The US Republican Party - tending toward autocracy?

[lpetrich]

Republicans are starting to look like authoritarian parties in Hungary and Turkey, study finds - CNN

xperts from the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden said the US Republican Party had become more illiberal and populist in recent decades and that its recent retreat from democratic norms has left it resembling authoritarian ruling parties like Hungary's Fidesz and Turkey's AKP.

"What we see is that the disrespect of political opponents, the encouragement of violence and also the violation of minority rights ... they have all clearly increased with the Republican Party in recent years, since [President Donald Trump] came in the leadership but also before that," Anna Luehrmann, V-Dem's deputy director and one of the lead authors of the study, told CNN.

The US Democratic party has not shown a similar shift towards illiberalism, according to the study.

Republicans closely resemble autocratic parties in Hungary and Turkey – study | US news | The Guardian

In a significant shift since 2000, the GOP has taken to demonising and encouraging violence against its opponents, adopting attitudes and tactics comparable to ruling nationalist parties in Hungary, India, Poland and Turkey.

The shift has both led to and been driven by the rise of Donald Trump.

By contrast the Democratic party has changed little in its attachment to democratic norms, and in that regard has remained similar to centre-right and centre-left parties in western Europe. Their principal difference is the approach to the economy.

The Republican Party was was slowly tending toward autocracy over 2000 - 2014, passing where the UK Tories are now in 2008, but took a big jump in the Trump years, almost getting to where BJP, Fidesz, and AKP are now.

 

[lpetrich]

Home | V-Dem

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About | V-Dem

Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) is a new approach to conceptualizing and measuring democracy. We provide a multidimensional and disaggregated dataset that reflects the complexity of the concept of democracy as a system of rule that goes beyond the simple presence of elections. The V-Dem project distinguishes between five high-level principles of democracy: electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian, and collects data to measure these principles.

V-Party Dataset | V-Dem - "Here you can download all the V-Dem data free of charge!"

 

[lpetrich]

New Global Data on Political Parties: V-Party

V-Party’s Illiberalism Index shows that the Republican party in the US has retreated from upholding democratic norms in recent years. Its rhetoric is closer to authoritarian parties, such as AKP in Turkey and Fidesz in Hungary. Conversely, the Democratic party has retained a commitment to longstanding democratic standards.

This is a global trend: The median governing party in democracies has become more illiberal in recent decades. This means that more parties show lower commitment to political pluralism, demonization of political opponents, disrespect for fundamental minority rights and encouragement of political violence.

...
Both parties use more populist rhetoric – anti-elitism and citizen-centrism – than typical parties in democracies, but the Republicans clearly more so.

The five indicators capturing cultural issues place the Republicans consistently to the right of the center. Democrats also fare to the right of the median party in democracies in this millennium in terms of the role of religion in politics, immigration, and support of state measures to enhance the equal participation of women in the labor market. They fare to the left of the spectrum when it comes to support for LGBT equality and opposing the idea of cultural superiority of particular group or nation.

V-Party’s data places the Democratic Party to the left of typical parties in democracies in terms of economic issues and the Republican Party to the right.

The US Democratic Party is center-left, not as left as the British Labour Party. Germany's Christian Democrats, Angela Merkel's party, is center-right, not as right as the British Tories or US Republicans.

Not surprisingly, Venezuela's ruling party is far left and very autocratic.

 

[lpetrich]

V-Dem Democracy Report: Nations 2009 - 2019

The highest scorers are northern European countries - they tend to score the best in human-development and democracy scores. "Overseas Europe" - Canada, Australia, and New Zealand - are also high scorers. The US fell from one of the highest to the lower end of European countries over that time, likely due to Trump's Presidency.

Russia is far down, China is near the bottom, comparable to Saudi Arabia, and North Korea is close to the worst. The worst one listed is Eritrea, but I can't say much about that place.

 

[prideandfall]

hi, the 1960s called and wants its relevant observations about the trajectory of US political parties back.

since 2000? fucking please. this shit has been going on in its current social and cultural incarnation since nixon.
this isn't "disturbing new trends" just now developing, this is the inevitable result of conservatism as an ideology.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Tending? More like enacting in official policy since ‘95, getting more and more egregious with every term.

It is to the point that it isn’t a certainty Biden will be inaugurated. That hasn’t happened since 1876.

 

[TomC]

The US Democratic Party is center-left, not as left as the British Labour Party.

I see no reason to believe this. The Democrats are rightist. Not as rightist as the TeaParty, but still. Modern Democrat politicians look like Reagan Republicans from the early 80s. The TeaParty Republicans look like fascists by comparison, but that doesn't make Democrats leftists.

It just means that USA politicians find it more expedient to head right, because that's where the money is. Here in America, an accomplished politician can do very well for themselves by sucking up to the billionaires. "Citizens United" helped pave the way for corruption in politics.

