Monthly Archives: May 2023

In 1954, Richard Hofstadter, the eminent American historian of modern conservatism, asked a provocative question about his eras assault on progressive and left-wing ideals, known as McCarthyism: Where did this extremism come from?

He argued in a celebrated essay that even the prosperous, post-Second World War United States was not immune to the radicalism of authoritarian populism. The so-called Red Scare of the 1950s was simply the old ultra-conservatism and the old isolationism heightened by the extraordinary pressures of the contemporary world.

Seven decades later, Hofstadters words ring true again. Conservative movements are always fighting a rearguard action against modernity by falsely claiming to protect society from progressives who trample traditional values and sneer at the forgotten men and women who embrace them.

With so much money and power behind it, this paranoid style of politics with its enemies lists, demonization of opposition leaders and often violent language has gone mainstream.

Conspiracy theories are no longer a stigma discrediting those who trade in salacious innuendo. Even mainstream politicians are now peddling them.

But is there anything to fear from the red-hot rhetoric of the paranoid style of politics? Some argue these circumstances are cyclical.

In Hofstadters time, after all, American conservative politics turned away from fringe radicalism following the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. The following year, Lyndon Johnson defeated right-wing Republican insurgent, Barry Goldwater in one of the largest landslides in U.S. history.

But the crisis we face today is bigger in scale and scope. Its been whipped to a frenzy by political leaders who seek to profit from the chaos that it incites via social media.

Populism was supposed to bring government closer to the people, but it actually places the levers of power squarely in the hands of authoritarians. Here are four ways populism has turned poisonous and poses existential threats to democracy:

Democracy without compromise erodes popular sovereignty by fragmenting the electorate and eliminating meaningful compromise.

We are now in a world of zero-sum political contests, with a shrinking middle ground. Conservative parties often force extreme referendums to maintain their grip on a deeply divided electorate.

Election campaigns have become dangerous contests over wedge issues designed to deepen cultural divisions using social media.

We saw this with Brexit as Boris Johnson and other populists stoked fears about immigration and Europeans. Donald Trump did it well with attacks on immigrants. Republicans are now doubling down on the abortion issue, even though theyre facing pushback from some state legislatures and governors.

In Canada, Albertas Premier Danielle Smith, whose United Conservative Party has been newly re-elected with a majority, has focused on demonizing her opponents and has allegedly engaged in anti-democratic conduct in her months as premier.

Read more: Democracy itself is on the ballot in Alberta's upcoming election

Identity politics isnt empowering working people because the politics of revenge doesnt fix structural problems.

Nevertheless, conservative parties around the world are marketing themselves as parties of the working class.

Populists recognize the working class is essential to their success at the national level because of the diploma divide that now separates right and left.

There is a strong correlation between lacking a college diploma and supporting nationalist conservative movements at election time.

It used to be that working people recognized education as a path to prosperity. But massive tuition increases in the U.S., in particular, have betrayed the promise of universal access to a college degree.

Tuition fees are also heading in the wrong direction in the U.K., Canada and Australia. Education now reinforces class divisions rather than breaking down barriers to a better life.

Read more: The 'freedom convoy' protesters are a textbook case of 'aggrieved entitlement'

Populism was supposed to empower people outside the corridors of power, but talk of retribution against liberal elites normalizes calls for political violence always a bad thing.

In a war of all against all, its not the wealthy who lose. Its ordinary, hard-working citizens.

Furthermore, once a lust for vengeance takes hold in the general public, its almost always being directed by elites with money and power who benefit financially or politically from the chaos.

Authoritarian leaders have gained unprecedented institutional legitimacy by building successful movements based on fantasies of blood and soil. The paranoid style of politics has entered a new phase with a full-spectrum assault on the rule of law from inside government.

Populists are lying when they argue they want to empower the rest of us by divesting judges of their authority to oversee democracy. They really want to breach the strongest constitutional barrier against authoritarianism.

Look at the situation in Israel, where Benjamin Netanyahus extremist coalition seeks to destroy judicial checks and balances and allow the countrys parliament to overrule its Supreme Court, a move that would ease the prime ministers legal woes.

Netanyahu has been charged with corruption and influence peddling.

Trumps attempts to undermine the legitimacy of judges are equally self-serving. As he runs again for president, hes already telegraphing his violent desires, promising pardons for the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.

The political dial is already spinning. The defeats of Trump and Brazils Jair Bolsonaro dont represent absolute rejections of their movements.

Despite an indictment for alleged financial crime and being found liable for sexual abuse in a civil case, Trump is still the 2024 front-runner.

Read more: Why populism has an enduring and ominous appeal

We cant count on an easy institutional fix, like a grand electoral coalition to push the populists off the ballot.

Opponents of Hungarys Viktor Orban formed a united front to oppose him in the countrys 2022 elections. But Orban was re-elected in a vote widely derided as free but not fair.

