How A Single Demagogue Can Change A Democracy Forever

Americans often think of demagogues as a feature of foreign countries with weak or non-existent democracies. But is it possible to still get a demagogue in a functioning and strong democracy? That’s the argument of Mehdi Shadmehr in his paper, “Demagogues and the Fragility of Democracy.”

One of the scariest features of this research is that once a country elects a single demagogue they can create a political death spiral that can lead the country into financial ruin. With the long running debate around Trump’s demagoguery in the background, and the 2020 election on the horizon, we discuss Shadmehr’s findings.

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Transcript:

William Howell:          

I'm Will Howell.

Anthony Fowler:

I'm Anthony Fowler.

Wioletta Dziuda:      

I'm Wioletta Dziuda.

William Howell:          

And this is Not Another Politics Podcast.

William Howell:          

Since Trump assumed office, lots of critics have argued that demagoguery has taken hold: that Trump is in fact a demagogue.

Tape:                           

He's a brilliant demagogue. He's played on people's anger. He's played on their emotions. He's promised them some sort of nirvana if he's to become president, which is clearly complete nonsense.

William Howell:          

And represents a distinct threat to our democracy and to the welfare of the country.

Tape:                           

It would've been no surprise to the founding fathers that Americans have proven susceptible to the charms of a demagogue.

William Howell:          

That may or may not be true, but when we think about the threat that a demagogue presents we should think beyond the particular harm that he or she does directly: that is the direct effect. We might also think about how other parties, other individuals, other organizations, adapt their behavior in anticipation of the threat that a demagogue presents. In that sense, we underestimate the kind of damage done or the threat presented by a demagogue by just looking at the direct effects, because the effects might carry through the system. We need to have some theory or evidence that would explain what that adaptive behavior might look like. Does this make any sense?

Wioletta Dziuda:         

Yes. I actually talked to someone who thinks it makes a lot of sense to ask exactly these questions. Mehdi Shadmehr from the University of Calgary, together with Dan Bernhardt and Stefan Krasa from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, wrote a theoretical paper that tries to ask three questions. First of all, why is it that we have demagogues? Why is it that they are elected? And when is it that they are elected? Second, what's the optimal response of the mainstream parties, the parties that aren't demagogues, that aren't trying to suggest policies that we would call populist? What policies should they suggest if they're being threatened by demagogues? Finally, what are the long-term consequences of all this? Let's listen to what Mehdi has to say.

Wioletta Dziuda:         

Hi Mehdi. Welcome to the podcast.

Mehdi Shadmehr:        

Hello. Thank you for having me here.

Wioletta Dziuda:         

My pleasure.

You wrote a paper called "Demagogues and the Fragility of Democracy." Who is a demagogue?

Mehdi Shadmehr:        

We define demagogue as a politician with two particular properties. One is that he or she claims that he defends people against the establishment, often corrupt establishment. Perhaps the more important aspect is that the demagogue offers simplistic solutions and explanation for the people's problems.

Wioletta Dziuda: 

What is a simplistic solution?

Mehdi Shadmehr:

One can divide it into two groups. One that we're familiar with unfortunately too often is when the demagogue attributes problems to a racial or ethnic or national group. Recently this group in United States for example has been Muslims or Mexicans. The other is when the demagogue ignore resource constraints. The demagogue says, "Let's reduce taxes," even though we need investment in infrastructure, in education, we need to reduce debt. The demagogue says, "Let's remove the regulation on environmental issues," even though we know that we have a problem and it's going to come back to us in a decade or two. People do not completely appreciate... do not internalize... do not take into account the long term consequences of policy. They focus on instant satisfaction as opposed to long term welfare. We all have this to some extent. When we don't go and exercise, when we don't keep our diet, when we drink too much or smoke too much... We all have this and demagogues tap into this all-too-human character that we have, just at the larger scale.

Wioletta Dziuda:         

In your paper, you assume that people tend to like the simplistic solution, but you say something more in the paper. You say that the danger of demagogues is not just demagogues per se and the fact that they appeal to the people, but it's also how the mainstream parties respond to that. Can you talk about this a bit?

