The film presents us an alarming view of “democracy”. Perhaps Machiavelli would be a fan of Luo Lei, in that he is able to reach a middle ground between being feared and being loved.  Though it is clear that he has beat up his classmates, it seems that he is able to appease them through the gifts his father suggests, such as those from the autumn festival or the trip to the monorail. Despite my readiness to dislike the incumbent, I can see how he holds a certain degree of virtue, at least in the way Machiavelli describes it. In the beginning of the film, he says that he wants people to vote for who they want. This film shows democracy in a loose sense. The classroom community is too small to mirror the way the masses consider political candidates. However, one thing is abundantly clear through Cheng Cheng and Luo Lei’s actions: the playing field is not fair. Xiaofei’s efforts are undercut from the beginning of the talent show, when her classmates scream insults at her. The unfairness of the election process is relevant in examining many democracies around the world. It seems that the main challenge to democracy presented in the film is that the children don’t really know what a democracy is, as we are shown at the outset of the film. Once they are given the power to choose for themselves, it makes sense that they would revert back to the incumbent, back to what has always been. For these reasons, they accept him despite his authoritarian form of ruling the classroom.

Cuba: A Photo Essay

Many people in the US feel as though whoever they vote for won’t change anything in our society. This is one of the reasons that voter turnout has dropped so far in recent decades.   Many people believe this signifies the beginning of the end of our democracy. This belief in an inability for change is a sign that people have less faith in the potential of democracy. The main function of democracy is after all the fact that the public votes for who has the power, and when that fails then it is understandable that the people begin to lose faith in the system. Additionally, voters have become more and more polarized, voting for either the republican or democratic party are on completely opposite political spectrums of one another. We talked about in class about how the most liberal republican is still very much more conservative than the most conservative democrat, illustrating just how different the two parties are. Clearly these points can be interpreted as signifiers for the crash of democracy, however I don’t think they are. Although I agree that politics in America have certainly taken a few steps back in recent decades, I believe that they will always come back. Most, if not all, people in America can’t imagine a non-democratic society and wouldn’t even entertain thoughts of a different form of government. While our politics might be in a rough patch, I am strong believer in that they will bounce back.

While reading Zakaria’s views on the importance of civic associations in liberal democracies, I sought to understand the roots of the cultural erosion which has propagated illiberalism. Zakaria claims that these social buffers which regulate society have eroded due to the weakness of political parties. As argued, a transparent, individualistic Congress gives these intermediary associations no use, allowing politicians to run free in an entrepreneurial system. Tocqueville’s “informal mechanisms” which lead to a civil society that fosters and supports the institutions of democracy have now failed to set a professional, political standard, leading to a loss of the culture of democracy within our country.

With these modes of buffering now deteriorated, Americans have promoted populist regimes, dangerously pairing both popular passions and public policy. As Zakaria argues, even though it is integral that a democratic society adheres to popular sentiments, without the consideration of liberal values our country is tending towards a tragic devolve. These civic associations are the liberal filters which allow the U.S to foster and promote the same institutions of Democracy which aided in the founding of America. Without them, U.S politics is like a child without their parents, left without a figure to mediate its actions in order to protect the long term interests of the country.

Roberto Foa and Yascha Mounk discusses a wide variety of things that pertain to the survival of democracy. One of their worries, which Tocqueville as “intermediary associations”, are the informal mechanisms that sustain a liberal democracy. These mechanisms/associations are defined as “the groups in between the government and the family that exist as arbiters and regulators of society” (Foa and Mounk 7). Foa and Mounk then identify factors that are degrading the strength of these mechanisms/associations and conclude that politicians are acting too much like businessmen and the system is too open now leading people to be able to do whatever they want. To prevent this peril from reducing the chance this democracy has for survival, there needs to be a series of balances that Foa and Mounk later introduce. The first is the balance between aristocratic and democratic ruling, the second is between popular passions and public policy, and the final is between checks and balances. All of these opposing forces need to strike a cooperative balance to prevent one party from gaining too much power and acting selfishly to reduce the justices and freedoms of its citizens.

