A Political and Oppositional Concept of Democratic Resilience

• In Event: Democratic Erosion and Resistance: Domestic to International Factors 1

Abstract

By drawing on a forthcoming book on depolarization and on ongoing work on oppositions strategies, this paper will develop and illustrate a “political” and opposition-focused conception of democratic resilience. The paper’s starting point is that contemporary autocrats who erode democracies from within exploit unresolved problems within their political and socioeconomic systems, use prima facie legal tools, and employ polarizing politics – and frequently a populist version thereof- as a constitutive instrument to obtain public legitimacy and support. This poses many specific dilemmas for opposition actors who aim to overcome such erosion in a sustainable way, which we will elaborate. Specifically, they are faced with challenging dilemmas between normal and extraordinary frames of politics on one hand, and among strategies of active and passive depolarization and reciprocal and reconstructive repolarization on the other. We will argue that resilience in such contexts requires ideational, organizational, and political preparedness and ability to resolve these dilemmas. In particular, it takes the ability to redefine the political field, and mobilize a winning majority along new axes of reforming and/or remaking the political and socioeconomic systems beyond the status quo. The paper will conceptualize and argue the ideational, organizational, and political dimensions of this resilience. It will then illustrate the argument with “negative” and “positive” historical and contemporary examples of reform and remaking episodes such as those in Sweden, Chile, Brazil, India, Turkey and the United States.

Authors

• Jennifer McCoy, Georgia State University

• Murat Somer, Ozyegin University Istanbul