Podcast: The Autocrat's Playbook

TRANSCRIPT: The Autocrat's Playbook

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

A real cause for concern is the demographic change that we're going through. No democracy, to my knowledge, has undergone a transition in which an ethnic majority loses its majority status and democracy survives.

Ian Bremmer:

Hi, I'm Ian Bremmer, and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. I'm host of the weekly show "GZERO World" on Facebook Watch. In this podcast, we share extended versions of the big interviews from that show. This week I sit down with Dr. Steven Levitsky, professor of government at Harvard University. He's known for his work on competitive authoritarian regimes and is an expert on Latin America. Today I'll ask him about democracy in crisis, both in South America and in the United States. Let's get to it.

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Ian Bremmer:

Are democracies actually dying right now?

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

They don't die as often as many people think, actually. The number of full democracies, particularly established democracies, democracies that have been in place for say two decades, that have died in the history in the world can be counted on one hand.

Ian Bremmer:

And they are?

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

Venezuela, Chile, Uruguay, so three in Latin America. And then democracies that were more short-lived, like Spain and Germany in the 1930s. Hungary, depending on your view of the situation, may be another case. But the number of full-scale democracies that have died is relatively small.

Ian Bremmer:

When you are identifying a potential threat to democracy, what are the ingredients that go into that? What are the indications that we have problems?

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

There's no perfect test to identify an autocrat. But we draw heavily on Juan Linz, the Spanish political scientist. Taught at Yale for many years. He was born in Wiemar Germany, grew up in Spanish Civil War in Franco Spain. Really spent much of his career trying to understand how and why democracies die. And he, in a book, a very widely cited book published in the 1970s, put together what he called a litmus test for identifying authoritarians. We kind of take that and repackage it a little bit and try to present it a bit more clearly in our book. And that litmus test has four elements. So this draws on Linz.

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

One of them is calling into question democratic rules of the game. For example, Trump's calling our elections rigged and suggesting that he might not abide by the results of elections is an example of that. Two is threatening to suspend civil liberties of opponents or the media. Three is encouraging or condoning violence. Fourth is not accepting the legitimacy of your rival. Those are the four indicators that we use. And we argue in the book that during the 2016 campaign, Trump checked off all four boxes. He met all four indicators. This is something that no major party candidate in the United States did.

Ian Bremmer:

So Trump has a authoritarian impulse, which is pretty strong and pretty consistent. On the other hand, Trump's ability to maintain focus and consistency on most things is fairly low.

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

Yeah. And that helps us.

Ian Bremmer:

The people around Trump, most of them are fairly establishment characters at this point, as opposed to say Steve Bannon or Mike Flynn in the early days. And the institutions are pretty strong. I mean, no deep state, but at least a deep bureaucracy. So if you take those four check marks against Trump as individual and compare them with all of the sort of other side of the balance sheet, you come away comforted, enthusiastic?

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

Well, much less concerned than we would be in a country like Bolivia or Ecuador or Turkey or Nicaragua where democratic institutions are very weak. If you put an authoritarian figure in a country with very weak democratic institutions, democratic institutions have little chance. If you put an authoritarian... somebody with authoritarian impulses, I think is a good way of describing Trump, in a setting with a strong opposition and fairly robust institutions, yeah, those institutions have a fighting chance.

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

I would say there's a very good chance that American institutions will survive this. It's still worth worrying about. It's, again, unprecedented in all of our lifetimes that we would elect a president with authoritarian impulses. Obviously, Nixon is a partial example of what I just said. But nobody that we've elected in more than a century has got these sorts of illiberal instincts.

Ian Bremmer:

How worried do you think we should be about the state of liberal democracy in the world today?

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

Well, our perspective is a little bit different. We do not think that fascism is around the corner. We don't think that the United States... that a military coup or outright tyranny is imminent in the United States. But we, like I think most Americans, have long taken the stability of American democracy for granted. We kind of assume, we kind of operate under the assumption that no matter how recklessly our politicians behave, no matter how recklessly we behave, we can't possibly break our democracy. And we think that is a dangerous mistake. We don't think that American democracy is dead. We don't even think that it's dying. But we do think that there are warning signs, there are things that should lead us to be concerned and careful in protecting our institutions.

Ian Bremmer:

What are the institutions in the United States right now that you think are actually most vulnerable to eroding away from being effective, democratic?

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

Look, in terms of basic rights, when I think of basic elements of democracy, one thinks of elections, one thinks of freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom of the press. Those things are not under direct threat. I mean, even though Trump has verbally threatened the media, I think those things are not under immediate threat. But there is some cause for concern. Five, 10 years ago, if you'd asked me whether Americans would... whether this sort of consensus behind core institutions like elections and a free press was in danger of erosion, I would've said no. But one effect of Trump's rhetoric against elections, meaning... not against elections, but questioning over and over again, both before and after the election-

Ian Bremmer:

Rigged.