Opposing coalitions are an uncertain strategy in most cases, and they dont work at all in two-party systems. There is in fact no obvious electoral strategy for defeating populism, especially now that the far right has hacked the system.

We can no longer view elections as contests between the centre-right and centre-left in which undecided voters make the difference between victory and defeat. Nor can we count on the right to step back from the abyss of culture wars. We cant even say for certain that the populism will recede in the usual cyclical manner.

Only decisive rejection can force the right to abandon anger and grievance, but voters are not yet turning their backs on the paranoid populists. It will take a lot of strategic ingenuity to beat them. And it will get harder to do so as they rig the game with rules designed to disenfranchise people who are young, poor or racialized.

All citizens can do is offer is constant, concerted pushback against the many big lies told by populists. Its never enough, but for the time being, its the only way forward.

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From Donald Trump to Danielle Smith: 4 ways populists are ... - The Conversation

At first glance, Turkeys electoral drama appeared to confirm well-worn readings of Middle Eastern politics as driven by clashing Islamists vs. secularists. The frame has long shaped outsiders perceptions of the country and, like other familiar binaries (e.g. Turk vs. Kurd, or orthodox Sunni vs. heterodox Alevi) has been internalized by many people in the region. The impression was encouraged by candidates choice of where to wrap their campaigns. Incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoan closed both the first and second rounds with events at Hagia Sofia a 1,500 year-old structure which has served as church, mosque and museum, and which he reconsecrated as a mosque in 2020. At both rallies, the monuments symbolically drenched spaces pulsated with the leaders electoral formula: equation of Erdoans very person with faith, nation, and state. Opposition challenger Kemal Kldarolu, on the other hand, wrapped his campaign with a more subdued visit to Atatrks mausoleum in Ankaraa tribute to the ongoing resonance of the secularist founding father for millions of voters.

Yet, closer examination reveals a different cleavage at play one which is propelling would-be Erdoans to power across the globe. This is a clash between people with pluralistic orientations: i.e., folks from all walks of life, who are okay sharing space with people who look, speak, and pray differently than they do, versus ultra-nationalists: people who believe that state and society are best served when we rally around a singular ethnic and/or religious flag.

The oppositions Milli (Nation) coalition sought to rally the former. Bringing together moderate, secularist nationalists from the right and left alike, the party fielded an Alevi leader who brokered a cross-camp coalition in pursuit of greater pluralism. This entailed formal alliances with Islamist critics of Erdoans hardline turn. It also incorporated an informal, but electorally meaningful, alliance with the restive Kurdish movement. The result, as a savvy Tweeter put it, was that on election day, leftists rushed to vote for rightists, Kurds voted for Turkish nationalists, atheists voted for devout Muslims, homosexuals voted for extreme conservatives, and former ministers of Erdoan voted for the staunchest opponents of his regime. The fact that this oddball coalition carried almost half of the vote despite Erdoans immense incumbent advantage was remarkable, if ultimately, insufficient.

Conversely, Erdoans Cumhur (Peoples) coalition with ultra-nationalist parties of both secular and Islamist orientation, gave the leader a crucial boost in the presidential contest which he won on 28 May, and parliamentary elections which wrapped on 14 May. The numbers are telling. In the first round, Erdoan lost ground within almost every electoral district, including his traditional strongholds, compared to prior presidential campaigns. Similarly, his Justice and Development Party (AKP) underperformed, costing the party 27 parliamentary seats. Yet, ultra-nationalist allies compensated by bringing 55 seats to the coalition. In short, by joining forces with the medium-sized Nationalist Action Party (MHP) and smaller, radical right parties, the AKP-led Peoples coalition secured a robust parliamentary majority.

Ultra-nationalist swing voters also decided the presidential race. Giving 5.17 percent of the first round vote to the third presidential candidate, Sinan Oans ATA alliance, they denied both Erdoan and Kldarolu the margins each needed to win (an especially demotivating outcome for the latter who had set expectations high).

The imperative, in turn, of courting ATA votes in Round Two, put Kldarolu in the impossible position of wooing extreme right nationalists while maintaining the 10 percent of ballots he had been lent by leftists, especially Kurds. Kldarolu tried by doubling down on anti-immigrant rhetoric, while scrambling to disassociate Kurdish voters from Kurdish terrorists. In the process, he squandered the inclusive spirit which had buoyed the opposition coalition in the first place.

The result was a victory for Erdoan who took home 52.18 percent of the vote, in comparison to the oppositions 47.82. This translates into a strengthened executive presidency and accelerated state capture, in coalition with ultra-nationalists of both Islamist and secular stripe. At least in the short term then, prospects appear dim for Turkeys de facto diverse society to claw back a pluralistic political system, where rule of law, freedoms, and human, womens and minority rights are effectively enshrined.

