The apparent failure of liberal democracy in the US and Europe is so widely reported on that it has been given a name: Democratic backsliding.
The basic premise of the concept is that democracy exists on a spectrum that a country can move forwards and backwards on. This conceptualization of democracy finds its data backing in Freedom House’s annual survey of the relative freedom found in each country.
2017 marked the first year since tracking this data that Freedom House noted a democratic “decline.” The hand wringing over democratic backsliding thus began in the academic and think tank world, but I have yet to see the term gain traction in the popular press.
This may be a blessing in disguise since I can now, hopefully, assess America’s own standing on the democracy spectrum without too many preformed conclusions in the audience’s mind.
The real question, then, is has America commenced a democratic backslide? Has liberal democracy hit a wall? If so what is the nature of that wall, and can American liberal democracy be able to overcome it?
The (apparent) problem
Previously, I wrote an essay on global democracy and the rise of illiberalism. Certainly the rise of illiberalism in fragile democracies and authoritarians in rival states has contributed to a general sense of democratic decline. However, I point out in that essay that the gap is more perceptual than factual.
Another possible contribution to democratic backsliding in the US is the rise of populism on the left and right fringes of the political spectrum. In the case of the Democratic and Republican parties, these populist voices have made a concerted drive towards controlling the centers of power. In the case of Donald Trump, there seems to be some success for the populist right. That success may very well be matched by the continued appeal of Bernie Sanders and his young acolyte Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Illiberals abroad and populists at home, disturbing images of masked demonstrators in streets, and college campuses in chaos. It’s no wonder democracy feels under threat. However, this is not an accurate depiction of American democracy. The appearance of fragility does not always confirm its reality. Rather, liberal democracy, particularly the American model, is a political philosophy and system with a unique capacity for outlasting competitors and external pressures.
American liberalism and the myth of fragility
The myth of American democratic fragility is hardwired into the American psyche, so it’s understandable that we may perceive it threatened at every turn. Indeed, many public figures and presidents have spoken of the American liberal democratic model in just such terms.
When asked what kind of government the Founders had created at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin reportedly said “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
Abraham Lincoln expressed his own concerns at the viability of American liberal democracy ahead of the Civil War:
“Secession would destroy the only democracy in existence and prove for all time – to both future Americans and the world – that a government of the people could not survive.”
Very well known to conservatives is Ronald Reagan’s statement:
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”
To be fair, these great thinkers are not wrong. The idea of fragility emphasizes the need for citizen involvement for the purpose of building institutional stability. Without that informed input and accountability from citizens, liberal democracy does indeed fail.
However, liberal thought’s diversity also makes it stunningly supple. Liberalism encompasses the left-right spectrum in that it shares broad concepts like representative government, the rule of law, and rights of persons. The left-right continuum thus emerges as a reflection of developing branches of the same philosophical root.
Left-right tension allows for a broad range of political movement, institutional development and use of language within a conceptual framework that’s not beholden to an individual or group.
This is, incidentally, what makes liberal democracy a uniquely empowering force for diverse people groups and oppressed minorities. Liberalism assumes the idea of fundamental human equality. Working that equality out day-to-day allows for give and take and the development of pluralistic communities that make appeals to common standards of justice and ethics.
On the other hand, political philosophies and ideologies that find their animating ethos in the personality of an individual, or the identity of a defined group are inherently exclusivist and discriminatory due to their closely circumscribed borders. The language of politics, the conceptualization of justice, and the concept of fairness are all defined in reference to those leading individuals or groups.
These dynamics render most forms of populism fundamentally anti-democratic in their brazen trafficking in Us vs. Them binaries and group victimhood.
Because of the fundamentally narrow scope of populist ideologies and personality cults, the degree to which they can threaten liberal democracy is quite limited. As external threats go, they are minimal to the liberal project.
The real danger to liberalism
The real danger to liberal democracy resides within: the inability of liberals of left and right persuasions to live, work and relate in community with one another. In such a polarized context we find two implications:
- the opposing sides no longer ascribe to the fundamental prepositions of liberal thought (this could be intentional or unintentional) or
- they betray a deep ignorance of the philosophy that should unite them.
Ignorance or denial are thus the twin threats to liberal democracy.
Tribal liberalism is no liberalism at all, but merely pushes us off the liberal spectrum and on to the statist spectrum with its left-right poles of communism, and fascism, or some other illiberal method.
America’s liberal democracy, then, has not necessarily hit a wall against which it is likely to shatter. However, it certainly faces a real danger of not remaining a liberal democracy at all if we persist in building a politics of personality rather than one of plurality.