Can democracy cure itself?

Since November 2016, I've read quite a few books that explore various interpretations of what the Trump election (and the Brexit vote in June 2016) might mean. Has our underlying tribal white racism overrun our politics? (Yes.) Have the gross economic injustices of contemporary capitalism made many people willing to risk burning it all down? (Yes.) Do we have kleptocratic enemies whose own survival depends on undermining the appeal of the democratic ideals we honor even while we also breach them? (Yes.) Are our legal constitutional arrangements outdated and incapable of delivering legitimate government? (Yes.) The list goes on.

Cambridge University luminary David Runciman's The Confidence Trap: A History of Democracy in Crisis from World War I to the Present - Revised Edition takes a comparative, political science-grounded, stab at the question whether democracy itself is a sustainable system for organizing a society. First published in 2013, before the Brexit and Trump shocks, Runciman certainly can claim to have seen bumpy times ahead for the system pioneered in the Anglophone world. An afterward looks at democracies' prospects in the light of subsequent events.

This is an alarming book. The writing is wonderfully lucid, jargon-free, something you seldom get from an academic political "scientist." But Runciman's point of view is irritatingly Olympian; if democracy is doomed, he'll describe its demise without betraying much distress.

Runciman grounds his discussion in 19th century musings of French politician Alexis de Tocqueville about the then-novel American democratic system. Tocqueville found the America of the 1840s both attractive and repellent (these lovers of "liberty" owned enslaved people!) -- but concluded it just might have enough inner resilience to survive and even thrive.

The key to making sense of American democracy was to learn not to take it at face value. It worked despite the fact that it looked as though it shouldn’t work. Its advantages were hidden somewhere beneath the surface and only emerged over time.

... Faith was the lynchpin of American democracy. The system worked, Tocqueville decided, because people believed in it. They believed in it despite the fact that it looked like it shouldn’t work ... You could have genuine faith in it. In that sense, he accepted that American democracy had passed a confidence threshold. His worry was about what lay on the other side. He was afraid that confidence in democracy would prove to be a trap.

The book records cycles of crisis in which democracies repeated a pattern of semi-functional response.

First, democracies are not good at recognizing crisis situations: all the surface noise of democratic politics makes them insensitive to genuine turning points. Second, crises need to get really bad before democracies can show their long-term strengths, but when they get really bad, there is more scope for democracies to make serious mistakes. Third, when democracies survive a crisis, they may not learn from the experience. All crises generate lessons about the mistakes to avoid in future. But democracies are capable of taking a different lesson: that no matter what mistakes they make, they will be all right in the end.

This is the "Confidence Trap" of the title.

In the fashion of academic disciplines which cherry pick examples from history that can yield insights within their frameworks, Runciman offers a catalogue of interesting tidbits.

On the aftermath of World War I:

Democracies tend to overreach themselves when they outlast or defeat autocratic rivals, because they assume the truth about democracy has finally been revealed. It hasn’t. What eventually gets revealed instead is the inherent difficulty democracies have in seizing the moment.

On German democracy's failure that ended in Nazi rule and devastating war:

German experiences before and after 1933 confirm how dangerous it is to assume that democracies can improvise a solution to every crisis they face. Improvisation destroyed the Weimar Republic, because it unraveled the authority of the state. But the demise of Weimar was not the whole story. Democracy looked to be in deep trouble almost everywhere in 1933. Yet that impression was ultimately misleading. No one can know for sure when established democracies have finally run out of road. Sometimes, despite the risks, improvisation remains the best bet.

On President John F. Kennedy's choices in the Cuban missile crisis:

[Kennedy faced] the two nonnegotiable requirements of democratic public opinion: first, that he should do everything in his power to avoid a conflict; second, that he should not be seen to back down. Democracies hate unnecessary wars, but they also hate making concessions.

On "winning" the Cold War:

... it was won by democracies that did not know what they were up to. ... Western democracy had not reined itself in. It had not even franchised itself out. It had simply kept going. Its victory relied on its underlying adaptability, not its self-control. Democracy had failed to take charge of its destiny, but it had taken whatever history could throw at it and come through, in ways no rival system could match. It was still standing when everything else had fallen down.

... This is the ongoing dream of democratic fulfillment: to harness the underlying benefits that only appear sporadically at times of crisis and turn them into solid, enduring gains. The problem, though, is that crisis politics does not map onto routine political decision making in a democracy.

On the Great Recession of 2008:

Outright disasters produce new beginnings. Successful firefighting tempts you to keep putting out fires.

These cringe-inducing insights are not comforting in our current predicament. He concludes that, having seen our system muddle through for a century and more, we've been complacent beyond reason.

... The cumulative success of democracy has created the conditions for systemic failure. The time may be past for muddling through.

A vote for Trump was simultaneously an expression of disgust with the system and a declaration of confidence in it. After all, who would entrust power to such a man unless they had some residual faith that they could be protected from the consequences of their choice?

He speculates that the catastrophe of financial collapse in 2008, for which nobody seemed to suffer except most ordinary people, may have wrung out democracy's resilience.

It took a while to work through, but eventually the belief that no one had been punished for the near-calamity—and indeed that those who should have been punished were making more money than ever—needed to find an outlet. ... Improvised solutions kept the show on the road but they also put off the day of reckoning. So two days of reckoning were improvised: 23 June and 8 November 2016. However different the circumstances and consequences of these two votes, they have this in common: they were an opportunity for sufficiently large numbers of people to register that the crisis was not over for them. As a result, they have produced a fresh crisis of their own ...

... Populism will only drag democracy down if it forces mainstream democratic politicians to remain stuck in a defensive mode, frightened of making mistakes for fear they lack the resources to correct them. The history of democracy in the twentieth century shows that it does not have to be that way. Nothing is certain. However, it is hard to escape the suspicion that what kept democracy moving forward through the twentieth century were the galvanizing effects of repeated crises.

... The arrival of Trump in the White House does not represent a reckoning. It is simply another diversion from the underlying challenges of an interconnected, networked and slowly warming world. Once, populism provided a spur to action. Now it is a sign of stasis. That is why I increasingly believe that the story I tell in this book—the story of democratic progress through adaptability—is coming to an end.

All the more reason to look for politicians among the Democratic presidential hopefuls who embrace drive and daring, rather than a return to an illusory "normal." And beyond politicians, all the more reason to look for peoples' movements that strive for justice and compassion, usually initiated and based among people for whom democracy has not (yet?) been a good deal. There are many such out there.

Runciman can ruminate from his elevated perch. Most of us are living in a place and time to get moving, not to agonize.