It Gets Better (political science edition)
July 21, 2020 9:54 AM Subscribe
Tell me about times in modern history that a country has faced the sort of threats to democracy or rule-of-law that the US is currently facing, but has managed to get its shit at least partway back together.
I'd love to hear "Whatchamacallistan peaked at our current badness level and made it back down to zero badness."
But maybe more realistically I'd also love to hear "Foobaritania hung out at our current badness level for a while, and then dialed it back a notch or two and seems to be staying put."
If you think it's impossible for a country to do this, don't worry, I already understand your point of view very, very well, and and am very familiar with the arguments for it. I don't really need to hear more.
I'd love to hear "Whatchamacallistan peaked at our current badness level and made it back down to zero badness."
But maybe more realistically I'd also love to hear "Foobaritania hung out at our current badness level for a while, and then dialed it back a notch or two and seems to be staying put."
If you think it's impossible for a country to do this, don't worry, I already understand your point of view very, very well, and and am very familiar with the arguments for it. I don't really need to hear more.
"Foobaritania hung out at our current badness level for a while, and then dialed it back a notch or two and seems to be staying put."
CHICAGO 10 - OFFICIAL TRAILER
posted by katra at 10:02 AM on July 21, 2020
CHICAGO 10 - OFFICIAL TRAILER
posted by katra at 10:02 AM on July 21, 2020
The civil rights movement in the USA is basically what you are looking for.
posted by splitpeasoup at 10:13 AM on July 21, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by splitpeasoup at 10:13 AM on July 21, 2020 [5 favorites]
The Velvet Revolution might be worth reading up on.
posted by Johnny Assay at 10:29 AM on July 21, 2020
posted by Johnny Assay at 10:29 AM on July 21, 2020
Argentina.
posted by kevinbelt at 10:30 AM on July 21, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by kevinbelt at 10:30 AM on July 21, 2020 [1 favorite]
Well, there was a Civil War at one point but we made a partial recovery from that, except for the ongoing racism.
posted by mygoditsbob at 10:38 AM on July 21, 2020
posted by mygoditsbob at 10:38 AM on July 21, 2020
Would France Mai 68 count? Although the protests resulted in a de Gaulle win in the short term, in the longer term there has been social reform and modernisation in France.
The other examples that came to mind was the South Korea, in particular the changes following the June struggle, and the transitions from fascism to democracy in Spain and Portugal.
posted by plonkee at 10:41 AM on July 21, 2020 [2 favorites]
The other examples that came to mind was the South Korea, in particular the changes following the June struggle, and the transitions from fascism to democracy in Spain and Portugal.
posted by plonkee at 10:41 AM on July 21, 2020 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: (Sorry to thread-sit, but just to clarify, I'm looking for evidence that things could get better without getting worse from here first. So the Civil War is only really interesting to me if there's reason to believe things are already as bad now as they were during the worst of the Civil War, and likewise for Franco etc.)
posted by nebulawindphone at 11:06 AM on July 21, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by nebulawindphone at 11:06 AM on July 21, 2020 [2 favorites]
Yeah, I think plonkee has it. South Korea, Spain, Portugal. Myanmar looked like a win for a while, now, not so much.
posted by rikschell at 11:15 AM on July 21, 2020
posted by rikschell at 11:15 AM on July 21, 2020
UK parliamentary reforms in the 1830s?
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:23 PM on July 21, 2020
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:23 PM on July 21, 2020
India from 1975-1977 was in a state of emergency. Recovered after the election in 1977.
posted by indianbadger1 at 12:37 PM on July 21, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by indianbadger1 at 12:37 PM on July 21, 2020 [2 favorites]
Counter-intuitively, you might look at earlier iterations of "populism," like the 1930s populist leaders in Latin America, like Getúlio Vargas in Brazil (who steered a middle course in increasingly factionalized conflicts between Brazilian fascists and communists) or Lázaro Cárdenas in Mexico (who sought to reanimate the promises of the Mexican Revolution after a violent liberal-versus-conservative culture-war conflict in the 1920s).
The populist movements of 1930s Latin America are not perfect (for example, Vargas does some pretty despicable stuff and ends up committing a dramatic suicide while still in office), but they do offer repeated examples in which political violence and polarization was ramping up in the 1930s, fascist political parties represented a real threat at the polls, and then a pro-worker populist movement materialized under charismatic leaders and things...did not erupt into violent revolution or civil war via generally democratic process and mostly legal compliance. (In comparison, things do go to hell in other Latin American nations in the 1930s, so a certain degree of status quo is still an achievement.)
