There is little difficulty in showing that some of the most venerable political parties of the democratic world might be facing terminal crises. The difficulty is in determining if government by a party or parties — the sustaining base of administrations the democratic world over — can last.
On most material measures, the world is getting better — less poverty, more education and literacy, healthier people (though few believe it), but not for the established political parties which often helped make it so. That is because the parties are at the mercy of a series of vast movements, global rather than bounded by the nation state.
In the US, the Republican Party of former US president Abraham Lincoln has been seized by US President Donald Trump, a man who often seems to prefer autocracy to democracy.
Illustration: Mountain People
The shift is driven by forces as disparate as an increasingly precarious and resentful workforce (nearly 60 percent of American workers are paid by the hour), a white backlash against the presidency of Barack Obama and a corporate world which rejoices in a new tax plan that richly rewards the rich.
Voters might turn against the Republicans in this year’s midterm elections, but the Democrats, having lost a presidential election they expected to win, have not yet found either a leader or a unified message.
In Europe’s leading state, Germany, the narrow victors in the September federal election — the center-right CDU/CSU — embark this month on talks with the center-left Social Democrats, coalition partners in the previous government. Both parties, with decades of often-distinguished political struggle and governance behind them, do so with reluctance — both fear the growth of new parties, sign of a dealignment from the establishment, winning support from about 40 percent of the electorate.
In Britain, the Conservative government seeks an exit from the EU, while a barely suppressed civil war rages within it. The far-left commands the opposition Labour Party.
In France, all of the established parties have been marginalized in the national assembly by a wave of political neophytes in the newly created En Marche movement — a support group for presently all-powerful French President Emmanuel Macron.
In Italy, elections in early March could see a revived right wing, with a substantial far-right component come to power — as it has in Austria.
Spain’s conservative ruling party is stalemated by a vote in Catalonia for separatist parties.
In central Europe, Poland and Hungary are ruled by authoritarian (and popular) parties, while in Poland’s case, the governing Law and Justice Party is set to be sanctioned by the EU for departing from agreed liberal-democratic norms.
All of this goes on while in China and Russia, Egypt and Turkey, autocrats not subject to public or institutional accountability enjoy popularity and mock democracies.
Less than three decades ago the triumph of liberalism and democratic governance was celebrated as the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union fell apart. Now the dystopian critiques are the bestsellers — as, from the right, Eric Zemmour’s indictment of contemporary France in Le Suicide Francais, and from the liberal side, Edward Luce’s The Retreat of Liberalism.
Beyond the local phenomena, there are larger forces afflicting the most storied parties.
Globalism is made up of interlinked factors. Many of them — the spread of medical knowhow and techniques, the enforcing of human rights through such organizations as the UN International Court of Justice, the rapid diffusion of communications technology and the containment of some of the world’s conflicts through the actions of non-governmental organizations, the UN and the richer national governments — seem to be, largely uncontroversially, good. (However, not for Trump, whose administration announced cuts of more than US$285 million in its budget for the UN after member states voted to reject his recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.)
However, other factors — the increased pressure on the environment through the effects of higher growth, the increase in inequality as, everywhere in the world, highly educated cosmopolitans benefit while the unqualified get left behind and the familiar institutions of the nation state are replaced, shrunk or bought by foreign companies or governments — are felt by millions as a loss to their self respect and their quality of life.
Liberal values were and are themselves part of globalization — indeed, were and still are aggressively promoted globally, since the end of the Cold War seemed to open up the globe to an appreciation of the values of freedom.
These included freedom of speech and publication, equality between men and women, an end to racial discrimination and expanded acceptance of all sexual orientations. They were developed by parties mainly on the liberal or left end of the spectrum, but were quite quickly adopted by parties of the center right.
Since the centrist parties often broadly agreed on economic policies, and were in favor of the market, the differences among them declined, even disappeared, making them less centers of activism, more of policy development by specialists.
Activism instead has shifted to non-governmental organizations, parliamentary lawmaking to global institutions, while wages and working conditions deteriorated because of competition from the developing world’s lower-paid working millions.
Among the lower-income earners of the developed world, globalization’s effects are felt as oppression and governments usually cannot help. In many nations, especially in authoritarian states, rulers consider the liberal program of greater freedom as immoral, even obscene.
Most mainstream parties were founded to promote, or oppose, issues that have nothing to do with today’s world. They adapt, but with increasing difficulty and in most cases declining membership.
It might be that the upstart parties, presently filling niches, expand and take their place. Or it might be that, as Jill Lepore has suggested, the “party of one,” which is the Internet and social media-empowered citizen, would take over in an unimaginably complex digitalized version of Athenian democracy.
Either way, parties — once centers of power, policy and hope — would be hard put to carry on.
John Lloyd cofounded the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, where he is senior research fellow.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
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