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

... whether our elections are free and fair, whether American elections are free and fair, and his calling into question the legitimacy of the independent or the so-called 'mainstream media,' arguing over and over again that the media are conspiring to bring his government down, that's had an effect on public opinion to the point where a large number of Americans, and in some polls a majority of Republicans, now believe that our elections are fraudulent, that do not believe that our elections are clean, and now believe that our media is conspiring against the government.

Ian Bremmer:

You haven't mentioned one thing that a lot of people seem to believe is how the system is rigged, which is not that the elections are stolen, but that fundamentally the swamp, as it's called, kind of skews outcomes to favor a very small number of wealthy Americans in special interests.

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

Yep. That's a great point. I'm not sure I would call it a swamp because a swamp kind of implies corruption and backroom deals, whereas actually the amazing thing about it in the United States is-

Ian Bremmer:

It's legal.

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

It's all legal. And most of it is above board. It's actually a pretty transparent swamp. I agree with you. So there are many ways for a democracy to be enfeebled, to become dysfunctional, to become less democratic. Without question, the extraordinary influence of money in politics in the United States is one such way.

Ian Bremmer:

So what are the characteristics that make democracies most resilient, not just institutional, but generally. I'm an alien, I'm looking down at a planet, I want to create, fertilize some democracies, what are the sorts of ingredients I want?

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

The two factors that empirically matter the most in terms of predicting resilience and durability are age and wealth. Actually, the United States scores pretty well on both. Certainly in terms of its constitutional system, not full democracy, but in terms of its constitutional system, one of the oldest on Earth, and it's also one of the wealthiest democracies on Earth. So those two sort of structural factors alone, age and wealth, predict quite a bit of resilience.

Ian Bremmer:

And age of the system, again, not age of the people.

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

Yes. But the systems are not like people. People are more vulnerable to death as they get older. Democracies are more resilient as they get older.

Ian Bremmer:

And wealth, distribution effects not as important?

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

If you look at wealth and age alone, you sleep well at night, you can be quite confident in the survival of US democracy. Two things that make me less confident or that worry me a fair amount are, one, rising levels of income inequality. We are now by most measures at higher levels of income inequality than at any time since before-

Ian Bremmer:

The Depression.

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

... the Depression. That's-

Ian Bremmer:

The Gilded Age basically.

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

That is a real cause for concern. The other is the demographic change that we're going through. No democracy, to my knowledge, has undergone a transition in which an ethnic majority loses its majority status and democracy survives.

Ian Bremmer:

So let me move to a different part of the world and one that you know very well, which is Latin America and say... Venezuela used to have real elections and they aren't anymore. Are you surprised by that and what happened?

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

Yeah. Venezuela is one of the really few clear-cut cases of full-scale, consolidated democracy-

Ian Bremmer:

Dying.

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

... dying, outright dying.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah. It is gone today, right?

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

It is gone. It is basically a dictatorship at this point. It was a long, unhappy story that began with oil and very high expectations, high levels of corruption, and a terrible economic crisis that endured really for 20 years. Standards of living decline, levels of inequality, levels of poverty skyrocketed between the late 1970s and the late 1990s. So the Venezuelans were living much worse, particularly poor Venezuelans were much worse off in the late 1990s than they'd been in the 1970s.

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

The 1970s, the country was experiencing an oil boom. Their president was telling them they were going to be a first world nation and they end up in poverty. So the level of disgust towards politicians, the level of anger which we see a bit of in the United States, magnified tenfold in Venezuela, which led to a collapse of the party system and it led Venezuelans to basically say, "Screw it. Let's take a wrecking ball to the elite."

Ian Bremmer:

Now, another country right now in Latin America where you have a lot of disgust with established leaders across the board, elections coming up, most popular person that's running for those elections right now, Mr. Bolsonaro, seems to check off some of the boxes that you've talked about on the authoritarian side. If he actually goes ahead and wins, is Brazil another country you conceivably are worried about heading in this direction?

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

Yeah. There's a debate, as you know, about whether the world has sort of sunk into a democratic recession and whether there's a great retreat or rollback of democracy in the world. I'm less pessimistic than a lot of people in that debate. I actually think that in spite of a number of geopolitical global challenges, the number of democracies in the world has remained pretty stable over the last decade.

Ian Bremmer:

But the comparative importance of one particular non-democracy, China, has grown massively.

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

Yes. And that may well have an impact in the future. So the geopolitical balance, the balance of power in the world has changed. The strength, the influence, the prestige of the liberal West has declined. But that doesn't automatically translate... It's a challenge to existing democracies. It doesn't automatically mean democratic rollback. The three countries that I'm really watching closely, that I worry about, are three big middle income countries in three different regions.

Ian Bremmer:

Brazil.

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

India, Brazil, South Africa. All three of them are still democracies, all three of them have relatively robust democratic institutions. They're real democracies that have now stuck around for a while, for more than two decades. The youngest is South Africa. But all three of them are potentially threatened. And if they go, for example, if Brazilian democracy falls apart, taking the route that you just described, a populist outsider, right-wing populist Bolsonaro, much like Trump in many ways getting elected... Brazilian democratic institutions are strong, but they're not as strong as the United States.

