SIO508: The Data Shows That Authoritarianism Is Very Often Successfully Reversed. Yes, Really.

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:14 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. I'm Thomas. That over there is Jenessa. How are you doing today?

0:00:14 Jenessa: I am doing great. I am so excited to talk about this topic. I've been itching to get into this paper.

0:00:18 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, this was, so this came up, I think from my angle anyway, I saw you commenting on something in a thread, right, and talking about this, and I thought, oh shit, that sounds like A, really interesting, and B, information I would really like to have.

0:00:32 Jenessa: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have been spamming this at everyone that I can because I'm so excited about it.

0:00:44 Thomas: Hmm. Oh wow. We need it, we need that right now. Why don't you give us a little preview. What are we talking about today?

0:00:45 Jenessa: It's just the most uplifting thing I've read in so long. I'm probably gonna cry when we talk about it, this is just amazing, wonderful research. Yeah, why don't I just briefly read you the abstract of this paper? The world is in a wave of autocratization, yet recent events in Brazil, the Maldives, and Zambia demonstrate that autocracization can be halted and reversed. This article introduces, quote, U-Turn as a new type of regime transformation episode in which autocradization is closely followed by and linked to subsequent democratization. Drawing on earlier literature, it provides a general conceptualization and operationalization of this type of episode. The accompanying database provides descriptions for all 102 U-turn episodes from 1900 to 2023, differentiating between three types. We'll get into that. A key finding is that 52% of all autocratization episodes become U-turns, which increases to 73% when focusing on the last 30 years.

0:01:55 Thomas: Wow. Well that's crazy talk.

0:01:59 Jenessa: The vast majority of U-Turns, 90% lead to restored or even improved levels of democracy. Yeah.

0:02:07 Thomas: I remember now this was on I believe it was on a no illusions post that we're pretty much once you're down this far on authoritarianism, essentially a fatalism about it. I admit, I kind of feel that way. In certain ways, it sort of starts to feel like, as you lose certain elements of democracy, it becomes harder to get them back. Because, you know, sort of like once they gerrymander, like how are you supposed to fix that when you can't vote for better representatives kind of thing. Like it's it's that sort of principle then that's when you chimed in with this paper about authoritarian u-turns and so I'm I'm really curious to learn about this and uh maybe maybe give us some hope so I'm excited why don't we uh take our first break and then we can dig into it if you want to support the show patreon.com/seriouspod that'd be much appreciated support our authoritarian u turn I don't know I can try we're I can't think of a tie-in I I just the The company policy has been very authoritarian, but with your help, Lydia can also have a voice. I don't know. Something like that.

0:03:12 Jenessa: Oh God. Yeah, yeah, I would have thought so too. I guess I say that, but I don't know,

0:03:14 Thomas: Anyway, patreon.com/seriouspod. Those numbers that you said at the outset sound, I mean, honestly, if anyone said that to me who wasn't you referencing a paper, I would be like, you are insane. That sounds too good to be true.

0:03:45 Jenessa: Part of me has always just been an eternal optimist. So maybe I would've happily skipped along. But I found this, first of all, on its own, it's just very uplifting, but it was also super helpful because I was coming across, you know, obviously we're all coming across like varying degrees of doomerism on the internet. And some of that is just a psychological thing that that person is working through on their own and we don't all have to participate in it. Sometimes people are actually expressing like a concern that's coming from, you know, a factual basis of things we've seen, right? I saw in particular one example that was getting shared around a lot that first made me think of this, where this journalist, I guess, political commentator, Christopher Armitage wrote this piece called, I researched every attempt to stop fascism in history, the success rate is zero percent and I thought that sounds a little extreme

0:04:28 Thomas: What? Yeah, that's that's why Hitler is still in power to this day. That sounds weird. Oh, without like an outside maybe. Yeah, OK, sure. Yeah. Also, just off the cuff here, I feel like this could be a no true Scotsman going on, maybe where it's like the only way you're defining fascists being elected is the ones we've heard of, you know, that are that level of famous to where, you

0:04:44 Jenessa: Yeah like that can't be right um and the thesis is more about that we're either going to need that we are not going to vote our way out of this yeah either someone's going to have to invade or we're going to to have like a bloody violent revolution there's just no way we're gonna vote our way out of this and he says I spent weeks researching this question desperately looking for counter examples for hope for any time in history where people successfully stopped fascists after they started winning elections here's what I found once fascists win power democratically they have never been removed democratically not once ever and I was like that really like never in all of human history that sounds not right and then the more I read every single example I was It's like, I've heard of that. And I am not a historian and not a political scientist, which is probably not great if I know every historical example you bring up. Um, mm-hmm, exactly.

0:06:01 Thomas: You know, we had a world war about it or something. Whereas, cause I, my first thought when you said that was like, well, we've been electing fascists for ever. I mean, there's, we've been electing fascists all throughout our history. It doesn't, it kind of ebbs and flows in terms of how much power they have, how open they are about it, how much of a coalition they have. But I, I right away, I'm like, I, uh, my impulse is maybe the way you're defining this, this is a no true fascist fallacy where it's like the only ones you're counting are the ones that are like that level. Hmm.

0:06:30 Jenessa: Yeah, the availability heuristic. I remember you as a dictator because you became a dictator. Like, we elected Trump and then we elected Biden and he tried to have a riot about we did have a riot about it and we elected biden and put him in office anyway yeah right yeah so like

0:06:49 Thomas: I know. Do we get credit? Should we get, I feel like we, we should get credit. Like, okay. Like if you had the good fortune of dying in 2024, like if you were just luckier than us and you died in 2024 from your view, you were like, yeah, we did it. Remember when Trump got elected and then we put a stop to all that. I feel like you should get credit for the first one, you know?

0:07:10 Jenessa: I don't think we call him like retroactively not a fascist because we unelected him in 2020 and he didn't hit the nuke button on his way out the door like he's he's I clearly look around today was uh I don't think we're gonna undeclare it so that was kind of my perception as I was reading that article I had the exact same thought I am recognizing these examples because these are examples of people who did come in to full like dictatorial power I know about them because they are like it's all this is all hindsight I thought to myself what I really want is like a historian or political scientist to do a systematic analysis where like somehow you could go back and like

0:07:13 Thomas: Partial credit? Right. Yeah.

0:07:57 Jenessa: Without the benefit of hindsight see would I have considered this person a rising fascist and then did they take over because certainly yeah if we define fascists as people who killed democracy well then but definitionally they weren't voted out that was outside your definition right so yeah how would you identify that and then this paper pops up and I discover there's a data set for this. And it's exceptional. It's exactly what I was looking for. Somebody doing a systematic approach to go through history and see what would I have thought if I was an expert in there at the time, not knowing the future. Philippines? Mm-hmm. He sucked. Yeah. Mm-huh. Yeah, you would think,

0:08:26 Thomas: I'm just remembering. Remember Duterte, I want to say? Yeah, Duterte, president of the Philippines. I don't know what's going on in the Philippines now, but I do know that that guy was fucking horrible. Yeah, like if anyone could be called a fascist, it would be that guy. And he's not in office anymore. So I mean there could be something going on there maybe we'll see just one I don't know if that'll be in the data set but that was just like one of my first thoughts sure right right plus if

0:08:59 Jenessa: Right? Yeah, yeah. Coming across this and then looking at, of course, you know, I have to go go read 10 other papers to make sure I fully understand this paper to the best of my ability. Not a historian, not a political scientist. I can't tell you that, you know, oh yes, the way they have characterized every event is the consensus among historians. Like, how would I know? What I can tell you is the methodology, the statistics, and the design is all very familiar to me, and it's solid, sound science from that perspective. Yeah.

