[P2P-F] Fwd: [Authoritarian-working-group] Centrists Are the Most Hostile to Democracy, Not Extremists

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Nick Buxton <nick at tni.org>
Date: Thu, May 24, 2018 at 12:43 AM
Subject: [Authoritarian-working-group] Centrists Are the Most Hostile to
Democracy, Not Extremists
To: "authoritarian-working-group at lists.tni.org" <
authoritarian-working-group at lists.tni.org>


Rather fascinating research highlighted in today's NYT.  I haven't studied
it closely enough to understand its conclusions, but it would seem though
to support our discussions in last year's TNI fellows meeting
<https://www.tni.org/en/publication/understanding-and-challenging-authoritarianism>
that agreed that many of the seeds to authoritarianism came precisely from
the centrist liberal democracies


Centrists Are the Most Hostile
to Democracy, Not Extremists

By DAVID ADLER MAY 23, 2018

A rally last September in Berlin for Martin Schulz, the Social Democrats’
candidate for German chancellor. Maja Hitij/Getty Images

The warning signs are flashing red: Democracy is under threat. Across
Europe and North America, candidates are more authoritarian, party systems
are more volatile, and citizens are more hostile to the norms and
institutions of liberal democracy.

These trends have prompted a major debate between those who view political
discontent as economic, cultural or generational in origin. But all of
these explanations share one basic assumption: The threat is coming from
the political extremes.

On the right, ethno-nationalists and libertarians are accused of supporting
fascist politics; on the left, campus radicals and the so-called antifa
movement are accused of betraying liberal principles. Across the board, the
assumption is that radical views go hand in hand with support for
authoritarianism, while moderation suggests a more committed approach to
the democratic process.

Is it true?

Maybe not. My research suggests that across Europe and North America,
centrists are the least supportive of democracy, the least committed to its
institutions and the most supportive of authoritarianism.

I examined the data from the most recent
<http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWV6.jsp>World Values
Survey <http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWV6.jsp> (2010 to
2014) and <http://www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu/page/survey-2008.html>European
Values Survey <http://www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu/page/survey-2008.html>
(2008), two of the most comprehensive studies of public opinion carried out
in over 100 countries. The survey asks respondents to place themselves on a
spectrum from far left to center to far right. I then plotted the
proportion of each group’s support for key democratic institutions. (A copy
of my working paper, with a more detailed analysis of the survey data, can
be found here
<https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fOGwtRUF-y-98IcDs-3YYrtREl8GbaoH/view>.)


Full article: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/23/
opinion/international-world/centrists-democracy.html?
action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------
NICK BUXTON
Futures Lab/Communications/Online Learning

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e: nick at tni.org
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skype: nickbuxton
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-----------------------------------------------------
Read my latest book, The Secure and the Dispossessed (November
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