Como morrem as democracias? Por Steven Levitsky - Legendado

okay first of all many thanks to the funda shell for inviting me to speak you probably spent I'm not an expert in Brazilian politics but I do study Latin American politics I've spent the last 30 years of my life devoted to studying Latin American democracies and President Cardoso was at the time that I began my studies one of the leading sociologists in the world in studying Latin America and so he has been an idol of mine since I was a young very young man and so it's a great great honor to be here today I apologize for not being able to give the talk in Portuguese my Portuguese is horrible my wife told me I should try to do it but I I chickened out so let me start by by pointing out something that I think's pretty obvious but I think it's important to say which is the democracies don't die today the way they used to democracies used to die the hands of men with guns generals many Dada's during the Cold War three out of every four Democratic breakdowns took the form of a military coup like in Brazil in 1964 and actually talking to people here a lot of people in Brazil I think still think that that's kind of how democracies die it's not today democracies die in a much more subtle way they died the hands not of generals but of elected leaders elected presidents and prime ministers who use the very institutions of democracy to subvert it since the end of the Cold War a large majority of autocrats have come to power through elections and they've used legal or constitutional means to consolidate their power they use elections they use plebiscites and referendums they in many cases work through Congress or they gain control of the courts and they use judicial rulings to legalize or legitimize their rule this is Chavez it's Putin Sorbonne it's err Diwan daniel ortega rafael correa do 30 in philippines and many other cases what makes this sort of electoral path to authoritarianism so dangerous is precisely that it's hidden behind a facade of democracy things look pretty normal there are no dramatic coup d'etat with a military cease the presidential palace and the president is exiled and the constitution is suspended and a hunt is set up none of them there are no tanks in the streets you still have elections still have a congress you still have a constitution in fact the subversion of democracy in many cases is it's subtle it is incremental and sometimes it's very slow everyone's party came to power in Turkey in 2002 it was not until two thousand seven or eight that the regime really began to be authoritarian Chavez was elected in 1998 it was not until 2006 or 2007 that it was clear that the regime had slid into authoritarianism that's seven or eight years so as a result because it is so subtle because the process of manipulating institutions is so subtle incremental slow citizens often are not aware that they're losing their democracy until it is too late in 2011 it was a survey in Venezuela this is 13 years after what Chavez was elected president they found in 2011 that a majority Venezuelan still believed that they were living under a democracy they were not so if democratic breakdown today begins at the ballot box not in the barracks one of the keys to protecting democracy is keeping authoritarians from getting elected in the first place and that means we have to be able to identify authoritarians when they're still candidates back in the in the 1970s the great political scientist juan linz who really devoted the bulk of his career to studying how democracies die he was born in vitamark germany raised in spain during the civil war and really devoted his professional career to figuring out how democracies die he wrote a very very widely circulated book in the 1970s and called the breakdown of democratic regimes in which he proposed what he called a litmus test of authority identify authoritarian behavior Daniel my co-author and I took that litmus test and kind of updated it and revised it Linz wasn't always the clearest of writers and presented a kind of an updated version of that litmus test in our book the test includes four types of candidate behavior that should set off warning bells that should make us nervous that should make us worried if we see it these are the four and these are these come mostly from lens one is a rejection of democratic rules of the game a refusal to play by Democratic rules of the game pretty obvious a second one is toleration or encouragement of violence a third is a denial of the legitimacy of one's partisan rivals opponents and a fourth is an expressed willingness to curtail the civil liberties of opponents including in the media when a politician exhibits one or more of these behaviors we should worry and more importantly we should not elect them now obviously there is no perfect no failsafe mechanism for identifying autocrats but in our research we found that most elected autocrats do in fact pass this test they do in fact exhibit signs of authoritarianism they reveal their authoritarianism before they get elected there are a few who say scary things while there are candidates and they end up behaving themselves in office but the vast majority of them do what they say they're going to do they behave as authoritarians as candidates they engage in authoritarian discourses candidates and they attack democratic institutions as presidents and prime ministers Chavez air. the Juan Ortega doterra taqueria there are many others so the lesson I take from that is we need to take what candidates say seriously they're not bluffing now extremists candidates authoritarian figures appear in all democracies from time to time the United States this is a long history of them the question is how do we keep them away from the center of power and here the pull and again we draw heavily on juan linz the political elite and particularly political parties play a very very important role elected authoritarians rarely come to power on their own they almost always get help from the political establishment somebody from the political or economic elite opens the door for them some mainstream politicians calculate that an alliance working with flirting with this extremist figure can help them politically in the short run help them win power help them stay in power help them defeat somebody else that they don't like but and the assumption is that if this extremist wins power the establishment can control them that deal that Faustian bargain often backfires in Italy in the 1920s Liberal leader Giovanni Gillette II seeking to tap in to the fascists mass appeal put Mussolini's fascists candidates on his list for Parliament normalizing legitimizing the fascist party that did not end well in Germany in the late 1920s conservative leaders forged an alliance with Hitler hoping to sort of tap into Hitler's grassroots support to shore up their own declining base