Como impedir a destruição da democracia, um debate com Sheri Berman e Daniel Ziblatt | vídeo

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Ladies and gentlemen um my name is Aisha hazarika and I am delighted to be with you here this afternoon and I will be cheering at this discussion now I am a london-based political commentator and broadcaster I have a radio show where I cover British politics and European politics and

Indeed American politics in Greek depth and I used to work in politics myself I was a political advisor in the British labor party working for Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and it’s wonderful to be with you in beautiful uh Lisbon and you might detect a Scottish accent and I am

Indeed from Glasgow and I can see it is a lot warmer here than it is in Glasgow so it is delightful to be with you now we have a fascinating conversation ahead of us looking to examine the condition of modern liberal democracy with two of the finest Minds in political science we

Have Daniel ziblat who is eaten professor of government at Harvard University he’s also director of the research group transformations of democracy at the wzb Berlin social science center in Berlin he is also an acclaimed author he’s written three books including how democracies die which came out in 2018 co-authored with

Steve Levitsky it was a New York Times bestseller and it’s been described by The Economist magazine as the most important book of the Trump era and it’s been translated into 30 different languages he also wrote conservative parties and birth of democracy in 2017 which is a fascinating account of Europe’s historical democratization this

Too has won many awards um as well and zibla is also a fellow the Radcliffe Institute Stanford center for advanced studies and was the winner of the Berlin prize for the American Academy in Berlin in 2019 so let’s give a warm welcome to Professor Daniel zeblatt thank you thank you

I’m also delighted to be joined by Sherry Berman Sherry is professor of political science at Barnard college at Columbia University Sherry’s research interests include European history and politics the development of democracy populism and Fascism and the history of the left she has written about these topics for a

Wide range of different scholarly and non-scholarly Publications including the New York Times The Washington Post foreign policy Foreign Affairs and folks Sherry currently serves on the boards of the Journal of democracy plus dissent and political science quarterly her most recent book democracy and dictatorship in Europe from the onsion regime to the

Present date was published in 2019 let’s give a warm welcome to Sherry so ladies and gentlemen we really are an excellent company with Sherry and Daniel and over the next sort of 40 minutes or so we’re going to be examining a number of questions around the current health

Of modern democracy and the many threats that it faces from external factors but also from within and changes to society as well let’s start off with this as a jumping off point you know we hear experts use expressions like Democratic backsliding um Democratic Decay Democratic recession but most I suppose normal people many

People in this room as esteemed as they are may not really understand exactly what these phrases mean and and why are they dangerous so just Sherry I’ll start with you what do these phrases mean and why do they matter why should we care about this phenomenon

So um let me just say thank you for um inviting me I’m really happy to be here I’m looking forward to this conversation so that some of those terms are designed to help us think about the way that democracies weaken today so in the past as I’m sure everybody in this room is

Well aware when we thought about the way dictatorships arose or democracies died we thought about something sudden and violent coups for instance or perhaps as we’re seeing today in Ukraine and Invasion from outside and we we understand what that is we understand that that’s a direct threat but what we

Often see today especially in countries that have been Democratic for a while are situations where democracies kind of Decay slowly so so backsliding isn’t something sudden it’s something that kind of can happen over a period of time or or Democratic Decay or Democratic undermining so part of those terms part

Of the point of those terms is to get us to think about the way in which democracies can die to use um uh the title of Dan’s last book in ways that are somewhat more difficult for us to to recognize and therefore perhaps to fight back against so so that’s one important

Thing I think we should think about is that we can lose our democracies gradually rather than suddenly and that requires us to think about the fragility of democracy and about how to fight back against those who want to um get rid of it in ways different than

We might have in the past but the second part of your question is about well why why should we care right maybe our democracies aren’t performing very well maybe they Decay or decline or backslide because people have lost faith in them in which case maybe we can understand why they might give a

Hearing to someone like a Victor Orban or a erdogan in Turkey who promises them something better so also we should care because those of us who take democracy seriously should think very hard about why there are so many people who are willing to turn away when we have

Politicians who do try to undermine it that’s something we should not dismiss those people we should not say they are just bad or or ignorant we should take the fact that there are many people who are dissatisfied seriously and think about ways of making our Democratic institutions our political parties and our

