Читать книгу Democracy Against Liberalism - Aviezer Tucker - Страница 10

This book is a political theory of contemporary, modern, and therefore neo-illiberal democracy. The scope is wide, including post-Communist countries in Central Europe, political movements and members of coalition governments in Western Europe, the Republican Party in the United States, Israel’s Likud government, India’s BJP government, and Brazil’s Bolsonaro. The neo-illiberal focus excludes from the scope of the book illiberal or authoritarian states that have never been liberal such as Russia, the Philippines, and Turkey. Authoritarian regimes that attempted to use some veneers of liberal legality and democracy, but have never been liberal and were only selectively democratic when it suited their interests and the results could be guaranteed, like Russia, Turkey, the post-reconstruction confederate states, and so on, are beyond the scope of the book.

Russia was an imperialist late-totalitarian dictatorship that imploded. In the 1990s, the state became very weak and, consequently, an unregulated and unprotected space for freedom emerged spontaneously, for civil society such as it was, as well as for crime and corruption. But Russia has never had liberal institutions, not even state independent religion and property rights. Following Putin’s restoration, the old secret police elite reasserted its control over a stronger though still quite weak state. Russian liberal-democracy did not die; it was stillborn.

In Turkey, a decades-long power struggle between a secular, modernizing, and authoritarian military and Islamist populists ended with the dramatic suppression of a military coup and the establishment of a hybrid authoritarian populist regime. During this struggle, the Islamists used democratic legitimacy against the military. But they never constructed liberal institutions, nor has there been much of a constituency for liberalism in Turkey outside the big cities of Istanbul and Ankara. The Turkish judiciary and press, though less weak than they are today, have never wielded the independent power they possess in liberal democracies. Erdogan’s post-coup consolidation of power and suppression of political opponents mark the end of the institutional independence of the military, and its submission to the state. The military is not a liberal institution.

After the defeat of the Confederacy in the American Civil War, the occupying Unionists forced abolition and democracy until they stopped enforcing the second, which led to undemocratic (Democratic Party) single-party rule. Democracy was foreign to the South and so it did not die there, but ceased to be enforced from without.

The liberal institutions of illiberal states in Latin America, like Venezuela and Ecuador, have been too weak for those states to be considered neo-illiberal rather than absolutist-illiberal or authoritarian. Their political permutations took place within broader cycles of populist democracy and authoritarianism, neither of which has been liberal. The Latin American transitions from democracy to authoritarianism were too quick to have encountered resistance from viable liberal institutions; they displayed none of the back and forth pushing and shoving between the executive and liberal institutions that is so typical of neo-illiberal democracy, and creates much of the sound and fury that surrounds it. Authoritarian regimes ebb and flow for internal and external reasons. Without pre-existing liberal institutions, there can be no neo-illiberal democracy.

There are obvious similarities in the “tool kit of dirty tricks” that authoritarian and illiberal regimes, including neo-illiberal ones, use to muzzle the press, centralize control of the branches of government, and persecute their opponents. They have obviously imitated and learned from each other. However, conceptually neo-illiberal democracy must be a liberal democracy to some noticeable degree first. Only then can democratically elected governments seek to “de-liberalize” the state, by inventing, borrowing, or imitating, by design or coincidence, the methods of authoritarians who meet weaker or no resistance when they consolidate authoritarianism, transfer power from one authoritarian elite to another, or expand an already illiberal state to destroy resistance in institutions or civil society. The similarities between Turkey and Poland, the United States and Russia, are only in some “symptoms” but not in the underlying etiology.

