30 March 2022 — 0807 mdt
American Democracy — Alive or Dead?
Guest Essay By James C. Nelson
Montana Supreme Court Justice (Ret.)
Our democracy — is it alive, do we still live in a democratic republic, or is our democracy dead, no longer a governance of, by and for the people? How is the American Experiment faring? As it turns out, not so well.
On November 22, 2021, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IIDEA), based in Stockholm, Sweden, released its 2021 Report on The Global State of Democracy. The Report concludes that Democracy’s “survival is endangered by a perfect storm of threats, both from within and from a rising tide of authoritarianism.” “The world is becoming more authoritarian as nondemocratic regimes become even more brazen in their repression. And many democratic governments suffer from backsliding by … restricting free speech and weakening the rule of law.”
Over the past year, 60 countries became less free, while only 25 improved. 38% of the global population live in countries that are not free (the highest since 1997); 20% live in free countries; and 42% live in “partly free” countries. Sadly, the United States falls within this last category
In her recent book, How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them, Professor Barbara F. Walter, describes anocracy — a middle zone occupied by governances that are neither democracy nor autocracy.
Researchers rely on what is called a Polity Score, compiled by the Polity Project at the Center for Systematic Peace, to capture how democratic or autocratic a country is in any given year. Based on a 21point scale ranging from -10 (most autocratic) to +10 (most democratic), full democracies receive scores between +6 and +10; autocracies receive scores between -6 and -10. Anocracies, are in the middle, receiving scores of between -5 and +5.
In 2020 the United States lost it long-held +10 Polity Score (as the world’s oldest democracy) and dropped to a +5 — anocracy.
Backsliding democracies risk armed civil uprising from the moment a country becomes less democratic as a result of fewer executive restraints, weaker rule of law, and diminished voting rights. When such a democracy’s Polity Score reaches between +1 and -1 citizens face the real prospect of autocracy.
Here is what happened to America.
Factionalism is defined as an acute form of political polarization, where political parties become based on ethnic, religious, or racial identity rather than on ideology. Parties become cults focusing on one person.
Ethnic Entrepreneurs facilitate factions with discriminatory appeals and policies in the name of a particular group.
Predatory Political Parties arise out of the factionalism and become the tools of ethnic entrepreneurs. These parties tighten their political power by attacking free and fair elections, freedom of speech, and freedom of association, often using slash and burn tactics, pursuing power with a win-at-all-cost agenda.
Downgrading takes place when group feels left out of the political process, when the group once held power, but sees it slipping away. The group feels a sense of resentment, rage, injustice and a loss of status in a place that is theirs. These people might be referred to as “sons of the soil.” Sons of the soil may be downgraded by migration; differences in birth rates or simple demographics
Economic Inequity (not the same thing as Income Inequality) refers to more structural changes in society — modernization, for example, which involves the process by which rural, traditional societies are transformed into urban secular societies.
Loss of Hope happens when downgraded groups see a future with nothing but more pain and violence as their only path forward.
Unregulated Internet and social media which act as channels for disinformation, misinformation, conspiracy theories and bully-pulpits for charlatans, trolls, demagogues, anti-democratic agents, foreign governments and others.
To stop the backslide we need to focus on those values that sustain democracy including the rule of law; the equal and impartial application of legal procedure; and accountability — the extent to which citizens are able to participate in selecting their government as well as their freedom of expression, association, free media, free and fair elections and effective government.
To stop our slide from anocracy into autocracy is a tall order. But the inescapable fact is that if We the People are not committed to saving our American Democracy, then it will die from within.
No one is going to bail us out.