The Need for Party Structure: Ziblatt and Stevens Together

 

As I previously mentioned, Daniel Ziblatt and Stuart Stevens' books complement each other well.  Ziblatt emphasizes the importance of political parties, including their campaign structures, in a working democracy, but his descriptions are mostly theoretical.  Stevens gives us a ground view look at political consultants and their role in democracy. 

In fact, sometimes the parallels are stunning.  Ziblatt speaks of parties as the "gatekeepers" of democracy, barring demagogues who threaten the rules of the game.*  Stevens says that parties should act as "circuit breakers" to deny the exploitation of the darkest side of our politics.**  Different figure of speech, same concept.  Stevens actually cites Ziblatt's How Democracies Die, both on the "gatekeeper" role of political parties and the danger Trump poses in rejecting the rules of the game, denying the legitimacy of opponents, tolerating violence, and threatening the civil liberties of opponents.  

Stevens' work also shows some stunning parallels to Ziblatt's earlier book, Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy.  In his earlier work, Ziblatt argues that the success of democracy depends on a strong conservative party.  By a "strong" party, Ziblatt means not just electorally strong, but institutionally strong, with a well-developed party structure, led by a party elite with a vested interest in perpetuating democratic politics.  In other words, people like Stevens who figure out how to appeal to voters, run political campaigns, endeavor to win, but recognize that losing means living to fight another day.  And note that this means not just that politicians who lose can run for office again, or run for a different office, but that political consultants can move from one politician to another and use the same basic institutions. Perhaps this is a cynical view of democracy, that its survival depends on the campaign consultants who have a vested interest in competitive elections.  But, as always, the question is compared to what.

In Conservative Parties Ziblatt looks at the alternatives to a strong party structure and finds them most unattractive.  Pre-WWI the German Conservative Party reached out to the Agrarian League, a better-organized group dedicated to enhancing agricultural interests, only to find out that the party had been taken over by an interest group, and one with most unpleasant anti-Semitic, anti-urban and militaristic tendencies. Post WWI, Ziblatt compares the weak DNVP (successor to the Conservatives) to the strong Social Democrats.  The Social Democratic Party was funded by membership dues and had a party newspaper.  The DNVP had neither an independent financial base nor a party newspaper.  Instead, it came to rely on Alfred Hugenberg, a right-wing media magnate who used his media empire to stir up right-wing radicalism and his fortune to finance the party (Ziblatt estimates that he provided at least 30% of party funding). Compare this, then, with Stevens' description of the Republican Party today*** -- at the mercy of an increasingly extremist right wing media driving its voters' opinions, dependent on mega-donors and their political action committees (PAC's), and beholden to special interests such as the NRA and Grover Norquist's anti-tax zealots.  Ziblatt emphasizes the point as well in How Democracies Die.

My most serious criticism of Ziblatt is over the key issue he never addresses.  Ziblatt emphasizes the need for a strong democratic conservative party to reign in the "right wing grassroots" with their authoritarian tendencies.  He warns of the danger of letting the right wing grassroots take over.  But he never explains who these right wing grassroots are or how numerous they are  He does drop at least some hints that they may not be so numerous.  Irish Protestant militias in Britain or anti-Semites in Germany exercises influence far out of proportion to their numbers and were more ideologically extreme than electorally-minded party leaders.  This suggests that the "right wing grassroots" are more accurately characterized as the activists. And their appeal is often to bigotry -- anti-Irish in Britain, anti-Semitic in Germany, or anti-black or -Hispanic in the U.S.   A strong party can meet some of the activists' more reasonable demands (denying Catholic Ireland control over Protestant Ulster, for instance) while refusing to surrender to outright bigotry.  And the party can contain the activists, in large part, by drawing in the allegiance of a broad electoral base while limiting the activists' popular appeal.  When right-wing media, mega-donors and interests groups capture a party, they are able to stir up popular sentiment in favor of extremism and endanger democracy.

Stevens makes the same point when talking about the more rabidly anti-tax and anti-spending elements in the Republican Party.  He served as campaign advisor to the incumbent Mississippi U.S. Senator, who had brought home the bacon for his state. The challenger was an obscure state senator who had never run for state-wide office, had no local base or fund-raising network, and was running on an anti-spending platform. Doubtless the challenger could pitch himself as the voice of the grassroots running against the establishment.  But, in fact, he was himself funded by large, wealthy out-of-state activist groups, freed by Citizens United to pour unlimited money into the election.  Stevens wrote ads for the incumbent the old-fashioned way -- by boasting that he had brought home the bacon for Mississippi and would continue to do so.  The challenger, in the meantime, found that cutting spending on Mississippi was not a winning issue and made barely-coded appeals to racism.  The incumbent won by a narrow margin.

Such elections are not unique to Mississippi.  In the Delaware election to replace Joe Biden, popular Republican moderate Mike Castle lost the Republican primary to Christine O'Donnell, who had no base of support in Delaware, but did have the support of national Tea Party groups and prominent right wing media figures.  O'Donnell lost to the Democrat.  The approach is not always a failure.  Ted Cruz ran as a scrappy outsider underdog against the Texas Republican establishment, despite having served as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist, in the Bush Administration Department of Justice, and as Texas Solicitor General, and despite having the support of national Tea Party groups, politicians, media figures, and former Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese.  Needless to say, Cruz won. But the point here is one that Democrats learned the hard way in 1972.  The distinction between the party establishment and the grass roots is a false one.  In many cases the party establishment is the grassroots.  The party establishment consists of the people who call meetings, knock on doors, and win the votes of their fellow citizens.  Candidates outside the party establishment usually need the backing of a well-funded out-of-state organization to compete.  The true dichotomy is the party establishment versus the activists, each claiming to be the true voice of We, the People.

And then there is the matter of bigotry.  Both men emphasize its importance.  Ziblatt points out that the issue of slavery tore our country apart, and that the parties were only able to turn down the temperature of politics by agreeing to exclude black people.  And he expresses the widely held suspicion that Republicans' actions are ultimately driven by a desperate white resistance against demographics.  Stevens says the same.  One wonders what they would say about Trump's recent inroads on the minority vote.  Nonetheless, Stevens made another comment that I found revealing and disturbing.  Republicans have for some time been reacting with hysteria to any Democratic gains, warning that the Democrats stand for radical Islam or Sharia or (currently) socialism.  And, he comments:

[M]ost Republicans know it's nonsense, just as they know Donald Trump is an unqualified idiot.  But what many Republican politicians actually do believe is that they represent the "real" America, and they are somewhere from uncomfortable to frightened by America's changing landscape.

__________________________________________________________________

*Ziblatt gives Charles Lindberg and Henry Ford as examples.

**His example is Todd Akin, who the Republican Party refused to support when he denied that rape could cause pregnancy.

***See especially chapters 5 and 6.