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Mainstream media in the Trump era have fashioned themselves as tribunes of the people and arbiters of truth. Democracy dies in darkness, warns the Washington Post; the New York Times intones, Truth. Its more important than ever. With the election of a Republican president, the media have rediscovered constitutional government. Suddenly, executive power must be constrained again. Checks and balances are all the rage. Federalism and states rights are no longer racist dog whistles, but essential antidotes to a domineering central government.

And yet, while the media clang their alarms about how Donald Trump is supposedly turning America into a fascist dictatorship, they largely neglect the fact that democracy really is dying in other parts of the world.

In Turkey, for instance, Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdoans recent referendum victory allowed him to consolidate power over all three branches of the national government. Erdoans triumph followed on the heels of a failed coup, which he may have staged, and which enabled him to jail and thereby sideline thousands of political opponents. The media miss the broader context of these events: Turkey has now all but completed its transformation from a secular, Kemalist nation to an Islamist dictatorship. Ankara has undergone its equivalent of the Arab Spring, with the same disastrous result as in other countries. A modern, majority-Muslim nation of 80 million people has repudiated a 90-year experiment in relative Western liberalism for dictatorial rule under a man who describes himself as a servant of Sharia and who views democracy as merely a means to an end: You ride it until you arrive at your destination, and then you step off. As Andrew C. McCarthy aptly put it: Erdoan is an anti-Western, anti-Semitic, sharia-supremacist, jihadist-empowering anti-Democrat. . . . His referendum victory is the death knell for democracy in Turkey. Is the triumph of Islamism within a NATO-allied country no big deal, or is the commentariat unable or unwilling to report on it because of its past romance with Erdoan?

Another story that the media largely ignore is that of the collapse of Venezuela under socialism. The Lefts May Daybetter titled Victims of Communism Day came and went with barely a peep about the collapse of the once-vibrant Latin American nation under Hugo Chavez/Nicols Maduro Stalinism. Just as Turkey is about to fall under the veil of Islamist tyranny, Venezuela is reaching the logical conclusion of Leftist tyranny. Thousands have been taking to the streets in protest. Citizens are going hungry in a country that was once the richest in the region. The government is seizing the assets of global corporations. Inflation is running at 280 percent. In a nation that had banned private gun ownership, Maduro is now planning to arm up to 400,000 loyalists to preserve some semblance of order. Central planning and other attacks on individual liberty and private property rights have turned Venezuela into another failed Communist experiment, leaving its people mired in violence, poverty, and misery.

You might think that the downfall of a nation in Americas hemisphere under democratically elected socialists might be subject to intense media coverage. You would be wrong. Could it be that the Left does not wish to report on the end results of its policies?

Lastly, Hong Kongs one country, two systems policy may be heading toward the dustbin of history. During a celebration marking the 27th anniversary of the Basic Law, Hong Kongs constitution, Chinas Hong Kong Liaison Office Legal Chief Wang Zhenmin warned an audience that the more Hong Kong fails to actively defend the sovereignty, national security and development interests of the country [China] in accordance with law, the more wary the country might be on Hong Kongs high degree of autonomy and the two systems. Chapter I, Article 2 of the Basic Law guarantees the territory a high degree of autonomy, under which it can enjoy executive, legislative and independent judicial power. But this autonomy is eroding under pressure from Beijing. As I wrote elsewhere following a trip abroad to Hong Kong in 2016, China has been exerting its control [over Hong Kong] in ways small and large, from harassing reporters and book publishers unfriendly to Beijing to blocking elected officials from assuming office if they fail to recite a loyalty oath.

The Chinese are eroding freedom in Hong Kong, step by stepbut the press appears largely disinterested in the story. Perhaps the fearless democracy defenders of the fourth estate are afraid of running afoul of Chinas Communist censors, who might ban media outlets unwilling to comply with local censorship laws. Or maybe, sadly, they sense the inevitability that Hong Kong will be subsumed by China regardless of their reportage.

Whether under Islamist tyranny or the Leftist tyranny of the Latin American or Chinese varieties, democracy is gravely threatened in major areas of the world right now. By and large, the Western media intelligentsia has nothing to say about it. The march of authoritarianism does not seem to rise to the level of importance of the latest Trump Twitter outrage, or his comment about Andrew Jackson and the Civil War, or the manner in which a White House advisor sits on a couch in the Oval Office, to take just a few examples. The Washington Post and its cohorts are right that democracy dies in darkness. They should turn their attentions now and then to the places where the lights are going out.