What lessons can we draw from Turkeys turn? We live, after all, in a world from Modis India and Orbans Hungary to Trump or DeSantiss United States, where populists, their ultra-nationalist allies, and opportunistic enablers are seeking to rewrite the frames and rules of electoral democracy.

Lesson 1: Its not only the economy, stupid

Much of the pre-election optimism surrounding the opposition was due to the sorry state of Turkeys economy: its hyperinflation and ravaged currency, and Erdoans counterintuitive response (e.g. refusal to raise interest rates; expansive economic populism). The governments bungled relief efforts after devastating earthquakes in February which killed at least 50,000, and left some 1.5 million homeless also were thought to advantage the opposition.

But, it seems that when a race is framed as if survival of the national in-group is at stake, identity politics beat out bread-and-butter concerns. Exceptionally high turnout by the AKP base underscores the urgency which Erdoan communicated to supporters. Populists claim to be bulwarks against existential threats real or imagined likewise render them remarkably immune to scandals for which conventional politicians are punished. In short, polarization, post-truth communication, and fear-mongering worked, from fomenting moral panic about womens and LGBTQ+ activism under the opposition umbrella, to a doctored video showing Kldarolu conspiring with Kurdish militants.

The results further suggest that conventional wisdom regarding bad economy = poor electoral performance ignores interest group preferences at its own peril. In other words, unsound policies which nevertheless benefit key constituencies can help a platform prevail at the ballot box, even though the result is managed decline for the economy overall. (In this case, smaller business owners, shopkeepers, and their workers key demographics for the pro-religious and ultra-nationalist base either benefit from Erdoans economic policies, or from his compensatory, economic populism.)

Lesson 2: Pre-election fairness matters as much as Election Day free-ness

Democracys minimum criterion is free and fair elections. In Turkeys case, there is wide consensus that election-day is relatively free (despite a number of anomalies reported at polls across the country). But the build-up to elections simply was not fair.

When it comes to mining the electoral playing field, the tactically brilliant Erdoan wrote the playbook which right-wing populists around the world are reading. Choice elements include control of traditional media through coercion and cooption, while policing and manipulating social media. Meanwhile, critical external media is delegitimized as driven by nefarious (Western/Zionist/fill-in-the-blank) interests. The result, since Turkeys far-right coalition coalesced in 2015, has been a steady drumbeat of very heavy nationalistic and militaristic narrative every day from morning till night on the TVs, in the newspapers, and beyond, shaping voter sensibilities.

A second strategy is to stack governing bodies with allies from election boards to the Courts. This helps to hedge against a vote gone awryallowing, for example, a populist incumbent to challenge an unfavorable electoral outcome (as Erdoan sought to do during nation-wide municipal elections in 2019).

As importantly, however, capturing institutions enables the incumbent to shape the opposition bench by disqualifying charismatic rivals. For example, the mediatic mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamolu, had a better chance of bridging two key demographics right-wing Turks and left-wing Kurds than Kldarolu. But he was prevented from running by dubious charges brought in December 2022. Forced to appeal, he would have campaigned with Damocles sword dangling over not just his presidential candidacy but his Istanbul mayorship. This danger compelled the opposition, in turn, to line up behind a weaker candidate.

Lesson 3: From Illiberal to Potemkin Democracy?

A key question then after Turkeys elections is whether the very notion of illiberal democracy is meaningful in our age of performative politics? Or, as some have argued, does the hope it evokes do more harm than goodallowing earnest voter engagement on election-day to legitimize outcomes obtained through post-truth polarization, and the mined playing field? Right-wing populists like Trump and Bolsanaro did weaponize democracy, embracing the vote when they won, but unleashing ultra-nationalist rank and file to overturn results when they lost. Erdoan a more sophisticated player than his western copycats stated, for his part, that he would accept any outcome. But there is evidence that at least some elements within his coalition were positioning for a stop the steal spectacle, had identity politics and the uneven playing field not prevailed.

Yet, ultimately, the only way left to prevent illiberal democracy from devolving into Potemkin farce may be the ballot box itself. In this respect, an uplifting takeaway from Turkeys elections was voters commitment to electoral participation (which was over 90 percent at many polling stations). In the build-up to March 14th& 28th alike, they turned out droves in diaspora and at home to vote and monitor, to celebrate and console. It is this conviction, that government is legitimized by the will of the people, which may compel even the most cynical populists, and their ultra-nationalist partners, to allow intermittent opportunities for democratic contestation, even if there is less democracy to save.

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Pluralism vs. Ultra-Nationalism: The Real Cleavage Behind Turkey's ... - E-International Relations

May 31, 2023

DHAKA President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkiyes so-called modern Sultan, emerged victorious in the most nail-biting test to his 20-year rule. Turkiye once a staunchly secular Muslim nation braces for another five years of virtual one-man rule with creeping Islamisation, unorthodox economic policies, and an independent yet disruptive foreign policy.

