Latest / Saving the World From Bad Ideas / Bad Idea #30 "It can’t happen here" with Susan Stokes

Transcript

Bad Idea #30 "It can’t happen here" with Susan Stokes · Saving the World From Bad Ideas

0:00
The two key questions that I try to answer in my book, The
0:02
Backsliders 1, is why are we seeing the an uptick in
0:08
democratic erosion now at this moment in history?
0:11
So it really is since the beginning of the 21st century.
0:14
And what places particular countries more at risk?
0:18
And they're sort of a a same answer to those two questions,
0:21
and that is income inequality. Welcome to saving the world from
0:26
bad ideas. I'm Mark Linus and I've had a
0:28
few bad ideas in my time. I used to go out in the night
0:31
time to destroy GMO crops, and I also posed nuclear power.
0:35
But then when I looked at the science, I found I got it wrong.
0:37
Oops. I've learned the hard way that
0:39
none of us are right all the time.
0:41
So now I'm here to challenge the assumptions that we all too
0:44
often take for granted because the future depends on us getting
0:47
it right. Welcome to another episode of
0:50
Saving the World from Bad Ideas. Today I'm talking to Susan
0:54
Stokes, who's a professor at the University of Chicago, where she
0:58
directs the Chicago Centre on Democracy.
1:02
Her latest book is called The Backsliders.
1:04
Why leaders undermine their own democracies.
1:07
Susan, welcome. Thank you.
1:09
Great to be here. Great to have you on the show.
1:11
So the bad idea, which is the format that we use and the bad
1:15
idea you're we thought you could challenge is it can't Happen
1:19
here. And I chose that theme as a bad
1:22
idea because there was a novel, of course, called It Can't
1:25
Happen Here about the US being taken over by a dictator.
1:28
And I think it was published, you know, in the 30s at some
1:30
point. And it it sort of speaks to this
1:34
idea that it's literally incomprehensible to have an
1:38
established democracy like the United States fall into
1:42
authoritarianism. And yet it seems like it's begun
1:45
to happen. I was in the US recently, and
1:48
this was when Jimmy Kimmel was kicked off the air.
1:51
And then there was James Comedy, who is indicted.
1:53
And I thought, you know, things look bad, but maybe it's going
1:57
to be OK. Maybe this is normal.
1:59
And, you know, you look around and everything looks normal on
2:02
the streets. And maybe previous presidents
2:05
did similar things. But I think your book, which I
2:10
thought was just fantastic, helped me understand that
2:12
actually it's not normal. And that that that even more so
2:15
that there's a playbook that there's lots of leaders in lots
2:18
of countries who are doing the same kind of thing, essentially
2:21
almost word for word in in some cases.
2:23
And we can see from other countries following this
2:25
playbook where it ends up, it ends up in Hungary, ends up with
2:28
Turkey, or even worse, ultimately ends up in Russia or
2:32
Venezuela. So let's look a bit at this
2:34
playbook because you talk a lot about it in your book and give
2:38
us some examples of the strategies that that backsliding
2:41
leaders use and and where this has happened.
2:43
Well, thank you so much for having me, Mark.
2:44
It's, it's really great to, to talk to you.
2:46
It, it is a bad idea. It's a bad idea that we are
2:49
living with. I think every day I, I, I say to
2:52
people, we're in a curious situation now where we have a
2:55
government that acts as though it's an, we live in an autocracy
2:59
and we have a population that still pretty much lives as
3:02
though we live in a democracy. And the, the, the, the tension
3:05
is between those two things, sort of which is going to end up
3:08
being the stronger reality. And, and I think that we don't
3:12
know the end of the drama at this point.
3:14
So the playbook is a kind of depressingly regular set of
3:18
strategies that autocratizing leaders and, and, and let me
3:23
just back up and say, talking specifically about leaders who
3:27
come to power in democratic system.
3:29
So presidents and prime ministers who are elected in
3:32
free and fair elections, perfectly normal.
3:34
And then who turn around and start undermining their own
3:37
democracies, as opposed to full autocracies where, you know, no
3:41
one's elected or if they're elected, they're not elected in,
3:44
in, in real elections. So those autocratizing leaders
3:48
or backsliders or wannabe dictators do a predictable set
3:53
of things and they and they, they target a, a, a predictable
3:57
set of actors or organizations. The, the courts are a
4:03
predictable target. So they do things like changing
4:06
the composition of courts, packing courts, changing their
4:10
terms in Hungary and Poland that were they changed the they
4:15
imposed retirement ages to change the composition of the
4:19
courts. We had a version of that in the
4:20
United States as well. They attack the press.
4:25
So the press become the enemies of the people.
4:28
But it goes beyond rhetoric. It's also imposing censorship or
4:32
inducing self censorship, buying out, having friendly magnates
4:38
buy out independent press, media organizations.
4:41
They attack opposition partisan party members and and legislate
4:49
and legislatures, especially if they face serious opposition in
4:52
the legislature. They attack civil society
4:54
organizations. They might decide that they're
4:56
illegal if they get any foreign support.
5:00
I think the Indian government closed down something like
5:03
20,000 civil society organizations.
5:05
They attack universities, so there's a they fire
5:10
professionals in the, in the civil, in the civil bureaucracy,
5:13
in the civil service. So it's a very predictable set
5:16
of targets. Some of the attacks are more
5:20
more modest, more moderate, and some of them are more extreme,
5:24
but the targets are very are very similar.
5:26
Yeah, And I don't want to just talk about Trump, but Trump
5:30
literally ticks all the boxes that you just mentioned.
5:32
I mean, he's attacked the judiciary, he's launched
5:36
politically motivated prosecutions of opponents.
5:38
He's attacked the universities, obviously he's threatened NGOs,
5:43
endlessly, threatened the media. This whole trope about fake news
5:46
is a way of obviously discrediting the Free Press.
5:49
Journalists have just been basically kicked out of the
5:51
Pentagon because they would have had to sign a code which would
5:53
have meant they were parroting the administration's propaganda.