Politicians more responsive to the kinds of needs and problems that citizens who are dissatisfied may be really struggling with thank you for that um Daniel your Reflections on on that and and to pick up a point that Sherry just made why is it that we believe and I think

Most people in this rumors agree but what is the argument for why liberal democracies are inherently better than other regimes yeah again also thank you everybody for being here and thank you for the invitation uh to be here as well in this historic location it’s appropriate place to talk about democracy

Um well just to add to what Sherry said I agree with everything she said I mean there’s two other features though to democratic backsliding uh one is that what often happens is that it’s done legally this Democratic backsliding happens legally and so people so politicians can kind of

Come into power through elections how you’re supposed to come into power in an election in a democracy and then begin to change the rules passing laws through Parliament judicial rulings not breaking the law not breaking the constitution in a way so that the leader in power and these are often Executives presidents or

Prime ministers consolidate themselves in power and make it harder and harder for themselves to be ejected from power and so make it harder and harder for an opposition to win so this is what it means to say that a democracy has weakened from within democratically to

Say that the an incumbent can stay in power for five years 10 years 15 years and actually we see this in in Hungary where it’s harder and harder for the opposition to win and so why is it harder and harder for the opposition to win it’s not that everybody loves the

Incumbent it’s that the rules have been altered in such a way through packing of the courts through the redrawing of election districts and again an illegal way to make it to reduce competition which is the essence of democracy and so in this way um what we what we often see is a result

Of of this is that voters often don’t recognize what’s happening I mean so far into Chavez’s rule in Venezuela majorities of Venezuelans still thought they lived in a democracy and the same holds in in Turkey as well and it makes sense because there’s nobody’s there’s no troops in the streets the rules

Aren’t necessarily being broken but that the key Benchmark is it you know can the incumbent be defeated or how hard is it for the incumbent to be defeated and if it’s hard to beat the incumbent then you have to question what kind of democracy do you have now just on this on the

Second Point well why do why should we care you know I think the great power one of the great powers of democracy is the power of self-correction you know political systems that are autocratic uh don’t have this kind of built-in mechanisms of self-correction when facing crises pandemics internal crises

Autocrats don’t have the kind of built-in mechanisms to respond to the demands of Voters and and to actually adjust course and so that’s often why autocratic regimes collapse overnight you know in 1986 1987 when the before the collapse of Communism nobody expected these regimes would collapse and suddenly overnight they did

Democracies though in a very kind of often painful messy ugly way uh self-correct and so when we see populous and we see voter disaffection what we’re actually witnessing is a process of self-correction at work and so in that sense I think the great magic of democracies they can deal with crises

And correct themselves and it may take a long time but I think that to me is the great virtue of democracy Sherry do you agree with that so I do and I I would like to pick up on on this last point that that Dan made which is that when we

Start to see in democracy’s populist parties for instance I think those are best viewed as symptoms of democratic Decay rather than causes of them and what do I mean by that when you start to see a lot of people who are willing to vote for parties who’s who much of whose

Appeal is that they are opposed to The Establishment they are opposed to existing parties that should make people who care about democracy take notice because that means that there are a lot of people who do not believe that democracy is working for them so you do not see very strong anti-democratic

Parties pop out of nowhere right even in the classic cases of democratic death that we think about in the interwar period in places like Portugal Spain or Germany when we see anti-democratic parties grabbing tons of Voters that is because those voters have already lost faith in democracy these parties feed on

Discontent and dissatisfaction they cannot create discontent and dissatisfaction in a Democratic Society that is working well so when we begin to see these kind of anti-establishment parties that is the time when Democrats with a small d stand up and take notice because that means there are a lot of

Citizens who feel like their political system is not working for them and that’s the time when presumably conferences like this Gatherings like this and handbooks of democracy and politics in different countries should be thinking about okay what has gone wrong why are citizens dissatisfied why are our political institutions not

Responding to the problems that citizens feel they and their societies face and that neatly takes us on to the next thing that I did want to discuss which is this rise of of populism and I think to the sort of untrained ear if you’re not a student of political science and

Analysis populism on the face of it doesn’t sound that bad sounds quite close to popular um it’s anti-establishment it’s very fashionable at the moment to be you know anti the elite that that we see this is a narrative that has been pushed now for a long time in my own country in the