Erdogan is the inventor of nativist, populist politics globally, and his defeat would mean something globally, said Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute. Now that hes not going anywhere, the question pressing on our minds is: what does Erdogans win mean for global democracy or, contradictorily, populism?

Erdogan, declaring victory from his residence in Istanbul, sang, We have opened the door of Turkiyes century without compromising our democracy, development and our objectives. The anthem is deception at its finest. Yet, it works. His supporters, who refer to him as Superdogan, celebrated on the streets with unbridled euphoria.

It is well-known that democracy in Turkiye once a beacon of democratic liberalism in the East largely backslid in the last decade.

In 2013, when people took to the streets calling for Erdogans resignation, amid a sprawling corruption scandal, the government led a brutal crackdown, imprisoning dissenters. And lets not forget the bloody 2016 failed military coup, where more than 250 people were killed and the aftermath of which saw the Erdogan government targeting 50,000 people soldiers, police, judges, civil servants and teachers in purge. Then, in 2017, Erdogan subsumed the role of the prime minister into that of the president through a referendum, and has since monopolised the political arena using state institutions for political gains.

Despite all the vile things hes done, Erdogan scored win after win like a wizard. A deep dive into his tenure reveals rather bloodthirsty politics, but people consume the surface he puts out: that hes all for Turkiye and the oppressed and whatnot. The majority of people forget that this man, who talks about saving people all the time, does so living in the largest presidential residence in the world: a palace with 1,100 rooms, which costs $615 million of public money.

It cannot be denied that the 69-year-old is a clever politician. He perfected the art of autocracy where his missteps such as lowering interest rates to bring down inflation are deafened out by the nationalist song of making Turkiye great again, flirting with the controversial history of the Ottoman era. For Erdogan, and for many leaders around the world, populism is not an ideology. Its rather a robust political strategy, wherein leaders actively leverage common peoples inclination to feel more charged by nationalist narratives and rhetoric over policies and performance.

And Erdogan has unmatched competence in harnessing the populist political strategy. Not unfamiliar to us in Bangladesh, Turkiyes leader used his development projects which physically transformed the nation to pull the rug over systemic corruption, its effect on the economy, and alarming macroeconomic indicators. He had his supporters smitten with shiny new things: the making of the biggest airport in the world, highways, universities, schools, bridges, mosques, shopping centres, transit lines, tunnels, ports, the $1.5 billion Kanal Istanbul in the works (which will turn Istanbuls European side into an island), and so on.

He showed off Turkiyes rising military prowess, such as the development of drones; his foreign adventures, and misadventures, legitimised Turkiye as a global force, even if a contentious one. He has alienated Turkiye from its Nato partners and imperilled the alliances defence, most prominently by purchasing Russian S-400 missile defence systems. Those bold moves have been welcomed by his supporters. A 40-year-old owner of a stagnating barbershop in Istanbul told Foreign Policy, This is the future I want to give my sons: A country standing strong and independently on the world stage. A safe place.

His re-election campaign withstood troubling times for the Turkish economy: rampant inflation, a deepening cost-of-living crunch, and intensifying poverty. Turkiyes response to the earthquake, which killed 50,000 lives, also highlighted the negligence of the government and was perceived by pollsters to reflect the last straw on the proverbial camels back.

Yet, the majority of Turkish people, in a polarised nation, saw no better option than their strongman. The Table of Six and the uncharismatic Kemal Kldarolu was never going to stand, because Erdogans hold over the nation in the judiciary, the media narrative, and so on makes it difficult to launch an effective opposition. Its also another indicator of his dexterous autocratic strategies, and the same dynamic is seen elsewhere in the world.

Erdogans win is a learning lesson for us to shift our thinking. It disparages the notion long held by analysts and journalists: that freedom of speech, rule of law, and a flourishing economy are essential to win the hearts of the people. Its common to think that when those features are threatened, especially the economy, the peoples will turns away from the office-holder. We perceive they want to break free from the shackles of the leaders responsible for the damage. But in this unstable global climate, that purview, though logical, is rather black and white.

Politicians like Erdogan in Russia, India, China, Israel, and the far-right parts of the West are mangling history to capitalise on their self-interests, and people support them. (For example, Putins support has not faltered even after the Ukraine war thats hit the Russian economy, as people still long for that past glory that shattered from the break-up of the Soviet Union.) Erdogan has ever-so-successfully played to the historical prestige of Turkiye to cultivate popularity; his nationalist narrative, which often includes bashing the Western global hegemony, nurtures national nostalgia of Turkiyes early global dominance.

Post his election win, calls are being made in the Western media for Erdogan to pivot his policies. But when autocrats face an unstable domestic context, they double down on repression, says Gonul Tol, the author of Erdogan War: A Strongmans Struggle at Home and in Syria. Erdogan has long held a self-conscious neo-Ottomanism dream, posing himself to be a modern version of Sultan Selim, who expanded the Turkish empire from a strong regional power to a gargantuan empire with an exclusionary vision of power. It is unrealistic to think hed shift. If anything, hell be more desperate to bring that dream to life, the act of which will continue to shake the edifice of democracy and whatever is left of it.