0:09:34 Thomas: We're coming from the standpoint of like let's correct this blogger whoever you're talking about

0:09:36 Jenessa: Yeah. No. Yeah, yeah. My understanding is this person is some sort of reporter. I don't know

0:09:38 Thomas: Who's saying they did it it's not like you're trying to correct any historians or whatever it's that would be maybe inappropriate but if it's like hey you're writing a blog saying nobody's ever come back and Jenessa's gonna check your damn work isn't that everyone these days

0:09:56 Jenessa: Their exact background. But yeah, their systemic analysis was kind of just, you know, yeah, yeah, exactly. Their analysis, to my mind, was very much not systematic when I was. It's not peer reviewed, that's for sure. And I was like, God, why do I recognize all of these incidents that just can't, there's no way I am like, oh, yes, I have a full understanding of history. Like, no. So yeah, these methods are very familiar. They're pretty common across the, you know, the various social sciences and the way that they get experts to agree with one another when something is a more subjective judgment, the waythat they then take the numerical data and analyze it. That part's all very familiar and very stable and straightforward here. So the first thing that's super cool is this thing called the VDEM Institute, Varieties of Democracy. So they are an institute in the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and they have been putting together this database of the Electoral Democracy Index, among other things, for years now. It started in 2014, and the data set they have looks at that index across 202 country units, so they're not restricting themselves to the UN-recognized specific, there's countries in here that don't even exist anymore, going from the 1700s to today, measuring it from from one year to the next, 4,200 country experts, 600 plus indicators, all coming together to give us a metric from zero to one. So think of it like 0% to 100%. How are we doing democracy-wise? Yeah, basically. Oh, oh God, you just like touched something so deep in my brain.

0:10:00 Thomas: They have a sub stack uh so they could be qualified or could be nobody it's hard to know wow the how we doing report, it's like that New York mayor you'll probably remember the name of that I want how am I doing who was that I'll remember it by the time the show's done it's all right this is like hey adhd easter eggs this is what Jenessa and I do remember something and and it's mainly me. And I'm like, I don't know what that is. And then either after the show or sometime during the show, I will remember it. 2024? Yeah. I'd still argue we shouldn't be up

0:12:03 Jenessa: I, yeah. I just sent you the map. You can look from 1789 to 2004. There's a couple of countries they have no data for. It's usually like very small island nations, Vatican City. But for the most part, you can see, you know, this is in 2004. So the US is still doing pretty good at that time. Only one country, sorry, yes, 2024. Well, so we're between zero to one is our, one's your highest score, like, oh my god, perfection, the best democracy you could ever have. And so, of course, that's going to include, like the fact that you vote for your leaders and how free the vote is, but it's also going to have things like freedom of the press, freedom of speech, you know, the things that make your vote informed. Obviously, if you make totally uninformed choices when you're voting, that's not great for democracy. Not super surprising, yeah,

0:12:41 Thomas: That high, but that's all right. What's Estonia doing? Holy shit. Okay. So top of the list, Denmark. That would have been among my first guesses. Yeah. Okay, what is Estonia? Where is is it? And how are they number two on the democracy scale in 2024? That's awesome.

0:13:18 Jenessa: They're doing all right. Estonia is an Eastern European country. They're right on the edge of like a former Soviet state, right on the edge of Russia. Probably not. Let's see.

0:13:34 Thomas: Okay. That's what I would have guessed, but how are They that high? Like not many of those countries that are former like Soviet Union or whatever, like that, not many of them are going to be on this list. I don't think, but just wanted to point out, I thought, as I'm looking at this list, it's interesting. So we got, since you're talking about it, U S as you said, 0.84 Denmark, number one, as they said, Estonia and Ireland tied at 0.9 nice switzerland 0.89 belgium norway sweden let's see czechia is that that would have been was that part of the soviet union maybe it was I actually think it's czech yeah yeah don't feel

0:14:06 Jenessa: Czechia is, it's entirely possible. I don't know how to pronounce that. That makes sense because that's used to be called the Czech Republic and that's the new name. Oh, do they have a lot of

0:14:17 Thomas: Bad I know this because of hockey it's a lot of those uh they have a few and one of one of the

0:14:21 Jenessa: Hockey players. It's good to take a look, see where people are at. A lot of things that are

0:14:23 Thomas: Best sharks he's traded now to the uh vegas golden knight so he's dead to me but he's from Czechia and uh I think he corrected people's pronunciation on it it's check yeah but yeah former Czech Republic. Anyway, just interesting to take in the democracy rankings there. Yeah. Right. Boy,

0:14:42 Jenessa: Like not super surprising, you know, like Russia and China not doing so hot. Yeah, you don't have a lot of free choices there. Keeping in mind, this is very specifically focused on your democracy index so in theory you could have you know other rights be limited like this is not measuring you know uh search and seizure like gun rights this is looking at voting specifically and then the rights that are adjacent to voting the things that are important to that so obviously if you don't have freedom of the press your vote is less free you are less able to make good choices about your your leaders. Yeah, it puts us below a decent chunk of Europe, but above other parts. And you

0:15:21 Thomas: Okay. Okay. That's where I think the US metric is going to fall short because I think you might think we have freedom of press or you might rate based on the laws and the constitution like, oh yeah, we have free and press. So therefore we must have a, you know, like a free voting public who gets to, to the point you just made, like you're more informed. So your vote is more more meaningful we don't have that I think that's that's got to be like a fucking zero for us and I I I would guess I know these people are experts but they might not be experts in what I guess if I have an expertise in anything it's the fucking misinformation in this country and I just think that's maybe it's maybe that's not accounted for enough is a suspicion I might have because I think our rating even in 2024 seems too high to me sorry that's vertical and the other one's horizontal

0:16:11 Jenessa: Know, keeping in mind, I mean, Europe likes to get really up on their high horse, and they're in the middle of electing a bunch of authoritarians too. So you know, everybody needs to relax like this is happening everywhere. You're hitting on a point that I actually come up in, there's a paper I want to talk about first that gave a really great summary of a lot of important terms we want to talk about and data points. So there's a couple of things that are accountability mechanisms that are like protective factors against authoritarianism. They separate these out in the literature. This seems to show up in a ton of papers, be pretty well accepted. There's horizontal accountability, which is parliamentary and judicial authority so that's like judges and in congress checking them whoever the leader is vertical accountability is electoral competition between parties and within parties so that would be the idea that democrats check republicans yeah I don't understand why they call them this but that's this one would be like coming the bottom and the top horizontal is like the judges and parliament coming in to check each other parliamentary and judicial they call horizontal accountability and they there's many different seems like people are all building off of one batch of literature that called it this and got on board yeah oh like overrule over top yeah

