Cautionary tales from other populist regimes – follow up

Here’s a follow up from Kim Scheppele:

Just saw this piece from the NYT today that reports on the new research of Yascha Mounk and Roberto Stefan Foa that analyzes the World Values Survey data and concludes that liberal democracies are in danger in the US and beyond:   www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/world/americas/western-liberal-democracy.html.  The new work shows plunging support for democracy in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands and Sweden and it is forthcoming in the January issue of the Journal of Democracy.

Their earlier paper (from which I excerpted the first table in my earlier post) can be found here:  http://www.journalofdemocracy.org/sites/default/files/Foa%26Mounk-27-3.pdf.    It’s well worth the (depressing) read.  Both their work and mine point in the same direction – toward the conclusion that once-stable democracies are in danger of coming unglued first through erosion of public support (Mounk and Foa) and then through the election of anti-constitutional populists by fed-up voters who support these leaders as they break the constitutions they inherited (me).