Around the world, rising populists and angry electorates are putting pressure, sometimes deliberately, on what Mr. Levitsky called democracy’s “two conflicting imperatives: majority rule and liberalism.” That contradiction “is as old as liberal democracy itself,” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard University political scientist. That vision of democracy as rule by the people persists, still heard in classrooms and in campaign rallies, where citizens are told that their authority is paramount. It has set up voters for shock and outrage when they discover, time and again, that they are not as powerful as they’d thought. The checks imposed on popular will can feel like democracy failing — though it’s actually the system working as intended — provoking angry backlashes... NYT - When More Democracy Isn’t More Democratic - NYTThey say all politics is local. I'm fascinated by the machinations I've seen in the UFT and in the various caucuses. I try to connect things to local conditions. Though this is NYT piece is mostly about BREXIT and populism, a key point it makes about tyranny of the majority applies to UFT/Unity and to the MORE Caucus where all checks on majority rule have been removed as one faction has taken control. And there is also a nascent but small right wing leaning populist sentiment in the UFT -- I will delve deeper in follow-ups.
Also see:
Federalist No. 51 (1788) In this Federalist Paper, James Madison explains and defends the checks and balances system in the Constitution. ... Madison also discusses the way republican government can serve as a check on the power of factions, and the tyranny of the majority.
And Federalist Papers No. 51 - Bill of Rights Institute
Madison defines a faction
as "a number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or majority
of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of
passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to
the permanent and aggregate interests of the community".
When More Democracy Isn’t More Democratic - NYT
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/21/world/europe/democracy-brexit-populism.html
By Max Fisher and Amanda Taub
LONDON
— To hear some British politicians tell it, they are mere servants.
They can only execute popular will, whatever the cost to the country or
themselves. To do otherwise would be to betray democracy itself.
“The
will of the British people is an instruction that must be delivered,”
Prime Minister David Cameron said after voters narrowly approved leaving the European Union in a 2016 referendum, though this meant both his resignation and, in his telling, devastation to the British economy.
Yet
lawmakers also believe they must determine for themselves how to serve
Britain’s best interests. Prime Minister Theresa May, Mr. Cameron’s
successor, justified her plan for withdrawal, or Brexit, as the best way
forward, even if it was not the most popular.
Voters
seem to share these dual expectations. The British government, many
believe, should first and foremost safeguard the national good,
including from the whims of public opinion, which has flipped
several times since the initial vote. But it must also respect public
opinion, as captured in that nearly three-year-old vote, above all else.
That
contradiction “is as old as liberal democracy itself,” said Steven
Levitsky, a Harvard University political scientist. But it is growing
sharper and more destabilizing, he said, and not just in Britain.
Around
the world, rising populists and angry electorates are putting pressure,
sometimes deliberately, on what Mr. Levitsky called democracy’s “two
conflicting imperatives: majority rule and liberalism.”
In
Western countries, white majorities are challenging rights long
promised to minority groups and outsiders. Populist leaders, including
President Trump, are clashing with institutions that they say oppose
popular will. Political establishments weaken every year.
The
result is a widening divide between two visions of democracy. There is
the ideal of rule by the people. And there is the more complicated
reality, in which institutions and representatives balance majority
opinion against considerations like universal rights and the common
good.
Unable
to reconcile those contradictory demands, once solid-seeming
democracies are breaking down. Faith in a system that makes two
contradictory promises is declining. The resulting chaos, far from
elevating one vision of democracy over the other, could weaken both.
The Democratic Ideal, and the Reality
Democracy may have begun as the idea that authority comes from the people, but there was always more to it.
As
its modern form first took hold, philosophers and revolutionaries
debated how to balance several lofty ambitions, of which popular rule
was just one. And they fretted over how to make their new system last.
They
concluded that democracy could never work as “simply the rule of public
opinion,” said Nadia Urbinati, a Columbia University scholar of
democracy. It would need “rules and procedures” to guard against
factionalism, an abusive majority or a power-hungry leader.
They
converged on a system in which “elections are just one leg,” alongside a
second leg of rules, rights and institutions, she said. “Without that,
we don’t call it a democracy.”
Edmund Burke, the 18th-century Irish philosopher, argued
that an elected leader’s duty required both listening to constituents
and putting his or her “mature judgment” ahead of their whims.
During debates over the American Constitution, James Madison warned in one of the essays that became the Federalist Papers
that unbridled majoritarianism had made earlier democracies “as short
in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” Only “a
republic” of representatives subject to rules and institutions as well
as the public, he wrote, “promises the cure for which we are seeking.”
Such
treatises formed the basis of today’s democracies, in which the
people’s will is carefully incorporated but rarely intended to dominate.
