In the last two decades, there was a thriving cottage industry of publications on the demise of American democracy. Book titles such as The Second Civil War, Crises of Democracy, Twilight of Democracy, Affluence and Influence, Why Washington Won’t Work, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, Tailspin, Unequal Democracy, Unequal and Unrepresented, American Gridlock, Democracy in America? Plutocracy in America, How Democracies Die, Let Them Eat Tweets, Last Best Hope, How Civil Wars Start and The Next Civil War are eloquent testimony to a democracy in deep trouble.
There are symptoms galore of an American democratic dystopia. The most glaring ones include the unbridgeable chasm between the Democrats and Republicans, gridlock between the executive and the legislature, a highly politicized and increasingly mistrusted Supreme Court, dysfunctional governance, discredited political elites, weakened social and economic institutions, blatant political inequalities, egregious and rampant money politics, tumbling public trust in democracy, coarse rhetoric, callous incivility, unresponsive and irresponsible elites, minority rule, rising populism and authoritarianism, the emergence of political tribes with different identities, the increasing dominance of nonelected forces and special interests, dissension over constitutional rules, so on and so forth.
In the United States, there are two opposite views about the future of American democracy. The optimists are hopeful that some sort of democratic rejuvenation will transpire because of the intrinsic ability of American democracy to renew itself. They allude to the Jacksonian era, the Civil War, the Progressive Era, the New Deal, the Civil Rights movement, and the Great Society as examples of the resilience and adaptability of American democracy. The pessimists, who are seemingly in the majority, are much less sanguine about the future of American democracy. They tend to see the crumbling of American democracy as too complete to be resurrected. The pessimists thus believe that the demise of American democracy is an inexorable and irreversible historical process.
The widening incongruity between liberalism and democracy has wreaked painful havoc on American democracy
I used to have great respect for American democracy. Today, however, I must admit that I by and large belong to the pessimistic camp. Many American scholars attribute the crisis of American democracy to such factors as ethnic and racial inequality and tension, staggering income and wealth gaps between the rich and the poor, public and private narcissism, the fraying of the social fabric, the demise of trade unions, the dwindling of the middle class, the paucity of mobility opportunities for the young people, the deep value cleavages, the irreconcilable regional divides, etc. All these are serious and deep-seated problems afflicting American democracy, and they cannot be resolved within a short period even if the necessary will and resources are there. Nevertheless, from my point of view, American democracy is undermined by several even more intractable structural impediments.
In the first place, there is no longer a common political community in the US. In a common political community, there is broad consensus on fundamental political values and institutions among the people who also see themselves as members of a community of common political fate. A democracy can only succeed when underpinned by a united political community. In today’s US, we witness a fractured “political community” where people’s values, feelings, identities, and interests are mutually antagonistic. Samuel Huntington, a political science guru, lamented in Who Are We? that the Anglo-Saxon culture is no longer the dominant and unifying culture in the US. Community solidarity and identification have given way to bitter strife among various political groups or “tribes”.
Compromise and conciliation are castigated as betrayal or weakness. In such circumstances, electoral victories by the majority will not be recognized by the losing minority. Simultaneously, respect for the minority by the majority is out of order. When a sense of common political community is not there, the so-called “democratic rules of the game” will no longer command respect and obedience. Various groups and individuals will resort to unconventional, extralegal, or even violent means to redress their grievances, to bring down their rivals, or to seize power. And these are the things we are now seeing more and more in the US.
The widening incongruity between liberalism and democracy has wreaked painful havoc on American democracy. The relationship between liberalism and democracy is always fraught in capitalist America. Embedded in liberalism is the freedom to compete in the capitalist market, which inevitably will result in staggering disparity in wealth and income. Democracy on the other hand postulates that politically all are equal and have equal political rights. However, nowadays the putative equal political rights in the US are at odds with its vast economic inequalities, rendering the former practically meaningless. Previously, when industrial capitalism held sway in the US, this oddity was visible but not insufferable because of the existence of a prosperous middle class.
Since the 1970s, with the rise of globalization and financial capitalism in the US, economic inequalities have reached an extremely perilous stage. Power and affluence are now firmly in the hands of a minuscule economic elite whose money power, a lot of which is derived from financial and legal engineering, has rendered most Americans economically struggling and politically powerless.
