How Democracies Die

by Steven Levitsky

  But eventually, politicians started talking. In 1978, Lagos returned to Chile and was invited to dinner by former Christian Democratic senator Tomás Reyes. They began to meet regularly. At around the same time, Christian Democratic leader Patricio Aylwin attended meetings of lawyers and academics from diverse partisan backgrounds, many of whom had crossed paths in courtrooms while defending political prisoners. These “Group of 24” meetings were just casual dinners in members’ homes, but according to Aylwin, they “built up trust among those of us who had been adversaries.” Eventually, the conversations bore fruit. In August 1985, the Christian Democrats, Socialists, and nineteen other parties gathered in Santiago’s elegant Spanish Circle Club and signed the National Accord for a Transition to a Full Democracy. The pact formed the basis for the Democratic Concertation coalition. The coalition developed a practice of “consensus politics,” in which key decisions were negotiated between Socialist and Christian Democratic leaders. It was successful. Not only did the Democratic Concertation topple Pinochet in a 1988 plebiscite, but it won the presidency in 1989 and held it for two decades.

  The Concertation developed a governing style that broke sharply with the politics of the 1970s. Fearful that renewed conflict would threaten Chile’s new democracy, leaders developed a practice of informal cooperation—which Chileans called “democracy of agreements”—in which presidents consulted the leaders of all parties before submitting legislation to congress. Pinochet’s 1980 constitution had created a dominant executive with the authority to impose budgets more or less unilaterally, but President Aylwin, a Christian Democrat, consulted extensively with the Socialists and other parties before submitting his proposed budgets. And he didn’t just consult his allies. Aylwin also negotiated legislation with right-wing parties that had backed the dictatorship and defended Pinochet. According to political scientist Peter Siavelis, the new norms “helped stave off potentially destabilizing conflicts both within the coalition and between the coalition and the opposition.” Chile has been one of Latin America’s most stable and successful democracies over the last three decades.

  It is doubtful that Democrats and Republicans can follow the Chilean path. It’s easy for politicians to bemoan the absence of civility and cooperation, or to wax nostalgic about the bipartisanship of a bygone era. But norm creation is a collective venture—it is only possible when a critical mass of leaders accepts and plays by new unwritten rules. This usually happens when political leaders from across the spectrum have stared into the abyss and realized that if they do not find a way of addressing polarization, democracy will die. Often, it is only when politicians suffer the trauma of violent dictatorship, as they did in Chile, or even civil war, as in Spain, that the stakes truly become clear.

  The alternative to learning to cooperate despite underlying polarization is to overcome that polarization. In the United States, political scientists have proposed an array of electoral reforms—an end to gerrymandering, open primaries, obligatory voting, alternative rules for electing members of Congress, to name just a few—that might mitigate partisan enmity in America. The evidence of their effectiveness, however, is far from clear. We think it would be more valuable to focus on two underlying forces driving American polarization: racial and religious realignment and growing economic inequality. Addressing these social foundations, we believe, requires a reshuffling of what America’s political parties stand for.

  The Republican Party has been the main driver of the chasm between the parties. Since 2008, the GOP has at times behaved like an antisystem party in its obstructionism, partisan hostility, and extremist policy positions. Its twenty-five-year march to the right was made possible by the hollowing out of its organizational core. Over the last quarter century, the party’s leadership structure has been eviscerated—first by the rise of well-funded outside groups (such as Americans for Tax Freedom, Americans for Prosperity, and many others) whose fund-raising prowess allowed them to more or less dictate the policy agenda of many GOP elected officials, but also by the mounting influence of Fox News and other right-wing media. Wealthy outside donors such as the Koch brothers and influential media personalities exert greater influence over elected Republican officials than does the GOP’s own leadership. Republicans still win elections across the country, but what used to be called the Republican “establishment” has today become a phantom. This hollowing out has left the party vulnerable to takeover by extremists.

  Reducing polarization requires that the Republican Party be reformed, if not refounded outright. First of all, the GOP must rebuild its own establishment. This means regaining leadership control in four key areas: finance, grassroots organization, messaging, and candidate selection. Only if the party leadership can free itself from the clutches of outside donors and right-wing media can it go about transforming itself. This entails major changes: Republicans must marginalize extremist elements; they must build a more diverse electoral constituency, such that the party no longer depends so heavily on its shrinking white Christian base; and they must find ways to win elections without appealing to white nationalism, or what Republican Arizona senator Jeff Flake calls the “sugar high of populism, nativism, and demagoguery.”

  A refounding of America’s major center-right party is a tall order, but there are historical precedents for such transformations—and under even more challenging circumstances. And where it has been successful, conservative party reform has catalyzed democracy’s rebirth. A particularly dramatic case is the democratization of West Germany after the Second World War. At the center of this achievement was an underappreciated development: the formation of Germany’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) out of the wreckage of a discredited conservative and right-wing tradition.