The situation in 1930s Latin America has to do with a lot of factors, but it helps that, in the 1930s and 1940s, the U.S. was practicing a comparatively "hands-off" approach to intervention in the region. (That changes in the Cold War, and then we get a lot of U.S.-backed dictators and political terror in Latin America, but don't look at the 1960s -- look at the 1930s.)
posted by toast the knowing at 12:38 PM on July 21, 2020 [2 favorites]
The populist movements of 1930s Latin America are not perfect (for example, Vargas does some pretty despicable stuff and ends up committing a dramatic suicide while still in office), but they do offer repeated examples in which political violence and polarization was ramping up in the 1930s, fascist political parties represented a real threat at the polls, and then a pro-worker populist movement materialized under charismatic leaders and things...did not erupt into violent revolution or civil war via generally democratic process and mostly legal compliance. (In comparison, things do go to hell in other Latin American nations in the 1930s, so a certain degree of status quo is still an achievement.)
The situation in 1930s Latin America has to do with a lot of factors, but it helps that, in the 1930s and 1940s, the U.S. was practicing a comparatively "hands-off" approach to intervention in the region. (That changes in the Cold War, and then we get a lot of U.S.-backed dictators and political terror in Latin America, but don't look at the 1960s -- look at the 1930s.)
posted by toast the knowing at 12:38 PM on July 21, 2020 [2 favorites]
So... this is a hard question to answer, for a couple of reasons. The simplest is that, historically speaking, there just haven't been all that many democracies, even in Europe. It's really only since WWII that democracy has become widespread. Second, many countries weren't even *countries*, let alone democracies, until the 1960s when decolonization really swung into effect. So this is a pretty small time window, and that necessarily means that if there are going to be multiple major changes, at least one of them will likely be pretty abrupt.
Politics will generally swing like a pendulum, but it generally doesn't go too far in one direction or the other without a catalyst, and that's often the stuff you aren't looking for: war, coup, etc. If you subscribe to the Great Man theory (which is, you know, problematic), it's possible to have great men as catalysts: Ataturk, Lee Kuan Yew, Martin Luther King, et al. But pulling back via natural pendulum swings is pretty rare in an already small sample size.
The final problem is that several good examples of transitioning from authoritarianism to comparatively calm democratic politics have subsequently started to transition back to right-wing populism. I'm specifically thinking of Poland and Hungary, who seemed like they were become western liberal democracies in the 90s and 00s, but are now led by Trumpy/Putin-y authoritarians (albeit democratically elected, this time).
All that said, it's definitely possible, but there just aren't a ton of examples. Some that come to mind:
-As I mentioned before, Argentina. They were in pretty bad shape in the 70s and early 80s, military dictatorship and stuff, and they've had some populist moments since, but now they're a pretty stable democracy.
-Post-apartheid South Africa has a lot of problems, but it is a multicultural democracy. And considering what it was before the early 90s (even though it was nominally democratic), and that it was a peaceful transition, that's kind of amazing. It puts the current problems in perspective.
-Northern Ireland has been a democracy for a while, but until the Good Friday agreement, it was basically in state of civil war. That has almost totally ended. It certainly seems that the rhetoric has cooled on both sides.
-Colombia likewise ended a paramilitary guerilla war and now holds regular elections. Not perfect, but much improved.
-Spain isn't exactly what you're looking for, because they weren't a democracy under Franco, so I don't think that really counts. But it's a fascinating case nonetheless, because the transition to democracy was an inside job. Franco named Juan Carlos I as his successor with the idea that he'd continue the far-right authoritarian policies of the Falangists, and instead he just noped and introduced constitutional monarchy to the point where Spain is as democratic as anywhere else in the world. That's tremendously hopeful to me.
-I'm gonna suggest Finland, which is not exactly the same. But they were allied with the Nazis in WWII (it's complicated, they weren't really *Nazis*, but you know what they say about sitting at a table with Nazis) and then spent pretty much the whole Cold War being codependent with the USSR. It's not the same sort of right-populist xenophobia currently in the US, but it wasn't a great situation. Now they're pretty widely admired for their calmness and rationality.
I might also suggest looking at the political history of countries that never got to this point in the first place, in which case I'd recommend Switzerland and the Netherlands (Geert Wilders and Pim Fortuyn notwithstanding). They're both fairly heterogeneous societies, which makes their lack of crackup even more notable. The ways they manage their heterogeneity make them a better model than, say, Scandinavia, who are often held up as worthy emulation, but are pretty homogeneous. If that's interesting to you, "consociational democracy" is the political science term, and Arend Lijphart is the godfather.
posted by kevinbelt at 1:19 PM on July 21, 2020 [14 favorites]
Politics will generally swing like a pendulum, but it generally doesn't go too far in one direction or the other without a catalyst, and that's often the stuff you aren't looking for: war, coup, etc. If you subscribe to the Great Man theory (which is, you know, problematic), it's possible to have great men as catalysts: Ataturk, Lee Kuan Yew, Martin Luther King, et al. But pulling back via natural pendulum swings is pretty rare in an already small sample size.
