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Democracy in Disarray

2021; University of Chicago Press; Volume: 53; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1086/713468

1744-1684

Alyson Cole, Robyn Marasco, Charles Tien,

Comics and Graphic Narratives

Previous articleNext article FreeEditors’ NoteDemocracy in DisarrayAlyson Cole, Robyn Marasco, and Charles TienAlyson Cole Search for more articles by this author , Robyn Marasco Search for more articles by this author , and Charles Tien Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreKen Fisher aka “Ruben Bolling” (winner of the 2017 Herblock Prize, 2018 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and a finalist for a 2019 Pulitzer Prize) generously offered Polity permission to use any of his wonderfully poignant cartoons for our Spring cover. He worried that the image we ultimately selected, “Busy, Busy Day in Trump’s America” from September of 2020, would be dated by the time the issue appeared in print in April of 2021. Wishful thinking, we suspect. Among the many aspects of life disrupted by COVID-19, the loss of temporality ranks high on the list. It is not so much that what is old is new again, but that we are trapped in an eternal recurrence, or an indefinite prolongation of the present.Drawn in the style of Richard Scarry’s classic “busy, busy people” children’s books, the graphic captures some of the tropes that dominated our political discourse in the final year of the Trump Administration. It vividly illustrates a democracy in disarray, where this refers not to party polarization, but state repression at all levels, the mobilization of far-right forces, the destructive denial of climate science, the gross mismanagement of the pandemic response, and a looming economic disaster that is already being felt by the poor and working class.That this chaos is depicted in images associated with childhood allows us to laugh momentarily at the sources of real anxiety for many in Trump’s America. Can humor serve a critical and pedagogical purpose? Trump’s brazen disregard for norms has left even those critical of the disciplinary effects of various forms of normativity almost eager for their return. His neglect extends well beyond the norms and institutions of American society to the American people, including his own supporters. As we write this editors’ note, COVID-19 has killed 333,000 Americans and more than 1.7 million people worldwide, with hundreds of thousands more deaths projected until vaccines are widely available.1 Millions are unemployed and food insecure, businesses continue to close, renters are in danger of being evicted, and the federal government remains divided on an additional relief bill. Even after Trump exits the White House, the busy business of surviving this pandemic will continue and the thick residue of Trumpism will remain.Fifty-five days after Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Trump has still has not conceded the race. On Thanksgiving, the lame duck president engaged in the ritual pardoning of a turkey, then pardoned disgraced former security advisor Michael Flynn, and announced that he would leave office only if the Electoral College votes in Biden’s favor. While Trump is attempting to stage a coup—albeit a poorly executed one—many are concerned about what will happen after he finally leaves the White House. Biden has promised to mend the divisions that Trump inflamed and exploited, but what would such a palliative process entail? Will Biden pardon Trump, as Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, in the name of “healing” and moving the country forward? Can we truly recover without addressing not only Trump’s crimes and misdemeanors but the damage he and his enablers in the Republican Party did to American democracy?As Bonnie Honig explains in this volume’s “Ask a Political Scientist,” discord and disruption can be generative.2 And there should be no rush to reconciliation premised on forgetting. Instead, we need to account for what happened during the Trump administration, and how, and also to engage in the equally difficult process of rethinking and restructuring basic features of American democracy. Honig envisions a commission appointed to uncover the truths and to reckon with changes that would repair what was broken even before Trump arrived on the scene. Whether Trump signifies a departure from politics as usual, or is just a grotesque manifestation of long-standing tendencies (e.g., an imperial presidency, a morally bankrupt two-party system that caters to the wealthy elites, racial animus, nativism, and misogyny), his presidency, like the pandemic, marks a profound rupture. This rupture can be fatal if not attended to properly. Or, it might become an opening to a different future. For the present to serve as the portal that Arundhati Roy so beautifully imagines, we need to travel “with little luggage”—freed from the weight of past trauma and resentment.3 And, yet, both Roy and Honig seem to agree that justice must precede forgiveness and democratic renewal. Neither one is seeking a restoration