The hollowing out of manufacturing in the American economy stemming from globalization and the shortsighted policies of the American government means that the US has to continue to rely on finance and debt creation to bolster an increasingly unsustainable economic growth. Reindustrialization and austerity in the US are unlikely. The dominance and persistence of financial capitalism in the US will pull liberalism further away from democracy and thus make liberal democracy unviable. Revolt of the masses, the eschewal of elite commitment to the people, and intensified mass-elite collision will become increasingly salient, a concrete manifestation of which is the life-and-death struggle between the Democrats and the Republicans.
The American Constitution, which has lasted for more than two centuries, does not seem to be capable of rejuvenating American democracy. Previously, emerging threats to American democracy could be overcome by amending the American Constitution, notably by incorporating new political forces into an expanded democratic system.
This time, for several reasons, the ability of the American Constitution to come to the aid of American democracy is much weakened. Long ago, the great American political scientist Robert Dahl in his How Democratic Is the American Constitution? identified quite a number of undemocratic features in the American Constitution, pertaining, among other things, to its electoral arrangements and unaccountable judicial power. Since then, they have pushed the US toward an even more undemocratic direction. Amending the US Constitution to rejuvenate American democracy by reshaping American politics or changing the electoral system requires supermajorities. This obviously cannot be attained given all the gridlocks and the absence of mutual trust in today’s American politics.
Financial capitalism in the US is unable to provide gainful employment and economic benefits to a majority of Americans. It is built on the foundation of US dollar hegemony and is intrinsically unstable and unsustainable. Economic grievances and the heightened sense of relative deprivation in society are increasingly translated into mistrust of the American political system and the governing class. Just like other political systems, American democracy cannot survive mainly based on political ideals. It has to be able to cater to the material well-being of the American people, many of whom are anticipating a gloomy future for themselves and their country. It is hard to believe that the economic system of the US can be changed fundamentally in the foreseeable future. Instead, it is more likely that financial capitalism, with its ups and downs, will continue, creating many more losers and discrediting American democracy.
Though somewhat incredible, the rise of China does pose a “threat” to American democracy. The miraculous success of the Chinese political model, particularly in promoting economic growth, eliminating poverty, and managing crises, has placed American democracy in a poor light. Even though China has no intention to “export” her political model to the West, its sheer existence will induce many thoughtful Americans to be skeptical of their own political system. If American democracy is no longer held by many Americans as the best in the world or if it is seen as unable to keep the US the world’s most powerful and richest country, public confidence in it will eventually slip, and so will its ability to hold the country together. This without any doubt is one of the reasons why China, as the paragon of a successful non-Western model of development, has become a bugbear of the American political elites.
Today, American democracy is losing appeal domestically and internationally. Yet, ridiculously, by practicing self-denial or self-deception, American political elites are still brandishing American democracy as the only political model for the world. They also vow that the US is ready to impose it on other countries by coercion, persuasion or inducements. This time, however, all these seem to be more propaganda and actions to reassure the American people of the continued superiority of American democracy than a realistic policy of the US.
The irreversible failure of American democracy, begetting a less self-confident US, has already impaired and will continue to imperil the relationship of the two countries. To divert public attention away from the parlous state of American democracy, US political elites try arduously to disparage the Chinese political system, blame everything wrong in the US on China, and hold the country together by endlessly spewing out anti-China venom. They also take innumerable actions unscrupulously and meanly to contain the rise of China and, if successful, to “prove” the inferiority of the Chinese political system. American ruthlessness will no doubt slow down China’s rise a little bit, but China’s eventual rise is unstoppable.
The plan of the US to bring China down is bound to be in vain, yet it will cost the US dearly, not least the growing resentment of the Chinese people toward the US. It will also erode the moral standing of American democracy, which used to be a showcase of self-confidence and magnanimity (though confined to its like-minded friends) in the world. However, from the prism of China’s self-interest, a rejuvenated American democracy would be good for the US-China relationship and good for humanity as it would allow these two self-confident and powerful countries to work together to tackle the burning global issues of the world.
The author is a professor emeritus of sociology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and vice-president of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.