5:57
And recently he's put election deniers, you know, from 2020
6:00
actually in charge of the federal election electoral
6:04
machinery. So they'll be in pole position
6:07
to undermine any future elections.
6:09
I mean, any one of these would have been a huge red line in
6:13
the, in the pre Trump era. And yet we sort of, we sort of
6:17
become accustomed to this Blizzard of, of actions which
6:21
which all come so rapidly that it sort of confuses and
6:24
befuddles any, any opposition. And it's, it's kind of just
6:27
exhausting. I mean, is that actually also
6:29
part of the playbook? You know, it's, it's actually an
6:33
innovation. It's, it's so as of, you know,
6:39
two or three years ago, my colleagues who wrote about
6:41
democratic backsliders talked a lot about stealth, about their
6:47
acting slowly, gradually and in a, in a manner that was
6:50
difficult to identify. It was hard for citizens and
6:53
other actors to know, are we, is this an autocracy?
6:56
Is this normal? Is it not normal?
6:58
And the innovation with the second Trump term is this sort
7:02
of fire hose of executive orders, many of which violate
7:08
the rules, you know, things that we thought were were well
7:12
entrenched rules. Many of them violate laws,
7:16
violate the Constitution. Many have been deemed to be in
7:20
violation of laws. But they come at, they're coming
7:23
at us so quickly and over such a wide range of areas that it, it
7:28
does seem that it's, that it is somewhat strategic.
7:31
So one of the things that's different between the, the first
7:34
Trump term and the second is that there was a, as you, I'm
7:37
sure your listeners know, there was a, a, a kind of blueprint
7:41
for the second term called Project 2025 that was drafted by
7:47
people in think tanks, many of them with many years of policy
7:50
expertise, intellectuals, you know, policy policy geeks.
7:56
And so there, there has been a kind of plan of action for the
7:59
second term. The other thing that's different
8:02
about the second term that is allowed for this kind of fire
8:04
hose dynamic is that the Supreme Court's decision on the
8:10
immunity, the immunity decision last in the summer of of of 24
8:16
really liberated Donald Trump from any real constraints.
8:21
So he's able to do pretty much anything he wants and feels that
8:25
he also is presumably a lame duck, which also frees him from
8:29
some constraints. And then the people around him
8:32
feel free of constraints because he has used the pardon so
8:35
generously to protect people who run into trouble, the law acting
8:40
on his behest. So that's, that's kind of a new
8:44
thing. And it's a, and, and it's a, a
8:46
different, there's a different feel to it.
8:48
It's effective in some ways in sort of scattering our attention
8:53
and, and leaving people kind of unable to get any traction
8:56
around topics because the next thing is coming at you so
8:59
quickly. But there is an adjustment as
9:02
well. I think there has been an
9:03
evolution toward kind of putting a generalized label on what
9:10
we're experiencing in terms of the protest movements that the
9:14
label has been no kings in terms of the, the, the sort of that I
9:20
think the academic and and and sort of commentariat.
9:25
The label is autocracy. So it's happening now.
9:30
Interesting on it is it isn't something that we have to worry
9:32
about for the future. It really is is happening now
9:35
and it has many different manifestations which are hard to
9:38
keep up with, but it it it that's the general kind of
9:41
pattern that we're observing. Right.
9:43
And you've you've launched or Co founded an effort to try to rate
9:46
this called bright line watch. Tell us about that.
9:49
It seems to be a sort of expert elicitation, but essentially you
9:53
can give the USA rating because you know, like I when you're in,
9:55
when you're there, it's confusing and you look around
9:57
and there's people walking in the streets and everything looks
9:59
normal. And so you need to sort of way
10:02
to actually decide how far along the the line between, you know,
10:07
Sweden on one side or Hungary or Turkey on the other is the
10:11
United States at this point. And does does does bright line
10:13
watch answer that? So bright line watch.
10:16
We started it in early 2017 as an effort to get a kind of a, a
10:24
continual gauging of where American democracy is and the
10:29
the sort of core activity is a, a survey actually 2 surveys 1 of
10:34
academic experts of political scientists around the country
10:38
and the other of the of a representative sample survey of
10:41
the public. And we repeatedly ask our survey
10:46
respondents to tell us what are the most important aspects of
10:49
democracy. And we have a long list, you
10:51
know, I think 2125 different aspects of democracy and then to
10:55
rate where the US is on each of these, each of these dimensions.
11:00
And we have seen, you know, quite a bit of decline, ups and
11:05
downs. There's been some variation.
11:08
But there, I think that our, there was a, a survey that we
11:12
did this spring that ended up with a rating of the US is less
11:18
democratic than it has ever been, closer to, you know,
11:21
autocracy than it has ever been in the period that we've been
11:25
running these surveys. And I think historically you'd
11:27
have to, I don't know where you go back to, to find a, a similar
11:30
kind of period. So that looks, that looks
11:34
pretty, pretty grim. And we also ask our survey
11:37
respondents to tell us what are the most alarming things that
11:40
they're seeing happening. And, you know, we're getting a
11:42
lot of concern about violations of the rule of law.
11:47
There's been a lot of concern about extrajudicial
11:50
assassinations basically in the Caribbean now in the Pacific,
11:56
lots of concerns about the militarization of US city.
11:59
So you're right that you can easily, you know, visit the
12:02
United States and not think that any if you if you're not
12:04
watching cable TV, you're not watching the news, you're not
12:07
reading newspapers, you're not paying attention to social,
12:10
social media. You could perfectly well think
12:12
that this looks like the US you've always known, maybe a
12:16
little less so these days. I was just in Washington the
12:18
last couple days and leaving the metro, saw my, you know,
12:22
military police standing at the top of the metro.
12:26
There wasn't obviously anything going on that they had to worry
12:28
about, but they politely said good morning.
12:31
And then, you know, here in Chicago, we've had lots and lots
12:36
of, you know, very visible presence of Border Patrol, of
12:43
ICE and lots of of sort of tense interactions, to put it mildly,
12:50
between the citizenry and, and, and them.
