On the fragility of democracy

Fareed Zakaria writes in a Washington Post opinion piece:

The news this week that democracy is imperiled in Tunisia — the only success story of the Arab Spring — comes just three weeks after we heard that Haiti’s president had been assassinated. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the government seems unable to establish authority across the country. It got me thinking about one of the fundamental questions of politics: Why is it so difficult to develop and sustain liberal democracy?

The best recent work on this subject comes from a remarkable pair of scholars, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. In their latest book, “The Narrow Corridor,” they have answered this question with great insight. In every society, they note, the first step is simply achieving some measure of order and stability. History is littered with places where gangs, warlords and tribes rule and the state is never able to effectively consolidate power and govern. That was Afghanistan’s past and might be its future.

If political order is rare, liberal political order is rarer still. Liberal democracy is the Goldilocks form of government. It needs a state that is strong enough to govern effectively but not so strong that it crushes the liberties and rights of its people. The authors call this “the shackled Leviathan.” (Thomas Hobbes used the biblical monster Leviathan to describe a powerful state.) Getting to liberal democracy requires that societies travel through a “narrow corridor,” one that allows the state to build power while allowing for the growth of a civil society that asserts itself and fights for rights. Together, they create the delicate balance between stability and freedom. Countries in the West have succeeded because they have managed to build up both strong states and strong societies.

In Afghanistan, despite two decades of efforts, the state has failed to gain control over much of the country, creating what the authors call the “absent Leviathan.” In Egypt, the state is too strong. After a brief flirtation with democracy after the Arab Spring, the country reverted to dictatorship. Other parts of the world have “paper Leviathans” — governments that exercise power mostly to enrich a small elite at the top. Think of Nigeria or Venezuela.

How did the West get Goldilocks politics? The authors cite two opposing forces. First, there was the legacy of the Roman Empire, which provided institutions, laws and traditions that made it possible to create order. Second, the northern European tribes, rooted in egalitarian assemblies, had a tradition of challenging powerful leaders. The contest between nobles and kings — and later, I would add, between church and state, and among the hundreds of states, duchies and principalities of medieval Europe — all helped individual liberty grow and flourish.

Zakaria goes on to argue that liberal democracy in the West is a matter of an unusual history, not cultural superiority. Although a few countries such as India and South Korea had a similar balance, but it is hard to maintain it. Liberal democracy really is fragile and rare. The phenomenon of “illiberal democracy” began to arise in the 1990s when democratically elected leaders started systematically abusing power and depriving people of democratic rights. They attacked and weakened liberal, constitutional government and supporting institutions. Established democracies such as India are moving into anti-democratic authoritarianism. 

Zakaria asserts that Russia lost its democracy and has reverted to dictatorship, apparently the normal human condition. Countries such as the US that have the right state-society balance are in a good situation. The US is in an era of democratic dysfunction, with populism threatening political institutions and norms that used to be taken as neutral. He argues that this anti-democratic mindset is the most dangerous in the Republican Party with its successful push to politicize vote counting and access to voting in red states.

Where does the main threat lie?

Based on poll data, most Republicans, conservatives and a significant number of independents see radical Democrats, socialism and government tyranny as the main threat to democracy and the rule of law. Others see the radical right Republican Party and radical fundamentalist Christianity as the grave and imminent threat, especially in view of the progress that movement has made in the last ~5 years. Where does the most urgent threat lie? 

Is the American liberal democracy a Goldilocks form of government that is inherently too unstable to last much longer? If it is unstable and on the verge of collapse, what is most likely to replace it, e.g., fascist tyranny, socialist tyranny, kleptocratic plutocracy, endless social instability and violence, maybe driven by two flavors (left and right) of autocratic tyranny, Christian theocratic autocracy, etc.? Or, is American democracy just fine and not under any serious imminent threat?