0:17:13 Thomas: Horizontal. Huh. All right. Damn it. I feel like they did it wrong. That's no, not wrong, but that's going to be counterintuitive to me. So I would think of horizontal would be like competition among parties. And then vertical would be because the court can overrule you. That feels more like a vertical, like, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, like from on high, you know, kind of thing. That is what is intuitive to me, so I have to remember it is the opposite of that, and then I will not remember it. Oh, great. Oh come on, diagonal. Now we are just getting crazy. Orthogonal accountability. Yeah. Right. Yeah, that's incredibly important. I

0:17:50 Jenessa: Yeah yeah I'm gonna make it worse for you now because diagonal accountability is pressure from civil society and the media well we ran we had up down and left right so those accountability mechanisms are resisting the autocratization process the process of becoming more autocratic they use that term a lot and I think the idea is like well if you say like authoritarian fascism whatever like those are much more specific whereas like you can really just have very democratic on one end and very autocratic on the other end like that's more of of a generic sort of term so autocracy autocratization that's the term that's going to get used the most and so those are checks on power things that stop the authoritarian process and basically those accountability mechanisms are intentionally targeted by authoritarians so yeah they target the media and find ways to reduce that accountability mechanism, and they reduce their party competition, and they reduce the ability of judges to tell them what to do. And next thing you know, there's nobody holding them accountable. They take away those mechanisms. So you're picking up on something very important, where this author actually proposes that and goes through the data to look at how different countries, at different stages in the age and health of your democracy, a person attempting to become an authoritarian might target these in a different order at a different time in a different way, that it may or may not be necessary to target some of these before others. So it is a really complex process. One of the things he lays out for us that

0:19:44 Jenessa: I think is really helpful is things that create resiliency. So some aspiring dictator shows up and you have protective factors and then things that are going to to weaken your democracy, leave you vulnerable to this person or this group that shows up and wants to take control. So here are the things that tend to create resiliency. Positive economic growth, higher democratic stock. So this is like countries that have been democracies for a long time. The people are invested, like it's part of the culture. It's a norm. If you had your democracy yesterday, like you're maybe not very personally invested. Whereas in the U.S., like any, Any, you know, at least we have acted this way for most of my history, that, you know, any little affront to your rights is like, how dare you try to take that right away? Like, that's our culture. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

0:20:40 Thomas: Remember reading a lot about this kind of thing in the first Trump and learning more about this. And one thing I remember was about how after the US was founded, there were other countries founded and they attempted to like match our constitution or whatever. And it just didn't work. It was something like that. And the lesson being that it's a lot more than just the piece of paper that says the things like it's more about the customs and the mindset and like the norms actually matter so much. And we've we've lost all that. So it's we've pretty much shown that any of that can be taken away by the media ecosystem and Trump's fascist machine that just once he says,

0:20:44 Jenessa: Mm-huh. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Mm-hm. Yeah.

0:21:18 Thomas: OK, it's fine that we did such and such. Then his whole apparatus says, yeah, of course, of course, it's fine that we did such and such. And it feels like that's almost unlimited, but not completely unlimited. Yeah. Yeah, for example, I mean, airing before this,

0:21:28 Jenessa: It's a huge problem that we are losing what was a very protective factor for us. And I think, I mean, it's still there as like, you know, compared to a place that's like never had democracy, like the attitude is still there right so like it's it's still a resource we can grab on to but it's weakening drastically oh oh god glenn beck yeah yeah yeah absolutely it's a cultural norm that maintaining

0:21:48 Thomas: It's not out yet as we speak. So you haven't heard it, Jenessa. But the episode I'm doing on the ICE whistleblower hearing, that is a great example, because that's something that everybody in this country should be up in arms about the fact that ICE as official policy decided that the fourth amendment doesn't apply. That was their official policy was, hey, there's no fourth amendment essentially, because we can just, if we want to go in someone's house and you think, you know, you think they're an immigrant, fine. That's the kind of thing that, remember back when what's his name with the chalkboard would just cry every five seconds about, Glenn Beck would cry about Obama ruining the country every week. He would have some segment about him. And this is why it's so important, the constitution, the republic. And then this this happens and they don't give a shit. It's all nothing. And it's really sad because we should give a s**t. I mean, we should give a sh** if anyone's rights are being violated. I think it's hard because I would love to say, hey, even when right-wing white Christians' rights are being violated, but this just doesn't happen that often, systemically anyway. But if it did, I'd have solidarity there too, because it actually is important that we value everybody's rights. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting because we actually don't have strong parties anymore.

0:23:03 Jenessa: Is really critical as soon as we let it go on one group of people we start letting it go on every group of People that's not just us that's a thing it's It's a historical thing that we can observe here so protective factor positive economic growth high incomes high democratic stock strong party systems uh so that is love it or hate it there's a protective effect against this like new upstart coming in who wants to do everything different yeah it stops that right yeah you know what I yeah yeah and they're just very ineffectual at it that's a good point

0:23:38 Thomas: I think people have a different sense of that word. I think if we did have strong parties, they would have like the Republican Party is not strong anymore because that was exactly what they could have stopped would be Trump. If they they want the whole Republican Party in 2016, they did try to stop Trump. They actually did try like most everybody. Yeah. Yeah, they thought they were stronger than they were in there. And also the structures of the primaries is important in that process.

0:23:58 Jenessa: Point yeah we don't have a strong party block yeah no me either yeah and it just didn't

0:24:03 Thomas: Yeah, there's a reason we had the Electoral College, and I'm not saying it's a good reason necessarily, but the function of it, I think it's kind of funny what we've done now is we've decided, and maybe this is right, but we've decide that the only thing the Electoral College can do is exactly reflect what the popular vote was anyway, otherwise we're pissed. And then you start to wonder, like, well, then what the fuck is the point of it? And the point it might have been one point of, it might've been to be able to stop someone like Trump, to be to say, Hey, we electors like, yes, there's the voting, but we electors know something and we're going to stop now. I don't think that's a good system. I don't know that it, I think the drawback is probably too steep, but the point is, I think that actually what's meant by a strong party is the fact that the party would be able to shut out someone like Trump to your point, like an upstart and it can't yeah.

0:24:54 Jenessa: Even if it was true yeah yep yeah yeah that's a good point getting their endorsement is pretty

0:24:55 Thomas: And we've weakened it further. If you ever come across this bit of anti like DNC propaganda, somebody did a lawsuit after the 2016 primary with Bernie Sanders. I don't even know if it was Bernie Sanders himself. I can't remember. It might have been, but it also might not have been. They got the headline they wanted because, of course, the first thing you would do is do a motion to dismiss and say, hey, we're a private organization. We can nominate whoever the fuck we want. Like we could we literally could stop. Yeah. The first thing You're going to do legally is say, Hey, even if it was true, we, the DNC, you know, fucked over Bernie Sanders. It's fine. We're allowed to do that. And then, of Course, that is fodder for a bunch of people who don't understand that to say, look, they admitted in court they're allowed allowed to rig the primary. But now we've gotten to the point where we got really mad about super delegates. Super delegates are another thing that would have been a feature of a strong party. And again, I would have, I don't like the super delegates, but I think it's the only point I want to make here is I think It might be counterintuitive what a strong Party system means. And it doesn't necessarily mean the two Party system. Yep. No, he just beat everybody.

