A recent New York Times carried a sobering headline: “Tunisia’s Hope of Democracy Unraveled in Political Failings.”
As the aspiration for democracy which marked the Arab Spring in 2011 withered in Egypt, Libya and Algeria, hope remained. There was Tunisia. The Arab Spring’s greatest hope for democratic change. Until now that is.
As The New York Times reported, “Disillusioned with the failure of their elected political leaders to make good on the revolution’s processes, Tunisians voted overwhelmingly for an inexperienced outsider for president in 2019. Two years later in 2021, that president, Kais Saied, swept aside parliament and most other checks on his power to establish one-man rule. Last month, he solidified his power grab in a new constitution approved by a national referendum. More than a decade after Tunisia threw off authoritarian rule, the only surviving democracy to have emerged from the Arab Spring was all but dead.”
I won’t try to go through all of the failed policies, the corruption, the turnstile, weak leadership (ten prime ministers in ten years) which led to this sad outcome. An overriding cause is something that is affecting us in the United States and in many other countries in a deep and alarming way today.
I refer to the demise of trust in government itself. I refer to sharp polarization and divides between people. I refer to the knee jerk tendency for legitimate policy differences to morph into absolute moral judgements, one person to another. I refer to opportunistic, self-centered leadership in contrast to character based, servant leadership. I refer to corruption.
Lastly and vitally, I refer to the failure to fight for democracy by those like you and me, who are in a position to know how precious democracy is and the overhanging, ever present threat to its continued existence
It is easy to forget that viewed across the span of history, democracy--inclusive democracy which confers the vote on every person, in fairly administered and respected elections--is an extremely rare and recent phenomenon. It didn't exist in the United Sates during the first 150 years of its history. It didn't exist in the monarchies of Europe through most of its history. Nor did it in the Ottoman, Austria-Hungarian, Chinese or Russian Empires over the centuries.
Moreover, democracy is a very frail thing. The history of governments in Latin America and Africa shows the enormous challenge of putting in place and sustaining a truly democratic form of government. As the "Economist" reports, since 2015 over a dozen presidents in Africa have ignored or abandoned term limits, some through constitutional amendments. There has been a string of both amendments and constitutional rewrites in Latin American countries, including Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela. But whereas previous waves of constitutional reform tended to put in place liberal principles, this latest wave goes the other way.
The inclination of leaders to seek power (and wealth) and for a majority of citizens to place their faith or be compelled to place their faith in a charismatic leader hoping they will be a savior is written large in history.
Yes, true democracy is fragile.
Whatever democratic character Germany and Italy evidenced in the late 1800s and the first decades of the 20th century was overwhelmed by Hitler and Mussolini and their cronies. They leveraged the power of victimhood and the claim of unique national and racial superiority to assert dictatorial control. Those who saw the threat of what was happening underrated the risk, felt they could control it, and with few exceptions failed to speak up and unite. Most of them perished.
The sprouting of hope that Russia and China were moving to more democratic forms of government which many people, including me, felt in the 1990s and early 2000s, has been quashed. Similarly, over the past decade, we have seen the erosion of democracy in countries ranging from Hungary, Poland and most recently and alarmingly to India.
This brings me to the situation we face today in the United States.
It’s all too easy for us in the United States--and by "us" I include "me"--to reach the comforting conclusion that while there is some risk of our democracy eroding, we don't need to fear a calamitous end. Why is this? We take reassurance in the protection afforded by the "checks and balances" of our government. We look to the shared responsibilities of the Executive (Presidential), Legislative and ultimately the Judicial branch and the balanced role of the states and federal government to shield us from a draconian outcome. Above all, we look back on our history and take reassurance in having overcome challenges before. So, we assume it will happen again.
Is that a safe assumption? No, it is not.
There have been times in our history when all three branches of government were unified in denying the equal right to vote to Blacks and in other periods, Chinese. The Supreme Court, which we would like to look to as the final objective arbiter of what is right, has often been wrong in securing true democracy. Just consider the Supreme Court decisions in the 1870s which invalidated legislative acts which had conferring rights on Blacks. Or consider "Plessy v. Ferguson" which codified discrimination in the 1890s.
The recent Supreme Court decision to overturn the precedent of "Roe v. Wade" has further undermined the trust in this branch of government. Despite the claims of those judges supporting a pure "originalist" interpretation of the Constitution, court decisions have often, if not usually, reflected political inclinations of the judge.
What worries me the most for the future today is the dramatic decline of trust in virtually all our key institutions. The decline in trust in one another as indicated by our acute polarization. And as a result of all of this, the decline in trust in our very ability to govern.
There are numerous causes for this. Gerrymandering, with its accompanying demise of truly contested accountable elections, is a big one. My son David Pepper’s book, Laboratories of Autocracy, makes this abundantly clear.
My key point is that democracy in this country is on trial. We need to fight for it. We cannot take it for granted or assume that, because we have been able to retain it over our short 250-year history, it will continue.
There was no guarantee we’d remain as one nation at the time of the Civil War. It could have gone the other way.
There was no guarantee that Donald Trump might not have succeeded in overturning the 2020 election. That was his intent. He had lots of support and still retains much of it. It could have gone the other way in 2020.. In fact, we can't rule out its going the other way in 2024. Many of the Republican candidates currently running to be Secretary of State--a key position influencing elections outcomes--are declared deniers of the legitimacy of the 2020 election even to this day.
The alarm bells are ringing. We need to speak out and we need to act. To learn what to do, I urge you read my son David Pepper's book, Laboratories of Autocracy. In the final chapter, he pinpoints thirty actions we need to take to preserve our democracy. For each of us as individuals, they prominently include:
1. Working to elect candidates at every level--federal, state and local--who are explicitly committed to making it easy for every person to vote and to accept the results of fairly administered elections.
2. Support legislation and referenda that eliminate the corrosive impact of gerrymandering and result in congressional district lines that lead to fair representation, contested elections and hence accountability.
