Political Identity Formation and Dangers to Democracy

• In Event: Democracy in Peril?

Abstract

Democracy is threatened at home and abroad by polarization, ultra-nationalism, and erosion of democratic norms. But how are proto-authoritarian political identities formed? Pressing further, are there common aspects of identity formation relevant to studying political identity development across the entire ideological, political, and even cultural spectrum? Would knowledge of such commonalities put us in a position to better understand polarization, perhaps even providing a common ground to mitigate it?

This paper addresses these questions in three ways. First, it develops a model of political identity formation relevant to modern liberal, democratic polities in an era of populism, polarization, neoliberalism, and globalization. Second, it uses this model to analyze anti-democratic political identity formation, using the American MAGA movement as a case study, and shows how this model helps reveal how authoritarian political identities are developed and calcified.

Third, it suggests that advocates of deeper democratization and pluralism must be attuned to identity needs, including their own, across the entire political spectrum. However, they must be especially attuned to those identity needs to which nationalist and populist rhetoric are designed to appeal. The insecurity that breeds and sustains extreme populist claims, for example, of national exceptionalism or national victimhood must be attended to by those who want to protect democracy. This means that we need an incisive understanding of political identity formation including, but going beyond, contemporary notions of “diversity.” For example, it must address inequality not just between but also within and across categories of ethnicity, race, sex, and gender, and inequality based on the contemporary structure of social classes. Otherwise, calls for pluralism and more democracy, ironically, may inflame populist grievances into reactionary dread of existential threat that needs to be defeated at all costs. Even through the suspension of liberties and the support for authoritarians.

This subject is now of utmost importance. In the United States, resurgent “America First” ideology made famous by Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement has eroded democratic and liberal institutional norms. With ex-President Trump the prohibitive favorite to become the Republican nominee for president again, there is reasonable fear that dangers to democracy will accelerate and proliferate as we approach the 2024 election, and beyond.

Anti-democratic trends are also seen in many other places throughout the world. Some examples include Italy (Brothers of Italy), Hungary (Fidesz), Poland (Law and Justice), France (National Rally), elsewhere in Europe, and beyond. For years, in Russia, Vladmir Putin has tightened his grip. In Israel, well before the current war, the hard-right coalition of Benjamin Netanyahu signaled the further erosion of pluralist norms and growing democratic deficits. And in the party- state of China, Secretary Xi Jinping’s increasingly harsh political repression (including in Hong Kong) has stymied and reversed nascent efforts to increase political openness and pluralize power in the “reform” period.

While there are some countertrends, overall, monitors of democracy and freedoms such as V- Dem, Freedom House, and the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index show that democracy has been eroding worldwide for some time. For example, in its Democracy Report 2023, V-Dem says that “Advances in global levels of democracy made over the last 35 years have been wiped out. . . 72% of the world’s population – 5.7 billion people – live[d] in autocracies by 2022.”

While there are very significant historical, cultural, and political differences between many of the nations in which democracy has been set back, or has failed to take root, there are points of analytic contact as well. In this paper I have chosen to focus on one such point as a particularly important analytic framework: the relationship between the development of political identity within a nation and its political culture. How is it that, at certain times and places, the political identities of significant numbers of people are attracted to authoritarian leaders and political movements? In particular, how do grievances play out and play into political movements detrimental to greater pluralism, tolerance, and democracy. The paper concludes by asking, how political practices might be changed to mitigate the threats to democracy identified.

Author

• Thomas S. De Luca, Fordham University