Benjamin Weingarten(@bhweingarten) has written for The Federalist, PJ Media, and Conservative Review. He is founder and CEO of ChangeUp Media LLC, a media consulting, production and publication advisory firm. You can find his work atbenweingarten.com.

Photo by Susana Gonzalez/GettyImages

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Where Democracy Really Does Die in Darkness - City Journal

New York Times

Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Rally Displaced by Pro-Beijing Event, Organizers Say New York Times HONG KONG Organizers of a pro-democracy rally held annually in July on the anniversary of Hong Kong's handover to China said on Wednesday that they had been denied permission to use a downtown park, a move that threatens to raise tensions ... Hong Kong pro-democracy rally application rejectedBBC News Annual July 1 Hong Kong democracy rally threatened as Victoria Park rejects venue applicationHong Kong Free Press all 5 news articles »

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Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Rally Displaced by Pro-Beijing Event, Organizers Say - New York Times

COMMENTARY

Donald Trumps firing of FBI Director James Comey caused barely a ripple on the glassy surface of equity markets, but more than 100 years of market and social data show that might be a mistake.

Or perhaps just premature: the long-term correlation between the future returns of financial markets and indicators of a healthy democracy and society are strong, according to a recent study.

We have documented that, over a five- or 10-year time scale, there has historically been, on average, a consistent positive correlation between future returns of a countrys stock market and past changes of the same countrys indicators that are socially good, Scott Axelrod and James Leitner of Falcon Management wrote in a December 2016 working paper for Swedens Varieties of Democracy Institute.

The institute has a database of indicators of a countrys democratic health, with data for 173 countries going back as far as 1900.

The indicators cover a wide range of areas of democratic function: from equality before the law, to government attacks on the judiciary, to the ability of legislative investigations to curb abuse by the executive branch of government. Do any of these sound familiar to observers of the Trump White House?

The study looked at 158 indicators, making a subjective judgment as to whether they were good and then comparing them to future stock market returns.

"The average over all four studies of the total correlation (across country-year pairs) between good past democracy indicators changes and future stock market returns is positive for 157 out of the 158 indicators that were selected solely based on whether they had enough data, the authors write.

In other words, more democracy pays off in higher long-term stock market returns.

We should note that many of the studied indicators are not mutually independent, meaning that they will tend to move together. A country which is, for example, limiting freedom of speech will often lack a variety of viewpoints in media, both measured areas.

To be sure, it is too early to have a full understanding of the intentions of the Trump administration in firing Comey, who had responsibility over investigations into connections between his presidential campaign and Russia.

Thus while the stock market is more likely to move today in reaction to estimations of how successful the administration will be in passing tax cuts, the development and strength of U.S. democratic institutions may be more important to returns over the very long term.

Interestingly, the one indicator not deemed good which correlated positively with future stock market returns was institutionalized autocracy, i.e. the extent to which power was vested in one person.

This is perhaps related to the argument which is sometimes made that China demonstrates that economic development need not go hand-in-hand with growing democratic freedom.

Perhaps not, but at least when it comes to China it seems a strong one-party state does also not go hand-in-hand with profitable stock markets. Despite China GDP increasing nine-fold from 1999-2015 its stocks have lagged. The MSCI China index only rose 29 percent from 1991 to 2015, compared to a 326 percent rise for emerging markets as a whole.

Putting aside the meaning of the actions of the Trump administration, anything other than a dire constitutional crisis in which, perhaps, the executive openly challenged its place in the order is unlikely to produce a big reaction.

A 2015 study by Heikki Lehkonen and Kari Heimonen of Finlands Jyvskyl University found that while there was a positive relationship between political risk and equity returns, the relationship between the level of democracy in a given market and political risk is parabolic, meaning higher levels of political risk create outsized market impacts.

Perhaps the impact of the erosion of democracy on markets is a bit like the old metaphor of boiling a frog. The water gets warmer and warmer, and finally hot, but by the time the frog notices and decides to get out, it is too late.