The British Brexit political crisis was initiated by the top-down introduction of an illiberal democratic instrument, the plebiscite, which had never been part of the British liberal unwritten constitution, though it was used before a few times in a consultative form and once (over changing the electoral system in 2011) in a binding form. This illiberal populist measure led predictably if unintendedly to a populist result. Other populist themes like xenophobia emerged subsequently in British politics. However, none of this amounts to neo-illiberalism or even to an attempt at neo-illiberalism. Britain is not and is not likely to become a neo-illiberal democracy, though it is likely to experiment with populist politics. British neo-illiberalism would have had to involve the British prime minister sacking the director of MI5 or the Special Branch before attacking the Lord Chief Justice over corruption investigations, while violating the independence of the BBC and transforming it into a propaganda arm of the ruling party, either by appointing party hacks to direct it, or by selling it to a friendly oligarch. An illiberal British PM would further appoint politically loyal judges, who would allow the imposition of a new written constitution and electoral rules to guarantee permanent gerrymandered majorities for the ruling party. The ruling party would also replace apolitical civil servants with party operatives and exercise direct control over the Bank of England. In England, last but not least, the government could instruct the Queen to dismiss the Archbishop of Canterbury and replace him with a politically loyal cleric, should he refuse to grant divine sanction to government policies. Sounds like an idea for a TV mini-series entitled “A Very Un-British Coup,” or a movie plot for Rowan Atkinson? England then is not about to transmute into a neo-illiberal democracy, even if it may have populist democratic governments at least in ideology if not in practice.

This book does not analyze “left-wing populism” because it is not illiberal, and it is unclear whether it is even properly populist. The media calls radical left-wing parties like Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, the Democratic Socialists who supported Senator Bernie Sanders, and so on “left-wing populists.” Neo-illiberal governments, whether of the right or left, must have conflicts with liberal institutions such as the judiciary. For example, during the years 1935 to 1937, F. D. Roosevelt’s executive came into such conflicts with the judiciary branch of government in the United States over the new deal’s left-leaning reforms. The Supreme Court attempted to block the new deal and, in response, Roosevelt planned on packing the Supreme Court with political loyalists, which in effect would have curtailed its independence. That would have been an aspect of left-wing illiberalism.

But nothing of the sort happened during the four years (2015–2019) Syriza was in power. I have seen no evidence that any of the “left-wing populist” parties or groups between social democracy and the Trotskyite vanguard have any such intentions. While the Greek governments that preceded Syriza were definitely populist (though not necessarily left wing) because their policies led to the destruction of the Greek economy, Syriza’s policies, aside from its ideology, were not populist. To avoid austerity, they did not want to pay back the loans of the Greek state. This was in the Greek national interest. It came into conflict with the interests of the European Union in general and Germany in particular. Since the latter held all the cards, they imposed their interests on the Greeks. This is not populist politics, but realist politics of interests. Maybe, if Syriza had not been so constrained, it would have embarked on economic populism that would have seriously hurt the Greek economy, but the fact of the matter is that it did not.

If populist left-wing rhetoric became policy, it may lead to a Venezuelan-type implosion through state over-spending beyond its means and credit. But it is far from clear that any of the so called “left-wing populist” parties would actually follow their own rhetoric. More significantly, it is unclear whether, if facing clear and immediate “Venezuelan” prospects, they would not step back from the brink, change course, and accept the constraints of the world we live in to become ordinary center-left governments. For example, when François Mitterrand’s socialists came into power in a coalition with the Communist Party in 1981 France, they sang the International on the day of their victory and attempted to implement left-wing populist policies. Within two years, they had to correct their course to prevent a crisis turning into a catastrophe, and ruled for the rest of the 1980s successfully as conventional center-left social democrats. As governments have come to rely increasingly on refinancing their debts on the international markets, the first sign of distress is usually rising costs of borrowing, which makes it more difficult for governments to pay their bills. They must choose then between default (as the populists do) or anti-populist austerity and reform (as ordinary center-left politicians do). Politicians, including “left-wing populists,” make promises that they cannot or do not intend to fulfil. The real test of populism is of policy.

The undoubtedly passionate aspect of left-wing politics is the fanatic insistence of left-wing populist voters on voting for a politician who expresses precisely their convictions, ideals, and passions. Populist left-wing voters shun compromises for the sake of building a broader, less ideologically purist, coalition that can actually stand a chance of achieving a democratic majority and face the test of cold reality. This is passionate political populism in its obvious self-destructiveness, guaranteeing fragmentation and political defeats.