Why would citizens vote freely for political leaders plotting or even promising to attack their democracy? Why do certain policies, parties or people take priority over democratic norms at the ballot box? And can democracy count on voters to save it?
Professor Milan Svolik of Yale University addresses these questions through rigorous research, but no easy solutions.
This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.
There are two ways to lose an election: one to see oneself as trapped into loss by the rules; the other to see the loss as something beyond oneself or positions. Neither embraces the People, but the latter sees a process traveling across populations of win and loss, that process not in any instance the People, but akin perhaps to the nation. Liberal democracy degrades when this second conception is lost. Consider teaching child sibs a game; outcome is not important, but rather that the game goes on. In this sense all our organized sport (which I have always hated) teaches a pillar of democracy. When losing is disallowed, the People is employed to either overrule electoral outcome or lock in the immediate past outcome. Rights building civil society are ultimately about letting your opposition build civil society. If this last is not a core principle, rights become an indulgence or easy road to achieve what must be achieved.
So the Istanbul case of 2019 could be seen as rear guard adherence to the principle of loss traveling throughout the nation, winners and losers changing in space and time. Perhaps the flip of 800,000 realized votes in second run is partly for the limited importance of the mayoral office relative to the national government, allowing this principle unencumbered realization.