And it shows in the results.
Tom

 

[Harry Bosch]

The US Democratic Party is center-left, not as left as the British Labour Party.

I see no reason to believe this. The Democrats are rightist. Not as rightist as the TeaParty, but still. Modern Democrat politicians look like Reagan Republicans from the early 80s. The TeaParty Republicans look like fascists by comparison, but that doesn't make Democrats leftists.

It just means that USA politicians find it more expedient to head right, because that's where the money is. Here in America, an accomplished politician can do very well for themselves by sucking up to the billionaires. "Citizens United" helped pave the way for corruption in politics.

And it shows in the results.
Tom

That's crazy. How do you justify that? Reagan was pro-life, anti affirmative action, wanted smaller safety net, lower taxes for the rich, took government away from colleges, no minimum wage, dramatically increased military spending, was anti gay, very anti environment, and etc. On what possible issues do current democrats agree with Reagan on?

 

[Keith&Co.]

On what possible issues do current democrats agree with Reagan on?

Well, C Everett Koop was well-spoken and honorable and- oh. He resigned when asked to jimmy up proof for a Rdpub talking point against abortion. Never mind.

 

[prideandfall]

That's crazy. How do you justify that? Reagan was pro-life, anti affirmative action, wanted smaller safety net, lower taxes for the rich, took government away from colleges, no minimum wage, dramatically increased military spending, was anti gay, very anti environment, and etc. On what possible issues do current democrats agree with Reagan on?

if you look at what they actually vote on, what they put in their speeches and campaigns, and what ends up being on their legislative agenda in the rare instances that they're in power, you'll find that most dems are all on board with that list, or at least ambivalent on it.

the vast majority of democrats are pro-corporate and pro-life, and only the most token gesture towards pro-society and pro-choice that is required to maintain their vote counts.
sure, you have *maybe* 5-6 democrats who are slightly left of center, but there are zero democratic far leftists or stalwart progressives.

 

[lpetrich]

The United States is backsliding into autocracy under Trump, scholars warn - The Washington Post - "The weakening of democratic values — a path that’s difficult to reverse — has accelerated, according to hundreds of indicators assessed each year"

Three years into the Trump administration, American democracy has eroded to a point that more often than not leads to full-blown autocracy, according to a project that tracks the health of representative government in nations around the world.

Then V-Dem's result that only 1 out of 5 democracies that head for autocracy will be able to reverse that trend.

“The United States is not unique” in its decline, said Staffan I. Lindberg, a political scientist at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg and a founding director of the project. “Everything we see in terms of decline on these indicators is exactly the pattern of decline” seen in other autocratizing nations, like Turkey and Hungary, both of which ceased to be classified as democracies in recent years.

The V-Dem project assesses nations on a large number of measures of democracy, like "the presence of legislative checks on executive power, freedom of personal expression, the civility of political discourse, free and open elections, and executive branch corruption, among others."

The United States is backsliding on all of those measures. “Executive respect for the Constitution is now at the lowest level since 1865,” said Michael Coppedge, a Notre Dame political scientist and one of the project’s chief investigators. “Corruption in the executive branch is basically the worst since Harding.”

That's Warren Harding, an early 1920's President whose admin was one of the most corrupt ever.

Executive respect for the Constitution has been roughly constant since at least the late 1940's, with only minor fluctuations, but it has made a sizable dip in the Trump Presidency.

Trump, for instance, has repeatedly floated the idea of staying in office longer than the constitutionally mandated two terms. The businesses he owns have profited from repeated presidential visits, and federal courts are currently weighing whether he has violated the Constitution’s prohibition against accepting payments from foreign governments. And several current and former members of his inner circle — including Stephen K. Bannon, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone — have been arrested or indicted since he took office.

...
Nyhan says he is most concerned about Trump’s repeated attacks on the integrity of U.S. elections. Trump recently said that “the only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged,” for instance, and habitually casts vote-by-mail efforts as inherently fraudulent. Both beliefs are false.

...
“Democracy depends on both sides accepting the results of free and fair elections and willingly turning over power to the other side if they lose,” Nyhan said. “We’ve never had a president attack our electoral system in this way.”

Lindberg refers to presidential attacks on the pillars of democracy as “dictator drift,” and says it’s a common feature of authoritarian leaders around the world.

Like by Erdogan in Turkey, Lukashenko in Belarus, Orban in Hungary, and a lot of leaders in Africa.

 

[lpetrich]

Lindberg talks about the Republican Party's "sultanism", abandoning core principles to do whatever its leader wants. Like not creating a 2020 platform and instead doing what Trump wants.

Lindberg is also deeply troubled by the president’s history of endorsing violence against his perceived political opponents. “This is the precursor of civil war,” he said. “Imagine that Trump loses by a margin that’s not convincing to all his supporters. He refuses to leave the office and encourages his supporters to ‘go out and defend the Constitution.' ”

The article links to
Full article: A third wave of autocratization is here: what is new about it?