United Kingdom we have just gone through this with the brexit vote and and all of that you know in my view a very very bad decision but that in my view was very much pushed by populism and even though you know we had lots of center-left strategists and advisors and politicians

Who really wanted to push back against it it didn’t work similarly we’ve seen that in America so why is this rise of populism so powerful and so potent at the moment and I’ll start with you well yeah there’s lots of factors lying behind it but I think the two biggest

Kinds of things that that most Scholars point to we heard a little bit about this uh just now when hearing about the handbook I think there’s material conditions drive this to a large degree so if if you have increasing inequality or if you have uh I think particularly important

Is a decline of intergenerational Mobility where people don’t feel like that their children will lead better lives than themselves or if you’re young and you look at and you think that you’re not going to lead the same kind of life as your parents these kind of material conditions provide the raw

Materials for popular for demagogues to use uh I think related as a kind of second major factor uh often in the kind of cultural realm I would say is in particular in Western Europe and the United States is changing demographics of society so as societies become more

Diverse I mean this is a welcome development I from my view ethnically diverse and culturally diverse different values and so on then this also represents Potential Threat to those who were used to an old way of life and so when you combine these two things together uh politicians and then

Demagogues who want to come along and gain power this is these two forces to get other provide kind of nice raw materials to use you know and I would say I mean that the populism and it’s in a sense I mean there is a democratic

Impulse to it and to my mind that’s that that’s not the threat populism per se it’s when populists act in anti-democratic ways and so in particular when they condone violence when they encourage violence when they when they don’t condemn violence uh when they don’t accept election results

Um when they try to entrench themselves in power and and make it harder for the opposition to win it so it’s when populists become uh anti-democratic that that we should really be worried um and you know and because because it people want to be in power they take advantage

Of these uh sense of dislocation and sense of change to try to entrench themselves in power and in the process the thing that really so a kind of second facet of this is that there’s a kind of effort to polarize Society because this is how people gain power

And so Society itself becomes polarized in this process and I think that’s also very dangerous and just following on from that um Sherry how do you think the other factors has helped with this rise of of populism for example are changing media landscape and the way social media

Has really collided with with politics in the last sort of 10 to 15 years how does that play into the rise of populism so I mean again just following up on on Dan’s comments I think we’re we are living in a Time although it’s it’s difficult to say when you’re in the

Midst of things to get to get some perspective on it but I think we are living in a Time in the West of really pretty rapid change and change in a lot of Realms so so Dan mentioned some of the economic changes that are creating divisions in society discontent in

Society there’s a lot of social change West European societies have gotten much more diverse as you mentioned and even the United States which has a long history of immigration now has a higher born uh higher percentage of foreign born population than pretty much I think any time in our history and then there’s

Technological change that’s sort of on top of that and actually in many ways aggravates it because it allows for a lot of things that can increase discontent and divisions to spread even more rapidly so it’s now possible for anyone to get a voice for almost anything now in some ways that’s good

Good that’s democratizing people whose voices wouldn’t have been heard 20 years ago because they were limited to you know sort of very you know traditional newspapers or traditional media outlets now have an opportunity to join with other people and have their voices heard that is a good thing but it also allows

People whose intentions are bad who want to spread disinformation who want to spread division to do the same thing and I think what’s happened is technological change has gotten ahead of the ability of um both society and governments to figure out the white right way to

Regulate that you don’t want to Tamp it down so much that free speech is hindered that voices that were previously excluded can’t be heard but you can’t simply allow people to spread things that are not just false Free Speech says sometimes you say things that are wrong but that are that are

Outright dangerous and divisive and I think we just haven’t come to the point yet where we have figured out as societies how to make that balance um work um I think I think you’re absolutely right because I think on the one hand when technology came along and collided

With politics You could argue that that was that was positive in in some ways I remember in 2014 with there was the referendum on Scottish independence I mean it got pretty nasty but one of the very positive things was a young a whole new Young Generation of people got

Really engaged in politics and it was in the palm of their hand it was through their phone and that was actually quite an empowering situation but then you you you are now in a phase where there’s not just misinformation by accident there is willful misinformation willful

Conspiracy theory as well and Dan how do politicians navigate this new kind of wild west of political you know communication yeah I I think I think these Technologies matter a great deal but we have to also remember there was a Spanish Civil War before there was Twitter

