Subverting Democracy

Extracted Attributes

Democracy

Democracy (from Ancient Greek: δημοκρατία, romanized: dēmokratía, dêmos 'people' and krátos 'rule') is a form of government in which political power is vested in the people or the population of a state. Under a minimalist definition of democracy, rulers are elected through competitive elections while more expansive or maximalist definitions link democracy to guarantees of civil liberties and human rights in addition to competitive elections. In a direct democracy, the people have the direct authority to deliberate and decide legislation. In a representative democracy, the people choose governing officials through elections to do so. The definition of "the people" and the ways authority is shared among them or delegated by them have changed over time and at varying rates in different countries. Features of democracy often include freedom of assembly, association, personal property, freedom of religion and speech, citizenship, consent of the governed, voting rights, freedom from unwarranted governmental deprivation of the right to life and liberty, and minority rights. The notion of democracy has evolved considerably over time. Throughout history, one can find evidence of direct democracy, in which communities make decisions through popular assembly. Today, the dominant form of democracy is representative democracy, where citizens elect government officials to govern on their behalf such as in a parliamentary or presidential democracy. In the common variant of liberal democracy, the powers of the majority are exercised within the framework of a representative democracy, but a constitution and supreme court limit the majority and protect the minority—usually through securing the enjoyment by all of certain individual rights, such as freedom of speech or freedom of association. The term appeared in the 5th century BC in Greek city-states, notably Classical Athens, to mean "rule of the people", in contrast to aristocracy (ἀριστοκρατία, aristokratía), meaning "rule of an elite". In virtually all democratic governments throughout ancient and modern history, democratic citizenship was initially restricted to an elite class, which was later extended to all adult citizens. In most modern democracies, this was achieved through the suffrage movements of the 19th and 20th centuries. Democracy contrasts with forms of government where power is not vested in the general population of a state, such as authoritarian systems. Historically a rare and vulnerable form of government, democratic systems of government have become more prevalent since the 19th century, in particular with various waves of democratization. Democracy garners considerable legitimacy in the modern world, as public opinion across regions tends to strongly favor democratic systems of government relative to alternatives, and as even authoritarian states try to present themselves as democratic. According to the V-Dem Democracy indices and The Economist Democracy Index, less than half the world's population lives in a democracy as of 2022.

Web Search Results

• The Crisis of American Democracy

  We often assume that one must break or change the rules to subvert democracy. But this isn’t always true. When changing conditions make it impossible to practice democracy as we did in the past, like when a pandemic makes in-person voting dangerous, failing to act—failing to update our rules and procedures—can itself subvert democracy. Malign neglect is an insidious form of constitutional hardball. It is hardly illegal to not act or to not pass legislation. Maintaining our traditional voting [...] History offers numerous examples of how fear of losing leads parties to subvert democracy. In Europe before World War I, many traditional conservatives were haunted by the prospect of extending equal voting rights to the working class. In Germany, for example, conservatives viewed equal (male) suffrage as a menace not only to their own electoral prospects but also to the survival of the aristocratic order. (One German Conservative leader called full and equal suffrage among men an “attack on [...] prevent it. Nearly all the most prominent democratic breakdowns across history (from Spain and Germany in the 1930s to Chile in the 1970s to Thailand, Turkey, and Venezuela in the early 2000s) have occurred amid extreme polarization. Partisan rivals came to view one another as such an existential threat that they chose to subvert democracy rather than accept victory by the other side.

• How Democracies Die - American Academy in Berlin

  Many government efforts to subvert democracy are “legal,” in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or ac­cepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy—making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process. Newspapers still publish but are bought off or bullied into self-censorship. Citizens continue to criticize the government but often find themselves facing tax or other legal troubles. This sows public [...] But there is another way to break a democracy. It is less dra­matic but equally destructive. Democracies may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders—presidents or prime min­isters who subvert the very process that brought them to power. Some of these leaders dismantle democracy quickly, as Hitler did in the wake of the 1933 Reichstag fire in Germany. More often, though, democracies erode slowly, in barely visible steps. [...] po­litical weapons, wielded forcefully by those who control them against those who do not. This is how elected autocrats subvert democracy—packing and “weaponizing” the courts and other neutral agencies, buying off the media and the private sector (or bullying them into silence), and rewriting the rules of politics to tilt the playing field against opponents. The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy’s assassins use the very institutions of

• Democratic Subversion - Part 1 | Beyond Intractability

  > _Subversion refers to a process by which_ the values and principles of an established system are contradicted or reversed in an attempt to sabotage the existing social order and its structures of power, authority, tradition, hierarchy, and social norms. It involves a systematic attempt to overthrow or undermine a government or political system, often carried out by persons working secretly from within. Subversion is used as a tool to achieve political goals because it generally carries less [...] Who is Responsible? While there is widespread agreement that democracy is in serious trouble, most on the left explain the problem in terms of the political right, which it sees as "subverting democracy," while the right makes the same charge against the left. [...] All three articles focus on the notion of "subversion" of democracy and Western values, as initially presented by Yuri Bezmenov, a former KGB 1 agent, who became disillusioned with the Soviet system and defected to the west. In a 1983 lecture, Bezmenov explained how the Soviet Union had a very long-term four-step program for destroying America from the inside out.Hirsi Ali, Atwood, Duran and Lakoff all assert that this subversive plan has, to a large degree, succeeded without Americans even

• The Democratic Dismantling of Democracies: How Leaders ...

  Around the world, democratically elected leaders are subverting the very institutions that brought them to power, gradually eroding checks and balances to undermine democratic norms. During what many are calling a constitutional crisis in the United States, a recent panel explored global patterns of democratic backsliding, drawing on firsthand experience from Venezuela, Thailand, and the United States. Moderated by Archon Fung, director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and

• Democratic backsliding - Wikipedia

  These findings suggest that aspiring autocrats may instigate democratic backsliding by accusing their opponents of subverting democracy and that we can foster democratic stability by informing partisans about the other side's commitment to democracy. [...] This form of democratic backsliding entails the subversion of free and fair elections by, for example, blocking media access, disqualifying opposition candidates and voter suppression. This form of backsliding typically takes place before Election Day and now tends to be done in a slower and more incremental way that the changes may even seem not urgent to counter, making it tougher for watchdogs like the media to find and broadcast the cumulative threat of all the mostly small, but significant [...] Democratic backsliding is a process of regime change toward autocracy in which the exercise of political power becomes more arbitrary and repressive. The process typically restricts the space for public contest and political participation in the process of government selection. Democratic decline involves the weakening of democratic institutions, such as the peaceful transition of power or free and fair elections, or the violation of individual rights that underpin democracies, especially