Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, experts on democratic systems and authors of “Tyranny of the Minority” have a great essay in today’s NY Times today about the various ways a society can protect itself from anti-democratic forces. I am including a gift link so that you can read the whole thing.
Here’s the intro:
Democratic self-rule contains a paradox. It is a system premised on openness and competition. Any ambitious party or politician should have a shot at running for office and winning. But what if a major candidate seeks to dismantle that very system?
America confronts this problem today. Donald Trump poses a clear threat to American democracy. He was the first president in U.S. history to refuse to accept defeat, and he illegally attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Now, on the brink of returning to the White House, Mr. Trump is forthrightly telling Americans that if he wins, he plans to bend, if not break, our democracy.
Mr. Trump tells us he plans to prosecute his political rivals, including Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Liz Cheney and other members of the Jan. 6 Select Committee; deploy the army to repress protest; and order the deportation of 15 to 20 million people, including some legal immigrants.
We have been studying democratic crisis and authoritarianism for 30 years. Between the two of us, we have written five books on those subjects. We can think of few major national candidates for office in any democracy since World War II who have been this openly authoritarian.
They outline five different approaches to combatting assaults on democracy with examples of how it’s worked in other countries. It’s happened here too but in the past we quelled it with what they call “partisan gatekeeping”
In the absence of legal tools to block extremist threats, the responsibility for fending off such threats falls to political parties. In a healthy democracy, party leaders police their own ranks, expelling antidemocratic elements or refusing to nominate extremists or demagogues for public office.
American parties were effective gatekeepers throughout the 20th century. In the early 1920s, Henry Ford, the plain-spoken founder of Ford Motor Company, who was admired by many Americans but whose extremism and anti-Semitism was embraced by Hitler and the Nazis, considered running for president as a Democrat. Early polls showed him leading the pack of potential candidates. But Democratic leaders never seriously considered him. Finding the party’s gates closed, Ford abandoned his presidential aspirations.
Half a century ago, Republican leaders engaged in self-policing when they joined in congressional investigations into wrongdoing by President Richard Nixon. When Mr. Nixon’s abuse of power was brought to light, key Republican leaders supported impeachment. Their actions shifted public opinion in important ways. It was not until a group of Republican lawmakers came out in favor of impeachment beginning in late July 1974 that a clear majority of Americans supported Mr. Nixon’s removal from office.
We all know how that’s worked out with this current threat. Trump tried to stage a coup and incited a violent insurrection and his party refused to use the one tool that could have prevented him from ever doing it again: conviction in the second impeachment trial. They are accomplices now.
Right now we’re trying what they call a “containment strategy” which is to try to create a popular front consisting of ideological opponents coming together to stop this illiberal movement. That’s the strategy of people like Liz Cheney and others to work with a very unified Democratic coalition to defeat Trump. It’s difficult because most Republicans are cowards and traitors:
But containment is hard in a polarized two-party system. Most of the prominent Republicans who have not endorsed Mr. Trump, including Senator Mitt Romney, former Vice President Mike Pence, and former President George W. Bush, declined to back Ms. Harris, opting instead to remain on the sidelines. Other leading Republicans who declared Mr. Trump unfit for office after 2020, such as Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, and Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador, who ran against Mr. Trump this year, now support him. As long as Republican leaders who privately view Mr. Trump as a grave danger refuse to go public, most Republicans voters will remain unmoved.
There are more options, none of which are currently on the menu mostly because many people who should know better still don’t seem to see the threat.
These assaults on democracy have been happening with some frequency around the world so it says something that these authors say they’ve rarely seen major national candidates as openly authoritarian as Trump. It sent a chill down my spine to read that. After I read how lamely we are resisting it, I felt another one. This may very well be our last chance.