Making Sense of Democracy's Distress

<span>Democratic backsliding and the rise of populist politics are among the most pressing constitutional challenges today. What drives these developments and how should they be addressed? This review essay discusses three recent books on the topic:&nbsp;<i>Democracy Unmoored&nbsp;</i>by Samuel Issacharoff,&nbsp;<i>Democracy Erodes from the Top&nbsp;</i>by Larry Bartels, and<i>Tyranny of the Minority</i>&nbsp;by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. The discussion is organized around three themes: the causes of backsliding; the role of constitutional law and courts versus the significance of informal democratic norms; and whether more democracy provides a plausible answer to democratic decay. A common view is that backsliding stems from widespread citizen discontent. That view is developed by Issacharoff, who links democratic backsliding to popular dissatisfaction with democratic systems, driven by economic insecurity, immigration, and government dysfunction. Yet Bartels challenges such bottom-up explanations. Drawing on European public opinion research, he finds limited support for the claim that mass discontent is driving democratic decay. Instead, he sees irresponsible political elites as the main culprits, although he leaves unresolved how democratic systems produce responsible politicians. A common legal response is that constitutional checks and judicial oversight of political power are crucial to democratic stability. The three books nonetheless converge in stressing the limitations of legal safeguards: laws can be abused and courts can be turned into instruments of illiberal rule. Levitsky and Ziblatt instead emphasize informal norms as key to sustaining democracy, especially mutual toleration and institutional forbearance. Yet it remains unclear how such a pro-democratic norm consensus can be maintained once it has started to erode. In&nbsp;<i>Tyranny of the Minority</i>,<i>&nbsp;</i>Levitsky and Ziblatt argue that more democracy is required to prevent backsliding. Making politics responsive to majorities is, in their view, ultimately the best way to stem extremism, which leads them to advocate a democratisation of the U.S. Constitution. Yet even if such proposals are attractive in theory, they appear politically remote in the current U.S. context and are unlikely to fully resolve the challenge posed by populist politics for contemporary democracies.</span><span></span>