Fortified and Reluctant Democracy
Democracy, in its general terminology is not short-term, as it has intellectual-theoretical proportions that span more than 2,500 years, and it has assumed various connotations according to the historical contexts in which it appeared.
It is still a subject of constant debate to this day, and is permanently inventive because of its never-exhausting political momentum, and also because of the growing and endless propensity of humankind to equality.
Researchers point to major patterns of democracy that have been achieved historically in different countries such as the UK, the US, and France. They are, respectively, liberal democracy, constitutional-egalitarian democracy, representative or contested democracy.
These entrenched, fortified democracies are almost impenetrable, unlike the fragile or loose democracies that we saw in the 1970s and 1980s in Latin America (Chile, Pinochet Coup), Asia (Turkey, the Military Coups) and Pakistan (Operation Fair Play)… etc.
In which any obsessed politician or military man can overthrow democracy and usurp power in it and the political system over and over, thus imposing himself as its guardian and monopolizing legitimacy for himself.
However, even those long-standing and fortified democracies are not immune to the occasional deviations in certain historical periods that threaten their very existence, as happened in Germany (Weimar Republic) and the rise of Nazism led by Adolf Hitler.
If the Democracy does not correct and refine itself, then over the years it proceeds in an inevitable direction towards tyranny or chaos, such as the tyranny of the individual on everyone, or the tyranny of the oligarchic minority over the majority, or the tyranny of the majorities (national, ethnic, sectarian) over minorities, or the tyranny of all on everyone and this is a mob rule.
The main threats to democracy in the capitalist west, and the US in particular, are the new trends that are growing in their societies, such as xenophobia, extreme nationalist tendencies, liberal barbarism, all of which feed the social base of the populist right.
The populist right wanted to rob the heart of democratic institutions and disrupt their will by stirring up chaos, which required a quick and direct reaction by those institutions through which they revealed their level of democratic responsibility.
What the outgoing US President Donald Trump did has distorted the US democracy, and this is considered one of the most perverted and ambiguous manifestations of political behavior in the history of the executive branch in US. Never before has an executive authority that has exhausted its duties took advantage of the mob’s discontent and incited it to attack or clash with the legislative institution.
Trump’s attempt to bet on the public’s anger and create chaos to justify his stay in power is a regressive turn in the role and position of the presidency that has not been witnessed in the history of the US before.
Trump’s totalitarian and populist tendency has pushed Trump to seek the help of his extremist following, who support his political programs and slogans, and organized by him to confront legitimate and federal institutions.
He wagered on this matter since the beginning, and did his best to divide the US society and bring it into an anarchic, internal violent conflict in order to justify his retention of power.
On the other hand, constitutional and democratic institutions should have been a strong buffer against this authoritarian tendency, and were able to correct every tendency towards authoritarianism and constitutional deviation in the presidency institution as quickly as possible.
The violence practiced by Trump supporters, in protest and instigation of the election results, had nothing to do with politics, nor with democracy. Rather, it contradicts every political logic that it excludes, and is a rare incident in the US history that shook the image of US democracy and put it to danger.
Perhaps this is what Trump wanted to leave behind before leaving the White House, in order to accurately express his refusal to acknowledge his electoral defeat.
More than a century and a half ago, the clever French theorist Alexis de Tocqueville observed that the US Constitution granted the president the greatest possible powers, but deprived him of the ability to act.
Since that time, he has seen that one of the flaws of the electoral system in US is that it creates a kind of long instability in the country’s domestic and foreign policy, but people do not really feel this defect as long as the president’s share of power is limited.
The president in America has a certain influence in the affairs of the state, but nevertheless he does not manage it.
The dominant power is in the hands of the representatives of the entire nation, and accordingly, the principles of the political state depend on the people as a whole, not only on the president, and therefore the electoral system in America did not have any harmful effect on the stability of the government.
Finally, Tocqueville says with a kind of prediction that in the election period between the two presidencies, only a few European nations can avoid disaster, chaos, or invasion, but in US, the society is in a way that makes it stable and steadfast on its rules without any need for anyone’s help.
The election of the president may be a cause for agitation and turmoil, but it is not a cause for ruin. This is what happened finally, and American democracy enshrined in a federal constitution was able to save itself by itself.