Name: How Democracies Die
ISBN: 9781524762933

How Democracies Die

Mutual tolerance and institutional forbearance are two unwritten democratic norms crucial for a healthy and stable democracy. Coined by Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt in their 2018 book How Democracies Die, they are considered essential "soft guardrails" that reinforce a country's constitutional rules. Mutual tolerance Mutual tolerance is the shared understanding that political rivals are legitimate and loyal citizens with an equal right to exist, compete for power, and govern. It is the willingness of politicians and the public to accept that opponents are not enemies, but legitimate participants in the democratic process. When mutual tolerance erodes, it can create a cycle of distrust where politicians may demonize their opponents and treat political defeat as an existential catastrophe. Examples: A sign of mutual tolerance: A candidate who loses an election publicly concedes and congratulates the winner, even if the results are disappointing. An erosion of mutual tolerance: In the U.S., increasing partisan polarization has led many to perceive the opposing party as an existential threat rather than a legitimate rival. Institutional forbearance Institutional forbearance is the practice of self-restraint in exercising one's legal power. It is the act of not using every legal right to its absolute maximum, in order to preserve the spirit of democratic norms.

What Hacker News says

uniqueuidNov 2022

That argument makes no sense, because we do not want to mirror other countries.

Instead, there are substantial arguments about freedom of speech and accountability. Even though they are messy, they are what we need to apply here because they are a legally binding framework that we built over decades.

By the way, I found Levitski and Ziblatt's book "How Democracies Die" [1] a pretty good treatment of these issues of balancing freedom of expression and democratic resilience.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Democracies_Die

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SymmetryJul 2022

Well, presidential systems like the US has mostly don't remain democratic for that long, we were lucky to have the spoils system moderating ideological conflict for most of our history and a period of unusually low polarization in the time since it ended. We've been seeing round of constitutional hardball like regular use of filibusters on every bill by the opposition that would have been unthinkable in 2000. But on the other hand we don't have senators seriously trying to kill each other on the senate floor like we did before the actual Civil War so as pessimistic as I am I'd be very surprised if things got as far as a civil war within the next decade. I wouldn't rule out a serious constitutional crisis though.

EDIT: I'd highly recommend How Democracies Die, The Revolt of the Public, and Why We're Polarized for understanding the current circumstances.

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uniqueuidSep 2021

It's a normative continuum between full state regulation (i.e. totalitarian but defensive) and no state regulation (i.e. completely free speech but vulnerable).

The US is very liberal. Most European countries are leaning towards regulation.

See the book "How Democracies Die" for a summary of the three most prominent legal approaches.

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btillyJun 2021

Yes, and if you read https://www.amazon.com/How-Democracies-Die-Steven-Levitsky/d... you'll realize that once democratic norms have broken down on both sides of the aisle, the next thing that happens is the replacement of democracy by a totalitarian state.

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superdeedaJan 2021

I found How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt to be very accessible for a politics/history noob like me. It contains a bunch of examples from all over the world of countries that either fell out of democracy or managed to retain their democracy after it was under threat.

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pashamurJan 2021

There is a good section on this in the book How Democracies Die where they go into detail as to why fascists could not come to power in America before Donald Trump. Basically their argument was that the party structures performed gatekeeping functions and that populists could not even get nominated to a party ticket (even with massive popular support, comparable to that of Donald Trump - they give the example of Henry Ford).

Those gatekeeping functions were lessened after the violent Democratic national convention of '68 (where there was a clash between pro-war and anti-war factions) and primaries became a thing that actually mattered (in 68 Humphrey was selected by backroom insiders who did not participate in a single primary in that cycle, leading to public outcry). However, the gatekeeping effects persisted because of the control the parties still had over advertising channels and the media; that control fell apart post-2000, which setup the conditions that enabled a populist like Donald Trump to actually be elected to the presidency.

So it's not free speech that kept fascists out of power in the U.S., it's institutional gatekeeping (in the 30's and 40's).

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