The final problem is that several good examples of transitioning from authoritarianism to comparatively calm democratic politics have subsequently started to transition back to right-wing populism. I'm specifically thinking of Poland and Hungary, who seemed like they were become western liberal democracies in the 90s and 00s, but are now led by Trumpy/Putin-y authoritarians (albeit democratically elected, this time).
All that said, it's definitely possible, but there just aren't a ton of examples. Some that come to mind:
-As I mentioned before, Argentina. They were in pretty bad shape in the 70s and early 80s, military dictatorship and stuff, and they've had some populist moments since, but now they're a pretty stable democracy.
-Post-apartheid South Africa has a lot of problems, but it is a multicultural democracy. And considering what it was before the early 90s (even though it was nominally democratic), and that it was a peaceful transition, that's kind of amazing. It puts the current problems in perspective.
-Northern Ireland has been a democracy for a while, but until the Good Friday agreement, it was basically in state of civil war. That has almost totally ended. It certainly seems that the rhetoric has cooled on both sides.
-Colombia likewise ended a paramilitary guerilla war and now holds regular elections. Not perfect, but much improved.
-Spain isn't exactly what you're looking for, because they weren't a democracy under Franco, so I don't think that really counts. But it's a fascinating case nonetheless, because the transition to democracy was an inside job. Franco named Juan Carlos I as his successor with the idea that he'd continue the far-right authoritarian policies of the Falangists, and instead he just noped and introduced constitutional monarchy to the point where Spain is as democratic as anywhere else in the world. That's tremendously hopeful to me.
-I'm gonna suggest Finland, which is not exactly the same. But they were allied with the Nazis in WWII (it's complicated, they weren't really *Nazis*, but you know what they say about sitting at a table with Nazis) and then spent pretty much the whole Cold War being codependent with the USSR. It's not the same sort of right-populist xenophobia currently in the US, but it wasn't a great situation. Now they're pretty widely admired for their calmness and rationality.
I might also suggest looking at the political history of countries that never got to this point in the first place, in which case I'd recommend Switzerland and the Netherlands (Geert Wilders and Pim Fortuyn notwithstanding). They're both fairly heterogeneous societies, which makes their lack of crackup even more notable. The ways they manage their heterogeneity make them a better model than, say, Scandinavia, who are often held up as worthy emulation, but are pretty homogeneous. If that's interesting to you, "consociational democracy" is the political science term, and Arend Lijphart is the godfather.
posted by kevinbelt at 1:19 PM on July 21, 2020 [14 favorites]
The US. The current GOP has rarely invented a really new evil: immigration restrictions, concentration camps, white supremacy, out-of-control capitalism, police brutality, racism, corruption, right-wing terrorism, and even terrible responses to a pandemic are all things that have happened here before. And gotten enough better that people were surprised to see them out in the open again.
The UK has had a pretty remarkable ability to move from aristocratic oligarchy, to bourgeois but conservative republic, to welfare state, to direst Thatcherism, to Blairism, to whatever Boris Johnson is doing, without revolutions or coups.
Latin American in the 1980s had an even more astonishing movement: at one point almost every nation except Costa Rica was a military dictatorship; later every nation except Cuba was a democracy. At least some countries in the former Warsaw Pact became democratic in the 90s without much trauma, especially the Czech Republic.
None of these transitions got to "zero badness", and I think expecting no unrest is a bit unreal. But '60 level unrest is not as bad as perpetuating the conditions that led to it.
It's profoundly disconcerting that we regressed so far so fast. But things have been way worse.
posted by zompist at 6:25 PM on July 21, 2020
The UK has had a pretty remarkable ability to move from aristocratic oligarchy, to bourgeois but conservative republic, to welfare state, to direst Thatcherism, to Blairism, to whatever Boris Johnson is doing, without revolutions or coups.
Latin American in the 1980s had an even more astonishing movement: at one point almost every nation except Costa Rica was a military dictatorship; later every nation except Cuba was a democracy. At least some countries in the former Warsaw Pact became democratic in the 90s without much trauma, especially the Czech Republic.
None of these transitions got to "zero badness", and I think expecting no unrest is a bit unreal. But '60 level unrest is not as bad as perpetuating the conditions that led to it.
It's profoundly disconcerting that we regressed so far so fast. But things have been way worse.
posted by zompist at 6:25 PM on July 21, 2020
Northern Ireland is mentioned up-thread. It's also worth considering that about 100 years ago, Ireland went through a war of independence and a civil war. Within two decades, the losing side in the civil war won power through democratic means, and now both sides in that conflict are in a coalition government. The army have never been a significant force in Irish politics, and the police are generally unarmed. Ireland hasn't been perfect or always peaceful, and there were times when it could have gone off the rails, but when you consider the violence surrounding the creation of the state, it could have been much worse.
posted by Grinder at 12:45 AM on July 22, 2020
posted by Grinder at 12:45 AM on July 22, 2020
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by nebulawindphone at 9:57 AM on July 21, 2020 [1 favorite]