Competitive Authoritarianism

[mister_coffee]

I have to wonder just how well any kind of Authoritarianism will work here. That won't stop people from trying.

A lot of the "prototypical" countries that are used as examples (Hungary, Turkey, Russia) are countries with a very limited democratic tradition (or basically none at all) and it bluntly isn't surprising that democracy doesn't fare very well there.

It just seems kind of arrogant to assume that Americans would be good at Authoritarianism just because they are Americans.

The counterargument would be that certain parts of the USA (mainly the Old South) have a history of being a one-party police state. So maybe we do have an authoritarian streak in there.

[Rideback]

Interesting. The Silicon Valley mantra of 'move fast and break things' is in play but as we're finding out with Trump's admin there's no finishing of the sentence because there's no plan to put things back together again once we face a broken country. In an authoritarian regime there's the premise that the people will be forced to bend a knee because there is no other way to survive. But Trump can't even promise survival.

More news about guys without warrants or ID grabbing innocent people
https://dailyprogress.com/news/local/cr ... 8bf16.html

[just-jim]

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Good interview with Steven Levitsky, Harvard prof and author of ‘How Democracies Die’…on NPR this morning. He thinks we may be headed, not for a dictatorship like China or Russia….but what he and others call ‘competitive authoritarianism’. Think of countries like Turkey, Venezuela, Hungary and El Salvador.

A partial quote:

“I think the most likely outcome is a slide into what Lucan Way and I call competitive authoritarianism. These are regimes that constitutionally continue to be democracies. There is a Constitution. There are regular elections, a legislature and importantly, the opposition is legal, above ground and competes for power. So from a distance, if you squint, it looks like a democracy, but the problem is that systematic coming (ph) abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition. This is the kind of regime that we saw in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez. It's subsequently become a full-on dictatorship. It's what we see in Turkey under Erdogan. It's what we see in El Salvador. It's what we see in Hungary today. Most new autocracies that have emerged in the 21st century have been led by elected leaders and fall into this category of competitive authoritarianism. It's kind of a hybrid regime.”

Transcript of the lengthy interview: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/nx-s1-5372334
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