Um you know Mussolini came to power without Facebook there’s going to be a fight tomorrow when people lose their blue ticks trust me like it’s going to be the next war that happens so you know democracies can get into trouble without this this technology and so what that

Suggests to me is that often the driving force of of these problems are really these economic and demographic and social essentially sociological changes and technology exacerbates that but I I don’t think we want to subscribe to a kind of technological determined ISM that if we just get the social media

Right then we’ll solve all our problems because I don’t I think that’s not that’s that’s clearly not the case but I do think I mean that Sherry is right that this exacerbates this and we don’t really know how to deal with it yet I think is part of the problem and one of

The ways in which um this matters for politics and polities and politicians is that you know when uh when there’s other media Outlets when there’s a kind of opening up of these Outlets then politicians don’t really have an a direct access to voters through the traditional media and

So you know people don’t quite know what’s happening so actually a really interesting story my co-author Steve Levitsky went to Brazil the year of bolsonaro’s election during the presidential election in Brazil and all the people he was talking to were saying well no don’t worry about bolsonaro

What’s going to happen is that you know he doesn’t really have access to television time for advertising and the other parties do so this will be fine and they have lots of minutes on television every night and what people hadn’t counted on was that he was communicating with voters through

WhatsApp and YouTube and so you know he could circumvented traditional media institutions and so what that means for mainstream parties and politicians is they have to figure out how to navigate this world as well in order to compete yeah absolutely and also I think it’s about the fact that the mainstream media are

Not The Gatekeepers anymore in the way that they they used to be I mean even in my time in politics if you wanted to get a message out you know there was like four newspapers or five newspapers you had to do there was like four or five channels now it’s completely different

There is this very atomized media landscape but just to pick up on on something you’ve just said and the point that both of you have made about why um democracy becomes weakened and the rise of populism is is the fact that a lot of people clearly feel that doing it

This way playing by the rules democracy isn’t working for them there is clearly a mismatch between citizens hopes and demands and expectations and the reality of what democracies can deliver particularly when we’ve been through a lot of turbulence the global financial crash the pandemic the war in Ukraine this kind of hyperinflation

Crisis that we’re all in so a lot of people look at these traditional democracies they feel fed up there are living standards are worse as you say their kids aren’t doing great their grandchildren aren’t doing great they see a lot of their you know communities crumbling there’s not enough

Infrastructure and then they feel incredibly fed up they feel they have to work harder for longer what do you think that sort of thing does for democracy Sherry so I think that most people in this room I’m just guessing sort of believe in democracy because of its value we think

Democracy is a good thing because we think it’s right that people should be able to choose their leaders and governments because we believe in political equality that is to say everybody should have a right to have a say in determining their country’s fate I think for a lot of people though when

They think about politics they think about politicians and governments having to solve problems the things that matter for them on a daily basis and I think when governments are not doing that when they feel like they’re struggling economically when they’re worried about their children when they don’t feel safe

On the street that again their dissatisfaction grows because while they probably like democracy they need it to deliver these other things and so insofar as people feel like their governments are not doing that because they’re either not responsive to them and they respond to other people Elites wealthy people whoever or because they

Feel that government has lost the capacity to do that so it doesn’t have the will and it doesn’t have the ability then yes I mean I think we should expect to see Democratic dissatisfaction grow I would I would just like to to say though that as a as a person who who studies

Democracy for a living which can be quite depressing um I I’m I don’t actually worry very much for the short to medium term and I I don’t know how Dan feels about democracy in Western Europe or or in even in southern Europe and I say even

Just because there was a lot of Hysteria even in the United States about the election of um Georgia Maloney in Italy parties may not be parties that we like but thus far I speak also of for instance the national front in France and others these parties have played by

The rules of the game and so they are a signal again that I think a lot of people are unhappy with what traditional parties have been delivering but they have not presented the kind of threat to democracy that I personally think the Republican Party presents in the United

States and that we’ve certainly seen in Eastern Europe now that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be vigilant we should absolutely be vigilant as anybody who’s here in Portugal knows democracy is fragile but we should also think about the ways in which again our political systems have the ability to

Respond and work to improve those kinds of things so that parties don’t go from being populist to being anti-democratic which is um obviously what happened in places like Hungary and turkey and I worry about what might be happening in my own country in the United States