To me, Zakaria’s point makes clear the largest with democracy in America while at the same time underlines the flaws of the presidential system. Democracy is ongoing while liberalism is disappearing, and this in turn is creating a government defined by polarized parties and distrust. However, I think that there is a larger truth about the United States that contributes to these problems, which both Zakaria and Foa and Mounk neglect to extensively factor in to their analyses, is the aspect of diversity and differencing beliefs, practices, and cultures that can comprise a state. Zakaria briefly touches upon what I am talking about when he writes, “The whole point of liberal democracy is to create a system that reflects and addresses popular passions but also allows for some deliberation, for some consideration of liberal values like the rights of minorities and free expression and private property” (Zakaria, 12). Perhaps the larger issue with democracy today is not a direct product of it becoming less liberal, but is a more direct product of a fragmented society. The “popular passions” that Zakaria refers to may be the majority, but they go against a huge percentage of other Americans, including minorities and underrepresented citizens. This then would explain the dangerous trend towards populism. A party that claims to represent the common people is not representing the interests of nearly enough citizens, and thus the winner-take-all aspect of the presidential system ensures the dissatisfaction with democracy, because too many people’s voices are being neglected.

Fareed Zakaria brings attention to the growth of illiberal democracy around the world, particularly in the United States. He blames the shift in professional groups from closed independence to entrepreneurship. Specifically, Zakaria laments the Congress’s loss of power and its movement from a “closed hierarchical system” to an entrepreneurial system of popular politicians. I believe he is correct in stating that the erosion of liberal democracy is occurring in the U.S. However, as he acknowledges, the Constitution, a document that the American people have come to hold sacred, checks majoritarianism and guarantees certain rights regardless of majority opinion. While I think he raises a major, pressing concern with the current state of affairs in American politics, I am not certain that a regression to the previous closed hierarchy is a viable option at the moment. Would Americans positively view a decrease in the transparency of political parties? And if the U.S. did revert to exclusive politics, how does it do so without significantly disregarding popular opinion? Foa and Mounk are more specific about the erosion of liberal democracy in the U.S. They explain how the American culture of democracy has evolved to allow a disregard toward informal democratic norms. In conclusion, the system is failing, but it may take a great amount of instability to cause a notable swerve off the path toward illiberal populism.

If we fully register and engage with Tocqueville’s establishment of “intermediary associations” playing an important role in the sustainment of liberal democracies, and look at these mechanisms’ applicability in today’s epoch of democracy in America, then yes, democracy’s survival is a cause for concern. Tocqueville’s definition of informal mechanisms as entities that, “are the groups in between the government and the family that exist as arbiters and regulators of society” (Illing 7), are, in a more basic understanding, associative groups that aren’t political. By this token, Tocqueville believes that these associations carry just as much importance as other political organizations because they are a cohort of people working to mediate and flex their preferences on the government but whom are separate from the government. Zakaria and Illing, however, dually note that these intermediaries of society are dwindling in the face of American liberal democracy. Essentially, political parties have assumed greater importance over non-political associations and have become entities that operate in more selfish and monetarily focused ways— whom Zakaria refers to as ‘entrepreneurs’ in politics. Moreover, Zakaria points out that liberal democracy is sustained by these waning non-political associations, and because these associations are also the cultural basis for liberal democracy, democracy is imperiled. An interesting metaphor Zakaria uses to describe liberal democracy is its comparison to a highway exit and how it is one of many, meaning that liberal democracy, although the favored implementation of democracy, is not a likely outcome. What we have seen in the Trump era are unprecedented political tactics that appeal to raw populism. Trump’s politics create a system that takes the passions of voters and works to implement those passions, but defies democratic principles because there is no deliberation or consideration of what others want— a major peril to democracy and society as a whole. In Foa and Monk’s piece, they use empirical data to support how many Americans are dissatisfied with American liberal democracy in the presidency, Supreme Court, and Congress to be at record low levels. So low that 1 in 15 Americans likened the idea of military rule in the United States over a democracy, and has since grown to be 1 in 6. This is an alarming statistic considering that 1/6 of the American public is so dissatisfied with the best form of democracy by many accounts. My fear is that as American political institutions grow increasing polarized, as trends suggest, then the disillusionment with liberal democracy will turn into greater skepticism from the American public, therefore endangering the future of democracy as an ideology.

-Ella Smit