12:52
I think the other thing that is beginning to maybe kind of give
12:55
us a feeling that there's a visual representation of the
12:59
degrading of our democracy is the destruction of the East Wing
13:02
of the White House. It seems that that is something
13:06
that's sort of alarming to people who haven't been paying
13:09
too much attention. It's such a symbol of American
13:12
government and American and American history, and to have it
13:16
all of a sudden going down before a bunch of bulldozers.
13:19
Apparently members of Congress are getting huge numbers of
13:22
calls about that in the last days.
13:25
Yeah, you sort of do need visual manifestations, don't you?
13:28
And I'm reminded of the debate pretty prominent before the 2024
13:34
election about whether or not this was fascism, you know, with
13:37
a capital F And obviously fascism came at in the 1930s as
13:43
at a particular point in history.
13:44
And, you know, we're somewhere very different now, you know,
13:47
nearly a century later. And, you know, there's no
13:50
straight line between what Trump's doing and, you know,
13:53
eventual concentration camps or something.
13:55
So it's just a debate you get into at all from a sort of
13:58
political point of view or, or or do you think it's just a
14:02
distraction? Because fascism is a word with
14:04
such strong historical connotations and linked to very
14:09
specific movements, I I don't use that term.
14:12
I, I do think autocracy and authoritarianism are appropriate
14:17
terms. And I see very direct parallels
14:21
between what the, you, the behavior of the US government,
14:25
the instincts of the leadership of the US government and other
14:28
autocratic leaders around the world today.
14:30
I mean, I, you know, I've just, I've just been reading about the
14:34
treatment of universities by President Erdogan in Turkey.
14:39
And it's, it's really the same, the kind of very similar
14:42
actions, very similar instincts. If there's a powerful
14:45
organization that disagrees with you, you, you harass its
14:48
leadership, you change its leadership, you, you try to
14:51
close it down and, and, and so those things look, look very,
14:54
very similar. One thing I've really struggled
14:56
with for a long time seeing this trend is why this movement
15:01
towards the erosion of democracy and the rise of this new
15:05
authoritarianism, authoritarianism has been so
15:09
widespread at this time across so many countries.
15:11
Is it social media? Is it some kind of byproduct of
15:14
globalization or something else? And actually, your book has
15:18
quite a persuasive answer to this question because you've got
15:22
a lot of evidence there. So tell us what really how you
15:25
how you explain the biggest risk factors that lead to this
15:30
increasing autocracy? The two key questions that I try
15:33
to answer in my book, The Backsliders 1 is why are we
15:37
seeing the move toward the, the, an uptick in democratic erosion
15:43
now at this moment in history? So it really is since the
15:46
beginning of the 21st century. And why what places particular
15:51
countries more at risk? And there's sort of a, a same
15:54
answer to that, to those two questions, and that is income
15:57
inequality. So when we engage in statistical
16:01
analysis to try to understand what are the structural features
16:05
that the countries have in common that are that that end up
16:09
eroding high levels of income inequality.
16:12
And wealth inequality is really the the, it, it really came out
16:15
surprisingly strongly. It's a robust, unshakable and
16:20
statistically pretty large effect.
16:24
Now to say that income inequality has that effect, that
16:27
there's a lot more that needs to be said.
16:28
What is it exactly about income inequality or wealth inequality
16:31
that that leads to democratic erosion or encourages democratic
16:34
erosion? And, and I can talk about that,
16:36
but just for the moment to sort of focus.
16:39
So we in the 21st century, the world has gone through a
16:43
powerful experience of, of globalization.
16:47
So countries in the global North and global South in different
16:50
ways have lowered barriers to, to international trade, to the
16:54
flow of international capital to some extent of peoples.
16:58
And those have those changes that globalization has created
17:03
income inequality and very, very predictable kinds of sources of
17:07
tension in societies. So in the global N where you
17:11
have the arrival of of people, it has tended to create
17:18
inequality by emptying out the manufacturing sectors.
17:21
That was a trend that was already underway in many
17:23
countries and also expose people to people from abroad, workers
17:28
from abroad. And so it's not difficult for
17:31
ambitious leaders to to come in and say you're being left
17:37
behind. The rest of the society is
17:39
growing. Look at your left behind and
17:40
look at these people who are, you name it.
17:43
They might be non Hindus, they might be non my guards, they
17:47
might be non Christians, they might be non whites who are a
17:51
threat. And they are, they're the reason
17:54
that you're that you feel like you've been left behind in the
17:58
global S. The tension from globalization
18:01
has more to do with the arrival of foreign goods and corporate
18:05
and corporations and investment. And so they're the, the, the
18:09
displacement and the inequality tends to exacerbate, you know,
18:15
class tensions, economic tensions, and there the, the
18:19
democratic backsliding, when it does happen, tends to be at the
18:23
hands of left populists. So the global N it's right wing
18:28
ethno nationalists who open the door to and and encourage the
18:32
kinds of trends in in political culture and society that allow
18:37
backsliding to happen in the global S.
18:39
It tends to be the left populist, the Lopez Obrador in
18:43
Mexico, Evo Morales in Bolivia, those kinds of those kinds of
18:48
folks. And, and it this, the, the
18:51
importance of, of income inequality in this process helps
18:57
us to understand. Just going back to your, your
19:00
very first question, you know, why is this happening in the
19:03
United States? It's was so surprising to
19:06
political scientists, to be perfectly honest, who have spent
19:09
their careers studying the factors that lead to to military
19:14
coups, which is the old way that we used to lose our democracies
19:17
because we knew that rich countries were very likely, very
19:21
unlikely to to see democracy breakdown.
19:24
And old democracies were also very unlikely.
19:27
And so here you have the richest and oldest democracy on the
19:30
planet that looks like it's going in an autocratic
19:32
direction. What's up with that?
19:34
So it turns out that you need different models, different
19:37
literally different statistical models and different
19:39
explanations for democratic backsliding.
