Jonathan Sumption, NY Times - [Sumption is a former justice of the Supreme Court of Britain and the author of “The Challenges of Democracy and the Rule of Law.”]
As an observer of democracies and a constitutional lawyer in Britain, I have watched with rising alarm as many Western nations threaten to become failed democracies.
They may not yet be like Venezuela, Peru, Hungary, Turkey or Russia. But these countries show what can happen when a democracy dies with a whimper, not with a bang. There may not be tanks on the lawns or mobs in the streets, but slowly, they are drained of everything that once made them democratic, often with substantial public support.
These countries have elections, legislatures, courts and so on. The institutional framework is still there. But they are no longer democracies because the political culture on which democracy depends has failed.
Now the United States is in danger of being added to this list. There are tensions among its institutions, though they are still largely functioning. But the deterioration of its political culture is striking — and alarming. The country resembles other Western democracies in buckling under the weight of increasingly unrealistic expectations of the state from its electorate.
Democracy is a constitutional mechanism for collective self-government and a way of entrusting decision-making to people acceptable to the majority, whose power is defined and limited, and whose mandate is revocable. That is the institutional framework.
A democratic culture depends on something more than institutions. It depends on the instincts of politicians and citizens. It calls for a willingness to choose solutions that the greatest number of people can live with. It requires conventions about how even lawful powers will be exercised so as to avoid capricious, vindictive or oppressive decisions. Above all, it requires people to treat political opponents as fellow citizens with whom they disagree — and not as enemies to be smashed.
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