There was no attempted coup on Capitol Hill. The analysis of prof. Ruggeri (Oxford)
If we talk about electoral violence rather than an attempted coup, two serious failures are to be highlighted. Here are which ones. The analysis by Andrea Ruggeri, Professor of Political Science & International Relations, University of Oxford, for il Mulino
Have we witnessed an attempted coup? Or was it just a badly managed demonstration? Can we outline the responsibility of President Trump?
I will try to define some concepts because – as Erica De Bruin recently pointed out in the "Washington Post" – we must be clear: to define precisely phenomena of political violence is not mere semantics or academic fussiness. The dynamics of weakening of democratic institutions vary with respect to different forms of political violence – for example: coups d'état, electoral violence or terrorism – and therefore the related strategies to prevent undemocratic threats depend on the ability to correctly identify the causes and actors of such violence .
Protesting – what Albert Hirschman calls voice – is a constitutive modality of democracy. In a democracy you can disagree against those who govern and against the majority. Minorities and dissidents have the right to demonstrate. Major reforms and improvements in democracies – from civil rights to social and economic rights – are also due to protest movements. However, the use of violence and the attack, even if symbolic, on the places of democratic institutions cannot be considered voice. The use of violence threatens the central mechanism of democracy – non-violent resolution of the conflict – and the attack on the places where the procedures of democracy are practiced directly challenges the idea of respect for rights and roles between minority and majority. Politics is often conflict, but democracy is resolving conflicts between citizens without violence through different procedures – for example with elections – and thanks to different institutions, with the centrality of Parliament. As Adam Przeworski teaches us, the strength of democracy is that whoever loses, loses a government turn, but then can be reorganized to win elections in the future. There is no doubt about this mechanism, otherwise the logic of violence overwhelms the difficult grammar of managing conflict without violence.
Therefore, the non-violent transition of power to democracy is a fragile and central passage. Laws, institutions, procedures (but also rituals) aim to spread and mitigate tensions to prevent those who have lost electorally want to keep power violently. And as Levitsky and Ziblatt remind us, challenging the salience of this passage, not recognizing the electoral result, demonizing the opponent and delegitimizing the institutions is very dangerous. Political violence in a democracy is dangerous, but even more so in this passage.
So, is President Trump responsible for these violent events? As everyone should know correlation is not causation, but it can represent the smoking gun. On the morning of the attack on Congress, Trump thundered, for the umpteenth time, against "electoral fraud" and declared to his supporters "we will not concede victory" in a demonstration in front of the White House.
Some have argued that since the president is also the head of the army, his inciting resistance to the transition and inciting "his" to violent actions is considered an attempted coup. Others argued that what we witnessed was only impromptu violence. However, I don't think we should define it, underestimating it, as a sudden and marginal event.
But even the belief that there was a coup attempt yesterday could be misleading. Powell and Thyne, authors of one of the leading coup databases, define a coup as "blatant attempts by the military or other elites within the state apparatus to unseat the incumbent head of state using unconstitutional means ". The central point is the failure of civilian power control over the military or collusion by civilian elites with some security apparatuses. In a coup d'état, power is violently expropriated and thanks to the support of the military or security apparatus. Defining the term we see that it was not an attempted coup d'état due to the lack of military support, but also a lack of coordination with elites within the state apparatus.
Yet the dramatic events we have witnessed are a form of collective and organized political violence, probably a violent act of electoral protest. Ursula Daxecker defines these as "public acts of mobilization, challenge or coercion by state or non-state actors which are used to influence the electoral process or which arise in the context of electoral competition". Although electoral violence usually occurs in weak democracies, established democracies today are characterized by intense partisanship with weak parties, as written by Julia Azari. Therefore, the absence of strong parties leaves room for dynamics of militarization of politics, as indicated by Alia Matanock and Paul Staniland, the militias in the American case become the operational arm of a strong leader in a weak party.
If we talk about electoral violence rather than an attempted coup, two serious failures are to be highlighted: that linked to the ability to prevent such violent actions through police actions and that of preventing the politically unconscious action of a president by his party.
About the failure of the security system I can ask questions but not give answers. Recent events provide us with many counterfactuals with greater force deployments, numerous arrests and high levels of repression of Protestants on the streets of Washington. Why on this occasion such a failure by the police force? Why did they underestimate the risk? For what prejudices? Or was there premeditation? By whom and for what purpose?
The second failure, which explains how the militarization of politics has led to events of electoral violence, is the serious weakness and absence of one party, the republican one. A party that let a single individual dictate a political agenda that exacerbated deep-seated tensions in society and de-legitimized democratic procedures. Parties matter in democracy and are essential in times of crisis. Weak parties that delegate to strong figures can weaken democratic institutions.
It was not an attempted coup. A demonstration of those who lost the elections, incited by the losing president, has turned into an episode of electoral violence. The security system has failed and failed to deter this incident. This does not mean underestimating the seriousness of the events, but it does mean indicating a different interpretation of the causes and dynamics of undemocratic threats. Democratic institutions, although fragile, still resist, but we must be vigilant.
(Extract from an article published on the Mill; here the full version )
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/attacco-congresso-stati-uniti-colpo-di-stato/ on Sun, 10 Jan 2021 06:37:09 +0000.