Mehdi Shadmehr:

Yes, exactly. A key element of the damages that demagogues cause is the electoral competition that they induce. In particular, they cause establishment party to somewhat mimic their bad policies in order to get elected.

Wioletta Dziuda:

You're saying that the problem is not only that maybe from time to time we get a demagogue that appeals to the people and gets elected, but even in absence of seeing demagogues being elected just the fact that they are somewhere out there and they make those promises to people, that changes the policies that the mainstream parties implement: the parties that are forward-looking and care about prosperity, and that puts the economy in danger.

Mehdi Shadmehr:

The country in danger, in fact. Even in the prisons of charismatic, far-sighted, benevolent, establishment parties, demagogues can push the country into what we call a death spiral in which the country does not save enough, does not invest enough, to compensate for capital depreciation. This is not just physical capital. One form of capital is physical capital in the form of infrastructure. Another is human capital in the form of education that we may be under-investing in. But even more importantly is social capital in the form of tolerance that we have of each other, trust that we have of each other and in our institutions, and trust that we have in having an independent judiciary and not meddling with that kind of institutions that we have. If we don't invest in them, tomorrow we're going to less of this and less output because of this, and hence less consumption.

Wioletta Dziuda:

What you're saying makes me think about my own country. Years ago, the party called Law and Justice came to power and immediately offered subsidies to every family with children. It was pretty clear to economists that the country cannot afford that, but of course these policies are extremely attractive because people see immediate benefit and not the consequences, and one interesting thing that happened which is consistent with what you just told us, is that the opposition was against this policy and they were criticizing it and they were invoking economists and different long-term analysis, but when it came to the recent parliamentary election even the opposition promised everyone that they would keep those subsidies in place. We did see this shift of politicians that were usually perceived as long-term thinking politicians adjusting their policies towards those offered by what I would call demagogues.

Mehdi Shadmehr:

To fully appreciate this, let me tell you how this dynamic work. If a majority is short-sighted and they don't care about future investment by mistake, the demagogue who only cares about election comes and say, "Okay, let's eat everything. Let's have high pensions and let's not invest in the future." Or it says, "You get some satisfaction from being a little intolerant? That's okay. Go ahead and do that. I'm going to be like that in the podium, in fact." We have seen that too often even in this country. This makes voters happy: just the same way that we would be getting ostensibly happy if we escaped gym now and then or if we have that second chocolate cake perhaps. What would the responsible party do in this situation? There are two extreme choices. One is to say, "You know what? I'm going to stick to what is right. I'm going to stick to the ideal." But if you do that, then the chances that you get elected may be small.

Wioletta Dziuda:

And then we are eating the second piece of the cake. Then you say the consequences are really dire, because we do implement those intolerant or short-sighted policies.

Mehdi Shadmehr:

There are two extremes. One is to say that "I'm going to do the ideal thing, meaning that I'm going to tell you that you're not allowed to have that second cake. We cannot have this level of pensions. We cannot have tax reduction. You cannot be intolerant. We cannot meddle with the independent judiciary," and so on. On the other hand, the responsible party may say, "You know what? I'm going to imitate the demagogue. Yes, guys, you want to be intolerant? Be intolerant. Let's have a high pension and let's have a tax cut." Now I'm sure to be elected but then I just repeated the demagogue. It's as if I have become a demagogue.

What a responsible party should do and at least in the American system, many times they did was to balance this: to stand somewhere in the middle. They inched towards demagogic or demagogue's policies, but they didn't go all the way. The reason is that they traded off between having the better policy but also getting elected. What's the point of saying that I want to implement the good policy if I can't go into the office?