0:26:04 Jenessa: Important in our current system but right now getting their endorsement often just means get enough signatures to get on the ballot and then win the primary and like that's how trump Trump got in charge of the Republican Party when a lot of people did. Like, clearly in 2016, you cannot deny that the Republican Party was not happy with how that primary went. They were not excited. That was the real problem.

0:26:26 Thomas: I mean, even, even Rupert Murdoch. I mean everybody tried to stop him. They didn't do it in a particularly coordinated way. I think that was a, there was sort of a tragedy of the commons way. Yeah. It's like, yeah. And at first they thought like, oh, I'm not going to be the one to go after him. I'm just going to let everybody else do it. Then I don't take the negative hit, but then also I get to benefit once he's gone. And too many of them did that. And so who knows had they had perfect hindsight 2020 and been able to like fight them together perfectly, maybe they could have, but he bested them, you know, he bested the party.

0:26:35 Jenessa: Not enough people dropped out early enough. It just, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:26:58 Thomas: And now we're to the point where on the democratic side, it's unlikely that you're you're going to be able to win an election unless you run against the Democratic Party as a member of the Democratic party. Like we're to that point. That brand has been killed mainly by the right. So I shouldn't have taken too long on this, but I actually think the parties are pretty weak right now. Weaker than they've ever been.

0:27:12 Jenessa: Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right, actually. As you're saying all this, it makes a lot of sense that, like, for the purposes of talking about Democratic resiliency, yeah, to whatever extent it applies there, yeah, Yeah. I mean, Trump won the 2016 primary with like 36% of the primary vote. And like that is clearly a failure of the party to ever coalesce or pick a candidate. One more resiliency factor, judicial systems that make changing the constitution hard. So we have that one, I think. We're pretty good on that. Yeah. Okay. So here's things that destabilize the democracy. Income inequality. Anti-democratic opposition to an incumbent. Yeah, so you have an incumbent, right? Somebody, you know, who's been in power and an anti-democratic opposition pops up. So this kind of fits with the next one is like anti-pluralist parties show up. Yeah. Yeah

0:27:36 Thomas: Yay. We got one guys. We get one. Oh, wow. Yeah. To an incumbent. I'm trying to think how to generalize that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's more like an event than a systemic thing, Right. I was thinking in terms of systems, I guess, because it seemed like the. OK, gotcha. Gotcha. OK. Yeah. Yeah, geez. Yeah this is we have pretty much 100 percent on those.

0:28:17 Jenessa: Yeah. Yeah these are factors I'm pulling out of the paper. So some of them are events. Some of them are like things about your democracy. It's a little bit of both. Presidential systems. Unstable compared to things like you know parliamentary systems weak party systems that's obviously the opposite of our strong party systems idea when the party system starts to fractionalize so like if you had like two or three strong parties and all of a sudden you have seven changing international environments weakening of international democratic norms basically if the world is going more autocratic you tend to kind of go along with the trend citizen discontent with democratic democratic institutions and parties and rising political polarization kind of kind of all the things yeah yeah change the rules yeah yeah in 2024 like before trump went in we were probably

0:29:07 Thomas: And I would argue that difficulty in amending the constitution one I actually think that is one that they've sidestepped because I get that in theory yeah if you have a good constitution making it hard to change would be good because I imagine what's happened in in other times and places as dictator gets in I mean this happens all the time I mean Hitler did it like get dictator gets in changes at the system so that yeah then now change the rules now I'm stuck on one hand we do We do have that to some degree, but I think the radicalization and theft of the Supreme Court means that they are able to change what the Constitution means in ways that are at times can be just as effective as amending the Constitution. And I would worry about that if we were looking at the risk factors on one side and we were

0:30:05 Jenessa: You know relative to other when we think of like our ideal perfect democracy no we were not doing good relative to China, I think we were doing pretty damn good but were all the risk factors there yes, many of us have been screaming about this, that the risk factors are here, they've been here, something very bad could happen, please please please pay attention. So going to the paper that I

0:30:31 Thomas: Looking at protections, the first thing you brought up, I would say that that would be an area that maybe people would have overestimated the protection we had.

0:30:41 Jenessa: Am so excited to talk about what they complain about is, hey, we have a ton of literature that's going to grab this data set now that it exists, oh my god, incredible, for hundreds of years we're looking at every year how this changed, this is amazing, oh my god, yeah yeah, this is 4,200 plus experts all teaming up for over a decade now to work together to get these metrics, yeah, unbelievable project that they've been doing here to get us this data so now there's just an explosion of papers using this data set and the data set is open source anybody can go grab it and take a look So what they said is, okay, people have been using that data set, you know, before that existed, we've been using other ways of looking at it. But we talk about the process of autocratization. A country is wherever you are, very democratic, very not democratic, getting worse, getting less democratic, and the democratization process of getting better at democracy. And we've always looked at those separately. But what if sometimes they're actually connected to each other? What if it's not just you went through an autocratization period, like some bad stuff went down, you got more fascist than you were, and that might just mean you were an amazing democracy and you got a little less and then you got better again and you stayed democratic the whole time.

0:30:52 Thomas: Boy, that seems so hard to even do. Hundreds of years? Okay. Wow. Wow. Wow. That's impressive. Hmm.

0:32:08 Jenessa: Or it could be you already lived in a place that was not very democratic at all, and it got even worse, or it got a little better, or whatever, it just fluctuated around. Or it could be you had a democracy and it plunged all the way into fascism, like any of these things are possible, right? But what if it's not that sometimes bad stuff happens, you go through an autocratization period, and then, you know, at some point in the future, for any number of reasons, you then go back through the democratization process. What if what happens sometimes is a causal connection? As a result of the autocratization, as a result of watching your democracy crumble around you, you reactively regain democracy. That the autocratization followed by democratization is not a coincidence of time that just two things happened somewhere on a timeline. What if they happen right next to each other for a reason? So they're going to do something really cool. They're not just going to go through and give examples. They grab this data and they use a procedure that a lot of people are using in the literature, this Episodes of Regime Transformation, ERT methodology.

0:33:23 Jenessa: And they're going to go from the year 1900 to 2023. What we're going to do is basically go through this data set of the last 123 years and look for, there's going to be episodes of autocratization. A country, wherever they were on that electoral democracy index, they're gonna get worse at some point and then flatten out and be more autocratic than they used to be. Very sad. There will be democratization episodes. They get better. Hooray. And then some of them might show this U-turn effect. And in fact, they identify those happening quite a bit. Yes, exactly. So we presumably start to suspect this by taking a look at this data and noticing something, I would guess, or perhaps just from observing, you know, I mean, they're political scientists, they might be wondering it on their own.

0:34:01 Thomas: So you're saying the U-turn was like the hypothesis of the paper. It's like, what if that happened? Okay. Mm-hmm.