We may not be frogs, and Trump may not wish or not be successful in subverting the strength of U.S. democracy, but investors inside and outside the U.S. should take careful note.

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If Trump erodes democracy, stocks will suffer - STLtoday.com

For as long as people have been criticizing technology, theyve been complaining that emerging tools make us lazy, stupid, unable to concentrate, and so on. It is easy to imagine that a certain technological advance, whether it is the printing press or the television, imposes some undesired quality upon humanity by its very nature. But the fact is that, while technology is by no means neutral, neither does it create characteristics in people that didnt already exist. Rather, any technology has inherent qualities that can amplify or diminish pre-existing human tendencies.

So rather than asking Is the internet good for democracy? we ought to explore whether the human characteristics that tend to be amplified or diminished by the internet support a functioning democratic system.

One universal human trait is to seek out and connect with other people who have shared perspectives or experiences. The internet, because it inherently collapses geography, greatly amplifies peoples ability to make those connections regardless of physical location. People who have experiences or views that are not well represented in their local communities can form rich online relationships with others who do share their perspectives. This effect can have obvious benefits in that it allows people to connect, to feel less isolated, and to have a louder collective voice.

However, the American democratic system is structured in a way that effectively equates political interest with geography. Our interests as citizens are meant to be represented by members of our towns, cities, and states. This is the case because for much of history, geographic communities were peoples primary communities. Political interest was shaped by the people you knew (who were mostly local to you), the characteristics of urban or rural environments, local industries, and so on.

But the internet has allowed for communities of interest to form independent of geography. That creates dissonance because we dont have a mechanism for our online communities to be represented in our political system.

Conversely, many political issues are still legitimately tied to locationwhether they are national issues that affect regional economies, or local issues like community infrastructure and budgetingand yet many technological interfaces obscure those geographic realities.

These tensions can and should be addressed from both angles. On the one hand, perhaps our institutions for representing the interests of citizens can better reflect our current society. One possible approach would be creating balance between structures that emphasize geographic community with structures by which political interests can be represented irrespective of geographic location.

That dissonance can also be resolved by designing technological tools in ways that allow for better communication and participation at a local level, tying us more visibly to our geographic communities. We already see some of this in practice, whether its online participatory budgeting or networked tools for local communication. But we can use more experiments in this realm, including more ways for people in a local community to connect with one another and better tools for understanding and participating in local government and politics.

The internet collapses geography and expands our concept of community, yet geographic community is a cornerstone of our structures for democratic participation. As a result, we live in a society whose current reality is not properly reflected in its political system. We need to either adjust democratic institutions to better reflect our connected society or we need to create better tools to make our geography something we can effectively engage with online, or perhaps both.

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Disentangling Democracy From Geography - The Atlantic

In what is often described as a post-political and post-truth world, is it worth being positive about democracys future? Is there even anything new to say about democracy altogether? Inspired by a new book on the crises of American democracy, Matthew Flinders takes a broader view and explains the books relevance and reach.

It is a brave scholar who dares to write about the state of democracy in the twenty-first century. What is there to know that we do not already know? What is there to say that has not already been said? Democracy is in crisis. History did not end in 1989. Fluidity defines modernity. We are in a period of post-political, post-truth, post-state, post-fact, post-democratic, post-representative, post-tribal politics about which I am almost post-caring. It was therefore with a certain sense of foreboding and intellectual trepidation that I peeped between the pages of Alasdair Robertss new book The Four Crises of American Democracy.

This is a great title. I can almost see the four horsemen of the apocalypse thunder, lightning, storm, and mizzle* charging towards Capitol Hill. However, in order to save my less than thunderous fingertips let me re-title the book with the far more hip and youthful acronym 4CAD. [Note. If this label takes off and the book flies off the shelves, or down the download wires, I will expect a commission.]

In 4CAD Alasdair Roberts locates the United States recent bout of democratic malaise in a larger context, arguing that it is the latest in a series of very different crises that have plagued America throughout the entire post-Civil War era. He focuses on four crises, describing the features of each and outlining solutions the government adopted in response.

