[FRIAM] Democracy in Name Only: endemic regime instability

[Steve Smith]

Someone here is more likely than I to have actually read Ziblatt and 
Levitsky's How Democracies Die 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Democracies_Die#:~:text=How%20Democracies%20Die%20is%20a,process%20to%20increase%20their%20power.> 

A recent article (behind a subscribe-wall) included the following quote:

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2022-01-20/americas-coming-age-instability

    /
    /
    /America may no longer be safe for democracy, but it remains
    inhospitable to autocracy./
    /Rather than autocracy, the United States appears headed toward
    endemic regime instability.
    /
    /
    /
    /Such a scenario would be marked by frequent constitutional crises,
    including contested or stolen elections and severe conflict between
    presidents and Congress (such as impeachments and executive efforts
    to bypass Congress), the judiciary (such as efforts to purge or pack
    the courts), and state governments (such as intense battles over
    voting rights and the administration of elections). The United
    States would likely shift back and forth between periods of
    dysfunctional democracy and periods of competitive authoritarian
    rule during which incumbents abuse state power, tolerate or
    encourage violent extremism, and tilt the electoral playing field
    against their rivals./
    /
    /

I found this characterization of our plight very compelling, if also 
very disturbing.

It seems as if we have "tumbled our gyros" but in a different mode than 
the rhetoric about "Civil War" and "Descent into Autocracy" seem to 
suggest.   It also characterizes a lot of the aspiring/limping 
democracies we know of in the world today up to and including extreme 
examples such as Russia which fits the DINO (democracy in name only) 
label pretty well.

This conception of the problem lead me to a very well written HS 
student-essay by the same title: democracy-in-name-only 
<https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/democracy-in-name-only-2020-01-02>.

Within this essay was a poignant quote:


    In the words of Alexis de Tocqueville,

        “A new science of politics is needed for a new world. This,
        however, is what we think of least; launched in the middle of a
        rapid stream, we obstinately fix our eyes on the ruins which may
        still be descried upon the shore we have left, while the current
        sweeps us along, and drives us backward toward the gulf.”


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