But this is just one part of this story. The other part is the dynamic part: that is, when capital depreciates tomorrow, you're going to be in a situation in which capital is going to be lower than today, which means that the output and consumption is going to be in general lower than today. The implication is that if before the voter did not want to save, now the voter does not want to save even more. If before the voter wanted to under invest, now the voter wants to under invest even more. It means that the situation becomes worse and worse. When the capital stock falls below some threshold, even the benevolent party doesn't propose to save enough to compensate for the depreciation. If demagogue wins, of course there's not going to be any investment or there will be little investment, but the problem is that because people are unhappy the benevolent, establishment party also have to cater to majority and mimic the demagogue even more and this mimicking is so extreme that investment that the establishment parties propose is not enough to compensate for depreciation.

Every period of time either the demagogue get elected, in which case there is no investment, or the benevolent party get elected, the establishment party get elected, in which there is some investment but not enough to compensate for depreciation. Capital tomorrow is going to be less than today. Then we're in the same situation even worse. Every period the capital becomes worse and worse. This is like a highway to hell, if you want to call it that. Unless there is some positive shock that suddenly push the capital stock above that threshold, then there is no coming back.

Wioletta Dziuda:

If you were to give advice to the mainstream parties... to the establishment politicians, if you will... you will tell them when the times are good or safe, even at the risk of perhaps losing election, and when times are bad do not be idealistic.

Mehdi Shadmehr:

Exactly.

Wioletta Dziuda:

Be more pragmatic and perhaps offer policies that even you know are not ideal. Is that correct?

Mehdi Shadmehr:

That is correct, especially during the last couple of years because of the Trump presidency there has cottage industry of papers and books on problems of demagogues and the dangers they pose in American democracy and so on. It seems that even some of the better ones, because they get their insights from Europe, the argument is that let the party move away from the demagogue. They give examples from different European country that say that sometimes a party supported its rival in order to prevent its extreme being to get elected. They suggest that people should do that kind of thing, or Republican Party now should do that kind of thing.

The pattern that we see in the American politics is the opposite. What one has to recognize is that if you want democracy we have to accept its pathologies as well. The pathologies of democracy is nothing new. We know this since ancient time. The difference between the American revolutionaries in particular and American statesmen and other people at the time was that when Plato and Aristotle and these kind of ancient philosophers looked at history and looked at the “data”, the observations that they had, they concluded this: democracy is horrible. Demagogues come and hence we should do something else. When people like Madison looked at the data they didn't have numbers, they didn't quantify them, but they have many observations and the conclusion was that, "Yes, we have this pathology and we have to fix it." They found ways to fix it through institutional filters, but they accepted that democracy have pathologies, and at the end of the day people can make wrong decisions and if they want something we can't just completely ignore it.

We have to take into account that maybe the country is not ready for that good things that have to come. All great leaders in American politics had this in mind, including Lincoln. That's a powerful tradition of American politics.

William Howell:          

Can we come back to death spirals? I keep thinking of... Don't alligators do this? Don't they grab a hold of their prey and start spinning like mad?

Anthony Fowler:          

Don't quote us on that. We're not experts on zoology.

William Howell:          

What do they mean by a death spiral and what within the model generates them?

Wioletta Dziuda:

There are two things that lead to a death spiral. One is a bit more obvious and one is a bit less obvious. The more obvious one is that we elect a demagogue, he spends the money that we have on current consumption, we under invest in education and infrastructure and so on, tomorrow we wake up and we're poorer. Because we're poorer, now we desire the instant gratification even more. Now we're even more willing to vote for a demagogue. We're more willing to reelect an old demagogue or find a new one. This demagogue again invests all the savings that we have in current consumption, we become even poorer, and this goes on and on until we completely run the economy down to the ground. That's a death spiral that a demagogue can create. One prediction of the model is that if we see a demagogue being elected, he or she is more likely to be elected next time.

William Howell:

So what we might call the irresponsibility of the demagogue is actually politically advantageous for the demagogue.

Wioletta Dziuda:

Exactly, which is a very interesting thing. We sort of knew that if we elect people who implement policies that are not reasonable policies we're going to end up in a bad place. But the fact that exactly those policies that are harmful are going to make the demagogues even more popular. That's an interesting finding of the model that was new to me.

