This book review might provide an interesting complement:
Specters of Fear and Executive Power https://www.lawfareblog.com/specters-fear-and-executive-power The parts about, e.g. the concentration of power in a party leader in Poland, a parliamentary hegemony as opposed to an executive one, argue, I think, that the problem isn't autocracy so much as power concentration wherever it lands. The splish-splash between power loci mentioned in the FA article seem to hint at that, but not go far enough. It's important because included in these concentrations of power are multinational corporations and celebrities like Musk and Bezos (who, we might note, owns the WaPo ... like some Chinese, Russian, or Qataris concentration of power ... and also apparently buys boats built too big to extract from the boathouse). Oversimplified "checks and balances" talk ain't gonna cut it anymore. On 2/4/22 08:31, Steve Smith wrote:
Someone here is more likely than I to have actually read Ziblatt and Levitsky's How Democracies Die <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Democracies_Die#:~:text=How%20Democracies%20Die%20is%20a,process%20to%20increase%20their%20power.> A recent article (behind a subscribe-wall) included the following quote: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2022-01-20/americas-coming-age-instability / / /America may no longer be safe for democracy, but it remains inhospitable to autocracy./ /Rather than autocracy, the United States appears headed toward endemic regime instability. / / / /Such a scenario would be marked by frequent constitutional crises, including contested or stolen elections and severe conflict between presidents and Congress (such as impeachments and executive efforts to bypass Congress), the judiciary (such as efforts to purge or pack the courts), and state governments (such as intense battles over voting rights and the administration of elections). The United States would likely shift back and forth between periods of dysfunctional democracy and periods of competitive authoritarian rule during which incumbents abuse state power, tolerate or encourage violent extremism, and tilt the electoral playing field against their rivals./ / / I found this characterization of our plight very compelling, if also very disturbing. It seems as if we have "tumbled our gyros" but in a different mode than the rhetoric about "Civil War" and "Descent into Autocracy" seem to suggest. It also characterizes a lot of the aspiring/limping democracies we know of in the world today up to and including extreme examples such as Russia which fits the DINO (democracy in name only) label pretty well. This conception of the problem lead me to a very well written HS student-essay by the same title: democracy-in-name-only <https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/democracy-in-name-only-2020-01-02>. Within this essay was a poignant quote: In the words of Alexis de Tocqueville, “A new science of politics is needed for a new world. This, however, is what we think of least; launched in the middle of a rapid stream, we obstinately fix our eyes on the ruins which may still be descried upon the shore we have left, while the current sweeps us along, and drives us backward toward the gulf.”
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