19:42
And of course the US is a very unequal democracy compared to
19:48
other advanced democracies. The level of the level of market
19:52
inequality, that is inequality that just comes from the
19:55
differences in people's sources, you know, assets and, and work
19:59
is, is pretty high. And our, and our, our state does
20:02
relatively little to ameliorate those differences.
20:06
But we are very unequal country, and that's a.
20:08
That's, that puts us much more at risk of democratic
20:11
backsliding. And by the way, it turns out
20:13
that being an older democracy, and this isn't just about the
20:16
United States is this is looking at the at the range of countries
20:18
where backsliding has happened. Being an older democracy doesn't
20:22
isn't a a protection either. So the US looks like less of a
20:26
puzzle in light of the the modeling that I've been able to
20:30
do and the explanation we've been able to give.
20:33
And, and I can see there, I mean, the correlation is, is
20:36
obviously very strong and I can sort of understand why this
20:41
might be the case. But have you studied this at
20:44
all? I mean, is it, I'm asking, you
20:45
know, why income inequality seems to lead to this
20:48
authoritarian drift? Is it because social solidarity
20:52
fragments when you've got this huge gap between the rich and
20:55
poor? Or is it because, you know, it's
20:57
like a breach in the social contract and that leads to
21:00
political polarization, which is exploited by populists or, or
21:03
what I mean, do you, do you have an explanation for why that
21:06
you've got this association? Yeah, no, the everything you've
21:09
said is correct. And there are a number of sort
21:11
of pathways that lead from income inequality to democratic
21:15
erosion. One of them is a larger and
21:18
larger sector of the of the population that feels left
21:21
behind and and senses grievance. There are also effects of income
21:25
inequality on on the wealthy on the people at the top of the
21:27
income distribution. They tend to be more to view
21:33
those autumn and more as sort of beyond the pale and less
21:37
deserving of rights. There also are effects of income
21:41
inequality on partisan polarization.
21:44
So the more unequal the income distribution in a country, in a
21:47
state, in the United States, the more polarized politics tends to
21:51
be. And there are all kinds of
21:52
reasons why partisan polarization helps autocratizing
21:57
leaders. In fact, it helps them so much
21:59
that they encourage it as well. Confidence in institutions,
22:03
confidence in what you might call elite institutions, which
22:06
public institutions in general tends to to decline when you
22:10
have income inequality and many people who have that feeling of
22:14
being left behind while the rest of society is growing.
22:17
And yeah, a loss of confidence in institutions can be channeled
22:22
very easily into a kind of, don't worry about me messing
22:27
with the courts or the press or the OR the parliament, the
22:29
Congress, because these are empty, hollow, corrupt
22:33
institutions to begin with. So it's not like I'm really
22:36
destroying something of value. So that last loss of confidence
22:41
is is another factor that is, is this that's encouraged both by
22:45
income inequality and by ambitious politicians who want
22:48
to take advantage of those things.
22:49
So there are a number of things that connect income inequality
22:53
with with right wing ethno nationalism, with left populism.
22:58
And and then leaders come to power who, you know, it takes
23:02
the right kind of leader as well.
23:04
I mean, I don't want to it's not all structural.
23:06
There are also are individual fact.
23:09
When I say the right kind of leader, really I mean the wrong
23:11
kind of leader. So, you know, the structural
23:15
conditions of the United States were not very different under
23:18
Barack Obama and under Donald Trump.
23:20
But Barack Obama is a president who venerates our Republican and
23:25
Democratic traditions and institutions.
23:27
And Donald Trump is someone who doesn't care at all about those
23:30
things. So you need a leader who's
23:33
willing to say, you know, I don't care about tearing these
23:37
things down, and I see some advantages to doing so in terms
23:40
of augmenting my own power. Yeah.
23:42
I mean, so there's this question about whether Trump is a symptom
23:45
or a cause and you were sort of alluding to that there.
23:49
It's, it sounds actually like he's more of a symptom and the,
23:52
the otherwise why would these people arise in every single
23:55
country? I mean, there's always going to
23:56
be political entrepreneurs who who figure out that there's a
23:59
gap there in the political landscape and how to exploit it.
24:02
I agree with that, Mark, and I think that it's one of the
24:04
things that's interesting is to remind ourselves that they they
24:08
do the same things, but they have they speak in somewhat
24:11
different accents. So, you know, you have leaders
24:15
as different as Donald Trump and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in
24:20
our neighbors to the South in Mexico.
24:23
They're entirely different personalities.
24:26
And I can tell you that based on analyzing, using social science
24:29
techniques to analyze their discourse.
24:31
Trump is sort of sarcastic. Lopez Obrador is dour, another
24:36
really contrasting personality. And somebody like Hugo Chavez
24:40
in, in Venezuela, he was a happy warrior.
24:44
You know, Lopez Obrador was a, is a, is a, a leftist.
24:50
Trump is a conservative. They have very different styles,
24:57
different they target that, you know, they both, just to give
25:00
you a little example, both of them have attacked the
25:02
universities for Trump. The universities are too woke
25:06
for Lopez Obrador. They're too conservative or so
25:09
or neoliberal is the is the term of abuse that he used.
25:12
So the the the idioms, the personalities, the the
25:15
particular spin on why they're doing what they're doing can be
25:18
very different. And yet there's this kind of
25:20
underlying similarity to the logic and the logics is destroy
25:25
institutions, replace independent institutions with
25:30
with institutions that are dependent on the executive,
25:33
augment the power of the executive, undermine what we
25:36
call horizontal accountability, which is the ability of
25:39
whistleblowers and coequal branches of government and and
25:44
on and on to, to, to monitor and to to influence the behavior of
25:47
the executive. Undermine vertical
25:50
accountability, the ability of voters to hold leaders to
25:53
account and all of that. You know, so they, they, they
25:59
do, they, they are individuals. And without these individuals,
26:02
they, you know, without Donald Trump, I think we could have
26:06
survived for a longer period of time without this happening.
