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Challenges to Democracy in the 21St Century

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Challenges to Democracy in the 21St Century Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century Series Editor Hanspeter Kriesi, Department of Political and Social Science European University Institute, San Domenico Di Fiesole, Firenze, Italy Democracy faces substantial challenges as we move into the 21st Century. The West faces malaise; multi-level governance structures pose demo- cratic challenges; and the path of democratization rarely runs smoothly. This series examines democracy across the full range of these contempo- rary conditions. It publishes innovative research on established democ- racies, democratizing polities and democracy in multi-level governance structures. The series seeks to break down artificial divisions between different disciplines, by simultaneously drawing on political communi- cation, comparative politics, international relations, political theory, and political economy. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14889 Richard Rose How Sick Is British Democracy? A Clinical Analysis Richard Rose Government and Public Policy University of Strathclyde Glasgow, UK Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century ISBN 978-3-030-73122-9 ISBN 978-3-030-73123-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73123-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa- tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image: © Justin Kase zninez/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland To my wife, Rosemary, and her parents James A. and Clare Amberton Kenny. Preface The Need for Clinical Analysis Even though the body politic does not have a limited life, a flood of books claims that democracy is dying. Authors who celebrated the freedom gained by tens of millions when the Berlin Wall fell now lament what has happened since. In The Twilight of Democracy, Anne Apple- baum (2020) writes, ‘any society can turn against democracy. Indeed, if history is anything to go by, all of our societies eventually will’. For some social scientists the global economic collapse of 2008 triggered the Crises of Democracy (Przeworski 2019). The rise of populist parties is interpreted as creating the paradoxical threat of The People vs. Democracy (Mounk 2018). Within two years of Donald Trump entering the White House in succession to Barack Obama, two Harvard professors authored a post-mortem about How Democracies Die (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018). A Cambridge University professor has gone further, explaining How Democracy Ends (Runciman 2018). The durability of Britain’s democratic institutions does not mean they are immune to symptoms of ill health. Popular distrust in parties and Parliament is today greater than distrust in any other major institution of British society. The Conservative government has gone through three prime ministers in five years, and the Labour party fought the last two elections under a leader that most Labour MPs considered unfit to be prime minister. In the 2016 referendum on European Union membership, the majority of Britons rejected their leaders’ consensus about Europe and vii viii PREFACE voted to leave the EU. The Constitution Unit’s (2020) detailed review of government practices asks, ‘Are we heading for a democratic lockdown?’ A leading Conservative minister, Michael Gove (2020), has invoked the Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci to describe ‘morbid symptoms’ in the British government that require radical reform, and former Prime Minister Gordon Brown (2021) warns that the United Kingdom is at risk of becoming ‘a failed state’. Generalizations about the death of democracy are often supported by reference to the replacement of elected governments by dictators in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, such as the death of the Weimar Republic in Germany and its succession by Hitler’s Third Reich. They overlook the fact that the democracies that died did so in their youth. Similarly, in the successor states of the Soviet Union, democracy was aborted or died shortly after birth. None was a long-established democracy like the United Kingdom or the United States. The claim that democracy is dying is a forecast about the end point in an as yet incomplete process of political change. Social science theo- ries provide a means of forecasting future events from available evidence. Mounk (2018) draws on theories of economic stagnation, identity conflict and social media threat to forecast democracy in danger. Mounk cites the election of Donald Trump as president as a potentially fatal threat to democracy, and Trump’s reaction to his election defeat in 2020 was a real threat to American democracy. However, the inauguration of President Joseph Biden fits the theory that the institutions of American democracy are strong enough to check those who abuse their power, a theory devel- oped to account for the removal of Richard Nixon from the White House in 1974. The variety of political systems described as threatened with death indi- cates that British democracy is not alone in facing challenges to its political health. However, this book rejects the facile generalization that whatever happens in another country today will happen in Britain tomorrow. A generalization drawn from populist parties gaining power in Italy in 2017 can be refuted by the meteoric fall of the populist Brexit parties of Nigel Farage in Britain. The ability of an undemocratic party to win a signifi- cant number of seats in the German parliament has shown the resilience of democratic institutions: the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is treated as a pariah, ostracized when German parties form a coalition government. PREFACE ix When a Finnish populist party was co-opted into government, it demon- strated that participating in government is a threat to populists, for the party split rather than face up to the demands of government. The statistical analyses of political systems globally, like that of public health during the coronavirus crisis, can only provide statements of prob- abilities. Like a doctor’s examination of an individual patient, clinical analysis of the health of democracy in a single country has the advan- tage of being able to take into account evidence specific to its history and political institutions. To paraphrase Tolstoy’s epigram about fami- lies, ‘Among unhealthy democracies, each is unhealthy in its own way’. Evaluating British democracy within a national context avoids concluding from a comparison with the putative virtues of other countries that British democracy would be healthier if it wasn’t British. However, this does not mean that just because political institutions and actions are British they are necessarily healthy. Britain meets the minimum requirements for a democratic political system. Everyone can vote in free elections in which parties compete to take control of government by offering a choice of policies and candi- dates. Democratic political systems are resilient; the government of the day is accountable to the electorate for how it has governed, and voters periodically can re-elect it or eject it from office (Schumpeter 1952). A democratic election inevitably shows that more than half of the voters have voted for losing parties. In a healthy democracy, losers consent to the outcome of a free and fair ballot and can try to reverse the outcome at a subsequent election. Donald Trump’s refusal to give consent to his defeat earned him an unprecedented second impeachment by Congress for inciting an insurrection. Just because democratic institutions offer people the chance to vote for what they want, this does not mean that all of the policies of a democrati- cally elected government will be effective. Democratic institutions cannot guarantee a high rate of economic growth nor can they prevent infec- tion and death during the coronavirus pandemic. Democracy and effec- tiveness can be combined in four different ways. A government can be democratic and effective, as happens in Scandinavia, or it can be undemo- cratic and ineffective, as in Belarus. The political institutions of Singapore are effective in managing the results of undemocratic elections as well as managing the economy. Mediterranean countries such as Italy and Greece have democratic political systems
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