This article from Vox, written by Aziz Huq and Tom Ginsburg, discusses democratization around the world and its impact on the United States. This article was published on February 20th 2017, which is shortly after the inauguration of President Donald Trump. The election of Trump brought about worries of the future state of democracy within the United States, which is reflected in the content of this article. A number of other sources at this time also reflect this fact, for example, this Guardian article and this New York Times article. While this article was written by two legal professors, it is not a journal-style article. The nature of the article is to provide a general overview of the state of democracy since the post-war period, the current trend of democratic backsliding and whether the US is likely to follow this trend.
Following the end of World War Two, there was a trend of democratisation, and it was largely expected that these new democratic states would remain democrat. The current trend of democratisation has been unexpected. The article references an academic paper which found that 25 states faced significant democratic backsliding within the post-war period. The article itself does not necessarily explain the concept of democratic backsliding particularly well. For the purposes of this post, it will be defined as ‘the state-led debilitation or elimination of the political institutions sustaining an existing democracy’, which results in a slow slip into autocracy. Autocracy can be defined as a system of government with majority or absolute power, which is known as being less stable than a democracy.
Classically democratisation involves coups d’etat, executive coups and election-day fraud. However, a key element of this article is the discussion of the falling number of coups in recent years. This is supported by the fact that out of 53 cases of democratic backsliding, only five of those cases involved coups. Huq and Ginsburg state that this is because the most prevalent form of democratic backsliding today is very slow-moving, rather than the sudden stop of democracy which you would find with a coup.
A key question of this article is whether the rising trend of democratic backsliding will have an impact on the United States democracy. Arguments have been made that the US has an unusually strong democracy, due to the fact that throughout history the US has avoided any revolution/coups when they were common around the world. For example in the 1920’s the phrase ‘American Exceptionalism’ was coined, which is essentially the concept that the US is exempt from whatever issues are occurring in the international sphere. However, it is concluded that the danger truly lies in believing that the United States is exempt from democratic backsliding simply due to historic ‘American exceptionalism’. This is because all states are vulnerable to democratic backsliding because it happens slowly without the public generally noticing.
In terms of the United States constitution, the article comes to the conclusion that there are no special protections afforded within the constitution, compared to other states which have faced some type of democratic backsliding. It even goes so far as to say that it might be more vulnerable to democratic backsliding than states such as Poland, Hungary and Venezuela. For example, the US justice system is reliant on norms or conventions rather than laws. These conventions are much easier to change.
To prove the article's point, two case studies are presented. One being Hungary, where small constitutional amendments were made in order to keep the Fidesz government in power with less than a majority. This is an example of a step towards autocracy and democratic backsliding. The second case study is Poland, where the Polish Law and Justice Party declared the appointment of judges ‘unconstitutional’ and appointed their own selection of judges. However, this was declared by Poland's own constitutional court to be unconstitutional, the chair of the court saying because of it that Poland was on the road to autocracy. These two case studies demonstrate how democratic backsliding can look in its most prevalent form.
This article is relevant to this course because it is essentially a discussion of the state of democracy around the world, as well as a discussion of how democratic states move towards autocracy. This is relevant to this course because this course is an exploration of dictatorships, revolutions and falling from democracy.
I would say that it provides a brief overview of different countries' state of democracy, but does not go into extensive detail in any particular case. Due to this, I would say this article would be useful in terms of gaining a general understanding of the topic of democratic backsliding. I would say that this article is generally reliable. When referring to a study, or journal article that source is included in the text, which gives the information reliability. The article is also written by two Professors, not journalists, which means there is less of a journalistic spin on the content of the article. While generally quite factual, it is worth noting that Vox tends to be very left-leaning with its story selection and wording of its articles.
In addition to my summary of the article, this video also by Vox may be useful to watch. It covers similar content but is slightly easier to follow as the article itself is quite content heavy. It may be a useful resource in terms of explaining some of the key elements included in this article. I would recommend watching this video before reading the article.
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Thanks for this summary and discussion, Isobel. Given that the article was written in 2017, do you think it has held up well?
ReplyDeleteAlso, do they say that autocracies are more stable than democracies?