the Conservatives were in decline when conservatives started to worry about Hitler after he was named Chancellor in 1932 conservative leader Franz von Papen told his conservative allies don't worry within two months we'll have pushed him so far into a corner he will squeal more recently in Venezuela for a former president or former president Raphael caldera publicly sympathized Lulu o Chavez its first coup attempt in 1992 lead helping to legitimize Chavez two years later as president he let Chavez out of prison call that a knew very well that who will Chavez was dangerous demagogue but he was convinced that Chavez would sort of fade away politically before the 1998 election so in all three of these cases Italy Germany Venezuela mainstream politicians opened the door to extremists in all three cases it turned out to be a tragic mistake again one lose devoted the bulk of his career to studying how democracies die one of the primary lessons that he drew is that mainstream politicians must do everything humanly possible to keep would-be authoritarians away from the center of power not only must they be willing to resist the temptation to align with extremists which seems pretty straightforward but they may they also have to be willing if necessary to join forces with ideological rivals in defense of democracy in lines' words I want to quote this because I think it's important when faced with an authoritarian threat mainstream politicians want --lens rights must join with opponents who are ideologically distant but committed to the survival of the democratic political order Italian liberals German conservatives and Raphael comdata failed to do that their democratic political orders collapsed now Daniel and I wrote this book we wrote how democracies die because we were worried about American democracy so inevitably I have to talk a little bit about the United States in 2016 the United States Republican Party also failed to heed one Lanza's advice Donald Trump tested unambiguously positive on our authoritarian litmus test he threatened not to accept the results of the election he threatened to jail his opponent he encouraged violence at his campaign rallies and he threatened legal action against critics in the media checks all four boxes on our test Republican leaders knew perfectly well that Donald Trump was a demagogue they knew damn well that he was unfit for office excuse my language but resisting a demagogue on one's own side of the political spectrum is hard it often means short term political defeat and no politician anywhere likes to lose so politicians often rationalize they tell themselves and they tell others that the demagogue may not be so bad that they can control him and that in any event it's better handing power to him than handing power to one's ideological rivals and that's what Republican leaders did no Republican leader not a single national elected Republican official not in no governor no senator no member of Congress was willing to do the one thing that would have ensured Trump's defeat that is endorsed Hillary Clinton that sent that's the fact that not a single Republican endorsed Hillary Clinton sent a very clear message to Republican voters it told them that it was a normal election that Donald Trump was a normal candidate that this was a a normal two-party race and in the context of a soso economy in the context of a closely divided electorate that was enough to get Donald Trump elected so now Americans are faced with a potentially authoritarian president that's where political institutions come into play and I want to talk a little bit about formal and informal institutions Americans as as you probably know have a lot of pride and a lot of faith in our Constitution and in fact our constitutional system of checks and balances has constrained many powerful and ambitious presidents in the past Andrew Jackson Franklin Roosevelt Nixon but one of the key arguments of our book is that Constitution is by themselves are not enough to save a democracy to protect a democracy they have to be reinforced supported complemented by unwritten rules what we call democratic norms and the book focuses on two norms in particular the first is what we call mutual toleration or accepting the legitimacy of one's partisan opponents that means that no matter how much we disagree with the other party no matter how much we dislike the other party we accept at least in public that they are loyal citizens who love the country just as much as we do and who have an equal right equal and legitimate right to compete for power and if they win elections to govern in other words we do not treat our rivals as enemies the second norm is what we call forbearance this is a little trickier forbearance means refraining from exercising one's legal right it is an act of self restraint it is an under utilization of power we do not often think about forbearance in politics particularly in Latin American politics but it is absolutely vital to making democracy work think for just a second about what the US president is constitutionally able to do legally able to do the president can pardon whoever he wants at any time for whatever reason he wants the president that's unclear but the cons of the Constitution doesn't rule it out that may be tested any president of the United States with a majority in Congress like Donald Trump has today can pack the Supreme Court the President does not like the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court his allies in Congress can pass a law expanding it from 9 to 11 to 13 to 15 and fill it with loyalists perfectly legal to do that or think about what the US Congress can do Congress can refuse to fund the government it can shut the government down and as all of you know the Congress can remove the president for any reason it wants legally my point here is that politicians can exploit the letter of the Constitution even a very good Constitution like like the United States's can exploit the letter of the Constitution in ways that undermine even eviscerate the spirit of the Constitution legal scholar mark tuition at a Harvard professor calls this sort of behavior constitutional hardball I do not know how to translate constitutional hardball into Portuguese good luck whoever's doing the translation but I'm going to use that term constitutional hardball it is the it is the use of the letter of the law to undermine the spirit of the law you look at any failing or failed democracy anywhere in the world and you will find an abundance of constitutional hardball Germany in Spain in the 1930s Argentina under Peron Venezuela under Chavez contemporary Hungary Turkey Poland constitutional hardball should be familiar to anybody who follows Latin American politics court packing is one example and Arjen the Argentine's are masters of constitutional hardball presidents Peron Mann and Kirchner all packed the Supreme