overwhelmingly Democratic, they skew elections in favor of the GOP.

Security crises are, therefore, moments of danger for democracy. Leaders who can “do whatever they like” can inflict great harm upon democratic institutions.

Humans have a limited ability to cope with people behaving in ways that depart from shared standards. When unwritten rules are violated over and over, Moynihan observed, societies have a tendency to “define deviancy down”—to shift the standard. What was once seen as abnormal becomes normal.

in the face of widespread deviance, we become overwhelmed—and then desensitized. We grow accustomed to what we previously thought to be scandalous.

Unwilling to pay the political price of breaking with their own president, Republicans find themselves with little alternative but to constantly redefine what is and isn’t tolerable.

It was only after 1965 that the United States fully democratized.

President Trump’s is the least prodemocratic of any U.S. administration since Nixon’s. Moreover, America is no longer a democratic model. A country whose president attacks the press, threatens to lock up his rival, and declares that he might not accept election results cannot credibly defend democracy. Both existing and potential autocrats are likely to be emboldened with Trump in the White House.

Although Trump’s presidency may ultimately be seen as a momentary aberration with only modest footprints on our institutions, ending it may not be enough to restore a healthy democracy.

This is spot on - Trumpism is here to stay and his acolytes will continue America’s Democratic regression

The third, and in our view, most likely, post-Trump future is one marked by polarization, more departures from unwritten political conventions, and increasing institutional warfare—in other words, democracy without solid guardrails.

North Carolina offers a window into what politics without guardrails looks like—and a possible glimpse into America’s future. When partisan rivals become enemies, political competition descends into warfare, and our institutions turn into weapons. The result is a system hovering constantly on the brink of crisis.

When American democracy has worked, it has relied upon two norms that we often take for granted—mutual tolerance and institutional forbearance. Treating rivals as legitimate contenders for power and underutilizing one’s institutional prerogatives in the spirit of fair play are not written into the American Constitution. Yet without them, our constitutional checks and balances will not operate as we expect them to.

Where institutional channels exist, opposition groups should use them.

Even if Democrats were to succeed in weakening or removing President Trump via hardball tactics, their victory would be Pyrrhic—for they would inherit a democracy stripped of its remaining protective guardrails. If the Trump administration were brought to its knees by obstructionism, or if President Trump were impeached without a strong bipartisan consensus, the effect would be to reinforce—and perhaps hasten—the dynamics of partisan antipathy and norm erosion that helped bring Trump to power to begin with.

Opposition to the Trump administration’s authoritarian behavior should be muscular, but it should seek to preserve, rather than violate, democratic rules and norms. Where possible, opposition should center on Congress, the courts, and, of course, elections. If Trump is defeated via democratic institutions, it will strengthen those institutions.

Trump was defeated but he poisoned the well of the institutions

Coalitions of the like-minded are important, but they are not enough to defend democracy. The most effective coalitions are those that bring together groups with dissimilar—even opposing—views on many issues. They are built not among friends but among adversaries.

When major businesses join progressive boycotts, they often succeed.

the fundamental problem facing American democracy remains extreme partisan division—one fueled not just by policy differences but by deeper sources of resentment, including racial and religious differences. America’s great polarization preceded the Trump presidency, and it is very likely to endure beyond it.

Reducing polarization requires that the Republican Party be reformed, if not refounded outright. First of all, the GOP must rebuild its own establishment. This means regaining leadership control in four key areas: finance, grassroots organization, messaging, and candidate selection.

Seeking to diminish minority groups’ influence in the party—and we cannot emphasize this strongly enough—is the wrong way to reduce polarization.

the world has never built a multiethnic democracy in which no particular ethnic group is in the majority and where political equality, social equality and economies that empower all have been achieved.

For many Americans, the economic changes of the last few decades have brought decreased job security, longer working hours, fewer prospects for upward mobility, and, consequently, a growth in social resentment. Resentment fuels polarization. One way of tackling our deepening partisan divide, then, would be to genuinely address the bread-and-butter concerns of long-neglected segments of the population—no matter their ethnicity.

Our constitutional system, while older and more robust than any in history, is vulnerable to the same pathologies that have killed democracy elsewhere.