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

Brazil is in the middle of a real perfect storm of a crisis, much, much deeper than the United States, a severe economic crisis plus what may be the biggest corruption scandal in the history of the democratic world-

Ian Bremmer:

Extraordinary. Yeah.

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

... which implicates the entire political elite, which gives people real reason, real reason to say... to look at the entire political elite, all the established parties and say, "To hell with them all," and vote for a populist. So there are real risks in Brazil. If Brazil's democracy were to fall apart, I would worry a lot about democracy in the rest of the region.

Ian Bremmer:

If we look at the other two countries that you're talking about, you're worried about, both India and South Africa, a lot of people have a belief that those are countries heading in the right direction right now, that there are leaders that people believe more in. Are-

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

Certainly in India.

Ian Bremmer:

And with Ramaphosa in South Africa as well compared to certainly what you had. Where would you tell people to watch? If there's a danger from those two countries, it would come from what going forward?

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

I think the electoral hegemony of the ruling party. It's more obvious in South Africa-

Ian Bremmer:

The ANC.

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

... where the ANC is a liberation party, much like India half a century ago, which because of its role in the struggle against apartheid and given the demographics of the country, the ANC was bound for a good generation or so to be a dominant party, which is always a risk in terms of authoritarianism. But thus far, the rule of law and constitutionality has prevailed to the great credit of the ANC and the founding generation. But one is hegemony. The other two things that are worth worrying about in South Africa; one, the level of violence which leads to sectors of society seeking out a strong hand.

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

And two, the slow pace of redistribution, which has led to demands and some efforts on the part of elements of the government and the ruling party for more accelerated land reform, which could lead to tensions, conflicts over property rights, which... I mean, I don't think that a sort of Zimbabwe like path is... particularly like in South Africa, but it's something to watch. In India, you have a new ruling party, but a real dominant one. The Congress Party is badly weakened, doesn't show a lot of signs of revitalization, and the BJP is a really strong party.

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

There are debates about how nationalist the BJP still is. But in a country as ethnically diverse, and in some cases ethnically divided, as India, a strong sort of Hindu nationalism could trigger violence and could trigger, potentially at least, abuse of their civil liberties or human rights.

Ian Bremmer:

We've talked a lot about what's happening inside countries. We haven't talked a lot about the supranational experiments. Of course, the biggest one in democracy is Europe. So I'm wondering, a lot of people that oppose what's happening in Europe right now oppose it because they say, "We've lost the ability to have democratic influence over our government. It's determined by these Eurocrats in Brussels who don't care about what it means to live in this system and big inequality." Look what happened to Greece and the rest. Are there lessons for democracy in how Europe was put together and the challenges that they're now experiencing.

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

If voters perceive that the decisions that are made above them and about them are completely disconnected from their own preferences, they're going to get angry. And what's happened, and this is, I think, a parallel of the United States with... One thing that's happened throughout the advanced industrialized countries in the last 25 years or so is that center-right and center-left have converged on two main questions, on globalization, support for globalization, and tolerance of immigration. I happen to think both those things are positive.

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

In fact, a majority of Americans think both of those things are positive. I think the support is more uneven in Europe. But there is a chunk of the population in every advanced industrialized country, including the United States, maybe a third, maybe 40%-

Ian Bremmer:

So it hasn't worked for them.

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

... is unhappy with one or both of those things. Does not like free trading, globalization, not happy with immigration, and feels like nobody in the political elite, not center-right, not center-left, nobody in the political establishment represents their view. And I think the problem... Trump's breaking with the consensus on both of those issues got him a lot of attention. It's not the only thing that won him support, but it was a refreshing alternative for many voters.

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

In Europe, the problem is made even worse by this added EU layer. So it's not only that the center-left and center-right in each European country has kind of abandoned the voter, but it seems like even those parties have given up authority to Brussels. And what's the lesson? If governments are not perceived to be responsive to voters, political elites are in trouble.

Ian Bremmer:

Steven Levitsky, Harvard University professor, author of "How Democracies Die." Thank you very much.

Dr. Steven Levitsky:

Thanks for having me.

Ian Bremmer:

That's our show this week. We'll going to be coming back in a couple of weeks making some changes. Big announcements coming your way. One I'll tell you right now is we're going to be switching the show to Monday morning. In the interim, we're going to be putting out some of our greatest hits over the past weeks. Maggie Haberman, Preet Bharara, Carl Bildt, you name it. All sorts of fun stuff. If you want to subscribe to our channel on YouTube or watch us on Facebook, you're very welcome to do that. We'll be coming back real soon.

Announcer:

The GZERO World is brought to you by our founding sponsor, First Republic. First Republic, a private bank and wealth management company, understands the value of surface, safety, and stability in today's uncertain world. Visit firstrepublic.com to learn more.