Anthony Fowler:

Then there's the other interesting part about even the responsible candidates are responding to this in interesting ways.

Wioletta Dziuda:  

Yes. The question is what should a responsible party do? The responsible party sees that people somehow desire those policies. A responsible party has a choice. Either they propose their responsible policies and they say, "In the event we are elected, it's going to be fine. We are going to be safe. We are going to avoid the death spiral. Or we cater a bit to the electorate and offer them policies that are somewhere in-between the optimal policies, the responsible policies, and the policies that the electorate wants." As you can see, there's a tradeoff. On the one hand, if I propose the good policies, that's great if I get elected but I'm less likely to be elected. That's not what appeals to voters. They're going to go for the demagogue, and then we're really in a bad shape.

On the other hand, if I cater a bit to the electorate and offer something similar to what the demagogue is offering, when I'm elected that's not so good because I'm going to impoverish the country, but I'm going to impoverish the country less than a demagogue would. By offering those policies, I'm increasing the probability that I'm elected. As you can see, there's a tradeoff. A rational politicians would actually choose the middle ground. What the model predicts is that whenever there's a demand for demagogues, we should see that the mainstream parties also propose more populist policies. As a result, even if the mainstream parties are elected, the economy suffers. In the long run, the country becomes poorer and poorer. It becomes poorer at a lower rate than it would have had the mainstream parties not responded to the demagogue, but it still becomes poorer [crosstalk 00:16:51].

William Howell:

And this is a second order effect. The damage isn't just done by the demagogue running down on the accumulated capital form the past today. It's also because the, “responsible party” gives in with the hopes of keeping the demagogue at bay and caters to the myopic views of average voters.

Wioletta Dziuda:

Yes. One interesting observation that they have is that we could see a country where we don't see politicians where we don't see politicians who be called demagogues elected, but the country becomes poorer and poorer and implements policies that are far from optimal just because somewhere in the background there's this desire for demagogues and there's the possibility that the demagogue will appear.

William Howell: 

So there's no moment in this death spiral where the voters say, "Oh my god, these demagogues are running us into the ground. They gave us what we asked for yesterday and the day before. They did do that. But we're in a decidedly much worse place by virtue of them continuing to cater our interests. Maybe we ought to update and look elsewhere, because boy we're in a sorry lot compared to where we were last week"? It's just, "Now we have even less capital. Now the demagogue is even more attractive to us, and therefore we're going to double down and triple down and quadruple down on this thing that is depleting everything we've got."

Anthony Fowler:

This might be where... if you wanted to tell the story with voter information or voter uncertainty, you'd pause for a second and say, "Wouldn't they learn at some point? Wouldn't they see..."

William Howell:

About the quality of the candidates or...

Anthony Fowler:

The pension crisis keeps getting worse and at some point they would say, "Maybe we do need to address this problem after all."

William Howell:

"Stop playing the slot machine. I'm losing all my money here."

Wioletta Dziuda:

They don't have this moment in their paper, but I have some thoughts on that. But what if it's not the same demagogue? What if it's a different demagogue with different populist policies? Trump said, "You're not doing well. You need lower taxes."

Tape (Donald Trump):

It's the largest... I always say the most massive... but it’s the largest tax cut in the history of our country, and reform, but tax cut.

Wioletta Dziuda:

 "You're not well because you competed with immigrants. We need to build a wall."

Tape (Donald Trump):

Years of uncontrolled immigration have placed enormous pressure on the jobs and wages of working families.

Wioletta Dziuda:

Suppose he implements all of these policies. There's a crisis. What should people infer? Perhaps they would be rationally inferring that those policies were not beneficial to them, but then a different demagogue comes along and says, "All you need is higher taxes because you need to get a federal job guarantee because you need to get Medicare for all because we need to wipe out your student debt. That's what's keeping you from being happy." Then they're like, "Well, we're poor. You're offering us instant gratification. It's not the one that Trump offered us. That was a bad one. But perhaps this one will be a good one." I can envision a world in which it's just different demagogues with different ideas and we still have uncertainty even in your world about all of these other ideas then we kept on elected demagogues as opposed to waking up completely and saying, "We're thinking about this all wrong.