Court they did it in ways that were technically legal constitutional impeachment can be an instance of constitutional hardball and Pietschmann is a very powerful tool because what you're doing when you impeach the president is you are challenging violating distorting the will of the electorate the mandate of the electorate so it is a very powerful tool a tool that at least the United States constitutional scholars agree should be used very sparingly should be used with restraint with forbearance in in Latin America we have a number of instances in which forbearance has not been used in which in Pietschmann has been used as a form of constitutional hardball it's been used by Congress's who don't like the president simply as a means of getting rid of a president they don't like I think the clearest case of all is Paraguay in 2012 when President Lugo was impeached in two days the president of Paraguay was given two hours to defend himself it was it was a show trial another case another one of my favorite cases is Ecuador in 1997 Congress did not like president Abdulla Buca ROM they did not have the two-thirds votes that they needed to legally impeach Buca ROM so they used the clause in the Constitution that allows a mere majority to remove the president for mental incapacity now we can debate whether of the la boca rom suffered from mental incapacity but the ecuadorian congress did not spend even five minutes debating whether he actually suffered from mental incapacity simply used the letter of that rule to remove the president Constitution hardball turns what should be neutral institutions into partisan weapons into weapons that are used against one's opponents that if frequent enough can undermine and even kill a democracy this is this is fairness Argentina's chavista Venezuela its era one's turkey what prevents a constitutional democracy from descending into regime threatening constitutional hardball is the norm of forbearance it's a shared commitment by politicians to institutional restraint to defending the spirit of the law above and blond and beyond the letter law it is basically politicians saying yes legally I can do that but we don't do things that way here that's incredibly important in a democracy now in the United States we argue in the book that norms of mutual toleration and forbearance were pretty strong throughout the twentieth century but we also argue that in the last couple of decades those norms are weakening in our country during the Obama presidency in particular Republicans began to abandon mutual toleration Republican leaders told their followers over and over again in public and in private that President Obama did not love America that Obama and the Democrats were not real Americans Hillary Clinton suffered a similar treatment Donald Trump repeatedly called every criminal and Republicans chanted lock her up live on national television in their party congress the erosion of mutual toleration the fact that republicans have begun to question the legitimacy of their rivals call them not american call them criminal worries us because without mutual toleration politicians are encouraged tempted often pushed to engage in constitutional hardball what do i mean when we view our rivals as enemies when we view our rivals as an existential threat we're tempted to use any means necessary to prevent them from gaining power and that is beginning to happen in the United States constitutional hardball is on the rise in the United States an early example was the partisan impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998 basically on a technicality that was the first impeachment United States in 130 years in the last decade about a dozen republican-controlled states have passed legislation making it harder for poor and minority citizens who tend to vote Democrat to vote they're trying to tilt the playing field by restricting the electorate most stunning of all in my opinion was the Senate's refusal in 2016 to allow President Obama to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia that was the first time that that happened that Congress had refused to allow the President to even try to fill a spot in the courts first time that happened since 1866 since the Civil War so the soft guardrails that are protected that have been protecting our democracy are weakening in the United States so what causes that what causes norms of mutual toleration and forbearance to weaken to erode we argue in the book that it's primarily a product of polarization Republican let me talk a little bit about the United States and I'll move on to Brazil in the United States Republicans and Democrats have come over the last 20 years to fear and loes one another one interesting piece of data a survey in 1960 found that 5 percent of Republicans at 4 percent of Democrats said they would be unhappy if their kid if their child married somebody from the other party today it's 50 percent fifty percent forty nine percent of Republicans and fifty-five percent of Democrats say the other party makes them afraid afraid we have not seen that level of fear partisan fear and hatred since the end of the Civil War and this is not traditional left-right polarization America's partisan differences run deeper than that they're about race religion and culture so whereas the Democratic Party has become a very heterogeneous mix of urban secular why and a range of ethnic minorities the Republican Party remains overwhelmingly white and Christian so what why does that matter it matters because white Christians are not just any group in the United States they were once a dominant electoral majority and more than that they used to sit unchallenged atop the country's social economic political hierarchies they filled the presidency they felled to Congress they failed the Supreme Court the governor's mansions they were the CEOs of the major companies there were the newscasters on television there were the movie stars they were the college professors those days are over as you all know but losing a majority and losing one's dominant social status can be deeply threatening many Republican voters feel like the country that they grew up in has been taken away from them that we think is what ultimately drive polarization in the United States the problem is polarization can kill democracies when politics is so deeply polarized that each side views a victory by the other side is something that is intolerable unacceptable democracy's in trouble because when an opposition victory is seen as something that's intolerable you start to justify using extraordinary measures to prevent that from happening things like violence things like election fraud things like cooze that's what happened in Spain in the 1930s it happened in Argentina four decades after the rise of Peron it's what happened in Brazil in the early 60s it's what happened in Chile in the 1970s u. s.

