Polarization Versus Democracy

KOMPAS/ PRIYOMBODO

Ulil Abshar Abdalla

I take the above title from an article in the July 2019 issue of the Journal of Democracy. The article was written by Milan Svolik, a political scientist and lecturer at Yale University. He is known through his "cool" 2012 study on the way of the emergence of authoritarian power and its types called The Politics of Authoritarian Rule, Cambridge.

The article written by Svolik immediately caught my attention because what he wrote was more or less "connected" to the current situation in Indonesia.

Svolik\'s thesis is simple: There has now been a "democracy breakdown", the deterioration of democracy in various countries, and this was caused partly by the sharp political polarization in society. When faced with two choices between democracy on the one hand and "political interests" on the other, usually the members of the public who have experienced polarization will put their political interests first rather than defending democratic values.

In a normal situation, without the dilemma of having to choose between democracy and political interests, the public will usually tend to say that they support democracy. However, in an urgent and dilemmatic situation, they will not hesitate to sacrifice democracy to support their political interests.

In the past, the threat to democracy generally came from a military coup. In the post-Cold War era, the threat comes from another direction, namely polarization in society that is so deep, where "political cleavages", political divisions in society, are so acute that they are difficult to bridge.

In a situation like this, the members of the public who initially – under normal circumstances – supported democracy do not hesitate to choose the political interests being fought for by candidates and their political figures rather than defending democratic values that tend to be "neutral" and "abstract".

Here is how the thesis is presented briefly by Svolik.

It is worthy for us to reflect on the article by Svolik, especially if we believe that democracy is truly "the only game in town", the only system that we consider relatively the most appropriate for the present situation, with all its shortcomings and flaws, or in fikih language, if we believe that democracy is akhaffuddararain, the system contains the least weakness compared to other systems, including and especially the khilafah system.

Trigger to the decline of democracy

This Svolik article reveals many interesting things. First, after the passing of the Cold War era, most of the democracy breakdowns occur not through a military coup, but what he called an executive takeover, a coup d’état carried out precisely by the president or head of government in power. In other words, it is a coup by the incumbents.

He presented interesting data: Out of 197 cases of a decline of democracy from 1973 to 2018, there were 88 caused by executive take-over. One interesting case that is still close to us today is Turkey. After succeeding to power through a democratic process and holding onto power for more than a decade, prime minister and then President Recep Tayyip Erdogan slowly staged a "systemic coup" from "inside" by adopting policies that were actually contrary to democracy.

The increasingly authoritarian character of Erdogan has become more apparent lately, especially his very brutal policy in dealing with his political opponents. Political opponents who are victims of Erdogan\'s current policies are of course in the Fethullah Gulen group.

Second, why does the public want to choose the incumbents who clearly have anti-democratic tendencies? Here Svolik presents an interesting thesis. The decline of democracy in the era of social media can occur not because of a "coup from above", but because there is a "movement from below" in the form of support from the public. Because of being "impressed" by the political promises of populist leaders, the public did not hesitate to vote for them even though they clearly had antidemocratic tendencies. We can call this a kind of "coup from below".

The case of President Donald Trump\'s election in the United States is the latest example. Certainly Trump was elected through democratic procedures, through open elections.

However, after being elected, Trump began to show his anti-democratic tendencies. Trump supporters who are fanatical still provide support despite Trump\'s actions against political civilization.

The latest case was a Trump tweet that brutally bullied Elijah Cummings, a member of the House of Representatives from a district in Maryland.

Trump rose to the top of power certainly not because he carried out a military coup, but through another means: riding the political polarization of American society. Not only that, he then deepened and took advantage of the polarization to win the political battle.

In Indonesia, we experience almost the same conditions. We witness a sharp political polarization between the two camps: cebong (tadpole) and kampret (mini bat). In this kind of polarization, a slightly neutral center position can be attacked by the two conflicting sides.

In such a situation, each party can militantly support the platform or political policy of the candidate they choose because the platform benefits their class interests, even though in other respects the policy may pose a threat to democracy.

One of Svolik\'s interesting theses in the article is that in this polaristic situation a voter who has supported certain political groups fanatically is better prepared to sacrifice democratic values in order to defend his own political interests than other neutral voters, who are not part from this or that faction.

One of the weaknesses of the Svolik article is that it does not state clearly why there is a sharp polarization in the development of democracy now. In my opinion, one of the biggest contributors to this polarization is social media.

Threat from within

An important lesson from the Svolik article is that the biggest threat to democracy today does not come from a military coup, but rather from "within" democracy itself, namely opposition and sharp polarization in society. Digital communication is now an important element that drives this sharp polarization.

A senior political scientist, Seymour Martin Lipset, has actually reminded us of this for a long time in his classic 1959 book, Political Man: “Inherent in all democratic systems is the constant threat that the group conflicts which are democracy’s lifeblood may solidify to the point where they threaten to disintegrate society.” In every democratic system, there is always an inherent threat, namely inter-group conflict in society.

In normal conditions, this conflict becomes the "lifeblood", the blood that sustains democracy. However, if this conflict is "twisted" massively through social media conversations or on other platforms filled with hatred and abuse, it turns into a threat of disintegration.

Ulil Abshar Abdalla, Lecturer at University of Nahdlatul Ulama Indonesia (Unusia), Jakarta