0:34:20 Jenessa: So they first use this method to identify, they're going to use a five-year window. So they set a window of a maximum of five years between the end of the autocratizing period and the beginning of the democratizing period. Period and they say look on some level that yeah it's just kind of arbitrary but it's not really because first of all that will give at least one election cycle in most countries that's you know the election cycle will be somewhere between like two and four years most places gives you at least one election cycle for democratic actors within the country to try to turn that around using the existing systems it is big enough to identify a broad set of reversals to not just limit yourself to these like really short term, like some bad uprising happens and six months later it turned around and it's like, I don't know, what is that? But it's not so big that you're accidentally going to pick up things where like, well, there was an autocratizing period. And then sometimes over the next 15 years, you know, 20,000 independent intervening events happened and God knows what's the real cause and democratizing started to happen again. We want to limit ourselves to a close enough time window that it's easier to say they're causally related and we'll do a check after that to uh see that in fact they are uh that they have some interlinkage between them so first we got to find them we got to find autocratizing a flat line of one to five years and then democratizing five years later that's the first thing we're going to look for did that happen anywhere in any of these countries over a 123-year window. And then we're going to go through and categorize them. So they came up with three possible types of what a U-turn could be. The first one, they put them in a different order, but I'm going to explain them in the order that I think is easier to understand. So one would be democratic reaction, where pro-democracy actors are able to successfully counter autocratization, oust an autocratizing incumbent, revert to democratization, bottom-up citizen mobilization. Like this is the, this is what we want. This is the dream. This isn't the hope that we don't have to have something horrible and terrible happen. They give an amazing example here in the Maldives, a recent example of a democratic reaction following a prolonged political crisis in the country. Understatement of the year. Go go check out the Wikipedia for this incident. Abdullah Yamin won the 2013 presidential election. Yamin soon attacked civil society and the media, undermined courts, expanded his own authority, leading to a democratic breakdown. However, the ensuing public dissatisfaction, along with successful organization from the opposition and civil society, led to a surprise defeat of Yamin in the 2018 presidential election to an opposing candidate. Democracy returned to the Maldives as repression and institutional manipulation ceased hooray what a wonderful example yeah yeah so great example of that happening he takes over

0:37:28 Thomas: But like the happiest of stories is like, oh, we sampled that fascism. Don't like it. Wasn't our favorite. Let's go ahead and do something different. Okay. Yeah. Mm-mm.

0:37:41 Jenessa: And the year he won the election is not automatically like oh my god the autocratization has started it's often gradual it's not always gradual but he does start attacking all of these things. And people get out there, they protest, and they vote him out of office. And they stop all of these civil abuses. Hooray, the thing. Oh my god, the thing. Can we have the thing, please? That'd be great. It was us for a hot minute. We did it for a second, for a minute there. One type is international intervention. So an international actor substantially changes the course of the country's political development. And it can be aimed at breaking down a political regime, reconciling ongoing conflicts, seeking to have a strong impact on regime direction. The critical thing here is intent. So like us invading Iran would not fit this. Yeah, so like Ayatollah Khomeini has controlled Iran for so long. We

0:38:05 Thomas: Could have been us. Sort of. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say, we're, this is how we're helping everybody else right now.

0:38:36 Thomas: We're just, Hey, get your democracies here. We're told we're so good at it. We're going to export it with these bombs that we are giving you. Yeah, yeah. So just to note on that, that would be the

0:38:51 Jenessa: Did not invade within five years of him taking over with intent to get rid of him. This is not that. That would be something like the invasion of Germany during Nazi Germany, when it was like pretty much as a reaction to what was going on. Everybody was like, not this, absolutely not. And democracy very quickly returns after the war to Germany. Another example of international interference is Liberia, 2003 to 2007. A civil war eventually led to the Accra Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The United Nations Mission in Liberia was established and so international actors were really involved there yeah yeah it's either the only one or like, to hear most people,

0:39:32 Thomas: One that like, according to that blogger guy, or, you know, sometimes popular sentiment, that would be like the only one that could exist I'd be like there'd be one type it's that hmm that's

0:39:45 Jenessa: Talk, it's like the only one or it's the most common thing we should expect that like we're screwed unless somebody invades us and like let's be real nobody's invading the united states so like we'd be screwed right and then the last one which I find the most confusing authoritarian-libertarian manipulation, key actors driving both autocratization and democratization are anti-democratic, either civilians or military. It's weird. Yeah. Yeah, they do. So we've got a lengthy definition, but I think this example is perfect. It happened in South Korea between 1961 and 1964. Park Chung-hee's military coup was followed by semi-competitive elections in 1963, legitimizing Park's coup and strengthening the military dictatorship. Okay, boo, that sucks. So a military coup takes over. And he's like, in order to legitimize my power, I'm going to hold elections and he wins. And it's like see, I am democratically elected. I'm great. No, boo. On

0:40:11 Thomas: Interesting how does that work yeah does it have a good example for us huh huh hmm interesting oh okay is it is would this count if it's like a civil conflict type thing where it's

0:40:49 Jenessa: The other hand, we have Juan Peron, gradual autocratization starts in 1949, ends in 1955 with a military coup and in that case in 1958 general elections followed restoring civilian rule so it is inherently anti-democratic to be like there was an elected leader and I have more guns than him so I'm gonna kick him out of the office like you can't argue that was a democratic reaction but they then hold elections after the military coup so like they are authoritarian authoritarian actors, but then they sometimes they do what Park Chung-hee did. They legitimize their authoritarian control with elections. Sure. Yeah, that can be an example. So if you went in

0:41:39 Thomas: Like essentially rather than an outside force coming and invading it's like, well, someone used force to put an end to this regime, but then they're going to restore democracy after that? Is it kind of that?

0:41:56 Jenessa: With full intent of doing that, it is still ultimately anti-democratic. Like that person was elected and you are like, I have more guns. So get out of here. Like, all right. I mean, it's not democratic to do that. But in theory, you could do it with the most noble of intent. And then we will have another election, but just that guy can't run. And you're like, well, I mean, all right. Or what will probably more often happen is, well clearly, I just led you all out of the dark times with my wonderful military leadership, and so I am the one true leader.

0:42:17 Thomas: Interesting. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And people, yeah, and that pitch works.

0:42:33 Jenessa: Right and so it's an extremely risky method it gets rid of the guy you don't like but it can

0:42:34 Thomas: And so people democratically support the fascism or the authoritarianism. Right.

0:42:44 Jenessa: Just put in a different guy who is now the other authoritarian and yeah right right right so if it

0:42:50 Thomas: Well, I was creating like a hypothetical good version of it, but it sounds like the bad version of It is just for whatever reason. And this happens a lot. People like a strongman oftentimes. And so they might have assumed power via some sort of authoritarian methods, but then they are popular enough to win election and do. And I guess it makes sense, like, how do you classify that? And they're kind of making that a third classification where it's like, okay, technically speaking, you had democracy, but everybody chose the authoritarian. And I have to assume they mean in a legitimate election. Otherwise, it's just plain old authoritarianism. Yeah, that's regular fascism. So that's why I was making the assumption you're talking about legitimate elections, which would mean that they earned those votes in one way or another, which is interesting.

