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Profile in Democratic Dissent from Authoritarianism: Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt on Saving Democracy [1]
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Date: 2023-12-27
What does it mean to dissent democratically from authoritarianism? This is a question for our troubled times, a question that calls for answers specific to current challenges. It is a matter of some urgency.
Accordingly, I offer an initial profile in democratic dissent from authoritarianism, a profile that features two Harvard University professors of government, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, who write about how to resist tyranny of the minority.[1] One of their key contributions is a description of what is democratic in principle and practice and what is not. They impart a guideline for what to defend, how to defend democracy democratically, and what to resist because it is antidemocratic. They do this with reference to the scourge of authoritarianism presently threatening liberal democracy. They do it having already written about how democracies die.[2]
Answers to three questions capture much of what we can learn from Levitsky and Ziblatt about resisting authoritarianism democratically.
What is democratic governance?
For Levitsky and Ziblatt, democratic governance is largely a matter of “majoritarianism,” rule of the majority of voters with protections in place for minority rights. As they put the matter, “Democracy is more than majority rule, but without majority rule there is no democracy” (p. 142). Their concern is that an authoritarian backlash is getting the upper hand at the expense of majority rule to the point where minority rule is an imminent threat to democracy. The will of electoral majorities is being thwarted by the undemocratic and unfair counter-majoritarian maneuvers of a Republican Party controlled by extremists. As a result, “electoral majorities often cannot win power, and when they win, they often cannot govern” (p. 11).
A mark of democracy is the willingness to accept defeat in a free and fair election. Fear of a far-reaching social change can undermine that willingness, which is the case in contemporary America where we are experiencing a demographic shift that is leveling the traditional racial hierarchy. Such fear “is often what drives the turn to authoritarianism” (p. 32). This authoritarian backlash is opposed to a multiracial democracy “in which adult citizens of all ethnic groups possess the right to vote and basic civil liberties” (p. 4).
Another principle of democracy is the rejection of violence to overturn the rule of majorities. When antidemocratic behavior (including coercion and insurrection) occurs, “loyal democrats publicly denounce such behavior, sever ties to individuals and groups responsible for such behavior, and, when necessary, join forces with partisan rivals to isolate antidemocratic extremists and hold them accountable” (p. 125).
Thus, the basic principles of a liberal and inclusive representative democracy guided by majority rule are: protecting civil rights and liberties, respecting the outcome of free and fair elections, abstaining from the use of violence to gain power, and rejecting antidemocratic extremists.
What is antidemocratic governance?
Given that majoritarianism is a key criterion of democratic governance, we should know what counts as counter-majoritarian behavior. Levitsky and Ziblatt identify multiple schemes contributing to the ongoing descent into minority rule. The essence of the problem, from their perspective, is that these counter-majoritarian measures are opposed to the development of an inclusive, multiracial democracy. The construction of a multiracial democracy, they observe, is an ambitious experiment supported by a solid majority and subject to resistance by an authoritarian minority using antidemocratic strategies. “We stand at a crossroads,” they warn. “Either America will be a multiracial democracy, or it will not be a democracy at all” (p. 225).
“Constitutional hardball” aimed at undermining equal access to the ballot and enabling partisan minorities to thwart majorities capitalizes on the flaws of a US Constitution “designed in a pre-democratic era” (p. 10). When a mainstream political party resorts to constitutional hardball—undermining the spirit of the law while ostensibly conforming to the letter of the law—they become “authoritarian enablers” (pp. 41, 50-51).
Constitutional hardball involves multiple stratagems. One is to exploit gaps in existing laws and rules, drawing on the premise that a behavior is permissible if it is not explicitly prohibited. Another is to overuse the law, such as in the excessive granting of presidential pardons. Selective enforcement of the law is yet another tactic to target political rivals, as is designing new, seemingly impartial and reasonable laws, actually aimed at opponents.
These hardball maneuvers are used to thwart the will of the majority, a majority that embraces the principles of multicultural democracy consistent with the country’s “growing ethnic diversity and movement toward racial equality,” a development that has “blurred ethnic and racial boundaries and weakened racial hierarchies” in the public culture (pp. 102-3).
Rather than adapt to this new demographic and cultural reality by making itself “welcoming and inclusive”—an open-arms approach advocated by Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee’s chair, after Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012—the Republican Party stuck to a strategy of voter suppression, including voter ID laws (a solution without a problem) and reduced early voting, “ostensibly aimed at combating fraud but . . . designed to dampen turnout among lower-income, minority, and young voters” (p. 111). These strategies and others, such as extreme partisan gerrymandering, culminated in Donald Trump’s election to the presidency and a further acceleration of “the GOP’s radicalization,” leaving the party “deeply immersed in white resentment politics” (pp. 117-18).
In addition to skewing elections, anti-majoritarian resistance extends to undermining the democratic process by preventing legislative majorities from passing laws. In the US Senate, for example, the requirement of a supermajority of 60% of the Senators to stop a filibuster provides a partisan minority with the powerful weapon of a veto used “to impose [its] preferences on the majority” (p. 143). Supreme Court justices with lifetime appointments and judges without term limits create conditions of “intergenerational counter-majoritarianism” where circumstances and the attitudes of the polity have changed over time (p. 148). Today’s Supreme Court is “frequently—and often glaringly—at odds with public opinion”; it is a court controlled by a “conservative majority . . . imposed by a partisan minority” (p. 177).