26:09
You know, our research suggests that we had, you know, nine
26:13
chances in a in 100 any given year with the levels of income
26:16
inequality and other structural factors to have a leader come to
26:19
power of this kind. But we could have gotten along
26:22
maybe for, you know, another 40 years without that happening had
26:25
it not been this particular individual.
26:26
But once they're once they've done what they've done, the
26:29
genie is out of the bottle. And it really does encourage
26:33
imitators both in your in a particular country and also
26:36
internationally. I mean, that's the other thing
26:37
to emphasize. These are, these are not
26:39
entirely independent events. Once you have a, you know, a
26:43
Viktor Orban out there, you know, inspiring right wing folks
26:48
who look around and say, Hey, I'd like one of those.
26:50
I'd like a government that works like that in my country.
26:53
You have a Hugo Chavez in Venezuela who rewrites his
26:57
constitution in ways that augment the powers of the, of
27:00
the president. Then you've got, you know,
27:02
admirers and of, of a left wing persuasion who want to imitate
27:06
those behaviors. So you know, it it's, you know,
27:10
it's a, it's sort of structure and agency.
27:12
It's it's individuals working in a in a given environment.
27:16
But, and, and Trump has changed our country forever and he will,
27:20
he will forever famous or notorious in our history books.
27:23
But but there is a kind of structural story to be told
27:26
about why this is happening. I mean, you would expect high
27:30
levels of income inequality to empower the far left, right,
27:34
because you'd point at the incredibly rich people and say,
27:38
hey, it's unfair, you know, the top 1% captured, you know, half
27:41
our national income or whatever, whatever happens to be.
27:43
So that that logically kind of makes sense.
27:46
What doesn't make sense so much is why it empowers the far, you
27:49
know, and has led to the rise of the far right.
27:52
You know, why do immigrants and minorities like trans people get
27:56
to blame when all the wealth's been captured by the Super rich?
27:59
Yeah, I know, wonderful question.
28:01
And as you know from my book, there's sort of a a back story
28:04
going back several decades, well into the 20th century, about
28:08
changes in the sort of the economic development and changes
28:13
in social structure in countries like Great Britain and the
28:16
United States and then a number of countries.
28:19
That meant that the size of the manufacturing working class was
28:24
shrinking. The numbers of the proportions
28:27
of populations that had university education was
28:30
growing. And so centre left parties
28:34
tended to change their appeals. They had incentives, just plain
28:38
old electoral incentives to broaden their appeals beyond
28:42
sort of union members in the, in the industrial working class to
28:46
more educated, more affluent urban dwellers.
28:50
And you know, you can see that happened in in the UK, it
28:54
happened in a number of countries, happened in the
28:55
United States, the the Democratic Party, which was
28:59
always a complicated animal because we're such a big
29:01
variegated country, but still. So those changes meant that by
29:06
1990, those parties, so Labour Party, Democratic Party, Social
29:13
Democratic parties in much of Europe, Northern Europe, we're
29:17
getting a smaller percentage of their electoral support from
29:21
working class voters or low income voters and a larger
29:25
percentage of their votes from middle class folks.
29:28
And that meant that there was kind of a loss of brand.
29:32
It wasn't as though the Conservative parties, the
29:35
Conservative Party in the UK, the Republicans in the US, the
29:38
Christian Democrats and so forth, really were kind of
29:40
stepping in to try to appeal to low income voters.
29:43
But there was a kind of a a loss, a kind of blurring of the
29:46
party identities of these leftist parties, left of center
29:50
parties. And then there was kind of also
29:53
a bit of a convergence of the center left parties and the
29:57
conservative parties around a project of globalization.
30:01
And all of that meant that there was kind of AI think it's
30:04
putting it too strongly to say that the working class vote was
30:07
orphaned. But there was a kind of a
30:10
somewhat of a loss of anchoring of those parties within those
30:14
sectors of the polity. And that opened up space for
30:17
right wing ethno nationalists. And what the right wing ethno
30:20
nationalists did was to position themselves a bit, you know, as a
30:27
bit more generous in terms of the welfare state than the
30:30
conservative part. The conservative parties
30:35
definitely decidedly more economically nationalist and
30:39
anti globalist. And then they added a kind of
30:42
very strong US versus them sense of identity.
30:47
So xenophobia versus a kind of inclusive pluralist version of
30:52
who The Who the people are who how do we define ourselves as a
30:55
people? So, you know, in, in my book,
30:59
you will have, you know, worked your way through a kind of an
31:02
illustration of, of these different changing party
31:04
positions in a, in a cube, in a kind of three-dimensional
31:08
illustration. And, and, but, but the point is
31:11
that there was a kind of opening up of a space that was very
31:15
tempting for what would become right wing ethno nationalists.
31:19
So think about reform in the UK. Think about the, the, the
31:23
Brexiteers earlier, think about the, the Trump, the micro
31:27
Republicans in the US, the Sweden Democrats, the Afd on and
31:31
on and on. So these there was new space for
31:34
those kinds of political parties.
31:35
They didn't always come to power.
31:37
And even when one they did, they didn't always undermine
31:40
democracy. But you'll know from my book
31:43
that I code Boris, the Boris Johnson government in the UK is
31:47
kind of a near miss that there was there were kind of shifts in
31:50
the direction of undermining democracy.
31:53
So the prorogation of, of parliament, you know, a
31:57
tightening of controls for, for on voting, tightening of kind of
32:02
repressive measures against protesters and so forth.
32:05
So they don't always undermine democracy, but they but they can
32:08
be they, they can, they can threaten to do so under, under
32:12
some conditions. So that's an answer to your
32:14
question. You know, why does the right,
32:16
you know, why does income inequality help the right?
32:18
Well, under the particular circumstances in which low
32:21
income voters were not well, did not see themselves as reflected
32:26
or saw themselves reflected in more and more blurry ways in
32:31
those centre left parties than they were open an open field for
32:36
for right wing parties. You know, I think maybe there
32:39
there was a gap for left wing populism in the global North and
32:42
you can see this with Bernie Sanders and AOC in the US to
32:45
some extent. But also I think working class
32:48
people are put off by the wokery and by the kind of elite
32:52
signifiers of, you know, the kind of cultural element of that
32:55
discourse. And so you've seen this complete
32:57
transformation now where the Democrats have become a party of
32:59
the, you know, the well off essentially, and the Republican
33:02
Republicans have become party of the working class.