And Dan I mean in terms of this view that a lot of people have and I hear this a lot in the UK I’m sure you I mean I don’t know if it’s the same here and I’m sure you doing America well not sure it’s quite sure and see in America but

One of the things a lot of people see is oh I played on all their houses they’re all the same no politician no traditional politician can fix this how much of a problem is that for the health of democracy yeah it’s interesting through through much of the 20th century

That was the critique in the United States that the parties were indistinguishable and you look at the people who ran for president and vice president they all basically look the same they all had my haircut they were all white men um and they were indistinguishable but but now the parties are very different

And so and now kind of people look back wistfully and nostalgically oh wasn’t that great when everybody kind of you know got along and was it were basically played by the rules so so a political systems can go in both extremes where the party because democracy is at the

End of the day about competition it’s about having Alternatives and making a choice and so it’s good that there are alternatives and it’s good that parties stand for something and disagree with each other so so sometimes people complain that they’re indistinguishable then sometimes other people say can’t

They just solve kind of our our problem our you know share problems can’t they understand that there’s just a easily identifiable problems that we should all be able to solve but you know so there’s so both systems can go in both either extreme but I I do think that you know

At the end of the day that there’s sort of two ways in which the governments can get out of sync with where the voters are on the one hand you can have um you know you know and I think what’s happened in the United States is that

Majorities are in favor of gun control majorities have all sorts of policy views but our institutions in the United States in particular are set up in such a way that majorities don’t actually govern that very often the you know the way that our Senate works and our electoral college that Donald Trump

Never won a majority of the vote majorities don’t actually govern it so there’s a disconnect between what the people want and what the institutions deliver that’s one kind of problem the other kind of problem is almost like the opposite problem which is at the other

End of the extreme which is a as a country like Hungary where majorities rule to such a degree that they dominate the system and then minority rights aren’t protected at all and so in this kind of system competition is extinguished and one side dominates the other side and so the other side never

Has access to power and so there can be too much majority rule or they can be too little majority rule but either way voters uh don’t really have a say and so you need to balance in a sense both majority rule and and the rights of the losing side as well

Now both of you have mentioned your home country and of course all eyes are on America yet again all eyes are on one particular gentleman uh as he has faces a court hearing earlier this month what do you think is going to happen with with Donald Trump and how big a threat

To democracy not just in America because I’m gonna throw it out here I think what happens with Trump in America doesn’t just stay in America I think he sends this incredible signal all across the world to to to to political leaders we’ve seen the effect of that in the

United Kingdom so this has got profound consequences for democracy all over the the world Sharia I’ll start with you so that this is the depressing part of of studying so look I mean I think Trump is actually a pretty existential threat to American democracy um he doesn’t care about the rules of

The game at all he will lie he will misinform disinform push conspiracy theories he has absolutely no interest in anything other than his own power he doesn’t care about the political system at all and I think he therefore represents an existential threat I also think the fact that he would bring with

Him in addition to the threat presented by a presidency another Donald Trump presidency he would bring within him with him into our government the absolute most extreme Fringe of his party again people who like him have absolutely no interest in American National interest the preservation of American institutions and norms and I

Think he would be really disastrous for American democracy and disastrous for democracy across the globe not only through his foreign policy which is erratic and irrational but because he would obviously give a huge amount a huge bolst to others in countries around the world who have similar anti-democratic and Ill liberal

Tendencies so again I am I feel much more worried about American democracy than I do about democracy in a place like Portugal where democracy is only 50 years old um so yes I think this should be something that anybody who cares about democracy should be concerned about even

If you’re fortunate enough not to live in the United States for the 2024 election it’ll be a lot of Americans moving to Portugal aspects um Daniel your thoughts yeah it’s hard to um to top that because I mean I agree with I agree exactly with that diagnosis

Um you know it’s it’s interesting though to think about you know why we’re in this situation in the United States and it’s important to remember that around 20 I mean I don’t know what his actual base of the electorate is maybe 30 percent of the electorate that means 70

Percent of Americans you know would never even consider voting for Trump 7 and if you kind of look across Western Europe there’s around 20 to 30 percent of people who would consider voting for candidates like Donald Trump across the market whether that’s the afd in Germany

