Pro-democracy organizing

Harvard scholars Erica Chenoweth and Zoe Marks have a new working paper with recommendations on how Americans could organize against a hypothetical autocratic regime. Here’s the gist of their proposed strategy:

Build and maintain a large-scale, multiracial, cross-class, pro-democracy united front that continues to push for structural/institutional reforms and contest for power, even after authoritarianism has appeared to consolidate. The coalition should use ongoing local, county, state, and national elections as flashpoints by which to build a resilient and expansive pro-democracy movement, document election malfeasance, and promote anti- authoritarian platforms, reforms, and talking points for campaigns to take up at all levels of government.

Protect, hold, and build local and community power through alternative institutions to address urgent communal problems, protect minority rights and lives, reinforce an oppositional pro-democratic culture, develop leadership, and build capacity for collective mobilization when needed.

Build pressure to induce defections among those loyal to the autocrat or authoritarian alliance, including through widespread economic noncooperation and labor action.

Prevent, deter, and strengthen resilience to increased threats of state or paramilitary violence through strategic planning and organized and disciplined actions, including building a capacity to anticipate, induce, and exploit defections; broaden inclusive participation; document paramilitary networks; publicize abuses; and demand local accountability.

You can read the full paper here. I don’t think the authors would disagree when I say that it reads more like the start of a conversation than a fully fleshed-out program. That isn’t a criticism; I’m glad to see serious academics trying to move this conversation along to practical and strategic considerations. The neverending debate over the precise nature and severity of the threat to democracy—e.g. “Is Trump really fascist, according to the ten-point rubric I just invented?”—has started to feel like the dead end of a dark road.

I’m not qualified to place odds on American democracy’s medium-term prospects. But putting it conservatively, I think it’s fair to say that the threat of a relatively durable autocratic regime coming to power within the next 10 years is probably a bit higher than many people realize. That regime, if it comes, won’t be totalitarian. It will continue to hold elections, some of which will be competitive. But it won’t be a democracy in the thick sense of the word.

Nazi Germany isn’t the right analogy. The most obvious contemporary one is Hungary—obvious because the authoritarian right in the United States has publicly embraced Orbán. Others have suggested an parallel with Mexico’s decades of one-party rule under the PRI; I don’t know enough about that history to judge, although it sounds plausible.

But we shouldn’t forget that the United States has its own indigenous tradition of authoritarian rule. De jure segregation in the Jim Crow South was part of a larger system of one-party authoritarian rule, sustained through patronage on the one hand and pro-regime terrorism on the other. A great deal of living, native born U.S. citizens grew up in what were effectively autocratic states.

In other words, it’s already happened here, and it’s worth thinking about what needs to be done if it happens again. It’s certainly not too early for more people to have that conversation. Given everything that has happened over the past few years, I’d say it’s overdue.

(via Zander Furnas)