33:05
And I want so I wonder whether the cultural aspects of this,
33:07
which you don't talk about too much in your book, but do you
33:09
think those have actually been a big factor in this
33:12
transformation? I think that the Democratic
33:14
Party got less and less good at talking to working class people,
33:20
you know, lower middle class people.
33:23
I think that they, they, the the party did become sort of
33:31
ferociously linked to certain policy positions that drove them
33:37
away from or made them less attractive to working class
33:41
folks in some parts of the country.
33:43
So just take abortion, for example, the Democratic Party
33:48
very strongly pro-choice and so much so that I think there was a
33:52
kind of lack of understanding for the, the fact that if you
33:57
were going to win, if Democratic candidates were going to win in
34:00
parts of the Deep South, there was going to have to be kind of
34:03
a broad tent approach and A, and a kind of willingness to allow
34:07
more Christian voices, more conservative voices on certain
34:09
social policies to, to, to have a place in the party.
34:13
If it made sense for them to have a place in, in, in other,
34:16
in other ways. I, I think that there is, there
34:19
has been a learning process. I mean, I'm not the only person
34:22
in the US who's saying, Hey, we have to re, you know, the
34:26
Democrats have to relearn appealing to low income folks.
34:29
So, you know, we have now a real struggle going on within the
34:32
Democratic Party. So Bernie Sanders, AOC do
34:37
represent an appeal to low income folks, but they're not,
34:42
they're very different from the right wing ethno nationalists in
34:44
that they're very pluralistic in terms of who the we are.
34:48
And so they, they're, they're better understood, I think as
34:51
more similar to the legacy Democrats sort of before these
34:55
transformations started to happen.
34:57
And there's a, there's a tremendous thirst for that.
35:00
The, the other thing I would add, Mark, is that political
35:06
leaderships in general, everywhere in all parties have
35:10
tended not to be representative of they're, they're, they're
35:17
wealthy folks, just individually, they're off
35:20
lawyers, highly educated, they're wealthy business people
35:24
and some of them are doctors. It, you know, there are union
35:28
members who become members of Parliament.
35:30
That's it's not unheard of, like the Labour Party has some of
35:32
those. But in general, there has been a
35:35
real kind of shift toward upper income people as literally as
35:41
the representatives of the people across the parties.
35:44
And so I just think it's harder for people who are not
35:48
experiencing life the way or have never experienced life in
35:51
the way that the average American, the average Brit, the
35:55
average Hungarian. What have you experiences it to
35:59
understand what that what that life is like.
36:03
I think we saw that in the US. We had, there were good reasons
36:07
to to think that even when inflation rates had gone down
36:12
under the Biden administration, that people really were still
36:15
experiencing tremendous, you know, affordability crisis.
36:20
And I think we didn't realize that.
36:22
I think the Democrats lost sight of that in part because of this
36:25
problem of of, you know, just literal representation.
36:28
I remember Trump going into McDonald's, I think it was, and
36:33
you know, serving burgers for a day or whatever, you know, as a,
36:36
as a political stunt. But he looked oddly authentic
36:39
there. And I, you can't imagine Kamala
36:41
Harris looking authentic serving Bergsen McDonald's.
36:44
And that's some sort of, so I could, I can, I can intuitively
36:47
understand his sort of working class appeal, although I
36:50
struggle to explain it, given that he's a billionaire and he's
36:53
always bragging about his wealth.
36:54
But somehow the right wing ethno nationalists, whatever you call
36:59
them, uh, populists, seem to be able to pose as tribunes of the
37:03
working class while at the same time a massive, huge wealth and
37:06
obvious and being in Trump's case, visibly corrupt.
37:09
Yeah, that no, you're right. I mean, the research suggests
37:13
that Trump is a little bit of an outlier in this regard that most
37:16
right wing ethno nationalist parties actually sort of locate
37:19
themselves in between the kind of legacy right and and and the
37:24
center left in terms of their championing welfare state.
37:28
So, you know, they, they're, they are more pro state
37:32
intervention economy, more pro welfare spending than the, than
37:36
the right. They don't approximate the
37:37
position of the left. It's not as though the left and
37:39
the and the right wing ethno nationalists have shifted
37:41
positions. That's true in general.
37:43
So, you know, in Sweden, for example, the sweet, the Swedish
37:47
Democrats are in a kind of tacit alliance with the, with the
37:51
ruling Moderate Party, kind of right wing coalition.
37:54
And they have pushed the Moderate Party toward more
37:56
generous welfare spending positions.
37:59
Now in the United States, we have an ersatz populist.
38:03
So Donald Trump has a rhetoric, as you say, that's kind of multi
38:08
vocal. He's he's, you know, he says in
38:11
speeches that he feels more comfortable with, with brick
38:15
layers and, you know, builders than he does with Wall Street
38:19
folks because he spent all his life with these people.
38:21
They're not really on the invitation list at Mar A Lago,
38:24
but you know, he says that he also brags about how wealthy is.
38:28
So there's a kind of up identification that he that he
38:32
manages people to feel. On the other hand, in policy
38:35
terms, it's there, you know, the, the, the Republican Party
38:38
is just as anti regulation, anti spending as it's ever been.
38:42
In fact, I think we had a somewhat slightly amusing
38:45
situation just recently. As you know, the government is
38:48
shut down here. The Democrats are insisting that
38:51
that healthcare spending be restored before they before they
38:55
cooperate to to reopen the government.
38:56
The the Donald Trump, who has the instinct to not, you know,
39:02
to, to not drive away his own folks, announced at one point
39:07
that he would be open to some kind of changes along those
39:10
lines. But it was the Republicans in
39:12
Congress who said no way. So they are more like the kind
39:17
of legacy, you know, what they would call rhino Republicans who
39:21
are absolutely steadfastly opposed to social spending and
39:24
and just only want to lower taxes.