Or Le Pen in France I mean there’s there’s about there’s a roughly that segment of the that’s a kind of constant across all democracies and actually look you know this is not entirely new looking back historically there’s always you know these kinds of politicians have been popular at different points

Throughout our history of course in the 20th century in the 1920s and 30s and so this is a kind of constant so the real question if you really are concerned about democracy you know hopefully you could reduce that 20 to 30 percent to let’s say 10 percent or six percent or

Whatever but even more important in a way is how do you get through the years without letting those forces put this kind of political leader into Power like why is the United States in a situation where this 20 has so much more power than the equivalent 20 in other

Countries and what that you know on the one hand this makes me optimistic because you could say well most voters across Western Europe and the United States are actually embraced democracy and the problem is only our institutions aren’t delivering to them what they want and I think the same thing applies to

The United States and so you know I think one what the implication of this is that you know we need to think about institutional reforms we need to make our parties work better we need to make the kind of gatekeeping Institutions work better to get through these uh

Kinds of crises and in a way it’s a little bit like an earthquake you need to kind of build your institution strong enough to get through these periods that come every now and then and you know we’re not going to Simply eliminate you know Trump voters from the map and these

People are going to always be there to follow up on that two things to follow up on I get your point about the the need for robust you know you protect democracy with with robust institutions but if as you see you have a set of bad faith political leaders who essentially

Want to rig the system they want to weaken institutions or possibly corrupt institutions so they’ve you know Advantage them how do you how does that work in that situation well I think there’s three kinds of solutions I mean that I’ve thought of I mean I think I like Sherry I’m in a

Depressing line of work um the economics is sometimes called the Dismal science I think political science in this domain as well so I mean three things that I’ve thought of is I mean in the short run at least it’s necessary to form broad coalitions you know so and

That happened in 2020 where you had Republicans supporting a Democratic president for Democrat candidate for president and this has also happened in the interwar years in Europe where broad coalitions of people who really disagree Catholics and socialists who really hated each other joined together you know in the

Middle of the 20th century defeat fascist forces so that’s in the short run sometimes actually but that’s not a long run solution because democracy is about competition not just about keeping the bad guys out a second solution is something that Europeans invented after World War II which is this notion of

Militant democracy where laws actually have to be passed and this is embedded in the German Constitution where if there’s certain actors who are bad faith actors who break the law and you can Define the law in a way that allows you to identify these actors that are anti-constitutional anti-democratic

Actors that they’re simply not allowed to participate in the political process now this is dangerous of course because in a democracy it’s about the free competition but ultimate cancel culture yes exactly but you know it’s it’s worked pretty well I mean it can be abused but it’s it’s a tool that should

Be in the tool blocks for Democrats to think about how do you exclude you know if somebody’s participated in an Insurrection or a military coup maybe they shouldn’t be allowed to run for office you know that would be one example and then the third solution which is the kind of liberal solution uh

Is that you use competition you beat the other side you just keep beating the other side and the hope of democracy is like in the economic Marketplace if a firm keeps losing customers keeps losing you come up with a new strategy you find uh hire a new manager and so on and I

Think you know one hope in a democracy is that trumpism loses again and you know at some point people slowly come around to realizing this is not the a viable path it’s a risky strategy but that I think is also an essential part of the toolbox and Sherry another

Um question that I often Ponder is that you had two terms of Barack Obama which was a moment of real progression not just for American politics but for you know people all across the world looked at the first African-American man that the White House it was this huge huge

Moment people thought anything was possible we actually believed many of us that we were in this new age of just liberal politics and that progress is always linear and then we have Trump how do you explain how you went from that to that well that is an excellent question

I’m not sure I have a great answer to that but I I surely you know I I it’s like Dan I mean this is my career if someone would have asked me in 2015 um you know it sketched out to me what my country would have looked like in

2019 I would have I would have laughed at them so I mean maybe I’m undermining my own you know sort of sense of authority here but and I would also point out just on this account that Trump did run throw his hand in the ring for the Republican primary in 2012 and

He was laughed at he got almost no support and you know then he came back in 2016 and won so what I’m that’s only to say that there is things that are unpredictable and contingent um again how did we go from a a moderate like Obama to Donald Trump part of that

