Thomas Carothers - Democracies Divided: The Global Challenge of Political Polarization

DEMOCRACIES DIVIDED

The Global Challenge of Political Polarization

Edited by

Thomas Carothers

Andrew ODonohue

BROOKINGS INSTITUTION PRESS

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Copyright 2019

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data are available.

ISBN 978-0-8157-3721-6 (paperback : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-8157-3722-3 (ebook)

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Composition by Elliott Beard

Contents

THOMAS CAROTHERS ANDREW ODONOHUE

SENEM AYDIN-DZGT

GILBERT M. KHADIAGALA

THOMAS CAROTHERS

NIRANJAN SAHOO

JOANNA FOMINA

ANDREAS E. FELDMANN

NAOMI HOSSAIN

EVE WARBURTON

UMBERTO MIGNOZZETTI MATIAS SPEKTOR

THOMAS CAROTHERS ANDREW ODONOHUE

Introduction

THOMAS CAROTHERS
ANDREW ODONOHUE

A t the end of the twentieth century, many political observers assumed that the coming decades would be a time of democratic triumph, with the remarkable democratic wave of the 1980s and 1990s coming to full fruition. Instead, democratic stagnation and setbacks have marked the first two decades of this century to such an extent that today, talk of a global democratic crisis is widespread. New and old democracies alike are confronting a daunting array of internal and external challenges, from the crumbling of public support for long-established political parties and the swelling popularity of illiberal politicians to the growing assertiveness and influence of authoritarian powers and ideas across borders. Recent developments in democracies around the world make clear that political polarizationmanifested in increasingly harsh divides between opposing political camps and diminishing shared political groundis a crucial part of this troubling picture.

Political polarization, particularly in the United States, tends to be studied as a unique national pathology. Yet as this volume demonstrates, it is a widespread phenomenon, with common negative consequences for democracy across diverse national contexts. It routinely weakens respect for democratic norms, corrodes basic legislative processes, undermines the nonpartisan stature of the judiciary, and fuels public disaffection with political parties. It exacerbates intolerance and discrimination, diminishes societal trust, and increases violence throughout the society. Moreover, it reinforces and entrenches itself, dragging countries into a downward spiral of anger and division for which there are no easy remedies.

A quick global tour highlights how pervasive polarization is among democracies today and how serious its effects frequently are. After a period of generally low political polarization in Latin America during the 1990s, high levels of divisive partisanship are damaging various Latin American democracies. Venezuela was for decades one of the most stable democracies in the region, but an intense, irreconcilable split between the governing forces of the left and the opposition has torn the society apart. Bolivian politics have undergone a profound change in the past decade, as the collapse of many traditional parties has reconfigured political competition around a deep cleavage based on ethnicity and culture. Colombia has become bitterly divided over the 2016 Peace Accord between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. With the 2018 election of President Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right populist who ran a stridently polarizing campaign, Brazil may have entered a phase of serious polarization. Latin America specialist Steven Levitsky argues that Chile, El Salvador, Mexico, and Peru also show signs of growing polarization.

South and Southeast Asia exhibit multiple serious cases of political polarization. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has experienced increasingly polarized conflict between a sociopolitical vision rooted in Hindu nationalism and a more secular and pluralist alternative. During the past two decades, neighboring Bangladesh has descended into harsh polarization between two staunchly opposed political camps. Before the 2006 and 2014 military coups, Thailands democracy was wracked by a profound fissure between two competing sides, popularly known as the yellow shirts and red shirts, that were split by social class, region, and other identity markers. Although Indonesia has enjoyed a generally positive democratizing run since the fall of strongman President Suharto in 1998, recent elections have been marked by an upsurge in divisive and exclusivist Islamist rhetoric.

In the Middle East, some of the political forces and energy released in the 2011 Arab Spring have resulted in bitterly polarized polities. Egypts brief episode of open multiparty competition after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011 descended into profound and violent polarization between Islamist political forces and their opponents. The eruption of protests against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in 2011 triggered a hellish descent into civil war. Despite hopes that the rise of the Islamist Justice and Development Party in Turkey might usher in a period of inclusive democracy, Turkish politics have instead become a domain of intense division, anger, and conflict between the ruling party and its opponents. Competitive party politics in Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, and Palestine have also been marked by significant levels of polarization.

Various sub-Saharan African countries have lived for decades with intense polarization, sometimes within democratic frameworks and sometimes within authoritarian or semiauthoritarian systems. An example of the former is Kenya, where a political system dominated off and on by contending tribal groups erupted into serious electoral violence in 2007. The country has lived since then with a precarious political settlement between two deeply divided sides. Burundi, Cameroon, Uganda, and Zimbabwe all exemplify the latter pattern. An especially serious case is Cte dIvoire, where divisions along religious and regional lines over the issue of Ivorian national identity have been mobilized in two civil wars.

Rising polarization is not just a developing world story. Decades-old patterns of relatively consensual competition in Europe between center-right and center-left parties are giving way to greater political polarization as populist forces challenge traditional political actors and norms. Poland, for example, has surprised many political observers by moving from what looked like a relatively smooth process of democratic consolidation into severe polarization. Escalating tensions there between a right-wing populist party and the antagonized opposition camp pose a serious threat to the independence of the Polish judiciary and other vital democratic institutions. In France, a multiparty system long characterized by alternation of power between moderate forces on the left and right dissolved in the presidential elections of 2017, which resulted in a polarizing contest between a new centrist formation, En Marche, and the right-wing National Front (as of 2018, National Rally). In Great Britain, the 2016 referendum on whether the nation should leave the European Union opened up a startlingly deep divide between Remainers and Leavers and threw the country into what has become protracted political conflict and dysfunction. Other European democracies have also witnessed serious polarization recently as a result of rising populist forces, as in Greece and Hungary, or have long been mired in communal divisions, as in Belgium and Bosnia and Herzegovina.