lagi heboh, ini buku bikin cebong baper
mari kupas guys wooke
Quote:
Anies Baca Buku 'How Democracies Die', Netizen: Kode Keras!
Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia - Gubernur DKI Jakarta Anies Baswedan mengunggah foto terbaru di akun media sosialnya. Duduk santai di rumah dan berkain sarung dan atasan putih lengan pendek, Anies tampak sedang khusyuk membaca sebuah buku berjudul 'How Democracies Die' atau Bagaimana Demokrasi Mati.
Ia duduk sebelah meja dengan latar belakang rak yang dipenuhi buku-buku, lukisan kaligrafi juga foto-foto keluarganya.
Foto itu diunggah di akun Instragram pribadinya juga Twitter dengan membubuhkan keterangan foto. "Selamat pagi semua. Selamat menikmati Minggu pagi," kata Anies, Minggu (22/11/2020).
Ketika rembulan emas tenggelam di cakrawala angin mati dan laut pun terdiam. Hening di sekeliling bumi sunyi, sepi, mencekam menunggu keputusan sakral, arif, dan bijaksana
Buku How Democracies Die ialah buku fllsafat politik ditulis oleh duo Profesor Harvard, Steven Levitsky dan Daniel Zibllat yang menyebut demokrasi bisa mati karena kudeta-atau mati pelan-pelan karena pemimpin yang otoriter.
Kematian itu bisa tak disadari ketika terjadi selangkah demi selangkah, dengan terpilihnya pemimpin otoriter, disalahgunakannya kekuasaan pemerintah, dan penindasan total atas oposisi.
Dalam ulasannya di Google Books, dijelaskan, ketiga langkah itu sedang terjadi di seluruh dunia.
Dalam buku ini, Steven Levitsky dan Daniel Ziblatt menyampaikan pelajaran penuh wawasan dari sejarah untuk menerangkan kerusakan rezim selama abad ke-20 dan ke-21.
Mereka menunjukkan bahayanya pemimpin otoriter ketika menghadapi krisis besar.
Berdasarkan riset bertahun-tahun, keduanya menyajikan pemahaman mendalam mengenai mengapa dan bagaimana demokrasi mati; suatu analisis pemicu kewaspadaan mengenai bagaimana demokrasi didesak; dan pedoman untuk memelihara dan memperbaiki demokrasi yang terancam, bagi pemerintah, partai politik, dan individu. Sejarah tak berulang.
"Namun kita bisa melindungi demokrasi kita dengan belajar dari sejarah, sebelum terlambat," tulis ulasan tersebut.
Apa yang dibaca Mantan Menteri Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan periode 2014-2019 memicu pertanyaan warganet di media sosial.
"Judul bukunya kode keras, sehat selalu pak! Salam dari Jabar," begitu ungkap warganet, @ozonnmariana.
"Bukunya kode banget," tulis akun @okiez_99.
Terlebih, politik ibu kota belakangan sedang ramai usai kepulangan Imam Besar Front Pembela Islam, Habib Rizieq Shihab ke Jakarta. Anies, sempat menyambangi Rizieq usai pentolan FPI tersebut tiba di tanah air pada 10 November lalu.
Namun, pertermuan itu ternyata berbuntut panjang, Anies harus memenuhi panggilan Polda Metro Jaya terkait dugaan pelanggaran protokol kesehatan di acara Peringatan Maulid Nabi dan pernikahan purti Rizieq yang dihadiri ribuan massa
Ketika rembulan emas tenggelam di cakrawala angin mati dan laut pun terdiam. Hening di sekeliling bumi sunyi, sepi, mencekam menunggu keputusan sakral, arif, dan bijaksana
How Democracies Die
The current political climate across Western democracies, in particular the United States, has been one marked by increasing ideological polarization. Given this phenomenon, How Democracies Die is an important work of admonition against a particular tragedy of democracy. As the authors eloquently write, the âtragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracyâs assassins use the very institutions of democracyâgradually, subtly, and even legallyâto kill itâ (p. 8). How Democracies Die provides a message that is simple, yet not simplistic, and timely, but (hopefully) not too late.
Authors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt begin by motivating their inquiry with an interesting phenomenon. Since the end of the Cold War, most democracies have not been overthrown externally by violent military coups, but internally through the ballot box and the subsequent capture of political institutions by autocrats. Though history doesnât repeat itself, âit rhymesâ (p. 10), and particularly alarmed by the recent election of Donald Trump, the authors wish to uncover similar patterns, or ârhymesâ as they would put it, of institutional erosion across democracies both in the distant and more recent past, including Venezuela, Turkey, and Hungary.