But that is not quite how this new system won the consent of everyday citizens.
The
first democracies built their legitimacy on that of monarchies, then
common, with a few proper nouns swapped around. “Instead of having one
king, you have a collective king, the people,” Ms. Urbinati said.
That
vision of democracy as rule by the people persists, still heard in
classrooms and in campaign rallies, where citizens are told that their
authority is paramount.
It has set up
voters for shock and outrage when they discover, time and again, that
they are not as powerful as they’d thought. The checks imposed on
popular will can feel like democracy failing — though it’s actually the
system working as intended — provoking angry backlashes.
Prime
Minister David Cameron announcing his resignation in 2016 after British
voters approved leaving the European Union in a referendum.
Brexit’s Democracy Problem
Brexit is a near perfect encapsulation of this contradiction.
Mr.
Cameron and others sold the 2016 referendum as handing power to the
people (never mind that the prime minister, confident that the measure
would never pass, was really just looking for a political fig leaf). But it has left Britons more politically disaffected than at any other point in years.
Members
of the 48 percent who voted to remain in the European Union have asked
why a slim majority should dictate the nation’s fate. Lately, with the
polls having turned against Brexit, it can feel like raw majoritarian
rule by a majority that no longer exists.
Meanwhile,
Britons who voted to leave have watched lawmakers fight over widely
divergent plans, none of which enjoy majority popular support. There is speculation about a second referendum that might overturn the first, feeding suspicion that the establishment never intended to follow the people’s will.
Referendums
can end up feeling less democratic than promised in part, political
scientists argue, because they are not actually all that democratic.
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They
tend to be volatile, turning on unrelated political events or even the
weather, which is thought to have influenced Colombia’s 2016 referendum on a peace deal
with insurgents. They are notoriously poor at reflecting public
opinion, particularly on a complex issue like Brexit. And they force
majoritarian rule onto a political system that is designed to resist it,
setting up voters and leaders for collision.
But
even if democracies are not designed for direct popular rule, democracy
is often idealized as being exactly that, making it nearly impossible
for British leaders to justify ignoring the 2016 vote. Even many who
wish to do so are arguing for holding a second referendum, repeating the same risks as in the first.
President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil promised to put the will of people over that of the establishment.CreditAndre Penner/Associated Press
Widening Fissures
Challenges to liberal democracy’s checks on popular input are growing globally.
In France, protesters known as the Yellow Vests,
not content to defer national policy to Emmanuel Macron, the centrist
president, have demanded that the country hold regular referendums on
new legislation.
The Alternative for Germany,
a far-right party, has also pushed for referendums, including on
whether to leave the European Union. Though the party is unlikely to get
its wish, merely asking allows it to portray itself as a champion of
popular will against an unresponsive establishment.
Some elected leaders are governing as if by never-ending referendum, pushing for raw popular will to carry the day.
In
the United States, failing so far to get his border wall, President
Trump — as populist leaders often do when institutions stand in their
way — has portrayed Congress as opposing the will of the people. Then he
allowed the federal government to be partially shut down.
Other
populists have taken things further. The ruling party of Poland, after
portraying the judiciary as an obstacle to popular will, briefly tried
to purge
the Supreme Court. In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte told
the police that they could keep citizens safe only by favoring him over
the rule of law.
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Such crises are growing more common, Mr. Levitsky argues, because of a shift within democracies.
Leaders
have always needed the support of both voters and establishments to win
elections. Voters wanted popular rule, establishments wanted checks and
institutions; the two held each other in balance.
But
in recent years a series of changes, including the rise of social media
and online fund-raising, have severely weakened establishments’ power.
“Now,
politicians are learning that they need to be much more responsive to
voters than to the establishment,” Mr. Levitsky said.
Marginal
figures like Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, a longtime lawmaker and now the
president, can win by promising to empower popular will over the
establishment. That doesn’t have to mean abolishing democratic checks,
but it makes doing so far easier.
That
can be taken to extremes. A new generation of elected strongmen has
risen by exploiting the gap between popular expectations of democracy
and its reality.
Institutions and
rules really do limit the public’s role. Though they are meant to
protect universal rights and the common good, they can be portrayed by
populists as an elite conspiracy to subvert the people.
The
only way to save democracy, the populists argue, is for a strong leader
to smash those institutions and rule directly on the people’s behalf.
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This
can initially feel liberating to that leader’s supporters. But, as Mr.
Madison warned in the Federalist Papers, a democracy imposed “by the
superior force” of an “overbearing majority” may not always remain
democratic.
And sooner or later, with the establishment taken care of, strongmen tend to start going after the people themselves.
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