Reviews | Europeans seem to understand the threat to American democracy better than we do

STOCKHOLM Sometimes things become clearer from a distance.

The United States' friends in Europe seem much more aware of the stakes of our election than we Americans. They understand the threat to long-standing alliances among democratic nations and to a political consensus that cuts across ideological lines in resisting extremism and authoritarian impulses.

Saying this of course risks being labeled partisan since President Biden is making the preservation of democracy a central issue in the 2024 election, as he emphasized during his trip to Europe last week to honor the anniversary of D-Day. Meanwhile, Donald Trump regularly praises the effectiveness of the repressive regimes of Russia, China, Hungary and even North Korea. Their leaders are at the top of their game, whether you like it or not, the former president said late last month.

But it should not be taken as partisan to describe what is at stake in an election, and in my conversations with Europeans over the past few weeks, I have been struck by the fact that so much many diverse political persuasions were acutely aware of how the world would be different. and what problems democracy would face if Trump were victorious. Outside of the ranks of supporters of far-right parties, there are few Trumpists in Europe.

Follow this authorE.J. Dionne Jr.'s point of view.

In one sense, this transatlantic disconnect is not shocking. In most democratic countries, voters typically vote in response to everyday domestic concerns about prices, housing, jobs, health care, crime, and immigration. For a large part of the American electorate, the defense of democracy is a rather abstract question.

If you live in Europe, on the other hand, U.S. food prices or the future of Obamacare are of little importance in your life, but how the outcome of the U.S. election could affect global alliances is important. So is the question of whether American influence and power will be deployed against the threats posed by Russian aggression, in Ukraine and elsewhere.

There is another reason for Europe's relative sensitivity to the question of democracy: dictatorship is a relatively recent reality there, as it never was in the United States. Consider not only the experience of fascism and Nazism in the 1930s and early 1940s, but also the relatively recent transition to democracy in Spain and Portugal in the 1970s or in Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of Berlin Wall in 1989 and the end of World War II. Soviet occupation.

My favorite phrasing on the political choices of this moment comes not from a political philosopher but from folk singer Joni Mitchell, who said you don't know what you've got until it's gone . In Europe, the cost of losing democracy is nothing more than a vivid memory.

My fear is that it is not lively enough. Both Europeans and Americans lose their appreciation of democracy because it is old, or because democratic governments are seen as incapable of solving problems, or because politicians are seen as serving the interests of an elite. or another.

In the United States, Gallup found that confidence in the functioning of democracy fell from a high of 61 percent in 1984 to 28 percent at the end of 2023. An Ipsos poll taken around the same time found that majorities or pluralities declared themselves dissatisfied with the functioning of democracy. worked in Poland, France, Great Britain, Italy and Croatia, as well as the United States. Among the countries surveyed, only Sweden shows a majority of people satisfied with democracy.

Champions of democracy could therefore look, outside the rich countries of the North and West, for reminders of the capacity of democracies to give voters the opportunity to express their desire for change, to denounce social exclusion and economic, to hold governments accountable and to defend democracy itself.

The past few weeks have offered two encouraging examples of the value of free elections and how they allow those without wealth and privilege to make their voices heard.

In India, voters denied Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party a majority after Modi and most polls predicted he would win a landslide. The rebuke came from poorer Indian voters who felt excluded from the country's prosperity and those who feared that Modi's Hindu nationalism would lead to constitutional changes disadvantaging Muslims as well as lower-caste Hindus.

In South Africa, the African National Congress lost its majority for the first time since the institution of inclusive elections in 1994, after the end of apartheid. On Thursday, President Cyril Ramaphosa responded to the criticism by calling for the formation of a government of national unity.

On their own, neither these elections nor European concerns about a Trump presidency are enough to turn democracy into a voting issue this year. But Americans would do well to pay attention to how friends of democracy around the world will interpret the choice we make. They warn us that flirting with authoritarianism never produces good results.

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