Has to do with the way the country had changed um I think Barack Obama was a great president in any way in many ways but there were a lot of really um bad Trends going on in American society that he did not deal with directly I

Would say the most obvious in his case would be economic problems that really left a lot of people angry and discontented I don’t think those those Trends alone can explain why people supported Donald Trump but they have been kind of corroding I think a lot of the foundations of um whatever sort of

Solidarity we had in the United States for um some years but I think what the Trump presidency brings up again especially on the heels of Obama and especially on the heels of his running in 2012 and receiving really almost no support is that you know you have to be really very

Vigilant you can’t look at someone like Trump and laugh and think oh he’s never going to be able to win he’s never going to be able to do anything bad because democracy is fragile and if you’re not Vigilant then bad people can come in and start to as we began this conversation

Sort of eat away at your norms and institutions to the point where they really are you know very vulnerable to to bad bad faith actors and Dan have you got any thoughts on this yes I agree I agree that there were these slow moving problems in a way that came to a head

Um and you know especially out of the financial crisis but I think it shouldn’t be underestimated the degree to which support for Trump was a reaction to the Obama presidency and so a sense you know by many people that um you know so you know one of the things

That brought Trump lots of Fame was by claiming that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States and so there was this idea that he was not a legitimate president and so the race plays a major role on this and so Trump trumpism was a reaction to changing demographics

Changing status of different ethnic groups and a kind of undermining of the old racial hierarchy that had existed in the United States for so long and so just you know just one quote from a guy who who’s you know when asked there was a republican Congressman this quote

Always sticks on my mind when asked you know is Donald you really don’t believe that Barack Obama is American he said well you know where he’s not born in America he says well I don’t know if he’s born in America or not but I know in his heart he’s not really in America

You know so this kind of mindset I think is a reaction so this was a reaction so the lesson of that is that when you see people saying outrageous stuff about race and ethnicity and you can kind of dismiss it and say well these are just crazies I think this suddenly moved into

The mainstream and into the White House and I really I’m really glad you brought that because the next thing we’ve just got about five minutes left I’ve got two questions I want to put to you before we wrap up but this is really important because I feel that a lot with Center

Left Progressive liberals we very much focus on the economic issues I mean sometimes we don’t even focused on that that well but we focus on those what we are very nervous around is cultural issues whether it’s to do with immigration whether it’s to do with race

Whether it’s due with you know we now have a big spike in you know discussions around transgender um LGBT issues how big a factor do you think that is now in terms of the rise of of of of populism and um you know something that Center left politics needs to think about quite

Carefully Sherry well so I’m going to cut against what I think the implication of your question is and say that I actually think that it is much better both for the center left and for democracy for our attention to be focused on economic issues rather than social and cultural ones I think

Those issues tend to make people very fearful and um feel threatened and I think that it it in so far as we can keep them from the focus of political competition I think democracy is better now that I’m not saying we shouldn’t deal with them right I’m not saying that immigration

And racism should not be dealt with and certainly not by the center left that is part of what the left is it’s about universalism it’s about equality but making these things the focus of political competition as opposed to economic issues I think that’s not a winning strategy for the center left

I don’t think it’s great for democracy I think dealing with the fact that our societies are changing demographically and culturally that is something that the left has to bring the population along with they have to understand that these are positive Trends they are necessary for healthy societies but

Insofar as you shove people’s fears in their faces I think you are doing I think you’re losing votes if you’re on the center left and I also think you’re not doing a favor for democracy zero-sum issues issues that make people feel threatened those are not the kind of

Issues that democracy deals with well so I very much agree with you there and I think it’s generally pretty disastrous for the left these kind of issues but there’s the world that we’d like and there’s the reality of where we are and we know that the right and particularly

Populism is really pushing at these things it’s happening really happening in the UK it’s happened in in America to sort of flip the question round Dan how do you think the center left navigates this new world where the right is pushing these particularly when things are going really bad on the economy when

The right keeps pushing this and of course with social media conspiracy theories misinformation certain sections of the press wanting to push this and really weaponize these issues how does you know the sort of progressive left deal with that you know I think the answer to that question will determine

Whether or not Donald Trump gets elected in 20. I mean if the center left can respond to that that challenge so you know I one way of thinking you know so I have you talked to kind of in the United States when I talked to moderate Republicans they’ll say isn’t Trump a