Ramisa Rob is a journalist at The Daily Star.

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The Erdogan era lives on, as does the power of populism - asianews.network

Most Mexico observers would agree that Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador (AMLO) is undermining the countrys democratic institutions. This development poses two questions. First, how closely the Mexican experience fits into the broader patterns of the crisis of democratic rule around the world in the 21st century? Second, what lessons can other societies learn from this experience as they also struggle to build and sustain democratic institutions in the face of rising authoritarian populism?

To answer the first question, I take as reference point the ideas of Mickey et al. for whom the experience of most contemporary autocracies suggests that it would take place through a series of little-noticed, incremental steps, most of which are legal and many of which appear innocuous. Taken together, however, they would tilt the playing field in favor of the ruling party.[1]

To answer the second question, I follow the ideas of Nancy Bermeo who considers three qualities of contemporary forms of democratic backsliding that opponents need to reckon with.[2] First, and in consonance with Mickey et al., that troubled democracies are now more likely to erode rather than to shatter.[3] Second, that current trends are not random events but rational responses to local and international incentives.[4] And third, that contemporary forms of democratic backsliding are most ambiguous and most difficult when they marshal broad popular supportand they often do.[5]

I have organized my own ideas in the form of a written questionnaire. My responses follow the notion that the struggle to build and sustain democracy in Mexico is in fact the history of creating autonomous electoral authorities and shielding them from political interference from the executive branch. For most of the 20th century, elections in Mexico were a farce as the hegemonic Institutional Revolutionary Party(PRI) controlled them and sanctioned their validity. The result was, of course, that the party always won. Starting in 1977, Mexican politicians from both the PRI and the opposition began to pursue a democratic project. This was attuned with the democratic winds blowing in other parts of the Spanish-speaking world. Over the next two decades, these politicians established the rules and institutions to redress the authoritarian regime. Despite the slow and complex process, by 1996 the electoral authorities became independent of the PRI-dominated executive branch. In this way, if in1977the elections were organized and sanctioned by the Ministry of the Interior, by2000they were organized by an autonomous Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) and sanctioned by the newly created Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary Branch (TEPJF).

This is in a nutshell the story of Mexicos democratic transition: a two decades-long series of electoral reforms to prevent political interference in elections from the incumbent government. Naturally, the democratic backsliding that we are currently observing in Mexico tries to unwind that process by restoring the influence of the executive branch in the electoral process.

1. Has Mexicos democratic backsliding taken place through a series of little-noticed, incremental steps?

Yes, and in fact I trace the exact moment when the democratic backsliding started in Mexico: the election night of July 2nd , 2006, when AMLO refused to accept his defeat and lashed out at the National Electoral Institute (INE) accusing it of abetting electoral fraud. That was the precise moment that the tide turned for the INE and by extension also for Mexican democracy. We are reaping what we have sown. The eminent Polish-American political scientist, Adam Przeworski argues that one of the essential conditions for democracy to survive is that losers accept electoral defeat.[6] None of this happened in Mexico in 2006, nor in 2012 when AMLO lost against Enrique Pea Nieto and again cried foul. On the contrary, and to this day, he keeps fanning conspiratorial flames with claims of a Big Steal la Trump in 2020. His animosity against the INE was not even tempered with his landslide victory in the 2018 elections that were organized and overseen by the INE. On the contrary, a few weeks after his victory, he went on the offensive against the Institute, accusing it of malfeasance for auditing his campaign finances.

Ever since 2006, AMLO has created his political persona as an embattled social justice warrior that faced and eventually defeated a corrupt economic elite that twice stole the presidency from him, abetted by the acquiescence of the INE. And ever since that year he has vilified the Institute over and over again. He found in this an unexpected ally in the liberal intelligentsia, which for years had ruthlessly criticized the Institute calling it inefficient, imperfect, expensive, tone-deaf, etc. Let no one fool themselves. Not even those with a superficial knowledge of AMLO can be surprised that he is leading a full-frontal assault on the INE. So to answer the question: yes, Mexicos democratic woes are the chronicle of a death foretold.

2. Have the steps been legal and apparently innocuous?

Yes and no. The real question, however, is whether it is desirable and feasible for authorities to force a political actor to acknowledge defeat? This is a devilishly difficult proposition. To be specific, should it be deemed illegal to disallow unfavourable electoral results? Whatever option we may hold, the fact is that back in 2006 and to this day it is not illegal to send institutions to hell as AMLO famously declared in the aftermath of that years election. It could be, I can imagine, fringing into the illegal to suggest that the INEs board members sold themselves for a few pesos, as AMLO accused them of doing. But most of the time those expressions are simply disregarded as rhetoric. Ironically but true: for a democracy to be such, it needs to tolerate the intolerant, and to put up with those that flat-out subvert and vilify it from the inside.