0:43:27 Jenessa: Was there's an authoritarian or authoritarian or not and then there's a military coup and a person takes over and holds elections okay that's just regular that's not a u-turn or any that's just regular old authoritarianism yeah right and so it could go towards things got well

0:43:51 Thomas: Interesting. OK. Oh, they. Oh wow. Wow. Right. Oh OK. Yeah. So I was about to ask. So there still has to be. So the U-turn isn't just counting the fact that they did that election like they held that Democratic election. It's also could be they held

0:43:55 Jenessa: They're they're less authoritarian than they used to be but that does not guarantee we're in a democracy right now or it could be an accidental democracy that person was like Like, I am the greatest person of all time. Of course, if we hold a free and fair election, I will be nominated king of the whole planet. And then they lose. And the people are so excited. That can happen. We could have our, that is where the U-turn comes in, is the authoritarian actor is an accidental democratizer. Right?

0:44:41 Thomas: That democratic election and lost which would be nice okay wasn't thinking about that yeah yeah

0:44:44 Jenessa: Yeah. So we can have it. Yeah. Yeah. So a U-turn is just going to require a period of autocratization, a period of, for their definition, they're giving here one to five years of like kind of leveling off and then a period of democratization. And we're going to look for a causal link between them that it's not just a coincidence. They happened right next to each other. So they'll first identify anything that looks like that U-shape happened in that EDI, that electoral democracy index.

0:45:11 Thomas: Oh gotcha okay so that was consensus largely in terms of those how they rated those or whatever

0:45:13 Jenessa: And then we'll send our experts in. They're going to do rankings. They're basically going to rate, which of these three do you think it is? And when they first do that, just on the first go around, they had an 86.3% inter-rater reliability. So people largely agree that one was democratic reaction, that one wasn't international intervention, and that one Was authoritarian manipulation. Very large consensus. Yes. After they get, okay, so we had 14 we couldn't agree on immediately. They had a procedure to go through to have, okay, let's have another independent rater rate it. What did they say? And they go back and forth and back and forth and eventually get to 100% agreement. There's really four that they were just stuck on for a while and had to have a little committee meeting to be like, all right, we have to pick one, guys. Which one is it? Yeah. What we end up with over that period,

0:45:43 Thomas: Categorize them okay cool interesting and then an autocrat among them seized power and decided I'm just doing this to prove a point. Right. Oh, censored. Yeah. Oh okay wow wow well that's encouraging I love that do you have

0:46:30 Jenessa: We find 102 U-turn episodes in 69 countries in that period. In that same time, there are 205 autocratizations that they would call terminated. So like things got bad. 42 that are censored. So it's still ongoing. We don't know. I don't Know why they call it censored? We don' t know yet. Is it going to end in an autocracy or a U-Turn? Because it's in the downward phase. It could turn back. We don't know. And 410 democratization episodes. That's nice. 38% of countries in the world have had at least one U-turn since 1900. And 52%, more than half of all autocratization episodes have become a U-Turn. The process is halted and turned around more than halfway through. Yeah. Yeah.

0:47:23 Thomas: Some examples for us. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Makes sense. Wow. So you're saying the U-turn is more common

0:47:24 Jenessa: So if you want to take a look at figure one. So you've got the red with the little dotted line. That's our censored group. Are well these are people who are autocratizing and we don't know what's going to happen to them yet we haven't had enough of a window to see how they're going to go you can see the blue democratizing there's a huge spike at one point which is the end of Soviet Russia, so a ton of countries go from a very extra obviously Soviet Russia was a very extreme control over people so getting out of that like whatever you next establishes your government was probably going to be slightly more liberal than that so what you see here is there's waves in the red the autocratization and so there's a first second and third wave in the 1900s here we're in the third wave things are not good right now it's happening all over the world there's something really interesting going on in this third wave where the character is different so you'll see that spike in the read and it tends to be followed by spikes in the green which means there was autocratizing happening but there's also people who are turning it around and it takes a little while to turn it around so that's why the green kind of lags behind the red so by the mid-1990s 73 percent of terminated autocratization episodes have already been turned around 36 out of 49 in this window that we are in right now only 44 percent of autocratization episodes ended up as U-turns before that in 1900 to 93. Something very new is happening. This used to happen. It's not like it was unusual back then, but it's happening a lot now. Way more common.

0:49:09 Thomas: Now huh yeah it could also just be a numbers issue of once there were more democracies in

0:49:11 Jenessa: It used to make up, if we look at just 1900 to 1993, so that's encompassing the first and second wave, about 44% of autocratization would be better characterized as a U-Turn. Here, if we look at the mid-90s on, so that's what they're calling the third wave, and I saw this in a lot of literature, it's not just these guys, 73% are U-turns. So far. We're not done yet. So, okay, what makes it different? U-Turns now start mostly in democracies. It used to be you would start in an autocracy and things would then get even worse. And then people are like, I've been fed up with this for a long time. I'm even more fed up and we're going to have a fight. Or there was a war and there were international interveners basically that's not how it's going now it's starting in democracies democracies are falling into this pattern and then reacting and coming back out of it and it might be that resiliency it might be that we have a culture around it we have protective factors around it we have structures around it and so we're kind of like ready to just grab that judicial system that we already had lay in there and just go right back into it and be like, this never happened. The third wave starts in 1993. Yes. Oh, yeah. So, right.

0:50:27 Thomas: In the world, it just would kind of have to be this way. If democracies became more common, because what time period are you talking? Yeah. So you're saying it's more common that the U-turns happen in democracies. Yeah. I could imagine part of that is just speaking in terms of numbers, there's more democracies and fewer authoritarian regimes to start with after 1990. So that would just mean, yeah, good. Right. Right, right, right. They've dabbled. They're

0:50:54 Jenessa: Well, so that's why they're saying it's possible if autocratization is more likely to start in an existing democracy, that might explain why U-turning is more common. They have that here. Contemporary U-turns occur in a very different context from before. Most countries have at least some experience with democratic institutions. I thought this part was funny. And those that do not have at least some experience with democratic institutions have at least some experience with emulating them as electoral autocracies.

0:51:18 Thomas: Dabbled. Yeah. Hmm. Huh. Yeah, that's really interesting. I'd be curious to see those

0:51:19 Jenessa: They have seen it on TV and pretended. So yeah, I think you're entirely right. It's entirely possible it's starting more often in democracies just because there are more democracies. And they're saying that might be why U-turning is more common, because if the autocratization process starts in an existing autocracy, like it was never great on democracy to begin with, and it's gotten worse, that might be fixed in a different way. A place that was already quite democratic has this autocratization period. They might be more likely to turn it around quickly, essentially, and turn it around not just quickly, but causally, that there's something about experiencing autocratizing in that circumstance that makes people react to it. So for those three types of U-turns, authoritarian manipulation, that was actually the most common the one that was like the weirdest and most confusing I bet political scientists are like yeah totally we've seen this a million times but to me I was like how — wait — you cause a democracy by being an authoritarian? How can this be? That was the most prevalent before the start of the third wave 69 percent of u-turns were driven by authoritarian actors it was some sort of military coup accidentally ends in a democracy maybe not not always accidentally. Argentina's on here like four times, but you can see authoritarian

0:52:43 Thomas: Examples like what I still don't totally get it. Hmm hmm. Yeah huh. Hmm yeah yeah that's true.

