Democracy and Other Problems

Share this post

Was 2022 the Year History Ended?

www.shadihamid.net

Discover more from Democracy and Other Problems

A newsletter committed to exploring how and why democracy produces "bad" outcomes—and what to do about it.
Over 1,000 subscribers
Continue reading
Sign in

Was 2022 the Year History Ended?

It was a great year for democracy—but also a good one for the Right.

Shadi Hamid
Dec 31, 2022
5
Share this post

Was 2022 the Year History Ended?

www.shadihamid.net
1
Share
person submerged on body of water holding sparkler

Was 2022 the year history ended? Not quite. It’s premature to declare victory. Most victories aren’t permanent. But this was a year, and perhaps even the year, that democracy proved its resilience. Democracy in general and American democracy in particular should have never been in doubt, but they were. For months, large numbers of liberal, left-leaning Americans promoted something resembling “misinformation” with claims that democracy was about to die.

Not only did our democracy not die on November 8, 2022; the election was orderly and somewhat boring in the way that elections in consolidated democracies should be. As one NPR reporter drily put it: “In an election that had experts worried about vigilante poll monitors and the potential for danger for election workers, voting on Election Day seems to have gone off without any major incidents.”

To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Oddly enough, a good year for democracy was also a good year for the Right, two facts that might otherwise seem in tension with each other. In the U.S. midterms, Republican candidates won several million more votes than Democrats. But in American politics, the party that wins the “popular vote” doesn’t necessarily win power. In 2016, this was a bad thing, with Trump losing the popular vote but winning the Electoral College. In 2022, this was a good thing (if you happened to be, as I am, a Democrat).

In Western Europe, where it seemed like the far-right had peaked, there is now a far-right prime minister in Italy for the first time in the postwar era. After Sweden’s most recent parliamentary elections, a far-right party is the largest party in the governing coalition for the first time.

Share

The world hasn’t ended, at least not yet. Democracy is chaotic and inelegant, but it does what it’s supposed to do quite reliably: it allows different parties to periodically alternate power through the aggregation of individual votes. Sometimes this produces good outcomes. Other times, it produces bad ones. But each time, the results are the product of long, uneven process of consultation and participation.

In non-democracies, even the supposedly successful ones, there is only the will to power. In the place of consent, there is instead imposition. If this was the year democracy showed its resilience, it was also the year the authoritarian “model” of countries like China and Russia showed their fatal flaws. Those weaknesses were always there. It just happened to take a war and a pandemic to make them obvious.

Leave a comment


If you’ve enjoyed my writing, please do consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. I’m excited about rolling out new features in the new year, including subscriber-only chats and open threads. Also, an end-of-year special: for the rest of today, you can get a 30% discount on annual subscriptions at the link below! Thanks for your support.

Get 30% off for 1 year

5
Share this post

Was 2022 the Year History Ended?

www.shadihamid.net
1
Share
Previous
Next
1 Comment
Share this discussion

Was 2022 the Year History Ended?

www.shadihamid.net
Greg Sanders
Dec 31, 2022

My reason for taking heart is that a good number of Republican voters appear to have rejected candidates that were election result deniers and otherwise of poor candidates even as they supported right-leaning candidates in other races. Thus in what could have been a much better year for the Republican party, a failure to clean house cost them a range of winnable races and quite possibly the Senate. (This was hardly the only factor at play in the election, see the overturn of Roe vs. Wade etc. but most relevant for your theses).

I'm curious if you'd agree with that analysis. I'm guessing not, as in my mind the concerns raised about the fate of democracy were valid and proved persuasive to those voters. There was certainly hyperbole on the risks, but I think your complaint about misinformation would also apply if a doctor warned a patient of a severe threat to their health, the patient changed their behavior, and their health subsequently improved. Democracy may be robust, but defending it requires pointing out threats to it and activating voter's civic nationalism to defend the country and system.

Expand full comment
Reply
Share
Top
New
Community

No posts

Ready for more?

© 2023 Shadi Hamid
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start WritingGet the app
Substack is the home for great writing