Other counter-majoritarian institutions inherited from the US Constitution include a system of federalism that leaves the law-making authority of state and local governments beyond the reach of national majorities, a malapportioned Senate that gives states with small populations the same number of Senators as states with large populations, the Electoral College which allows losers of the popular vote to win the presidency, and the high barrier for changing the Constitution which requires a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress plus ratification by 75% of the states (p. 148). Abortion rights and gun-control legislation as well as resistance to reducing poverty and inequality are glaring examples of where minority rule is out of step with majority public opinion.
How can we strengthen democratic governance?
While the risk is that we have reached a tipping point of democratic decline—perhaps a steep, even precipitous decline—it is also the case that democracy is usually a relative term, a matter of degree, a measure of more democracy or less democracy rather than an absolute and immediate question of democracy’s life or death. The issue usually, at any given point in time, is one of maintaining, increasing/strengthening, or decreasing/weakening the country’s democratic makeup and health.
Facing the prospect of a slippery slope into authoritarianism, we must now pursue ways of bolstering democracy. The staying power of liberal democracy cannot be taken for granted. What, then, can Levitsky and Ziblatt tell us about how to strengthen democratic governance from their perspective to advance multicultural democracy and resist the authoritarian backlash?
Turning the tide of democratic backsliding in the US may not seem so implausible when we consider that other established democracies have taken the lead in reducing vulnerabilities to minority rule. The US is an outlier in that regard. The UK, Norway, France, the Netherlands, Finland, Germany, and Australia are among countries that have reduced “institutional fetters on popular majorities” (p. 213). The US, once a democratic pioneer among nations, is now a “democratic laggard” (p. 216).
How can we democratize our democracy? Levitsky and Ziblatt identify two types of short-term strategies to be used sparingly in the face of imminent authoritarian threats, and they propose three sets of reforms as long-term solutions.
The two short-term strategies are containment and defensive democracy. Containment, the first short-term strategy, is a way of responding to an acute crisis such as the impending election of antidemocratic candidates. It involves forging coalitions across ideological and partisan divisions to create a pro-democratic front. It aims to keep antidemocratic parties out of power, but it becomes counterproductive in the long run if such coalitions persist to the point of short-circuiting democratic competition. Defensive democracy, the second short-term strategy, uses the law to prosecute antidemocratic conduct. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, for instance, which prohibits insurrectionists from holding public office, might be used against domestic enemies of democracy, but employing the law for this purpose must be undertaken with restraint because it is subject to abuse.
The proposed long-term strategies, consistent with James Madison’s belief that fair and free competitive elections are the best means of prevailing over antidemocratic extremism, require “long overdue constitutional and electoral reforms” (p. 230).
These reforms include a set aimed at upholding the right to vote by, for example, passing a constitutional amendment establishing the right of all adult citizens to vote, automatically registering all citizens to vote when they turn eighteen, expanding early voting and mail-in voting, and requiring state and local elections to be administered by non-partisan officials.
A second set of proposed reforms are aimed at ensuring election outcomes reflect majority preferences, that winning the most votes means winning the election. This entails abolishing the Electoral College and replacing it with direct popular vote, adopting a proportional representation system in which large electoral districts are awarded more representatives than small ones, and replacing partisan gerrymandering with independent redistricting commissions, for example.
A third set of proposed reforms aim to empower governing majorities to legislate by abolishing the Senate filibuster, ending lifetime terms for Supreme Court justices, and making it easier to amend the Constitution.
No digest can substitute for all that can be found in the Levitsky and Ziblatt volume on Tyranny of the Minority, but condensing its argument renders it readily available, may lead to reading the book in full, and hopefully will promote further thinking about how to dissent from authoritarianism and advance democracy democratically.
This is not, or at least should not be, a strictly partisan concern or critique. Both major political parties at different points in US history have perpetrated antidemocratic practices. While Levitsky and Ziblatt are highly critical of the present authoritarian turn of the Republican Party, they believe that adoption of their proposed reforms would unleash a healthy competitive dynamic that would prompt Republicans to build broader, more diverse coalitions to dilute the influence of extremist elements and win elections fairly, which would be “very good news for American Democracy” (p. 236).
The barriers to reform are substantial, elections have to be won and legislation passed in the meantime, but reform has to become part of the larger conversation to ever become a reality. Positive advances that seemed impossible to achieve have happened before and can happen again. Achieving meaningful change requires getting reform onto the public agenda, reshaping the terms of the debate, and applying continuous political pressure via petitions, door-to-door campaigns, rallies, boycotts, and more.
What is needed, in short, is a sustained democratic reform movement. Accordingly, subsequent profiles in democratic dissent from authoritarianism will feature some of the voices that are stirring the conversation and spawning a movement for democratic reform.
Robert Ivie
12/27/2023
[1] Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point (New York: Crown, 2023)
[2] Steven Levitsiky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (New York: Viking, 2018).
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