But one thing is to say that AMLOs antics are legal, or rather put not illegal, and another thing to say they are innocuous. They are not. The first casualty here was the publics trust in its electoral authorities. We need also to remember where we came from: the PRI led a hegemonic party system under which other parties are permitted to exist, but as second class, licensed parties; for they are not permitted to compete with the hegemonic party in antagonistic terms and on an equal basis.[7] It took almost 20 years to restore public trust on the electoral process, and one night in 2006 to destroy it. And we are still stuck in that moment. The conspiratorial flames over the 2006 electoral results are the same that are being fanned over the INE with claims of it being a bloated, unreliable bureaucratic apparatus. AMLO is crystal clear on this, by the way, noting I did not reach the Presidency because of the INE, I reached the Presidency because of the people. When I was a candidate, I never met with the INE and always tried to keep my distance from them and not believe them because I knew that they were biased referees.[8]

Demagoguery and lies may be the daily bread in politics, but they are never innocuous. Quite the contrary, they create alternative facts where the devil lurks.

3. Taken together, have they titled the electoral playing field in favour of ruling party MORENA?

Im not entirely sure about this. Despite all of AMLO's efforts to undermine, neutralize, and emasculate the INE, the fact remains that it still there and working. Barring the possibility that AMLO strikes a last-minute decisive blow against it, it is safe to assume that the INE will have survived the most direct and vicious attack from the federal government in its 26-year history. Let's take a moment to see how this happened.

First, there was Plan A, which flat-out proposed to eliminate the INE under the guise of an "electoral reform" that would create a new body under the orbit of influence of the executive branch. Largely perceived as a power grab, the electoral reform failed after a massive rally across Mexico in defense of the INE in November 2022.

Then came Plan B, a not-so-veiled administrative reform that aimed to denaturalize the INE by drastically reducing its budget and stripping it of key administrative responsibilities. This plan also failed when massive demonstrations took place across Mexico and abroad, and the legislative process of the bill was admitted for review by the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation.

Next came Plan C, which, as it turned out, was an attempt to pack the INE's board with AMLO loyalists. The plan also failed due to pure luck as the new board members were chosen at random, leaving out AMLO's favoured options.

Despite all of the efforts and animosity displayed by AMLO towards the INE and the rivers of ink spilled around it, his gains are modest: placing one of his loyalists in the INE's presidency, which, given the collegial nature of the board, feels like a pyrrhic victory.

For all of the above reasons, I believe it is unclear whether the electoral field is tilted towards MORENA or not. To be clear, the playing field is always tilted towards the incumbent, but is it any more tilted now than it was in 2018 towards the PRI or 2012 towards the PAN? We will soon find out.

4.Piecemeal erosions of autonomy may thus provoke only fragmented resistance.[9] Has the opposition in Mexico fallen into this trap?

I dont think so. AMLOs 2018 landslide victory taught the opposition that the only way to prevent a complete takeover by MORENA was to join forces. And they did so in 2021 by running together in that years midterm elections, successfully defeating MORENAs candidates in key races for Congress and in several of Mexico Citys boroughs. They also managed to establish a united front in the defense of the INE, despite the many attempts of the government to break it apart. Therefore, on the balance the opposition has acted together on the critical turning points, most likely simply out of pure survival instinct.

5. trends in backsliding are rational reactions to international incentives as well as domestic history.[10] Has the Mexican opposition recognized this?

I am not sure. The 2018 election in Mexico was a political earthquake that shattered the 25-year-old party system that consolidated with the end of the democratic transition. This was a stable three-party system in which the PAN occupied the political right, the PRD the left, and the PRI, the center. A generation of Mexicans grew up in this system that abruptly came to an end in 2018; almost single-handedly brought down by AMLO. The immediate reaction of the traditional parties was to cast this event as a bizarre accident. Stunned as they were left, they were incapable of realizing the profound generational and social changes that had occurred since 1996. They grew up over-confident with hubris and took their voters for granted. This painful truth is slowly sinking in and, little by little, the opposition parties are starting to realize certain things. First of all, and chief among them, is the generational change towards a more radical electorate, which became less tolerant and more belligerent than before, just like AMLO himself. Second, that not all of this is their fault. These are dark days for democracy around the world as its value is questioned and demagoguery runs rife. Mexico is not an island, and it is only natural that the authoritarian winds that blow elsewhere do the same in the country, just as did the democratic winds that blew strong in the 1970s and 1980s.

6. those seeking to reverse backsliding must cope not only with the state actors who engineer backsliding but with their mobilized supporters. Silencing or simply ignoring these citizens preferences may stoke reactionary fires and undercut the quality of democracy. Yet changing their preferences is devilishly difficult and a long-term project at best.[11] Have the opposition parties in Mexico arrived at this realization?