Anthony Fowler: 

"We learned that the tax cut for rich people was a terrible idea, but now we think a four trillion dollar cash transfer to college graduates is a great idea," for instance.

Wioletta Dziuda:         

Yes.

William Howell:          

But it's all with an eye towards present consumption. It's not a good idea in the sense that this will stimulate the economy in some way or set things right for the long haul. The story of the variation of the demagogues you've just introduced, Wioletta, is one in which you could eat this kind of candy or that kind of cake, and that dipping between them might sustain these kinds of repeated investments that seem... investments of trusted authority that seem mad amidst a death spiral, right?

Wioletta Dziuda:         

Yes. They don't talk about this in the paper because in the paper they have those short-sighted voters who don't learn, but if I were to be pessimistic and say, "Even if you believe voters learn, can we still end up in this death spiral?" I would say yes, there's a story I can tell along the lines that I have in the paper that actually generates this disastrous outcome.

Anthony Fowler:          

There's a gloomy prediction in this paper that there's this long-run equilibrium where eventually you have an open democracy and the median voter is picking and you end up in this terrible state where there's no economic development and you only elect demagogues. Although we can point to demagogues in American politics and in lots of other advanced democracies, we have lots of examples of democracies that don't seem to obviously be following the death spiral path. You can argue that in the US we've done a pretty good job. The economy has been steadily growing and whatnot. Do we think this model doesn't apply to the US, or do we think there's some other countervailing factors that prevent us from falling into this trap.

William Howell:          

The easiest explanation for why it doesn't apply to the US... I mean, it applies to the US, but the model would point to the existing stock of capital that is relatively high within the US which makes the demagogue less appealing to the voter. Therefore, it can free up the responsible party to make deeper investments to sustain that stock, whereas in a Latin American country where that stock is considerably lower they're going to be more susceptible to demagoguery precisely because the marginal value of present consumption is higher for a voter because existing stock is so much lower there.

Anthony Fowler:          

There are ebbs and flows and there are negative shocks. We had a Great Depression.

Tape:

1929. The financial house of cards collapses and the over-inflated stock market plunges into a Great Depression. A financial panic grips the world.

Anthony Fowler:          

That was followed by a somewhat populist leader, FDR, who said, "Let's have huge social programs that we've never had before."

Tape:                           

A second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all.

Tape (Franklin D. Roosevelt):                           

I feel timid people will fear progress: will try to give new and strange names for what we are doing. Sometimes they will call it fascism, sometimes communism, sometimes regimentation, and sometimes socialism.

Anthony Fowler:          

To provide short term benefits...

William Howell:          

In order to ward off the Coughlin and Huey Longs: the genuine demagogues.

Anthony Fowler:          

That's right.

Tape (Huey P. Long):                           

According to the tables which we have assembled, it is our estimate that 4% of the American people own 85% of the wealth of America.

Tape (Huey P. Long):                           

We say to America 125 million none shall be too big, none shall be too poor.

Anthony Fowler:          

But that didn't turn into a death spiral. We recovered from that.

William Howell:  

It's true. FDR comes in and does this huge amount of stimulus spending. It's an unbelievably activist government that within the context of the model looks like a demagogue, but is in the service of the national recovery.

Anthony Fowler:          

Or maybe the responsible party behaving as if they were a demagogue. Either way.

Wioletta Dziuda:         

I would guess that maybe we just say we got lucky that we didn't have more demagogues that were of high quality who got elected, but there's one other thing that he and his co-authors talk a lot about, which could go a long way explaining your puzzle. They said if you have very responsible mainstream parties, they should realize that their policies should be counter-cyclical. What does it mean? When things are bad... so during the Great Recession or Great Depression... we should not be ambitious. We should be pragmatic. We should not talk about fighting the climate change or investing in education. Instead we should have lower taxes, increased deficit, give people giveaways, we should just make them happy because we want to make sure that the true populists are not elected. But when times are good and people are happy and the economy is growing, then we should over-invest. We should spend more than what you would think is optimal from your contemporary perspective in education, in infrastructure, in building institutions, in building social capital, because then if we get unlucky in the future... either because we elect a demagogue or because there's some economic crisis that hits us... we have a lot of capital. So we have a lot of periods during which we could have a demagogue and it would still be relatively fine.