39:26
So there's some kind of complicated thing going on.
39:30
Both Trump's own instincts aren't really populist when it
39:33
comes to policy and he's constrained more than you would
39:36
think by the the very strongly anti tax, anti spending position
39:42
of the of the Republican Party. So so they are exceptional.
39:45
They're the least populist in terms of the the real, the real
39:48
actions, the real public policy than than their counterparts
39:52
elsewhere elsewhere in the globe.
39:54
And that's why it's so confusing, though it's it's
39:56
almost like it's a gigantic contract that these far the far
39:59
right leaders. You know, defend the privileges
40:02
of the of the of the Super wealthy and, you know, it's tax
40:05
cuts for the rich and your average Republican budget now as
40:08
it always has been. And they do that while blaming
40:11
immigrants and, you know, minorities and and somehow
40:16
persuading working class people who would presumably stand to
40:19
gain from more socially democratic leadership to support
40:23
support the far right. One of the tricks in all this is
40:27
to downsize the state so that it doesn't it doesn't have much
40:32
capacity. It's not good at doing what it's
40:34
supposed to do. And then saying, see, the state
40:37
is not an answer. Government policy is not an
40:39
answer to any of these problems. If you maybe you're too young to
40:43
remember, but back in the Reagan era, there was, you know, the
40:48
Ronald Reagan's, you know, famously said the whatever
40:52
number of most terrifying words in the English language.
40:55
We come from the government. We're here to help one of his
40:58
advisors. This line was, you know, we want
41:00
to shrink this the state to the to shrink the government to the
41:03
size where you could drown it in a bathtub.
41:05
So when you do that, when you defund government, I think
41:07
you've seen this a little bit with the National Health Service
41:09
in the UK. When you defund these
41:12
government, you know, service organizations to the point that
41:15
they don't, they don't work very well, then it's easier to get
41:18
people to say, well, you know, I life isn't great, but you know,
41:22
but, but the, the, the government's not going to help,
41:25
not going to help me. I, I would say that, you know,
41:31
probably if you think about your country and my country, one of
41:35
the, one of the ways to unravel that puzzle is that we
41:39
traditionally have probably less class consciousness here or less
41:43
prone to kind of, you know, dislike the toffs and so on.
41:48
On the other hand, there is a, there are shifts in public
41:53
opinion. So the American public is more
41:57
open now than it was 1015 years ago, 20 years ago to increasing
42:03
the tax rate on wealthy individuals and corporations.
42:07
That's that's a real change. And that's something that the,
42:11
you know, that the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and
42:13
the the Democrats who are really out to change this problem, to
42:17
address this problem of a lack of connection with working class
42:20
voters are are, you know, that gives them an opening to some
42:24
different kind of public policy should they come back into
42:26
office. Yeah, I, I think there's
42:28
something about popular culture as well, though.
42:31
And, and Trump seems to be able to have his finger on the pulse
42:35
of popular culture in a way that the Kamala Harris and the sort
42:38
of Democrat elite never could. And I wonder whether there's a
42:42
kind of connection with the shamelessness of Trump as well.
42:45
I mean, you, you, you write in your book, actually.
42:47
And this line's struck stuck with me that leaders are less
42:50
likely to seek to erode democracy if they're in awe of
42:53
their constitutions and the state's founding generations.
42:57
And of course, you know, and you mentioned about the demolition
43:00
of the East wing of the White House.
43:01
I mean, Trump does not care about, uh, you know, the, the
43:06
history of the country, the Constitution, uh, has no respect
43:10
for the founding fathers for war heroes.
43:12
He's, you know, shit posts AI deep fakes from the presidential
43:16
account. You know, is this part of the
43:19
authoritarian playbook to sort of actually to me in the office
43:23
of the president? And if so, what?
43:24
What purpose does it actually serve?
43:26
So I think what is part of the of the authoritarian playbook is
43:32
kind of cynicism about elite institutions.
43:37
And the original title of my book before my editor got me to
43:42
change it was trash talking democracy.
43:44
So that is, you know, as, as I was mentioning earlier, income
43:49
inequality and the changes that we've seen leave people just on
43:54
their own to be more skeptical about what they see as elite
43:57
institutions. But leaders can foment that
44:01
cynicism. They can spread that cynicism.
44:04
And so doing and acting in ways that suggest that there's no
44:09
reason not to tear down all these institutions and start
44:13
over again is very much part of their, of the logic of their, of
44:17
their, you know, their strategies for power.
44:19
I guess I should also ask whether it's true.
44:22
I mean, I take it for granted that democracies are better
44:24
places to live because, you know, you've got rights and
44:28
you'd think everyone would prefer to live in a free country
44:30
than one which is controlled by by a dictator.
44:33
But then, you know, I don't have material deprivation and
44:36
lawlessness. So maybe democracy is a function
44:39
of privilege. And you can see I don't know,
44:41
China's doing pretty well at the moment.
44:43
You've got, you had Duterte in, in the Philippines and Brucelli
44:46
and El Salvador. And they came to power and were
44:50
very popular because they took on, you know, high rates of
44:53
murder and, and, and gang violence and so on.
44:56
So are are autocracies better at solving some problems?
44:59
So there certainly have been, you know, there are autocracies
45:02
that have managed to grow at very rapid rates.
45:05
The, you know, the growth of the Chinese economy and the lifting
45:09
of millions and millions of Chinese people out of poverty is
45:13
a, is a miracle. It's a, it's a, it's, it's, it's
45:15
an amazing achievement. But the research shows that on
45:19
average, over the long run, democracies actually grow
45:22
economically more quickly than do autocracies.
45:25
They provide better healthcare. The health of people in
45:28
democracies is better than those in autocracies.
45:31
Social services are better in democracies.
