Post-2016 democratic deconsolidation is a named, measurable historical process
Evidence
Democracy in the United States and Europe is threatened in ways few imagined possible only a short time ago. Many of us assumed that the democratic foundations laid after World War II and consolidated with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 were unshakeable. Now they look less resilient. To some eyes, they appear fragile. As defenders of constitutional democracy, we find ourselves on the defensive. We thought that democracy had severe flaws, we recognized democratic deficits, but we believed in the possibility of reform. Was our confidence in the progressive arc of democracy premature, or naïve, or a sign that we were complacent because we were being well served, or perhaps utterly unfounded from the start? Did we underestimate antidemocratic forces brewing in society? The signs were there. For many years, public opinion polls had documented diminishing support for democratic institutions. In the past two years, measures of civil and political freedom, which once had declined only in autocracies and dictatorships, took a turn for the worse: in 2016, “it was established that democracies … dominated the list of countries suffering setbacks.” Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk give a name to this process: “deconsolidation.” … The new conspiracism is but one entrant in the lineup of disruptive forces. In the United States, it has moved from the fringe and has taken up residence in the highest levels of government, and it makes an appearance in day-to-day political life. Our focus has not been the entire domain of conspiracism but rather those claims that strike at the heart of regular democratic politics: rigged elections, plans to impose martial law, depictions of political opponents as criminal, a Department of Justice planning a coup against the president. … David Runciman suggests that “the spread of conspiracy theories is a symptom of our growing uncertainty about where the threat really lies.” We have argued that the new conspiracism is itself a threat to democracy. In the context of what is referred to as the literature on “how democracies die,” we don’t propose the new conspiracism as a sufficient way of framing what is happening. The new conspiracism is not the engine of every crisis of democracy, nor does it figure in every crisis of democracy. Malignancy abounds, and not all degradations of democracy go together. The new conspiracism is more than simply an offshoot or epiphenomenon of other forces such as authoritarianism or strident populism. Once it secures a foothold in public life, conspiracism has independent force. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 365
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to my long-standing shelf on post-2000 democratic decline literature — Foa & Mounk join the ‘how democracies die’ corpus I already track. — connects to: Delegitimation erodes democracy slowly rather than through crisis or coup — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 42; War of position replaced war of movement in modern democratic politics; Post-truth predates 2016 with roots in cognitive bias, philosophy, and media change — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 51 (+2 more)
- DEEPTHINKING: The closing self-interrogation about whether defender confidence was premature/naive/complacent — and the concession that the signs were there — condenses the whole ‘we were startled into thought’ posture of the book.
Broader Connections
- Delegitimation erodes democracy slowly rather than through crisis or coup
#complicates(0.80) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 42 - Post-truth predates 2016 with roots in cognitive bias, philosophy, and media change
#corroborates(0.80) — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 51 - Historical-political typologies are interpretive criteria, not rigid predicting schemata
#qualifies(0.80) - Speculative uncertainty is now reshaping democratic politics itself.
#expands(0.80) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 240 - War of position replaced war of movement in modern democratic politics
#expands(0.75)