I am not sure. There is still a whiff of hubris among the leaders of the opposition towards the heterogeneous political coalition that AMLO put together in 2018. They are still very much operating under the successful slogan of Felipe Caldern in 2006: AMLO: A danger for Mexico. This fear-inducing message worked wonders in 2006 but not anymore. AMLO learned his lesson and in 2012 and 2018, he softened his image. The electorate stopped being afraid of him at some point in the second quarter of 2018 when he broke his historical voter preference ceiling, going from the mid-thirties to 50 percent. This is the15% of loosely committed voters who will decide the 2024 election. The thing is that it is unlikely that they will be mobilized simply by offering an anti-AMLO message, which at this point seems to be the only thing the opposition has to offer. But that would be too little, too late. The opposition leaders needs to offer more and engage with them in a way that does not censor them over their past or present views on AMLO. They need to offer them a path that reconnects with their profound desire for radical change in times of social anxiety and widespread criminal violence. A political New Deal to promote national economic and social recovery, a deal that clearly departs from AMLO but at the same time is not a return to a past that voters soundly rejected in 2018. The challenge ahead for the opposition is to reinvent itself and adapt to new circumstances and new generations. Give hope to the young and old and fully embrace their radical desire for change, to which they are fully entitled. It starts at the basic level of developing their own language and breaking free from the Newspeak of this administration: 4th transformation, conservatives, otros datos, fifs, etc. The future of democracy in Mexico depends on it.

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Democratic backsliding in Mexico: Lessons for opponents of ... - Wilson Center

In an announcement as surprising as sunshine in Florida, the states governor, Ron DeSantis, unveiled his long-teased candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination Wednesday. The only unforeseen aspect came from technical glitches at the start of a Twitter conversation with Twitter CEO Elon Musk.

The question now obsessing pundits is whether DeSantis stream of Florida legislative victories can overcome the GOPs allegiance to a certain former president and his disdain for the man he calls Ron DeSanctimonious.

In his first term as governor, and especially in the months since his landslide reelection last November, DeSantis has tried to position himself as the Republican who will most aggressively insert himself into the nations culture wars. Assisted by a Republican supermajority, he enacted laws banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, allowing permit-less concealed carrying of guns, and outlawing education about sexual orientation and gender identity through the fourth grade. He has prohibited diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at state colleges and requirements that teachers and students use pronouns that dont correspond with a persons birth sex. And he even punched Mickey Mouse, by tightening state regulation of Walt Disney World in Orlando after the company criticized his sexuality instruction ban, dubbed Dont Say Gay by critics.

DeSantis is offering this record as rationale for Republicans to nominate him to take on President Biden, over GOP front-runner Donald Trump. But can DeSantis win, when polls have shown that majorities or pluralities of Americans disagree with him on many of these issues? Does he comfortably fit intoTrumps populist, MAGA movement? Hours after DeSantis launched his campaign, BU Today spoke with Rachel Meade, a lecturer in political science at the College of Arts & Sciences who studies populism in politics, about where DeSantis fits in the political and cultural landscape.

Rachel Meade: DeSantis is not particularly populist, according to many common understandings of populism. He is not very charismatic, nor does he use the kind of everyday or politically incorrect language that is often associated with populist appeals to the people. Populists also usually have strong relationships with grassroots social movements, who they communicate with in direct and informal ways, as Trump does in his rally appearances.

I think he is less populist than Trump, but more so than the typical Republican. And he is clearly trying to present as populist. I just think he is mostly, though not entirely, unsuccessful. His rhetoric on woke corporations, schools, and media strikes a populist tone. He is attempting, with some level of success, to pick up the mantle of preexisting populist social movements, like the anti-lockdown, parental rights/anti-critical race theory movement, and the broader sentiments and frustrations with a perception of anti-free speech censorship. Still, I think the arguments against him being truly populist and picking up that MAGA base are stronger.

Fully populist appeals clearly designate an elite and institutional target, and usually have an economic component, whereas his anti-woke narrative remains mostly a cultural critique and doesnt clearly connect to peoples broader economic concerns. In addition, his style often sounds very technocratic and jargon-y, which was very notable in his campaign launch speech on Twitter.

The harms of a Trump presidency are clear, most notably in 2020 election denialism and the Stop the Steal movement. While DeSantis seems less likely to embrace election denialism and has steered clear of those aspects of Trumpism, its still hard to say whether DeSantis would be better or worse when it comes to concerns about authoritarianism. He has proved a much more effective policymaker and navigator of bureaucracy when you look at the many anti-[critical race theory] and anti-trans policies passed across a range of Florida institutions, and how he coordinates with conservative activists across the states. This could potentially mean that he might be more effective in following through with policies to match his promises, which is something Trump often failed to do. Where those promises would seek to undermine democratic institutions or erode checks and balances, this could pose a threat.