Threat why would you ever vote for a republican they say yeah it’s a threat but so too is woke culture and there’s a kind of equivalence of these two and I hate that and I hate trumpism but you know and so there’s all right you know so maybe we could find some other

Alternative and so I think one way of thinking about this is to admit that this can be a threat from the left that there can be you know threats to free speech and so on that can be real in universities and so on but on the other

Hand to recognize you know a sign of maturity in a way is to recognize the scale of a problem you know so if you have a small smaller problem and a bigger problem is to recognize that there are bigger problems and to me you know canceling a free speech in

Universities is a problem but it’s not of the same scale as an assault on the US Congress and the use of guns and in politics and so I think to recognize that it’s a problem but to emphasize that there’s a bigger problem so you know when my 11 year old daughter comes

Home from school and is in tears because she says my you know my friend was mean to me today you know and the neighbor’s house is burnt down you can say well the neighbor’s house burning down is a bigger problem than my daughter’s bad experience with her friends so I think

Similarly a kind of maturity is to is to be able to emphasize that there are bigger problems and smaller problems and I think these it’s of course important to not shove people’s faces into things that they’re fearful but to make the case that these are much bigger threats

I think coming from the right side yeah I I completely I cook a thousand percent agree with that now we’re just coming to the end of our time and I think the final um thing I’m going to try and get from my panelists if I can is um some optimism

And why should we be optimistic about the future of um democracies and how should democracies look after themselves to guard against what Dan said you know that sort of Death By A Thousand Cuts maybe not the big bang but the death by a Thousand Cuts from voter suppression

To shutting down scrutiny of debate etc etc what should we do in democracies to protect ourselves well if you’re looking for a reason for optimism I would go back to something that Dan said at the beginning right which is democracies can self-correct so during the 1960s that was the last big

Time that Western democracies Portugal wasn’t a democracy yet had went through a real crisis I mean we had terrorism in Europe we had shootings in the streets in the United States we had unbelievable rioting we had incredible discontent that was generated by the realization of a lot of citizens again that democracy

Was excluding them it wasn’t taking the rights of minorities and women seriously I mean this was a time of real turmoil and yet democracy managed to recalibrate not perfectly it didn’t deal with all of those things perfectly women still don’t have equal rights certainly minorities still don’t have equal rights but but

Democracy recalibrated it has that ability as long as we don’t let it decay too much so I think the optimism should be that this is not the first time we’ve gone through a crisis and and unlike a dictator like Orban or erdogan those people can’t change dramatically their

Entire system is built on their their own personal Prestige their own unwillingness to change course and so when things go really bad for them that regime is really imperiled in a way that a democracy is not as for what democracy should do well we’ve already discussed that people the governments have to

Figure out ways to better respond to Citizens needs and demands there are real challenges facing Western societies economic challenges making people understand the advantages of more diverse societies the advantages of bringing in new people from the outside to deal with demographic change we talked about that it was talked about a

Little bit with the handbook this is what we need to do we need to figure out ways to get politicians and governments to be more responsive to citizens to satisfy their demands to listen to their concerns it sounds simple it’s not but that’s what democracy is supposed to do

Done yeah and I I agree with that one additional factor is that most voters in fact are are liberal-minded in all of our democracies I mean most voters and citizens Embrace democracy and progress is in fact possible so if you compare you know 1968 Richard Nixon was running

For president there was riots in the streets and he decided the way he was going to win the presidency was by tapping into voters white voters racism and saying you know if you vote for me I’ll put an end to this and it worked you know they voted for him and he came

Into power in 2020 Donald there was black lives matter protesters in the streets and Donald Trump tried to carry out the same strategy and it’s happened of white voters fears of African Americans and it didn’t work and what that suggests is that voters have become more inclusive come to terms with

Democracy and multiracial democracy multi-ethnic democracy in a way that should give us in fact Faith and Hope and democracy well thank you so much that’s been a fascinating discussion I mean the big thing I think I’ve learned taking away from this is that actually democracies are the best way to proceed

Which is good news um but in order to preserve the health of our democracies our politicians have to raise their game they have to be better politicians and to Sherry’s Point governments have to govern well and deliver for their citizens what a fascinating conversation we have had

Thank you so much and let’s give a warm Round of Applause for Dan and Sherry foreign