The first crisis the crisis of representation occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and was dominated by fears of plutocracy and debates about the rights of African Americans, women, and immigrants. The crisis of mastery spanned the years 1917-1948, and focused on building administrative capabilities so that government could better manage both an increasingly complex economy and volatile international system. The crisis of discipline, beginning in the 1970s, was triggered by the perception that voters and special interests were overloading governments with unreasonable demands and the response was to limit governments reach. The current crisis what Roberts calls the crisis of anticipation is a future-orientated crisis, preoccupied with the capacity of democratic systems to deal with long-term problems such as the rise of China and climate change.

And yet despite the focus on recurrent crises, Roberts confidence remains unwavering. A long view of history should give us better grounds for optimism he notes in the concluding chapter on Adaptable Democracy. This is not the first time that the country has sunk into malaise. It is, in fact, a recurrent feature of American politics, and perhaps of democratic politics more broadly. His core argument is therefore one of almost Obama-esque hope and joy [T]hese dark moments of malaise have served as preludes to longer periods of ideological and institutional renewal.

This is a brilliant book and a much-needed antidote to the politics of pessimism that swirls around so much scholarly writing and media messaging. And yet when all is said and done what is the real sign of a brilliant book? The answer is one that leaves you with a million thoughts and ideas swirling around your mind like autumnal leaves falling from a tree. 4CAD is therefore a brilliant book.

So let me grasp a couple of those leaves out of the air in order to tease-apart the relevance and reach of Robertss book.

The first leaf has the word excess faintly written upon it. A larger leaf, possibly a small and more scholarly twig, might have had the word hyper-democracy etched upon its bark what a funny tree that would bebut one thought 4CAD left me reflecting upon was whether we might actually have too much democracy. To make this argument is not to adopt a particularly right-wing (or left-wing) position but it is to emphasise the issue of governing capacity and democratic proportionality. Roberts highlights the issue of climate change and offers a four-part recipe for addressing the challenge more public information, building trust between states, crafting laws that incentivise green energy, and shifting public opinion so that laws are not ignored or evaded and yet I was left with a sense that these were still fairly soft or light green responses to a far starker and more immediate challenge.

The second leaf has the word populism inscribed upon it which, in turn, leads us to consider the reach or broader international relevance of 4CAD. To some extent Robertss historical argument that underlines the adaptive capacity of democracies to respond to crises holds true for many other advanced liberal democracies around the world. The pain and destruction of the Second World War led to the creation of structures to embed nation states in international webs in order to pool resources, share sovereignty, and force politicians to adopt a broader mind-set in a multitude of ways.

Democracy to put the same point slightly differently bounced back across Western Europe and then flourished in other parts of the world throughout the twentieth century. And yet Robertss positivity is dented by the simple fact that the UKs Permanent Representative in Brussels has just handed over a letter from the British Government to the European Council President notifying it of the UKs attention to leave the European Union. The rise of populist nationalism across the world has been one of the defining features of the past five years and shows little sign of waning. My fear is therefore that although the adaptive qualities of democracies should not be under-estimated, so too should their capacity to learn from the past not be over-estimated.

Which brings me nicely to a final leaf; one that is slightly larger, heavier and coloured with the fulsome autumnal colours of yellow and orange; this is a leaf that has been indelibly tattooed with the word Trump. Writing about contemporary politics is a dangerous game as you can never be quite sure what will happen between the delivery of the final manuscript to the publisher and the date on which the book hits the shelves. In this case, Trump happened.

But what exactly does democrat Donald mean in terms of interpretations of crises and fatalism or responsiveness and rejuvenation? Is Donald the fifth crisis of American democracy (i.e. 5CAD rights still reserved) or the paradoxical saviour of democracy in the United States. From one perspective Donald can only be seen in a positive light: on the one hand, the anti-establishment shock candidate and representative of the left behind, and even if he wreaks havoc and chaos Robertss thesis would suggest that a presidential crisis is likely to trigger democratic rejuvenation and a new public philosophy [a] prelude to longer periods of ideological and institutional renewal. I just hope that Robertss positive defence of democracy proves correct.

_______ About the Author

Matthew Flinders is Professor of Politics and Founding Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics at the University of Sheffield. He is also Chair of the Political Studies Association and a board member of the Academy of Social Sciences. *Eagle-eyed readers will be wondering what mizzle is and I am delighted to tell you that it is a traditional English term for fine drenching rain in generally cold and dark weather.

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The future of democracy: is there ground for optimism? - EUROPP - European Politics and Policy (blog)