Noah Jagielski
Mr. Hilbrands
AP Government and Politics
27 July 2018
Manipulating Democracy
It is remarkable how countries today follow and utilize the concepts first created by ancient societies such as ancient Greece and Rome. The people living in these great societies developed the idea to construct a governing system to help run their community; we nowadays call these governments. Countries today use these institutions to help control and protect their people in a variety of ways. However, many people disagree on how a country should be set up and ran. Sometimes, these people decide to takeover governments that have already been installed, such as democracies. The state of a democracy can be altered by an individual who has intentions that differ from those who are in charge of the government. Completely destroying a democracy begins when a seemingly ordinary individual rises to power and begins to quietly carry out harsh and unexpected actions; this then disrupts the original government and the future lives of the general public.
Whenever a democracy holds a presidential election, there may be a candidate who comes from nowhere and is all of a sudden competing with other opponents. Unlike some individuals in history who use violence to assume power, such as Pinochet in Chile during the 1970s, these kinds of people are typically peaceful. Once they are noticed by the public, this person may do one of two options. First, they may verbally assault other opponents to bring down their reputation and make the public think differently of them. This is destructive in that it makes the playing field smaller for other, smaller opponents who actually have the intention of keeping the democracy. Second, this person may appeal to the public’s emotions and beliefs instead of speaking about what they truly believe in. Their secretive actions are disguised “may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy” (Levitsky, 5). This kind of person is given the term demagogue, and a very famous example of this took place in America during a time called the second Red Scare. A man named Joseph McCarthy attracted millions of Americans by utilizing the great fear of communism and incorporating it into his own rhetoric. However, by utilizing one of these two methods, the public’s mind can be swayed quite easily. If the candidate worked their deceptive magic well enough, “democratic backsliding [can begin] at the ballot box” (Levitsky, 5).
Once the polls close and the presidential candidate is finally chosen, the new president (or dictator) can officially enact plans that covertly begin to morph the structure of the government. The dictator begins “by quietly firing civil servants and other nonpartisan officials and replacing them with loyalists;” Fujimori’s primary advisor Vladimiro Montesinos did exactly this (Levitsky, 79). In order to keep the situation on the downlow, the dictator will most likely ask the fired government workers to promise to keep quiet. The dictator’s plan of overtaking the government can be ruined if the discharged worker decides to speak up and expose the plan to the public. However, if this does not happen, the dictator can eventually build up an array of supporters that are associated within the government. The next thing a dictator can do is to buy off or even weaken individuals and companies that may threaten the leader’s status (Levitsky, 81, 83). Fujimori was another great example of this; the dictator had his primary advisor bribe several congressmen with money so that way they would vote for Fujimori during election time; this allowed him “to run for, and win, an illegal third term in 2000” (Levitsky, 83). Fujimori’s advisor also bribed the stockholders of two television channel so that way they would not broadcast any news pertaining to Fujimori’s illicit activities (Levitsky, 82). News channels allow average everyday people to speak up and talk about sensitive information, which is a right to have when living in a democracy. When someone, who has the goal of taking down a democracy eliminates this right, there are many devastating effects; in general, the public is censored from the truth and only hears about information that the government decides to put out.
Once the dictator has all of their plans in action, they can overtly overthrow what last remains of a democracy; additionally, this has a tremendous effect on how the citizens are represented in their new and modified government. Throughout the late twentieth century, there have been several examples of this scenario. After Fujimori bribed and censored his critics, he “appeared on television and announced that he was dissolving the congress and the constitution” (Levitsky, 75). Such an action completely ruined the foundations of Peru’s original democracy. Fujimori was able to create a new form of government, or in other words, his own dictatorship. Another example was with Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. After his takeover, Chávez got rid of the supreme court that was originally associated with Venezuela’s democracy. He installed his own supreme court called the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (Levitsky, 81). Just as expected, the court was filled with loyalists; in effect, the constitutionality of Chávez’s unlawful actions could not be determined properly since he severely tampered with the judiciary system. Whenever a dictator like Chávez interferes with the judicial branch and destroys the system of checks and balances, the public has to suffer whatever absurd laws are approved by the supreme court.
A politician who has secret intentions of changing the structure of his or her democracy can do so by means of their election process, their furtive actions once they are chosen as leader, and their forthright actions once they have been in power for some time. In all three of these stages, there are overwhelming effects on fellow candidates, news companies, the judicial branch, and especially the citizens. It is up to all of these groups, including political parties, to detect a prospective dictator when they see one. If an undercover dictator cannot be identified during their rise to power, the future of a country after they are elected will not look so promising.