1. So this went up yesterday - preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2021/0… - and I'm very happy with it - @seanmcarroll questions and sense of how the various arguments pulled together meant that I sound far more coherent than I usually feel.
2. As noted in the interview, anything genuinely intelligent-sounding that I said should likely be attributed to the co-authors whom I am leaning on heavily throughout. We discussed work with Cosma Shalizi, with @hugoreasoning and Melissa Schwartzberg, and with Marion Fourcade .
3. Also, by sheer coincidence (the interview took place a couple of months ago), we talked about the main themes of a report by @schneierblog and I that @SNFAgoraJHU published yesterday on the current state of American democracy. It's here - snfagora.jhu.edu/publication/re…
4. The fundamental idea behind the report is straightforward - that democracy (as Przeworski and others have argued) depends crucially on beliefs, and that core beliefs are unravelling thanks to interconnected feedback loops:
5. Trump claims that he won undermine the belief that elections will lead to alternation of power. Crazy like what is happening in Arizona undermines beliefs that elections will be conducted fairly. And beliefs that fellow citizens are minimally rational are also being undermined
6. But - we argue - these feedback loops rely on forces that under other circumstances can strengthen democracy. Political ambition to win can reinforce democracy when channeled and constrained. Skepticism about institutions is often justified.
7. The first implication is that democracy is more fragile than we thought that it was (feedback loops that should strengthen democracy can weaken it). The second, for very similar reasons, that the feedback loops that are now undermining democracy can similarly be disrupted.
8. The question is how - we offer some initial policy suggestions, building on the work of other people like @leedrutman and our own more tentative suggestions (which are in part intended to provoke people to do better than we can).
9. But the underlying message is both that American democracy has never been as great as some make it out to be, and that the way forward is to strengthen it rather than (as many are starting to suggest) to limit it.
10. Shrinking democracy down would radically widen the gap between political institutions and the people they are supposed to represent, aggravating the problems rather than solving them.
11. Democracy is a dynamic system - it works when it is able to address real needs, and accommodate new groups and identities. It hasn't been doing a great job at either. We need to figure out how to rechannel its flows in healthier directions, rather than blocking them. Finis.
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