November 2020 – Takis S Pappas

November 30, 2020November 30, 2020

Πολιτικός ανταγωνισμός στη νέα εποχή

Δημοσιεύτηκε στην Καθημερινή της Κυριακής, 29 Νοεμβρίου 2020

Ο Κωνσταντίνος Καραμανλής, όταν κλήθηκε το καλοκαίρι του 1974 για να αποκαταστήσει την δημοκρατία, είχε μια εξαιρετικά απλή ιδέα για το πώς θα έπρεπε να κυβερνηθεί η χώρα. Την μεταφέρω ακριβώς όπως ο ίδιος την εξέφρασε τότε: «Οι πάγιες θέσεις στα βασικά ζητήματα που απασχολούν ένα έθνος και προδιαγράφουν την πορεία του δεν μπορεί να είναι πολλές. Εκ των πραγμάτων, οι δυνατές επιλογές είναι ολίγες. Συνεπώς, η ύπαρξη πολυάριθμων κομμάτων, με αυτοσχέδια προγράμματα, όχι μόνον δεν ανταποκρίνεται στις ανάγκες ενός λαού, αλλά προκαλεί σύγχυση και πολιτική αστάθεια, που είναι η πληγή της δημοκρατίας». Σαν πρακτικός πολιτικός που ήταν, λοιπόν, ο Καραμανλής επιθυμούσε την διαμόρφωση ενός συστήματος δύο μεγάλων κομμάτων που, αφού πρώτα είχαν συμφωνήσει στα βασικά, θα εναλλάσσονταν στην εξουσία για να πετύχουν όλα τα υπόλοιπα με τρόπο που καθένα από τα δύο θεωρούσε τον καλύτερο.

November 16, 2020November 16, 2020

Trump’s very narrow defeat bodes ill for liberal America

On November 3, 2020, the American voters fired Donald Trump, as shown in the graph below. The graph, to be sure, tells the truth. But this particular truth is deceptive. Biden’s win was an exceptionally narrow one, and this outcome does not bode well for America and the well-functioning of her liberal institutions. This blog post explains.

Joe Biden won the election, and Donald Trump lost it (to this moment, he hasn’t clearly conceded defeat yet). But it was a narrow victory for the Democrats. The voters did not issue the broad rejection of Trump that Biden’s camp had hoped for. The “blue wave” that the pollsters had expected to sweep across the country never happened. (In fact, almost nothing of what pollsters had expected ever happened). Instead, Trump picked 5m votes more than in 2016 despite four years of scandals, impeachment, and his terrible mismanagement of the coronavirus outbreak that had killed more than 230,000 Americans until election time. The Republicans increased their ranks in the House of Representatives (although control of the chamber still belongs to the Democrats) and appear poised to hold onto the Senate if they win in January 2021 the two runoff elections in Georgia.

November 2, 2020May 19, 2021

Trump’s “surprising” performance that wasn’t such

For many months before election day, the polls suggested Joe Biden would win the White House by a significant margin. As I am writing this (3 November), the outcome is still uncertain and the world is on tenterhooks. But, even if he scrapes in 270 electors, Biden is going to be a lame President. (In any case, the Democrats have already lost the Senate and the majority at the Supreme Court.) From now on, American politics will be a dogfight, to put it as mildly as possible. But this isn’t my point in the post. My point is that the current outcome was not entirely difficult to predict. In fact, and given the comparative analysis of similar cases of countries with populist governments, it was a straight conclusion. Over the past year alone, I have written a ton in various places about the likelihood of a Trump win. Below is some of that early forecasting

In an article that was published in the Journal of Democracy in April 2019, I warned: “Once in office, populist parties invariably establish an illiberal order that displays four characteristics: reliance on charismatic leadership; incessant political polarization; the colonization of the state by loyalists, accompanied by the undermining of liberal institutions; and the systematic use of state-sponsored patronage. Populists in power tend to display strong resilience as long as the above characteristics are in place.”