William Howell:          

We could absorb that hit.

Wioletta Dziuda:         

Exactly. It's extremely important when the times are good not to just say, "The times are good. Let's do business as usual," but be forward looking and say, "Let's over-invest." Perhaps it's true that the mainstream parties in the US were forward looking enough to make these kind of investments. With Mehdi we had a long conversation that unfortunately couldn't make it to the podcast, but he gave a lot of examples of how the founding fathers and the leaders of this country at the beginning of the history of this country indeed talked about over-investing, building the institutions, and making sure that we're prepared for this future demagogue that they were almost certain would come.

William Howell:          

They also had other checks beyond... First, they weren't imagining responsible parties. They had other kinds of institutional checks that were meant to curb the influence of a demagogue. That's what the source of separation of powers is, the source of the electoral college and these enlightened individuals who could override the selections of average voters should they go with a demagogue. There are other things beyond just the accumulation of additional capital that the founders recognized as potential checks against demagoguery.

Wioletta Dziuda:         

You could also think of those checks and balances as some sort of capital: that these are things that voters don't care about too much when the times are good, so we should invest in them. We should implement filibuster or have two chambers in the parliament. But when times are bad, people want action. They are frustrated by the greed of the government. Then they demand dismantling of those checks and balances. The paper would say be forward looking and when times are good, when people are fine with all these checks and balances, implement them. Maybe I'm stretching the model a bit, but I think...

William Howell:          

That is what they say. They say, "Let's think about that stock not just as capital but think about it as democratic norms and the strength of those democratic norms." Those struck these cast-off claims in that if you think of a demagogue... I think of a demagogue not just as somebody who... as Hamilton put it... flatters the prejudices of voters in order to betray their interests, but as somebody who strategically seeks to undermine a democracy in order to scale back checks on their authority, in order to personalize their power, that that's a constituent feature of what demagoguery is about and why somebody like Trump is frightening. It's not just that he's handing out checks today which might drain our resources tomorrow, it's that he's taking steps to unwind our democracy and accrue more authority for himself.

They do say in the paper that a world in which a demagogue's chances of holding election increases by virtue of these kinds of activities will only strengthen their findings, but it's all built on a model of myopic voting by average citizens and not on the very strategic effort and the difficult effort... the kind of forces that would push back against an effort to unwind a democracy. Those aren't featured front and center. What are featured are capital stock and myopic voters and a would-be responsible voter, not, "Hey, I want to get the judiciary out of my way, or I want to marginalize the press," which introduces all kind of strategic activities that aren't present in this model but that I would like to see in a model of demagoguery.

Anthony Fowler:          

You could argue that this makes the model a little more interesting. I think we can agree that the kind of leader who aims to erode democratic institutions is dangerous for reasons outside this model, but their point is that even in a world where democratic institutions are fine and the median voter always gets exactly the candidate they want nevertheless you can have this... it's not eroding of democracy, but these horrible outcomes that are irreversibly horrible outcomes and in some ways you might argue that's even more damning for democracy: the idea that even when the institutions are fine, democracy could be still be doomed. Maybe that's an overly-gloomy interpretation, but that's a possible outcome in their model, even with a leader that isn't consciously trying to get rid of the judiciary and whatnot.

William Howell:          

I guess it cuts both ways though. I would say that yes, in some ways this is a hard case for them even when democracy is fine, but then you nonetheless observe them pandering to the interest of myopic voters in ways that have long-term deleterious consequences. But the institutions such as they are in this model are pretty weak. It's one so-called responsible party that also is responsible to a voter, and if you look at our democracy it includes a free and independent press, it includes a judiciary with people who are elected for life, it includes separation of powers generally and staggered elections: all of these other things. The work of a demagogue is to find ways to unwind those checks and personalize power. That isn't featured as prominently as I would like to see.