45:36
They're obviously, you know, they're, they're almost by
45:39
definition greater freedoms. Freedom of expression, freedom
45:42
of, of information, freedom of the press, freedom of movement.
45:47
Those things are are, you know, you're you're better off living
45:50
in a democracy than an ocracy if you care about those things.
45:53
So I think that it's it's easy to pick out an example here and
45:57
there or a period, a run of years where a given autocracy
46:01
has has performed better. But the but really the social
46:04
science suggests that that's there there almost are no ways
46:07
in which aspects of autocracies that would lead one to want to
46:11
live in them rather than in democracies, unless you thought
46:14
you were going to end up at the top of the the heap in terms of
46:17
of political power. And then maybe you would prefer
46:19
to be in a in a autocratic system.
46:22
So what countries have been relatively insulated from this
46:25
this, this trend? And what can that tell us about
46:27
how to perhaps save and protect democracy?
46:31
I'll start with an, an example from a, what might otherwise
46:35
have been a, a, a left populist experience, and that is Brazil.
46:41
So Brazil has experienced democratic erosion.
46:43
It a typically experienced it at the hands of a, of a, of a right
46:47
wing politician, Gyre Bolsonaro. But kind of wrapped around that,
46:52
that government have been a series of governments from the
46:56
Workers Party, which is a kind of a Social Democratic Party in,
47:00
in Brazil. And it's been led by individuals
47:04
who are, you know, who have helped build the institutions of
47:09
redemocratization in Brazil. So President Rousseff was a
47:13
political prisoner at one point under the dictatorship.
47:19
President Lula has, you know, was a a Union Leader who helped
47:24
push for democratization back in the 1980s.
47:28
And so those, those leaders are 1990s, those leaders have a, a
47:33
kind of a sense of the importance of democratic
47:37
institutions as protectors of their own parties of themselves.
47:40
And so when they've come to power, they have pursued
47:44
policies to improve the lives of the, of, of low income folks in
47:48
their, in their country and have not and have not at the same
47:52
time undermined democratic institutions.
47:55
I'm very interested in turning to the the the global N to the
47:59
wealthy countries. I found it really interesting.
48:02
You'll recognize the kind of three-way comparison that I make
48:05
between the United States, the United Kingdom and Sweden, where
48:11
you have a lot of the same kind of general patterns that have
48:14
led to the rise of right wing ethno nationalism in all three
48:17
countries and very strongly anti immigrant leaders in all three
48:21
countries. But the greater income equality
48:25
and a sense, I think a generalized sense among Swedes
48:29
that they have a social welfare state that is highly beneficial
48:34
has meant that even when the Sweden Democrats get access to
48:38
power, you don't see, no one is going around questioning the
48:43
questioning the the propriety of judges.
48:46
No one is questioning the confidence in elections in
48:50
Sweden. They're not beating up the, you
48:52
know, the, the, the press is not the enemy of the people.
48:54
So even though supporters of the Sweden Democrats are more
48:58
skeptical of institutions than our other Swedes in general,
49:01
there's a kind of bulwark against democratic erosion in a
49:05
country like that because relatively higher levels of
49:08
equality. Now, that doesn't mean that that
49:10
can that can't fall apart. And obviously we see some
49:15
northern European countries like like France, Germany, where, you
49:21
know, an election code could go a different way and things could
49:23
really change overnight. It's interesting to see that in
49:27
Italy you have the rise of a kind of right wing ethno
49:30
nationalist party or, or set of leaders to power who have not
49:34
pursued an, an aggressive agenda of, of democratic erosion.
49:38
So I, I think that those are the kind of factors that have so a,
49:42
a, a history, a sense of the importance of democracy for
49:46
protecting 1's own political party and one's own people in a
49:50
place like Brazil. And a kind of, you know, a
49:53
public that just doesn't have a so much hunger for a real kind
49:57
of tear down the institutions, burn it all down and start over
50:00
kind of attitude in a place. Maybe we should get serious
50:04
about dealing with income inequality if we want to protect
50:07
democracy. Well, we absolutely should.
50:10
I mean, you know, there have been, I think, a lot of reasons
50:13
that we already know about to worry about societies that are
50:16
highly unequal in income terms. There might, there are economic
50:20
reasons. That is, that is not a good
50:22
thing. There are moral reasons.
50:23
I think that it's not a good thing.
50:24
But add to the list that in If you invest in policies that
50:29
improve income distribution, you're investing in the
50:32
resilience of democracy. OK, last question, very quickly.
50:35
I'm going to ask you to look into the future.
50:37
What's going to happen at the end of Trump's term?
50:39
Is there going to be another free election in America?
50:43
Could I say 70%? Yes.
50:45
I think there's a, there's a good chance that there will be.
50:48
I think that we have civil society that thinks that we live
50:51
in a democracy and acts that as though we do.
50:53
I think we have judges, federal judges, courts below the level
50:57
of Supreme Court who have been very strong bulwarks against in
51:01
favor of the the rule of law. I think we have a press that
51:04
continues to be, you know, independent and does excellent
51:07
investigative journalism and keeps us informed about what the
51:11
nature of our society and our democracy.
51:13
And then we have all kinds of wildcards that could lead in the
51:16
other direction. So not sure.
51:21
Well, I guess that's cautiously encouraging anyway.
51:23
Your books called The Backsliders, Why Leaders
51:26
Undermine their Own Democracy. Susan Stokes, thank you so much
51:29
for joining us. Thank you.
51:34
Thanks so much for listening to Saving the World from Bad Ideas,
51:37
a Weplanet podcast. Weplanet.
51:39
It's a movement of citizens and scientists dedicated to
51:42
defending the science and solutions we need to save the
51:44
world. Please do subscribe and share a
51:46
nice review. It helps us spread the message.
51:48
We'd also love to hear your feedback and suggestions at our
51:50
e-mail podcast at weplanet.org. Please also join our podcast
51:55
mailing list and we'll let you know when a new episode drops.
51:57
Just go to Saving the World from badideas.org or
52:00
weplanet.org/podcast right now. See you next time.