I hesitate to make any kind of prediction, since Americans are so surprisingwhich is what makes studying public opinion so interesting! But I would tentatively say that with Trump in the race, it does seem like a long shot for him, as he faces attacks from die-hard MAGAs, Never Trumpers, and fired-up opposition from liberals and identity groups based on his anti-woke policies. His position in the race is also complicated in that he is trying to present himself as a more grown-up or responsible version of MAGA populism, even though part of the appeal of Trump is actually his transgressive nature and feeling of authenticity.

I think he is less populist than Trump, but more so than the typical Republican. And he is clearly trying to present as populist.

Im not convinced he is a fully populist governor, but he may well be the most successful and notable current Republican governor. I do think hes made an impact in Florida policy, which has resonated with a portion of the Republican electorate. In particular, many conservatives and others became more politicized during COVID-19 out of opposition to federal and local COVID policies, public health communications, media rhetoric, and social media platform policiesall of which were seen to be silencing the voices of those who disagreed with COVID orthodoxy. DeSantis very effectively presented Florida as a beacon for COVID freedom, by advertising that schools and businesses were open there. He capitalized on the growing discontent with COVID policy and the anti-lockdown, anti-mask, and reopen social movements, whose roots can now be seen in the parental rights school movements that DeSantis has also taken up.

Direct, unmediated communication with the people, through social media platforms, livestreaming, or rallies, is a major feature of populist leadership style, so I would say this was at least an attempt to present himself as a populist champion of the people. Elon Musk has been trying to rebrand Twitter as an adversary of ideologically liberal norms of speech and a defender of free speech and political correctness, all of which fits with DeSantis anti-woke brand. Yet truly populist communications involve more than a politician just delivering information on a social media platform. In my view, populist communication in the digital realm has to include some level of reciprocity and interaction with constituents that goes beyond top-down communication.

With this higher bar, I would judge this to be an unsuccessful attempt at populist communication. Twitter itself is not the platform one might go to in order to present as a real man of the people, being mostly full of journalists, politicians, and highly engaged and educated news junkies. Even with Elons attempted rebranding of the platform as a free speech haven for censored conservatives and others, this cant make up for the splintering of conservative social media, with Trumps die-hard supporters with him on Truth Social, as well as competition from other conservative and free speechbranded platforms like Rumble.

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Can Ron DeSantis Out-Populist Donald Trump to Win the GOP ... - Boston University

The Karnataka election may spur competitive populism among various political parties

The Congress impressive victory in the Karnataka Assembly election has not just added a new dynamic in national politics but also cast a shadow on the future of economic reforms. In general, reforms are put on the back burner in the period before a general election. PV Narasimha Rao carried out the historic liberalisation in the first three years of his tenure (1991-96). Similarly, in the last year of his tenure, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, another great liberaliser, also did not privatise any public sector undertaking (PSU). Once again, there are news reports that the Narendra Modi Government will not take up any new PSU for sale, though the Government would continue with the ongoing deals involving disinvestment in IDBI Bank, Shipping Corporation, BEML and Container Corporation of India (Concor). An official was quoted in a report, saying. Even the proposed privatisation of two public-sector banks and a general insurance firm has been postponed. The reasons are not difficult to find. It is very easy for socialists and vested interests to find fault with any privatization deal. They malign everything and everyonethe idea of privatization, the process, the privatisers, the government that does it, the economists and experts who favour the sale of PSUs. They deploy all tricks and proffer fallacious arguments in their jihad privatization: sale of family silver to pay the grocers bill, national assets being sold for a song, etc. If they fail to stop a privatisation, they begin harassing the privatisers. Arun Shourie, disinvestment minister in the Vajpayee cabinet, is still facing court cases decades after the transactions were made.

Besides, the political cost of liberalisation is highor at least politicians believe that. Vajapayees defeat in 2004, for example, was falsely attributed to his governments liberalising moves. It was not just Left-leaning intellectuals but also many RSS luminaries linked his unexpected loss with the reforms his government carried out. Public discourse at that timeand to some extent even nowwas heavily influenced by socialist dogmas. The most prominent dogma sees the economy as a zero-sum game: one gains only at the expense of the other. So, if India was shining, as the BJP claimed, Bharat must be whining. In such a milieu, the Congress shrewdly coined the slogan, Aam aadmi ko kya mila. In such a social, cultural and political milieu, the Modi Government should be lauded for just slowing down and not discarding privatisation. But the danger of populism is realand it might grow. The grand old party took recourse to populism in Karnataka, and handed over a bill of Rs 50,000-60,000 crore to the States taxpayer. The GOP and other parties are likely to come up with more freebies and entitlements; the BJP, willy-nilly, may be forced to enter the race of competitive populism. If that happens, economic reforms will suffer a terrible setback.

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