{"id":5686,"date":"2021-07-28T16:23:58","date_gmt":"2021-07-28T16:23:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=5686"},"modified":"2021-07-28T16:23:58","modified_gmt":"2021-07-28T16:23:58","slug":"call-it-authoritarianism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=5686","title":{"rendered":"Call it authoritarianism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“Blocking an inquiry into the January 6 attack<\/a> on the Capitol, embracing Trump\u2019s \u201cBig Lie\u201d<\/a> that the election was stolen, making it easier for partisans to tamper with the process<\/a> of counting votes: These are not the actions of a party committed to the basic idea of open, representative government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s common to call this GOP behavior \u201canti-democratic,\u201d but the description can only go so far. It tells us what they\u2019re moving America away from, but not where they want to take it. The term \u201cminority rule<\/a>\u201d is closer, but euphemistic; it puts the Republican actions in the same category as a Supreme Court ruling, countermajoritarian moves inside a democratic framework rather than something fundamentally opposed to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s worth being clear about this: The GOP has become an authoritarian party pushing an authoritarian policy agenda.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“When people think of authoritarian governments, they typically think of police states and 20th-century totalitarianism. But \u201cauthoritarianism\u201d is actually a broad term, encompassing very different governments united mostly by the fact<\/a> that they do not transfer power through free and fair elections.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“competitive authoritarian systems survive in part by convincing citizens that they are living in a democracy. That\u2019s how they maintain their legitimacy and prevent popular uprisings. As such, they do not conduct the kind of obvious sham elections held in places like Bashar al-Assad\u2019s Syria (he won the 2021 contest with 95 percent of the \u201cvote\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In competitive authoritarianism, the opposition does have some ability to win a bit of power through, well, competition \u2014 even if the scope of their possible victories are limited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a tricky balance for the regime to pull off: rigging elections enough to maintain power indefinitely while still permitting enough democracy that citizens don\u2019t rise up in outrage. Many competitive authoritarian regimes have collapsed under the stress, either transitioning to democracy (like Taiwan<\/a>) or forcefully repressing the opposition and becoming a more traditional autocracy (like Belarus<\/a>).”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Happily, the United States still passes the most basic test of whether a system is democratic: whether the public can vote out its leaders. But it is hard to deny that the Republican Party has begun chipping away at that baseline principle, using the flaws in our political system to entrench their power.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/policy-and-politics\/2021\/6\/15\/22522504\/republicans-authoritarianism-trump-competitive<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Blocking an inquiry into the January 6 attack on the Capitol, embracing Trump\u2019s \u201cBig Lie\u201d that the election was stolen, making it easier for partisans to tamper with the process of counting votes: These are not the actions of a party committed to the basic idea of open, representative government.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s common to call this GOP behavior \u201canti-democratic,\u201d but the description can only go so far. It tells us what they\u2019re moving America away from, but not where they want to take it. The term \u201cminority rule\u201d is closer, but euphemistic; it puts the Republican actions in the same category as a Supreme Court ruling, countermajoritarian moves inside a democratic framework rather than something fundamentally opposed to it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth being clear about this: The GOP has become an authoritarian party pushing an authoritarian policy agenda.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“When people think of authoritarian governments, they typically think of police states and 20th-century totalitarianism. But \u201cauthoritarianism\u201d is actually a broad term, encompassing very different governments united mostly by the fact that they do not transfer power through free and fair elections.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“competitive authoritarian systems survive in part by convincing citizens that they are living in a democracy. That\u2019s how they maintain their legitimacy and prevent popular uprisings. As such, they do not conduct the kind of obvious sham elections held in places like Bashar al-Assad\u2019s Syria (he won the 2021 contest with 95 percent of the \u201cvote\u201d).<\/p>\n

In competitive authoritarianism, the opposition does have some ability to win a bit of power through, well, competition \u2014 even if the scope of their possible victories are limited.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a tricky balance for the regime to pull off: rigging elections enough to maintain power indefinitely while still permitting enough democracy that citizens don\u2019t rise up in outrage. Many competitive authoritarian regimes have collapsed under the stress, either transitioning to democracy (like Taiwan) or forcefully repressing the opposition and becoming a more traditional autocracy (like Belarus).”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“Happily, the United States still passes the most basic test of whether a system is democratic: whether the public can vote out its leaders. But it is hard to deny that the Republican Party has begun chipping away at that baseline principle, using the flaws in our political system to entrench their power.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1104,431,221,198,968,170],"class_list":["post-5686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-authoritarianism","tag-democracy","tag-donald-trump","tag-elections","tag-republican-party","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5686"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5687,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5686\/revisions\/5687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}