  Before the 1940s, Germany never had a conservative party that was both well-organized and electorally successful, on the one hand, and moderate and democratic on the other. German conservatism was perennially wracked by internal division and organizational weakness. In particular, the highly charged divide between conservative Protestants and Catholics created a political vacuum on the center-right that extremist and authoritarian forces could exploit. This dynamic reached its nadir in Hitler’s march to power.

  After 1945, Germany’s center-right was refounded on a different basis. The CDU separated itself from extremists and authoritarians—it was founded primarily by conservative figures (such as Konrad Adenauer) with “unassailable” anti-Nazi credentials. The party’s founding statements made clear that it was directly opposed to the prior regime and all it had stood for. CDU leader Andreas Hermes gave a sense of the scale of the rupture, commenting in 1945: “An old world has sunk and we want to build a new one….” The CDU offered a clear vision of a democratic future for Germany: a “Christian” society that rejected dictatorship and embraced freedom and tolerance.

  The CDU also broadened and diversified its base, by recruiting both Catholics and Protestants into the fold. This was a challenge. But the trauma of Nazism and World War II convinced conservative Catholic and Protestant leaders to overcome the long-standing differences that had once splintered German society. As one regional CDU leader put it, “The close collaboration of Catholics and Protestants, which occurred in the prisons, dungeons, and concentration camps, brought to an end the old conflict and began to build bridges.” As new Catholic and Protestant CDU leaders went door-to-door to Catholic and Protestant homes during the founding years of 1945–46, they conjured into existence a new party of the center-right that would reshape German society. The CDU became a pillar of Germany’s postwar democracy.

  The United States played a major role in encouraging the formation of the CDU. It is a great historical irony, then, that Americans can today learn from these successful efforts to help rescue our own democracy. To be clear: We are not equating Donald Trump or any other Republicans with German Nazis. Yet the successful rebuilding of the German center-right offers some useful lessons for the GOP. Not unlike their German counterparts, R
epublicans today must expel extremists from their ranks, break sharply with the Trump administration’s authoritarian and white nationalist orientation, and find a way to broaden the party’s base beyond white Christians. The CDU may offer a model: If the GOP were to abandon white nationalism and soften its extreme free-market ideology, a broad religious conservative appeal could allow it to build a sustainable base, for example, among Protestants and Catholics, while also potentially attracting a substantial number of minority voters.

  The rebuilding of German conservatism, of course, followed a major catastrophe. The CDU had no choice but to reinvent itself. The question before Republicans today is whether such a reinvention can occur before we plunge into a deeper crisis. Can leaders muster the foresight and political courage to reorient what has become an increasingly dysfunctional political party before further damage is done, or will we need a catastrophe to inspire the change?

  Although the Democratic Party has not been the principal driver of America’s deepening polarization, it could nevertheless play a role in reducing it. Some Democrats have suggested the party focus on recapturing the so-called white working class, or non-college-educated white voters. This was a prominent theme in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s traumatic 2016 defeat. Both Bernie Sanders and some moderates argued passionately that Democrats must win back the elusive blue-collar voters who abandoned them in the Rust Belt, Appalachia, and elsewhere. To do this, many opinion-makers argued, the Democrats needed to back away from their embrace of immigrants and so-called identity politics—a vaguely defined term that often encompasses the promotion of ethnic diversity and, more recently, anti-police-violence initiatives, such as Black Lives Matter. In a New York Times op-ed, Mark Penn and Andrew Stein urged Democrats to abandon “identity politics” and moderate their stance on immigration to win back white working-class votes. Though rarely voiced, the core message is this: Democrats must reduce the influence of ethnic minorities to win back the white working class.

  Such a strategy might well reduce partisan polarization. If the Democratic Party were to abandon the demands of ethnic minorities or relegate them to the bottom of the agenda, it would almost certainly win back some white lower- and middle-income white voters. In effect, the party would return to what it was in the 1980s and 1990s—a party whose public face was predominantly white and in which minority constituencies were, at most, junior partners. The Democrats would—literally—begin to look more like their Republican rivals. And as they moved closer to Trumpist positions on immigration and racial equality (that is, accepting less of both), they would appear less threatening to the Republican base.

  We think this is a terrible idea. Seeking to diminish minority groups’ influence in the party—and we cannot emphasize this strongly enough—is the wrong way to reduce polarization. It would repeat some of our country’s most shameful mistakes. The founding of the American republic left racial domination intact, which eventually led to the Civil War. When Democrats and Republicans finally reconciled in the wake of a failed Reconstruction, their conciliation was again based on racial exclusion. The reforms of the 1960s gave Americans a third chance to build a truly multiethnic democracy. It is imperative that we succeed, extraordinarily difficult though the task is. As our colleague Danielle Allen writes:

  The simple fact of the matter is that the world has never built a multiethnic democracy in which no particular ethnic group is in the majority and where political equality, social equality and economies that empower all have been achieved.