0:52:49 Jenessa: Manipulation listed many times, international intervention listed, you know, the countries and the dates. So you could always check incidents. But that South Korean example, I think is the most helpful. It's like there's a military coup. Oh, we're getting rid of that dictator. I'm going to hold an election. Oh yeah, y'all loved me. Hooray. They might've been slightly more democratic after that, but like not so good. Or, you know, the military coup that does actually intentionally or unintentionally give you the democracy that was that was quite common they were often driven by authoritarian actors two-thirds of U-turn episodes of that period occurred in an existing autocracy they're not usually a military coup of like a nice little elected person who was running a wonderful democracy well then how would you that wouldn't be a U-Turn even if you showed up and then had democracy after that would just be a very strange blip in your history. So these are starting in autocracies already and then some kind of military coup type thing happens and then you end up better at the end of it. Weird. That was very common back then. It is not nearly as common anymore. But coup-driven autocratization followed by military officers either handing over control to civilians or holding elections to legitimize a power grab and their rule and sometimes that election doesn't actually legitimize their power grab. Democratic reaction is by far the most common type of U-turn since the 1990s, 61%, 22 out of 36 episodes. So this third wave that we are in, what's way more common is autocratization happens through legal means. Actors win free and fair elections. Opposition actors react to gradual power grabs by voting incumbents out of office, finding lawful grounds to impeach autocratizers or protesting against them. That is the most common way that you end these periods today, not with a military coup. This is probably unsurprising in the era of nukes, I guess. International intervention is a much more rare event. Only 19%, 19 out of 102 episodes of U-Turns historically were driven by international actors.

0:54:59 Thomas: Yeah and that they do it right. I'd be curious how many if any the U.S. is involved in those

0:55:00 Jenessa: This idea that international actors see you go through this horrible thing and go, my God, we have to help. And they're going to show up and help us. It's not happening, people.

0:55:17 Thomas: Historical examples and like how is that classified if like I don't know how often we even made it better. I'm curious what those examples even are actually beyond World War II or whatever. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. So I guess what I'm saying is it's even worse, which is not

0:55:26 Jenessa: Yeah, let's see if we can find a... So Belgium shows up in... Oh, it's almost all World War II. Belgium shows up in... The autocratizing was 1914 to 15 and 18. Democratization was 18 to 21. So that's World War I. And Belgium shows up again as an international intervention. From 1940 to 1941, it autocratized. And from 44 to 50, it democratized. That would be World War II. So I think you're going to see a lot of that. Yeah, people, nobody's coming to help us. We are coming to

0:55:59 Thomas: Even that is really very likely. So there could be nothing that way. And if they do, it might not work. Yeah, if they Do, it also might not work. Like there may be examples of failed, you know, know that wouldn't be in the data set so it could be yeah good yeah yeah well and yes and what

0:56:07 Jenessa: Help us! Oh, right. Yeah. Critically, an international intervention is defined around them coming to help you. They have to not like that you have a dictator that they want to get rid of the dictator And so they show up to get rid of the dictator, not for unrelated reasons. Yeah, right, right. We didn't see the autocratizing and show up as a result. They haven't been flatlined for less than five years. And there is no guarantee they're going to come out of democracy. God, I hope so. Wouldn't that be wonderful? But that's, you know, so really international intervention, this thing that everybody is leaning on is the least common thing from 1900 to now.

0:56:36 Thomas: Results is democracy because it could Be like for example with Iran you if you if you wanted to argue oh we took out the dictator or whatever it doesn't like look who's there now so that wouldn't qualify either even if it was within five years and whatever yeah I don't think so yeah and when it happened it was because of a world fucking war pretty

0:57:13 Jenessa: It just doesn't really do it yeah it's it's yeah yeah right yeah it just it's less true now than

0:57:18 Thomas: Pretty much. I mean, the odds. So I just think kind of the first thing I was thinking in terms of the thesis of this episode is people who are saying the only way this will change is by an outside force. Actually, that's not true, according to the history. I didn't even really think of the fact that also that doesn't really work and never happens. So it's not just it's kind of on both ends of that. It would be foolish to even hope for an international intervention to yield good results. I mean, it'd be kind of silly to assume that would even happen based on the history.

0:57:54 Jenessa: It's ever been and it wasn't terribly true back then either it's just it's just not really a

0:57:57 Thomas: Wow. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think that makes sense, especially just how humans work. I mean, often if people are showing up, it's because they most likely stand to benefit. So maybe they are intervening in a way that they want, or they're going for a resource they want.

0:58:00 Jenessa: Thing people don't show up to save you you have to save us. Yeah right and god knows what happened

0:58:16 Thomas: Or they're just taking over something like they could, you know, so like that's not in the data set because they don't that didn't result in democracy. So who knows how many attempts there were at international intervention that didn'T yield democracy. Yeah, exactly. So stop hoping for that, everybody.

0:58:28 Jenessa: Right. Yeah, yeah. No, no, thank you please to a war I don't want that I don't want any of this. I don't want a civil war either. I don't want a military coup. I would love to do a democratic reaction, which we now have a definition for in the literature. There's a really cool thing going on. When they set this up, all they were looking for was a predefined, you're going to have an autocratization and a democratization period, and then a bottom. That could have been a very slight change from we were an amazing electoral democracy. Everything was wonderful. It got a little worse. We were still a democracy. And then it got better again. We're still a a democracy. Nothing required that you plunge into an autocracy. Nothing required that end as a democracy, it could have been a crappy autocracy, things got even worse, and then they got better again, but it was still not a democracy. And instead that's what we end up seeing is it is often starting in democracies, especially in the third wave in particular, it is almost always ending in an autocracy, when we look for this U-turn shape happening, 94% of all episodes go far enough down on that electoral democracy index that we would say, this is an autocracy, this is bad. Things have gotten really, really bad here. And yet, again, we are going to see that more than half come back up, turn into a U-Turn, 73% are going into U-Turn in the third wave. 66% are even closed autocracies for a while so that's a very specific definition of like things have really shut down things have gotten really bad out of 45 cases where autocratization started in a democracy democracy broke down for a short period in 39 cases before the turnaround so some very lucky five countries like oh god things got a little worse here for five minutes like the rest of them like things got really really bad 85% became democracies again by the end of the U-turn. Nothing about the mathematical definition required that, and that's what they observe still. So as we look at this, you don't want to have it biased in your head as like, well, okay, that just means they saw things got worse and then better, but that, you know, oh, this percent got better democracies or this percent turned around. That could have been tiny little turnarounds. We are mostly talking about big dips and big returns. So this doesn't even include the near misses. The like, oh boy, things got close for a minute there, but we didn't dip far enough to meet these criteria. This is the places where it got bad and then it got better. And we are going to see, on average, the electoral democracy index score is higher at the end of this process than when you started. Yeah, it's a terrible, terrible thing to go through, but at the the end, people come out better than they were before, with a stronger democracy. Yeah, yeah. Should the trend from the first part of the third wave of autocratization continue, around 30 of the 42 ongoing autocritization episodes could possibly become U-turns, which would make a remarkable difference in regime change dynamics. Slightly more than half of all autocrotization episodes become U turns. This is much more common than the current literature suggests. U turns have become the most common outcome of autocratization episodes during the last 30 years. I know we're in a really shitty time right now, but this data literally looks like we're in the best time ever in history to go through an autocracization period. We are more likely than ever, it is the most common outcome, is to turn around and get your democracy back. And there is a good chance you'll get your democracy back better than ever. And a really good chance you will do it with a democratic reaction, action, not a military coup, not an international intervention. You're going to do it yourself. Yeah, we don't. Yeah. And it's also, I think, very risky given some of the last little bit here that

