This was published 4 years ago
Opinion
Democracy is fragile. Handle with care
Peter Hartcher
Political and international editorOn the night Barack Obama won the US presidency, most of Washington DC was euphoric. City intersections spontaneously filled with dancing, chanting, ecstatic crowds.
But as the news of his victory came through, one Democrat election-watching party remained subdued. The host of the party, Madeleine Albright, America's first female secretary of state, stood on a chair to speak and the crowd of some 200 revellers fell silent.
Illustration: John ShakespeareCredit: The Sydney Morning Herald
"I want to give thanks that we are witnessing the democratic transfer of power without bloodshed in America tonight," she said. I was surprised. Was it ever an option that America would see a bloody one?
We now know the answer: Yes. It is an option. It is a distressingly realistic prospect for an American election due in 17 days.
"In the past 16 weeks, more than 50 drivers have ploughed into peaceful protesters all around the country," Rachel Kleinfeld of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace wrote in the Washington Post a month ago.
"Armed militants shut down Michigan's legislature. Unidentified law-enforcement officers heaved demonstrators into unmarked vans. Security forces in Washington used low-flying helicopters to harass citizens decrying police brutality. Protesters and police alike have brutalised journalists. Ideologues from left and right have been accused of killing political opponents. Should Americans be worried about widespread violence? Yes.
"Political violence tends to strike in countries where it has happened before. It feeds on discrimination, social segregation and inequality," Kleinfeld wrote. "All the ingredients are here."
The President himself tacitly endorses the use of violence, so long as it's by his own supporters. Asked whether he would denounce white supremacists, Trump said "Proud Boys, stand back and stand by," naming the far-right group during the debate against Joe Biden, "but I'll tell you what, somebody's gotta do something about Antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem. This is a left-wing problem."
And four months ago Trump threatened to use the 1807 Insurrection Act to order US troops onto American streets "to enforce law and order" in cities under the administration of Democrat local governments. This was against the wishes of governors and mayors, only to be countermanded by his Defence Secretary, Mark Esper, who read out a televised statement explicitly opposing any such deployment.
Just this week the former US defence secretary, retired marine general James Mattis, saw fit to say during a Lowy Institute conference that "the military exists to protect the experiment we call America, not to police it". It is flabbergasting that a former US general feels constrained to point out that the US military is not supposed to be used against the US.
This trend towards the threat and reality of political violence is an attack on democracy's central advantage: not the guarantee of the best possible government but the bloodless removal of a bad one.
As the liberal philosopher Karl Popper put it in 1958: "There are only two types of government: those in which the governed can get rid of their rulers without bloodshed, and those in which the governed can, if at all, get rid of their rulers only by bloodshed. The first of these types of government we call democracy, the second tyranny or dictatorship."
Which is America going to be? Donald Trump point blank refuses to commit to accepting the election result. He has held this position consistently for four years. Until very recently, it was common to refer to a sitting US president as "the leader of the free world". Today, the US President does not accept the central tenet of democratic governance – the voice of the voters, the people's will.
America's situation is deeply troubling. Other democracies can not rely on the US to lead by the force of its example any longer, or even by the suasion of its rhetoric. And it's not all Trump's fault. He represents the culmination of decades of democratic neglect. He is a symptom, as well as now a leading cause, of the decline of American democracy.
"Since the end of the Cold War a global movement has transformed how democratic elections are conducted, with many democracies holding freer and fairer elections than at any time in their history," write Stanford academics Thomas Westphal and Stephen John Stedman.
They speak of the active efforts of democratic institutes and NGOs, many of them American, that have coached countries in best practices and electoral integrity. "Paradoxically, the US is the one democracy that seems immune from this transformation," they write in The American Interest. A result is it has become "one of the most polarised democracies in the world".
The political parties have been interested in trying to game the system, not improve it. The US descended slowly but surely into a crisis of over-politicisation. This extends from the highest levels of its democracy – the frantic tribalism of appointing its Supreme Court – to the lowest – the ruthlessly authoritarian struggle by each party to strike off grassroots voters who support the other.
The US has allowed its electoral problems to fester for decades. Three of the top problems are its whacking gerrymander, its deep money politics and its voter exclusion. The net result is a Fort Knox of vested-interest cash fighting for fewer and fewer genuinely contestable seats in an increasingly unrepresentative electorate.
One outcome? The shocking dysfunction of the US Congress. It has devolved into a coliseum for a gladiatorial division of spoils, in a fight to the death, by the representatives of moneyed elites. It's no wonder a generation of middle Americans has seen the stagnation of its living standards, and the working class has felt a creeping despair in a system loaded against it. Presidents come and go; the people's problems remain, even as the billionaire class swells and the celebrity set taunts them.
Donald Trump, of course, has not solved the essential problems, but he has delivered a vicarious thrill to his supporters as he slaughters one elite sacred cow after another.
For Australia this is not "fire across the water", a distant problem that has nothing to do with us. It is a stark case study in the consequences of democratic neglect. As some of the leading thinkers on democracy such as Australia's John Keane and America's Francis Fukuyama have pointed out, democracies must evolve and develop. Or they die.
Australia's democracy, with New Zealand's, was a successful innovator for a long time. Australia invented the ballot paper and the secret ballot, which spread worldwide under the label of "the Australian ballot", and compartmentalised voting booths. NZ was the first to give women the vote; Australia, specifically South Australia, was the first jurisdiction to allow women to stand for parliament.
Two other Australian innovations remain rare among nations – compulsory voting and preferential voting. As the political scientist Judith Brett points out in her book From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage, "preferential voting is as distinctively Australian as compulsory voting. Both ensure that the governments we elect have the support of the majority of voters." It also means that the political parties must adjust continuously to the demands of the voters.
These features of Australian democracy didn't happen by magic, and Brett's book tells brilliantly the story of how they came to be. They were instituted by politicians and public servants, developed through free debate and democratic evolution. And they were put in place a century ago.
Australia recently has shown the ability to update its system – for instance, in 2018 belatedly banning foreign political donations, and legislating against foreign interference in our democracy. But look around. Much more is needed. The people were sick of our political system, and getting sicker by the year, before the pandemic struck. The effectiveness of federal and state governments in managing the plague has won a reprieve for Australian democracy. But no more than that.
The Berejiklian government in NSW is in deep trouble as the ICAC probes the extent of the Premier's involvement in low moneygrubbing by her Liberal MP paramour. The Andrews government in Victoria has showcased brazen lack of ministerial responsibility in the face of dire failure. And the federal government is preparing to unveil legislation for a federal ICAC with design features that guarantees it will be rejected by Labor and the crossbench.
The people's pandemic-induced suspension of judgment is wearing off. Australians will be revolted anew by the return of politics as usual; indeed, many already are.
Federal political donations laws are a joke, a federal ICAC with teeth is an urgent necessity, a media freedom protection is freshly affirmed to be essential.
The NSW debacle shows that MPs cannot be allowed to run side businesses, and Victoria shows afresh that ministers must be sacked for serious failures under the doctrine of ministerial responsibility. Everyone else in the country is held responsible for their actions. Who gave ministers special immunity?
These are just a few of the reforms Australia needs to renew its democracy. The American "beacon on the hill" is growing dim. Australia needs to light its own way.