or a return to the past. The challenge is figuring out a new way forward.As with our January issue, all of the research articles in this issue were accepted for publication by the previous editorial team. Reviewing our inheritance to determine which to include in this issue, we found that these texts, fittingly, point in various ways to the challenges of democracy in disarray. This issue opens with Susan R. Liebell’s “Sensitive Places?: How Gender Unmasks the Myth of Originalism in District of Columbia v. Heller,” which argues that the Supreme Court endorses a patriarchal theory of the household to uphold the right of armed self-defense.4 For Liebell, the “selective originalism” of the Heller case delineates a right of self-defense that threatens women’s ability to defend themselves against those who most often endanger them.In “Democracy, Interpretation, and the Problem of Conceptual Ambiguity: Reflections on the V-Dem Project’s Struggles with Operationalizing Deliberative Democracy,” John Boswell and Jack Corbett suggest that conceptual ambiguity should not be seen as a problem for the study of democracy, but a strength.5 From this perspective, conceptual ambiguity facilitates contestation over what democracy means and allows researchers to reconsider democratic practice in times of crisis. Daniel Innerarity’s “No Democracy without Comprehension: Political Unintelligibility as a Democratic Problem” grapples with another aspect of democratic deliberation, arguing for the importance of political competence and comprehension to the practice of democracy.6 Increasing social complexity, Innerarity argues, requires diverse strategies of simplification, education, and expertise.In “Combatting Suspicion, Creating Trust: The Interface of Muslim Communities and Law Enforcement in the United States after 9/11,” Sangay Mishra and Jinee Lokaneeta examine the implementation after 9/11 of a “trust and cooperation” approach to policing Muslim communities in Southern California.7 Mishra and Lokaneeta identify reasons why these efforts failed and why the relationship between the Muslim community and law enforcement agencies became instead one of hostility and distrust.David Dagan’s “Iron Cages and Ballot Boxes: Prosecutors, Elections, and Subnational Statebuilding” contributes to research on bureaucratic capacity by focusing on the development of subnational bureaucracies whose leaders are elected.8 What Dagan calls “policrats” are leaders who value their status as elected officials, such as district attorneys, who must harmonize their classic electoral activity with the work of professionalizing their bureaucracies.Our issue concludes with an interview with Bonnie Honig, conducted by Alyson Cole. We are grateful to Professor Honig for her probing and powerful reflections on our political disrepair and the resources available for rebuilding the infrastructures of our democracy.9We want to extend special thanks to Julie Hollar, who served as Managing Editor of Polity for over five years. We are delighted to welcome B Stone as our new Editorial Assistant. Thanks also to our copy editor, Claudia Van der Heuvel, and to Andrés Besserer and Carly Ransdell for maintaining the journal’s social media presence. We are immensely grateful to Ken Fisher for providing the cover art for this issue, and to Matt Lang at the University of Chicago Press for his assistance.Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter at @PolityalsBeruf.Notes1. These numbers reflect total deaths as of December 28, 2020. We are painfully aware that the numbers will undoubtedly be higher by the time this issue goes to print.2. “Ask a Political Scientist: A Discussion with Bonnie Honig on Agonism, Disruption, and Repair,” interview by Alyson Cole, Polity 53 (2021): 344–56.3. Arundhati Roy, Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2020).4. Susan P. Liebell, “Sensitive Places?: How Gender Unmasks the Myth of Originalism in District of Columbia v. Heller,” Polity 53 (2021): 207–38.5. John Boswell and Jack Corbett, “Democracy, Interpretation, and the Problem of Conceptual Ambiguity: Reflections on the V-Dem Project’s Struggles with Operationalizing Deliberative Democracy,” Polity 53 (2021): 239–63.6. Daniel Innerarity, “No Democracy without Comprehension: Political Unintelligibility as a Democratic Problem,” Polity 53 (2021): 264–87.7. Sangay Mishra and Jinee Lokaneeta, “Combatting Suspicion, Creating Trust: The Interface of Muslim Communities and Law Enforcement in the United States after 9/11,” Polity 53 (2021): 288–314.8. David Dagan, “Iron Cages and Ballot Boxes: Prosecutors, Elections, and Subnational Statebuilding,” Polity 53 (2021): 315–43.9. See note 2 above. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Polity Volume 53, Number 2April 2021Democracy in Disarray The Journal of the Northeastern Political Science Association Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/713468 Views: 753Total views on this site HistoryPublished online February 10, 2021 © 2021 Northeastern Political Science Association. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.