2025/05/05 by Matt Simonton · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Religion and Society Interactions
paper · pdf · doi:10.1515/9783111705446-002
It was a concern of the ancient Greeks, inherited by modern political thinkers like the Framers of the US Constitution, that democracies would inevitably devolve into tyrannies.Champions of the rights of the people would arise and undermine democratic institutions from within-"commencing demagogues," in the words of Alexander Hamilton, "and ending tyrants."In fact, as Aristotle knew well, most anti-democratic revolutions ended not in tyranny but in oligarchy, the rule of the wealthy few, as elites rejected the sovereignty of the common people.From this perspective, we can see how much contemporary discourse on populism and authoritarianism is about the actions of elites and not about the power of the people at all.This chapter uses the figure of the ancient demagogue, greatly misunderstood, to restore a properly popular component to modern analyses of populism and democratic backsliding.The great Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt once wrote, "[I]n every talented and ambitious Greek dwelt a tyrant and a demagogue." 1 Before and since, political observers have worried that charismatic leaders will overthrow democracy from within and install themselves as modern-day tyrants.Such a worry guided the Framers of the United States Constitution: in the very first of the Federalist Papers, for example, Alexander Hamilton wrote: dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government.History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants. 2 The political scientists Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky, drawing on this tradition in their study of How Democracies Die, likewise discuss the danger of demagogues to democracy, resulting in autocracy:Although some elected demagogues take office with a blueprint for autocracy, many, such as [former Peruvian President Alberto] Fujimori, do not.Democratic breakdown doesn't need a blueprint.Rather, as Peru's experience suggests, it can be the result of a sequence of unanticipated Burckhardt (2013) 56.