DEMOCRACY'S GUARDRAILS?

The speed and smoothness of democratic backsliding and the suddenness of democratic breakdowns tend to surprise us. We expect established institutions and parties, as well as the individuals socialized in democratic norms who populate them, to remain loyal to democracy. But instead we often see both hard and soft guardrails of democracy (institutions and norms) crumble, as various combinations of judges, capitalists, party activists, bureaucrats, military officers, and law-enforcement personnel accept and even support the actions of aspiring authoritarians. In this course we will explore why and when this happens—and also look at conditions that might prevent this from happening.

Our focus will be specific—not on the would-be dictators or on structural forces that might shape these processes but on those institutions and actors that might be considered the bystanders or enablers of democratic reversals. Our readings will include political science literature on democratic breakdowns and fracturing of elite consensus, political norms, and strategic games of transition, but we will also read selections of relevant histories and memoirs. We will consider cases of breakdown and backsliding from 1930s Germany to 1970s Chile to twenty-first-century Hungary, Poland, and the United States—always focusing on potential guardrails.