Speaking of Democracy

If you have opened any messages from either the Democratic or the Republican party lately, you know the state of the nation is parlous, and it's up to you to fix it by making sure the other party, which is actually causing the trouble, doesn't win any more elections. But wait a minute.

Saving the country better not be that simple, because the other party is going to win again sometime. The teeter-totter principle of American politics clearly states that, whichever party is up now, is going down again soon. And while we may all agree that, if They aren't stealing elections, they must be blocking the vote, or They are rioting in Detroit or the Capitol, and autocratic rule and creeping socialism … it remains difficult to get a civil discussion going on these matters. Ideally, we need a view from somebody who isn't riding that teeter-totter.

As it happens, this week I came on two recent reports on the state of democracy. Neither the Freedom House report nor the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) report is cheerful reading. Both find that democracy is in trouble around the world, and in decline in the United States. Freedom House finds that, in terms of political rights and civil liberties, the United States now ranks a little lower than Argentina and Mongolia. The EIU analysis puts us just below Chile in its “flawed democracy” grouping.

About now, somebody is going to say, “The United States isn’t a democracy, it’s a constitutional republic.” OK, but could we talk about that later?

Getting back to those reports, it's troubling to hear somebody say your country is in trouble, but the reports do offer insights. Better yet, because Freedom House approaches from a different angle than the one the EIU takes, the difference in results gives us something to think on. For starters, Freedom House puts inequality— in voting rights, on the street, and in court — at the head of its list of threats to democracy.

The EIU, on the other hand, rates the United States pretty high, compared to other countries, on what seem to be the analogous measures of electoral process, political participation and civil rights. Could both those findings be accurate? Could the United States be ahead of most countries when it comes to civil rights, for example, just not good enough for America?

On the EIU scorecard, functioning of government and political culture are the major problem areas for the United States. Since those two categories at least sound like Freedom House's threats number two and three — elected bodies not really representing citizens, and extreme partisanship — maybe we could all agree to talk about those issues. Is Congress dealing with the problems we want Congress to deal with? Is Republican/Democratic partisanship a problem?

Even if you never look at another word Freedom House or the EIU says, you are probably going to run into some commentary that draws on one or the other. The New York Times already has an extended panel discussion of the Freedom House results, and I can imagine a conversation on “The View.” The Fulcrum is talking about the EIU report, and Tucker Carlson might be interested.

Unfortunately, you are probably not going to hear an extended debate on the comparative merits of those two analyses for the same reason that letters from Nancy Pelosi and Steve Daines do not arrive in a shared envelope. The Freedom House report features a picture of hands lifting protest signs, one with the face of George Floyd, and the introduction talks about the harm to democracy when “an incumbent president attempted to overturn election results … .” Not everyone wants to hear that.

According to the EIU introduction, what has really hammered democracy around the world these last two years has been the way governments responded to the pandemic. Some governments did lock downs, some tracked citizens by cellphone, some even mandated vaccinations — all actions with dangerous long term consequences for democracy. Another significant portion of the electorate probably doesn't want to hear that either

How are we ever going to have a conversation about the state of affairs when we don't all get the same party emails, hear the same political commentators? There is, however, one thing you could do to get the conversational ball rolling. You could google the Freedom House, From Crisis to Reform report. Skip the intro, and just think about the reforms if you want. The same goes for the Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index, even if you only read the section on the China Challenge.

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Will Rawn is a retired Montana State University-Northern professor