Recent political and opinion movements surprise us with their questioning of democracy as a political system. We take for granted that democracy is the desirable, normal, and permanent political system once achieved. However, history continually reminds us how vulnerable a democracy is. It is striking to see that the United States—the oldest democracy still in existence—could abolish it. As in enough precedents we know, this could even pass for a democratic decision.
The 1930s witnessed the demise of many democratic regimes. The rise of militarism, fascism, and National Socialism stirred up storms that destabilized the often precarious foundations of democracy. In recent years, we are seeing the demise of yet another group and the deterioration of others. Every election could be the last. To avoid this, it is necessary for the parties democratically vying for power to agree to relinquish it if they fail to win it again, but there are too many cases where this does not happen. Increasing polarization contributes to this.
Democracy is born of an unstable political equilibrium. It should be stimulating over time, and often this is not the case. We easily find that the conditions that have allowed a democracy to take root are mutable and can disappear. Those who wanted democracy can change their minds or can die and make way for generations that favor non-democratic solutions that may seem more favorable to their interests or ideology.
What problems can we identify that we should be prepared for? Essentially, the wounds left by major military, political, economic, or social impacts. If they are wars, the postwar periods can be disastrous. If they have been positive, as in the case of the post-World War II era, they are exceptional. But the post-World War I era was calamitous, leaving all kinds of wounds that worsened until they led to the Second World War.
Since there are no wars in our recent past, it is worth asking what might cause them. We now see how trade conflicts are fertile ground in which the will to wage war can fester. But in Europe, there are two wounds that are not distant and that are significant. Perhaps they will not bring about wars, but they can lead to breakdowns in social consensus. The most recent is the Great Recession and the policies of extreme spending cuts—austerity measures. The effects of contractionary monetary policies after the First World War have been studied, and the consequences were not positive anywhere; quite the contrary. Very early and fragile democracies had to manage monumental cuts as a result of hyperinflation or large population movements. Many years later, the austerity policies imposed in the wake of the Great Recession and the euro crisis by the European Central Bank, promoted by the German monetary area, did a great deal of damage. The legislation adopted to reduce public spending has left wounds that do not heal easily.
The other recent wound is the fall of the Soviet Union and the regimes of real socialism in Eastern Europe. The lack of Western aid—the lack of a Marshall Plan—left very deep wounds from which leaders like Putin have emerged. We in the European Union believe we have helped many of these countries, but we took too long, and often we haven't even managed to get our efforts acknowledged. Political instability in Eastern Europe feeds on this resentment. "Europe" is to blame for everything. Our impotence in the face of the Russian invasion of Ukraine makes this perfectly clear.
On the other hand, in Western Europe, the redistributive policies promoted by the left, so popular in boom years, can be aggressive for those who have to pay for them and who don't benefit. Increasingly impoverished middle classes can feel expropriated, and this feeling doesn't fuel moderate reactions but rather passionate ones. This is what we see happening with mass immigration, convenient for obtaining cheap labor, but which provokes competition between nationals and immigrants for the benefits of the welfare state.
It also happens with the dispute surrounding real estate ownership: many small property owners are afraid of being expropriated. Curiously, no one reacts to the gigantic fortunes, which can choose how much tax they pay and where they pay it. Financial capital—previously blamed—has now been fiscally absolved in the public eye, while real estate capital has been declared guilty. The fear of expropriation is dangerous: it moves mountains and changes ideologies. Every fear, every resentment, every wound, is dangerous for democracy if it does not know how to deal with them properly.