democracy and this is we're going to stop talking about my country is far from dead it still has pretty robust institutions but the democratic norms the informal unwritten rules that used to sustain our institutions are being eroded by polarization so I think there was real reason for concern in in my country all right so what about Brazil I again am NOT an expert on Brazilian politics so don't take anything I say very seriously but I think our books arguments are relevant here too first and foremost was obviously perhaps like the United States in 2016 Brazilians face the specter of an authoritarian presidential candidate by my host Leo requested that I do a little homework before my visit here so a couple of research assistants at Harvard helped me do some research on Boston Otto and we applied our litmus test to Boston Adam here are the results you probably will not be surprised that he passes test positive in flying colors indicator number one does he reject democratic rules of the game throughout his career as far as we can tell going back to the 1980s Boston ro has praised the military dictatorship and challenged the legitimacy of the post 1985 democracy in 1993 he declared I am for dictatorship called for the closure of Congress like in Fujimori's Peru of the year earlier more recently Boston are declared that what happened in 1964 was not a coup he promised a chavista like packing of the Supreme Court and he questioned the legitimacy of brazil's electoral system calling it rape he just named as his vice presidential candidate a general who at various points has signaled his openness to a military coup so not only his bowl senado rejected democratic rules of the game but he's actually done so in a way that is more open and more egregious than air the one that Fuki more tea than Chavez then or Bach none of those guys openly embraced dictatorship okay so he passes that one check that box indicator number two toleration or encouragement of violence in 1998 Boston artist said the military should have killed 30,000 people including for another record also he's encouraged encourage the extrajudicial police killing of under criminals he is embraced death squads in Rio de Janeiro he's justified the extrajudicial killing of 19 farm workers in Fatah in 1996 indicator number three denying the legitimacy of one's partisan rivals both Sanada was called President Cardoso a corrupt Oh who should have been killed during the dictatorship he calls Lula criminal wants to imprison him and says he if in government will treat the MST as terrorists indicator number four a willingness to curtail the civil liberties of opponents ball senado has repeatedly endorsed the use of torture and extrajudicial killing including against leftist politicians and activists so Boston ro is a thoroughly authoritarian figure that distinguishes him and I think this is very important that distinguishes him from all of his rivals it always major rivals in the 2018 presidential race it distinguishes him from Alckmin from from Marina Silva from Haddad from Sidhu I was my host also requested that I do a little research on these other candidates and and we did none of them show up on this litmus test pseudo Gomez the from the best of my research has a big mouth but we found we found no evidence of a Thor of authoritarian tendencies being hot-tempered and being offensive is not the same thing as being authoritarian taking bribes as Lula allegedly did is not the same thing as being authoritarian this is very important center-left politician is even corrupt ones do not generally threaten democracy authoritarian candidates do threaten democracy so Brazil may be headed to one of those critical moments that lunes wrote about when political and economic elites may have to choose may be forced to choose between their short term political and policy goals and the long term defense of democratic institutions and though the the overwhelming lesson of my research is that Brazilian elite should resist the temptation to back ball senado under any circumstance under any second-round scenario you can imagine I worry when I read that ball Sanada was applauded by the National Confederation of Industry last month and that according to CNI president Robson and Riley many entrepreneurs like Bo senado because he shows Authority I worry a lot that business leaders will decide that ball senado is worth the risk because maybe because of the economic policies that Paulo gauges can deliver or maybe because it's just better than having to deal with the government led by Seto or her that this is the historic mistake that Italian liberals made it's the mistake that German conservatives make it's the mistake that u. s.