grape’s Reviews > How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future > Status Update

The author suggests that the U.S. should adopt broad social policies (paid leave for parents, raising of the minimum wage/universal basic income…)—many of which are standard in European Union countries—to reduce political polarization and racial backlash.

The fundamental problem of American democracy remains extreme partisan division—one fueled not just by policy differences but by deeper sources of resentment, including racial and religious differences.

Reducing polarization requires that the Republican Party be reformed, if not refounded out-right.
They can only transform when they free themselves from the clutches of outside donors and right-wing media.

Racial Gerrymandering: The legislature approved a redistricting plan that concentrated African American voters into a few specific districts.

Diluting Electoral Weight: By "packing" these voters into limited areas, the GOP effectively "diluted" their overall voting power across the state.

“When unwritten rules are violated over and over (…) societies have a tendency to “define deviance down” to shift the standard. What was once seen as abnormal becomes normal.”

“The backsliding of democracy is often gradual, its effects unfolding slowly over time.”

Constitutions protect democracy but there are not enough to ensure them for lifetime.
Their openness for interpretation makes them dangerous.

Two fundamental norms are desperately needed for democracy:
Mutual toleration (agree to disagree) & institutional forbearance (patient self-control)

“Even well-designed constitutions cannot by themselves guaranteed democracy for one constitutions are always incomplete like any set of rules they have countless gaps ambiguities.”

“God has never endowed any statesman or philosopher, or anybody of them with wisdom enough frame, a system of government that everybody could go off and leave.”
-Benjamin Harrison

„Whereas old-school dictators often jailed, exiled, or even killed their rivals, contemporary autocrats tend to hide their repression behind a veneer of legality.“
„One of the great ironies of how democracies die is that the very defense of democracy is often used as a pretext for its subversion.“

Since the end of the Cold War, most democratic breakdowns have been caused not by generals and soldiers but by elected governments themselves.
Political party’s are democracy’s gatekeepers.
Successful gatekeepers requires that mainstream’s party come together to isolate and defeat extremist forces (= “distancing“).
Litmus test for identifying antidemocratic politicians.