But for background, I must mention  Waves of democracy a concept popularized by historian Samuel Huntington. In between were waves of autocracy, as they might be called.

The first wave of democracy was roughly over 1828-1926, beginning at when all US white men got the vote ("Jacksonian democracy"). Then France, Britain, Canada, Australia, Italy, Argentina, Switzerland, and a few others before 1900. It reached its peak at the breakup of the German, Austrian, Russian, and Ottoman empires in 1918, at the end of the Great War, making a total of 29 democracies.

The first wave of autocracy started in 1922, with Benito Mussolini's Fascists taking over in Italy. It mainly hurt the newer democracies, which could not hold off Fascist, Communist, and militaristic movements which rejected democracy. At its peak, there were only 12 democracies remaining in the world.

The second wave of democracy started after the Allied victory in WWII, and it peaked in 1962 with 36 recognized democracies.

The second wave of autocracy started around then, with only 30 democracies in its peak.

The third wave of democracy started in 1974, with Portugal's Carnation Revolution, and included many Latin American countries, Asia-Pacific ones, ex-Communist Eastern European ones, and sub-Saharan African ones. By 1995, the only non-democratic Latin American countries were Haiti and Cuba.

There were hints of a third wave of autocracy as far back as 2003, with "democratic breakdown" in Paraguay and Venezuela, according to one article.

 

[Harry Bosch]

That's crazy. How do you justify that? Reagan was pro-life, anti affirmative action, wanted smaller safety net, lower taxes for the rich, took government away from colleges, no minimum wage, dramatically increased military spending, was anti gay, very anti environment, and etc. On what possible issues do current democrats agree with Reagan on?

if you look at what they actually vote on, what they put in their speeches and campaigns, and what ends up being on their legislative agenda in the rare instances that they're in power, you'll find that most dems are all on board with that list, or at least ambivalent on it.

the vast majority of democrats are pro-corporate and pro-life, and only the most token gesture towards pro-society and pro-choice that is required to maintain their vote counts.
sure, you have *maybe* 5-6 democrats who are slightly left of center, but there are zero democratic far leftists or stalwart progressives.

Could you please provide some data that a majority of democrats are pro-life? Of course many democrats are pro-corporate and pro economic development. They represent city folks and professionals who like their jobs and their way of life. I hate to point out the obvious, but the Trump voters took around half the votes in one of the greatest turnouts in US history. The belief that there is this army of far left voters just pining for far left politicians to vote for is deluded.

 

[Angry Floof]

Starting to? They've been at this for years, decades. There are numerous people and groups of the Steve Bannon type but less known who traipse around the globe spreading their religious-political dogma behind the scenes, hijacking messaging and prejudice. Australia and the UK have been right behind us in the progression of right wing authoritarian disease. Canada is on that path as well even though they, like Australia and the UK, and the US before them, think they are too enlightened or too liberal or too progressive or too educated or too smart or whatever to have any need to pay attention to the symptoms of the disease of fascism, and there is no better way to be overcome by fascism than to believe you are immune.

But I guess it's good that the media are starting to talk about it.

 

[lpetrich]

Full article: A third wave of autocratization is here: what is new about it? - about a third wave of autocracy that seems to be happening.

This wave unfolds slow and piecemeal making it hard to evidence. Ruling elites shy away from sudden, drastic moves to autocracy and instead mimic democratic institutions while gradually eroding their functions.

... Thus, the affected countries remain more democratic than their equivalents hit by earlier waves of autocratization.

How autocratization happens has also changed, from more blatant forms to more subtle forms. Military coups and election fraud are not as common as they earlier were, but harassment of opposition, reduction of media freedom and space for civil society, and "executive aggrandizement" have become more common. The latter involves reduction of checks on executive power.

Here in the US, the President has gradually acquired more and more power, prompting concerns about an "Imperial Presidency", a phrase from Richard Nixon's Presidency. But even after Trump is gone, as he very likely will soon be, Congress will be in a poor state to exercise leadership, given how divided it will likely be. Mitch McConnell's preference for obstructionism rather than for action will only make it worse for Congress.

"This is important because the archetype of dramatic reversals to closed autocracy is becoming rare – as are closed autocracies." Those that don't try to appear to be representative democracies. They were about 1/2 of regimes in 1980, but are now only 12%. "Contemporary autocrats have mastered the art of subverting electoral standards without breaking their democratic façade completely." As of 2017, some 56% of countries qualify as democracies and 32% are "electoral autocracies", something sometimes called "illiberal democracy".

Aspiring autocrats are learning to subvert the democratic process rather than do anything spectacular, like do coups or blatantly steal elections.