Wioletta Dziuda:         

I think I agree with you, but I think there's a lot that one can say about exactly this issue just by looking at the paper. Why is it that demagogues dismantle democracy and get permission from the voters to do so? I think that one could argue that they propose this very populist policies. They say, "We are going to build a wall at the border and spend all the money on that." Then there are these checks and balances that prevent them from doing so and then they talk to the voters and say, "Look, those checks and balances are not working. I'm promising you the things that you want. What should you do? The only choice we have is to dismantle democracy."

Anthony Fowler:          

Or at least dismantle checks and balances: change democracy in a way that makes it more majoritarian as opposed to more super-majoritarian.

Wioletta Dziuda:         

Exactly. A slightly myopic voter will say, "Yes, this is a trade that I'm willing to take." The basing force is the one that the paper focuses on and then we can understand why observationally we see demagogues dismantling democracy and trying to weaken the media.

William Howell:          

I think you can motivate those kinds of claims within the context of their model, but if you think that judges or the administrative state or an independent press have power unto themselves that allow them to push back in ways that are strategic and that their fortunes are not contingent upon their ability to satisfy the same voter that the demagogue is trying to satisfy, then it becomes a bit more contested and interesting. It's not just the demagogue is going to say, "I want to give you all these things, dear voter, but these other folks won't let me," and so they're going to try to set to work on undermining the influence of these impediments. That's true. But whether or not they succeed... we don't have answers to that from this model, because we need to characterize what those interactions look like.

To my mind, a lot of the concern about Trump is how he is employing particular strategies to do that... to marginalize the press, to hollow out the administrative state... that have very little to do with flattering the prejudices of the median voter today.

Anthony Fowler:          

Will, do you want to revise your views on checks and balances at all in light of this paper? You've written two books where the thesis is largely, "Let's give the president more authority."

William Howell:          

I take it all back.

Wioletta Dziuda:         

You should not.

William Howell:          

I think you're right to say, "Separation of powers," in work that I've done in the past, "presents an impediment to problem solving, and that if on the other side you're worried about the threat that a demagogue presents to the extent that separation of powers provides a more robust kind of check, then does the lone responsible party represented in this model?" It seems like a force for good.

Anthony Fowler:          

What's our final takeaway from this paper? Are we headed towards a death spiral?

William Howell:          

I think so. Are we headed towards a death spiral? What is our final takeaway?

Anthony Fowler:          

Wioletta has given us a positive recommendation about what our responsible party should do in good and bad times. That's an important thing to think about.

Wioletta Dziuda:         

And I think that's my main takeaway. That's the main thing that I learned: that we shouldn't be idealistic when we are fighting a demagogue, but we should be extremely proactive when we are not. We should save a lot. We should invest in democracy when there's no danger of a demagogue so that we prepare for the next Trump, Erdogan, Kaczynski, you name it.

William Howell:          

That sounds right. I guess my lament is that when we get those kinds of deep investments in democracy... empirically, when we get them empirically it's usually in the aftermath of crisis. It's in the aftermath of cataclysmic change and that's precisely when the demagogue's fortunes are rising. If what we can take away is a sense of hope about our ability to keep the demagogue at bay, I think empirically... for reasons that are entirely outside of the model... we're not going to investments precisely because the threat is so distant.

Wioletta Dziuda:          

Anthony?

Anthony Fowler:          

I agree with everything that's been said.

William Howell:          

We came together on this one.

Anthony Fowler:          

We've got to fight about something.

William Howell:          

Next time.

Wioletta Dziuda:         

Thank you.

William Howell:          

Thanks for listening to Not Another Politics Podcast.

Wioletta Dziuda:         

Our show is a podcast from the Harris School of Public Policy and is produced by Matthew Hodapp. Thanks for listening.