0:58:31 Thomas: Buddy. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, those who make it. Yeah for sure. Wow yeah yeah I think that's the most certain thing out of all this because these statistics don't mean you know we don't know where we are in statistics ever and so who knows but that is certainly encouraging and it's certainly worth knowing about especially in an atmosphere full of the kind of talk we referenced at the outset, you know, that the only hope is someone coming in and invading us. That does not make any sense. So, yeah, that's really important. Huh. Right. I, for one, think General AOC is going

1:02:57 Jenessa: They're going to give us is super helpful when we look at the timescale of these. Remember, we had a minimum of one year and a maximum of five years of our like bottom of the U, the down period. So you could take that plus the length of time the democratization took and go, So, hey, how long did it take before we weren't like living in absolute terror? Authoritarian manipulation and international intervention last on average slightly more than seven years. Democratic reaction lasts substantially longer, almost 10 years. We need time. We need to get our democracy back. They talk extensively about, yeah, you know, the mechanisms that you use to take back a democracy through a democratic reaction. If your election cycle is every two years, every four years, well, then like by definition, you have to wait at least that long, right? If you're going to have a military coup, you can get rid of that guy anytime you want. If you are going to try to stay within your system, you necessarily take longer. It takes longer to do it this way, but people don't die. And in the authoritarian manipulation condition, we have to just trust that whoever led that military coup is going to give their power back, and they don't always do that. We need to give ourselves time. I don't trust any of those people for a second no they have to do it I think

1:04:13 Thomas: To hand back power. Unironically, I would be, AOC. I do. She can take if she wants to march on

1:04:21 Jenessa: I don't know man, I think anybody holding that much power is a scary prospect if we can put

1:04:23 Thomas: Washington with her army and take over. I welcome it. But other than that, she's a rare, she's an outlier. Yeah. So if we start now. Yeah, oh, I know. And and the fact that in terms of military

1:04:36 Jenessa: Them in there democratically it puts us holding the power and it's just so much safer that way and it does not require nearly as much trust and that's what the data is showing us if we have to keep sustained pressure throughout, on average, about 10 years to get this done. So now is not the time to let up. Now is not to wait for France to invade. Now is the time to keep the pressure on. We might be in a U-turn. Who knows? We might be in the middle of it right now. You can't know until hindsight. So keep the pressure on. Right. Of course not. Oh, God. Yeah. Yeah, no. Every situation in history is a brand

1:05:16 Thomas: Might, the U.S. is such an outlier that you can't use any of these statistics to judge what are the likelihoods that someone else is going to fix our democracy? It's just silly. We have no we have have zero data to give us any bearing on that because there's just no analog to that like at all. Yeah. Yeah, we have so many risk factors. We've been smoking fascist cigarettes and like

1:05:37 Jenessa: New situation that's never occurred before. So to some extent, always statistics be damned. But yeah, we are a very unique, weird example. We have a lot of risk factors right now. We have a lot of things that could make us very resilient. And I don't know, this leaves me very very hopeful that the odds are in our favor. We just have to keep that pressure up. We just have to keep working. Yeah, it's very hard to imagine that things are totally fine and there's

1:06:05 Thomas: Being out in the fascist sun too much, which the risk factors we have are just out of this world. Well, don't just imagine it. We got to do it. But yeah, very, very encouraging.

1:06:16 Jenessa: Nothing to worry about. It is very easy to imagine that in the long run, we're going to get it back. Yes. This really recontextualizes the rest of the literature, like everything that's been done about this before. This is why this U-turn concept is so important. If everything was just standalone autocratization, standalone democratization, and we don't recognize that sometimes there's a causal link. The autocracizing caused the democratizing. This is actually one historical event all bundled together. If you just look at that autocratizing episode that's the beginning of the U, the first half of the U, you would look at, first of all, that would be successful. You would say, yep, this person won. They took over, they killed democracy, and not by virtue of everything they did, they eventually lose and maybe even ultimately strengthen the democracy. And you would also say, and everything everyone did in the resistance failed. The people were resisting and they were trying this and they Were trying that and it didn't matter. It plunged into autocracy anyway. How sad, how terrible.

1:07:15 Thomas: Well, that's also encouraging. So basically, even if there's that retrenchment, I think is

1:07:24 Jenessa: But if we consider it one event, a U-turn, it absolutely mattered. The thing you did during the autocratizing period can be part of what led to the democratizing afterwards. It's not a failure because you still kept going down in the U. It was part of the U, so they say an important part of this paper is to look back at the literature and say, You may be wildly overestimating how common autocratizing is, how successful it is, how hard it is to stop. If you consider the lag in time that the democratizing happened after, so it's just a separate unrelated thing, you're going to think, man, it's easy to just take power from the people and kick the people out. And they fight and they protest and they have elections and and they do all this stuff, and you still win. But if it's one event, that's way less true when we reanalyze the literature. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Earlier literature using this same data set,

1:08:29 Thomas: Is the right word, to fascism, you know, like, say, in, like Trump's second term, say for example, or say, for example sort of say, it doesn't mean that all the efforts in the first term were meaningless. You know, they, they might still, they're still part of that effort in that story. Really interesting. Yeah. Very encouraging. Really glad we did this episode. That's so

1:08:47 Jenessa: You'll see papers that are like, yeah resistance is really hard, it almost never works, you know, as soon as the process starts, it Almost always goes out to this bottom, and this author is going to say, actually, if you group these together as one event, I don't think that's so true anymore. So it completely changes whether the type of resistance was a success or a failure, if you think of it as one event or two events. So also super encouraging and asks other people in the field, and I think ourselves, to reconsider what does success and failure really look like. Oh, I will link you to, I'll put in the show notes, this paper, and there's a couple of others

1:09:27 Thomas: Fascinating too. This more so than many, I feel like I want to like read all of this. Like it just seems really interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:09:38 Jenessa: That I think are really good supplements. They're all, I think, quite readable. The methods get a little in the weeds, but most of these I think are written at a pretty reasonable level for non-academics. I think everybody should check these out. It's just pure joy. I was reading it and crying on the train. I was just so happy to read this. So yeah, definitely check it out. And the data set, it's right there. It's free. Play with it. Go see what you can find.

1:10:02 Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. That is so cool. And nobody knows this. Nobody's talking about it. Nobody knows this, I'm so glad that we're covering it.

1:10:08 Jenessa: Yeah, thanks for having me.

1:10:10 Thomas: Thanks so much for the breakdown. Thanks for bringing that to everyone's attention.

1:10:35 Jenessa: And Dan's yelling at the cat. Sorry.