  This is America’s great challenge. We cannot retreat from it.

  But there are other ways for Democrats to help restructure the political landscape. The intensity of partisan animosities in America today reflects the combined effect not only of growing ethnic diversity but also of slowed economic growth, stagnant wages in the bottom half of the income distribution, and rising economic inequality. Today’s racially tinged partisan polarization reflects the fact that ethnic diversity surged during a period (1975 to the present) in which economic growth slowed, especially for those at the bottom end of the income distribution. For many Americans, the economic changes of the last few decades have brought decreased job security, longer working hours, fewer prospects for upward mobility, and, consequently, a growth in social resentment. Resentment fuels polarization. One way of tackling our deepening partisan divide, then, would be to genuinely address the bread-and-butter concerns of long-neglected segments of the population—no matter their ethnicity.

  Policies aimed at addressing economic inequality can be polarizing or depolarizing, depending on how they are organized. Unlike in many other advanced democracies, social policy in America has relied heavily on means tests—distributing benefits only to those who fall below an income threshold or otherwise qualify. Means-tested programs create the perception among many middle-class citizens that only poor people benefit from social policy. And because race and poverty have historically overlapped in the United States, these policies can be racially stigmatizing. Opponents of social policy have commonly used racially charged rhetoric against means-tested programs—Ronald Reagan’s references to “welfare queens” or “young bucks” buying steaks with food stamps is a prime example. Welfare became a pejorative term in America because of a perception of recipients as undeserving.

  By contrast, a social policy agenda that sets aside stiff means testing in favor of the more universalistic models found in northern Europe could have a moderating effect on our politics. Social policies that benefit everyone—Social Security and Medicare are prime examples—could help diminish resentment, build bridges across large swaths of the American electorate, and lock into place social support for more durable policies to reduce income inequality—without providing the raw materials for racially motivated backlash. Comprehensive health insurance is a prominent example. Other examples include a much more aggressive raising of the minimum wage, or a universal basic income—a policy that was once seriously considered, and even introduced into Congress, by the Nixon administration. Still another example is “family policy,” or programs that provide paid leave for parents, subsidized day care for children with working parents, and prekindergarten education for nearly everyone. America’s expenditures on families is currently a third of the advanced-country average, putting us on par with Mexico and Turkey. Finally, Democrats could consider more comprehensive labor market policies, such as more extensive job training, wage subsidies for employers to train and retain workers, work-study programs for high school and community-college students, and mobility allowances for displaced employees. Not only do these sorts of policies have the potential to reduce the economic inequality that fuels resentment and polarization, but they could contribute to the formation of a broad, durable coalition that realigns American politics.

  Adopting policies to address social and economic inequality is, of course, politically difficult—in part because of the polarization (and resulting institutional gridlock) such policies seek to address. And we are under no illusions about the obstacles to building multiracial coalitions—those including both racial minorities and working-class whites. We cannot be certain that universalistic policies would provide the basis for such a coalition—only that they stand a better chance than our current means-tested programs. Difficult as it may be, however, it is imperative that Democrats address the issue of inequality. It is, after all, more than a question of social justice. The very health of our democracy hinges on it.

  —

  Comparing our current predicament to democratic crises in other parts of the world and at other moments of history, it becomes clear that America is not so different from other nations. Our constitutional system, while older and more robust than any in history, is vulnerable to the same pathologies that have killed democracy elsewhere. Ultimately, then, American democracy depends on us—the citizens of the United States. No single political leader can end a democracy; no single leader can rescue one, either. Democracy is a shared enterprise. Its fate
depends on all of us.

  In the darkest days of the Second World War, when America’s very future was at risk, writer E. B. White was asked by the U.S. Federal Government’s Writers’ War Board to write a short response to the question “What is democracy?” His answer was unassuming but inspiring. He wrote:

  Surely the Board knows what democracy is. It is the line that forms on the right. It is the “don’t” in don’t shove. It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; it is the dent in the high hat. Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is a letter to the editor. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea which hasn’t been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad. It’s the mustard on the hot dog and the cream in the rationed coffee. Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of a morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is.

  The egalitarianism, civility, sense of freedom, and shared purpose portrayed by E. B. White were the essence of mid-twentieth-century American democracy. Today that vision is under assault. To save our democracy, Americans need to restore the basic norms that once protected it. But we must do more than that. We must extend those norms through the whole of a diverse society. We must make them truly inclusive. America’s democratic norms, at their core, have always been sound. But for much of our history, they were accompanied—indeed, sustained—by racial exclusion. Now those norms must be made to work in an age of racial equality and unprecedented ethnic diversity. Few societies in history have managed to be both multiracial and genuinely democratic. That is our challenge. It is also our opportunity. If we meet it, America will truly be exceptional.