Here we present the first ever comprehensive identification of the 217 autocratization episodes taking place in 109 countries from 1900 to 2017 (Table A1 in the Appendix) leaving only 69 states unaffected (Table A2 in the Appendix).71 This count includes 33 countries classified as autocracies in 2017 such as North Korea and Angola who seem to be caught in an “autocracy trap” and due to the “floor effect” never had much possibility to become worse. The remaining 36 “non-autocratizers” are classified as democracies in 2017. This group consists mainly of countries with a long democratic history, such as Sweden and Switzerland, or that democratized recently, such as Bhutan and Namibia. Additionally, seven countries experienced autocratization solely due to foreign invasion during the two World Wars.72

Eastern European Communism comes to mind for that latter one.

 

[ideologyhunter]

More importantly, it's plutocracy. The autocracy is a way to advance the plutocracy, not the other way around. Good recent book on the subject, which I'm reading now: Let Them Eat Tweets, by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson.

 

[lpetrich]

Roughly 2/3 of autocratization episodes took place in already authoritarian states. Many of them were in Africa, where they reversed democratic gains. The other 1/3 were in democratic nations, and they tended to stay autocracies.

The authors delineate the two previous waves of autocracy:

1. 1926 - 1942 (SH 1922 - 1942)
2. 1961 - 1977 (SH 1960 - 1975)

SH = Samuel Huntington's identification

In each wave: 32, 62, 75

Democracies are more vulnerable this time around partly because there are more of them.

"In democracies: the third wave of autocratization has a legal facade"

The first and second waves of reversals were almost completely dominated by the “classic” form of autocratization tactics of illegal access to power, such as a military coup (39% of episodes) or foreign invasion (29%), and by autogolpes, where the chief executive comes to power by legal means but then suddenly abolishes key democratic institutions such as elections or parliaments (32%).

Autogolpe = auto-coup. That's how Adolf Hitler came to power. His Nazi Party got into the German Reichstag, then formed a coalition with some other parties. The Reichstag Fire was a convenient pretext for claiming extra powers, and left-wing parties were soon outlawed. Some months later, the Nazis outlawed all parties other than theirs, including their coalition partners. Those parties then meekly shut themselves down.

 

[lpetrich]

Canada is on that path as well even though they, like Australia and the UK, and the US before them, think they are too enlightened or too liberal or too progressive or too educated or too smart or whatever to have any need to pay attention to the symptoms of the disease of fascism, and there is no better way to be overcome by fascism than to believe you are immune.

Stephen Harper is an obvious example of that.

Justin Trudeau's backing off from electoral reform is horrible.

 

[prideandfall]

Could you please provide some data that a majority of democrats are pro-life?

i think before i do that and get into what is essentially a semantics argument i should point out that i tend to think of the term "pro-life" a bit broadly, meaning "in support of spewing out babies at all costs" and not simply "in opposition to legal abortion" so that's my fault for using a common term in a personal way.

anyways most dems seem to at least "pro-birth" and softly "pro-choice", but as someone who's position is that "abortion on demand without apology or explanation" is the only morally viable argument, i find being soft pro-choice barely tolerable.
most dems seem to be fine with restrictions and getting mired in a debate about when 'life' begins and... this is really all a distraction. my point wasn't to get too much into the weeds on a given issue, it was to highlight that 'far left' doesn't exist in US politics.

Of course many democrats are pro-corporate and pro economic development. They represent city folks and professionals who like their jobs and their way of life. I hate to point out the obvious, but the Trump voters took around half the votes in one of the greatest turnouts in US history. The belief that there is this army of far left voters just pining for far left politicians to vote for is deluded.

i mean... ok? i never asserted that there is an army of far left voters, so i'll take that statement as generally true but i don't see how it applies to me specifically.

 

[lpetrich]

"In democracies: the third wave of autocratization is gradual" - the authors propose a "maximum annual depletion rate" - depletion in what democratic norms they follow.

• Germany 1930-35: 26%
• Turkey 2008-17: 7%
• Russia 1993-2017: 5%

Germany's big burst happened in 1933, the year of the Reichstag Fire, something that Adolf Hitler and his henchmen exploited to do a coup from the inside.

The first and second waves had much faster breakdown than the third wave, a median of 31% in the first two vs. 8% in the third. "The most sudden breakdowns occurred after the German invasion in the Czech Republic (55%) and in the Netherlands (52%) during World War II."

"The rate of autocratization of democracies has dropped significantly (r = −0.66, dashed line on Figure 4) over time." While the number of democracies has increased over that time.

The sudden forms of autocratization – invasions, military coups, autogolpes –always result in a democratic breakdown. Even democratic erosion processes are more often than not lethal for democracy: 18 (55%) of them have resulted in democratic breakdowns; only 5 (15%) processes have stopped before democracy broke down and 10 (30%) were still ongoing in 2017.