Polarisation and the threat to democracy

[Celerity]

In a polarised US, Sheri Berman writes, the tyranny of unrepresentative minorities represents the main threat to democracy.

https://socialeurope.eu/polarisation-and-the-threat-to-democracy




The leaking of a memo indicating that the United States Supreme Court will likely rule that women do not have a constitutional right to abortion has inflamed political divides which are deeper and more dangerous than those facing any other wealthy democracy. As one recent study put it, the US suffers uniquely high ‘pernicious polarization’—the division of society into political camps whose defining feature is mutual hatred and fear. Such intense polarisation is associated with a wide range of negative outcomes, including policy gridlock, democratic erosion and even violence.

Since polarisation threatens many European democracies, thinking about the American case may help those trying to avoid similar developments domestically. To paraphrase Karl Marx, it may be that the country that is more polarised shows to others the image of their own future.

Deep cleavages

Perhaps the most obvious cause of damaging polarisation in the US is the translation of the country’s deep economic and social cleavages into political ones. Economically, over the past generation or so the US has been characterised by higher income and wealth inequality, allied to lower social mobility, than any other advanced industrial democracy. The ‘losers’ from these trends—disproportionately low-income, low-education and non-urban whites—have been incorporated into the Republican party, while globalised capitalism’s ‘winners’—highly-educated and skilled urban dwellers—increasingly vote Democratic.

Socially, cleavages over race have long been the main challenge facing American democracy. But, again, over the past generation or so these ethnic cleavages have increasingly aligned with political ones, particularly for the Republican party which receives about 80 per cent of its votes from white citizens. As we know from contemporary developing countries such as Kenya, Lebanon and Iraq, as well as many cases from Europe’s past, when ethnic and political cleavages coincide the results are often deadly. (This trend did diminish somewhat over the past electoral cycle, with the Republican party picking up the support of more conservative Hispanic and even some black voters.)

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