What provokes, or initiates, this erosion of democratic institutions? Similar to the argument advanced by Robert Higgs in Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), the seeds of authoritarianism are sown during crisis. âOne of the great ironies of how democracies die,â Levitsky and Ziblatt state, âis that the very defense of democracy is often used as a pretext for its subversionâ (p. 92), in which elected autocrats use economic crises, wars, or terrorist attacks âto justify antidemocratic measuresâ (p. 93). Historical examples illustrating this point include not only the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany, but also more recently Alberto Fujimori in Peru and Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. Like any game, democratic governance is built upon rules, both formal and informal. However, crises are often utilized by nascent demagogues to bend, or otherwise change, the rules of the game for their own political expediency. In each of these cases, establishment politicians overlooked the warning signs and opened the door for the ascension of such demagogues.
The four key indicators, or behavioral warning signs, of authoritarian behavior that Levitsky and Ziblatt outline are (1) the rejection, in words or action, of the democratic rules of the game, (2) the denial of the legitimacy of political opponents, (3) toleration or encouragement of violence, and (4) a willingness to curtail civil liberties of opponents, including the media (pp. 21-24). According to the authors, we should be wary of the fact that Trump exemplifies each of these characteristics (pp. 65-67).
Until 2016, the American democratic system has able to withstand such unabashed authoritarian tendencies and exclude overt demagoguery in two ways, both formal and informal. Until the rise of Trump, the gatekeepers of democracy (p. 37), such as the leaders and bosses of political parties, have effectively marginalized extremists from their parties, both on the left, such as former Governor and Senator of Louisiana, Huey Long, as well as on the right, such as Senator of Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy. However, as Levitsky and Ziblatt argue, democracy cannot survive through formal political channels alone. âDemocracies do have written rules (constitutions) and referees (the courts). But these work best, and survive longest, in countries where written constitutions are by their own unwritten rules of the gameâ (emphasis original, p. 101), these unwritten rules being what Levitsky and Ziblatt refer to as âthe soft guardrails of democracyâ (p. 101).
Two crucially important informal norms that the authors highlight, and explain the robustness of American democracy, are (1) mutual toleration and (2) institutional forbearance. The first norm refers to the acknowledgement of the legitimacy of oneâs political opponents to compete for power through the democratic process, so long as they play within constitutional rules (p. 102). Mutual toleration excludes the use, or even encouragement, of threats and violence to bar political opponents from competing for office. The second norm is closely related to the rule of law; institutional forbearance means that elected officials cannot exercise legal action that intentionally privileges one group of individuals at the expense of another. For example, the passage of poll taxes or literacy tests, as occurred throughout the post-Reconstruction South, was generally applied across the population, making no reference to race. However, Southern states passed these laws knowing the intended effect would be to disenfranchise African Americans, who voted overwhelmingly Republican, and therefore restore the Democratsâ dominance in the South. This example was a violation of institutional forbearance: though it was rule by law, it was not rule of law.
The reversal of these antidemocratic measures via the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, according to Levitsky and Ziblatt, had a polarizing by-product, generating a partisan realignment among Republicans and Democrats along ideological lines. âWith the disappearance of conservative Democrats and liberal Republicansâ after this realignment, âareas of overlap between the parties gradually disappearedâ (p. 169). What has further fueled this political polarization, generating an erosion of democratic norms, was the emergence of a system of presidential primaries. âBeginning in 1972, the vast majority of the delegates to both the Democratic and Republican conventions would be elected in state-level primaries and caucusesâ (p. 50). This shift in the political selection process meant that the âpath to nomination no longer had to pass through the party establishment. For the first time, the party gatekeepers could be circumventedâand beatenâ (p. 51). By placing presidential nominations increasingly in the hands of voters, it eroded the preexisting peer-review process of candidates, opening the door to political outsiders. These formal changes, combined with the rise of social media (p. 56), would unleash a set of political dynamics, according to Levitsky and Ziblatt, in which each party would increasingly cater to their ideological base, from which a populist candidate like Donald Trump could emerge, unreliant on the political establishment and with complete disregard of democratic norms. Even if Trumpâs presidency does not break the âhard guardrails,â or the formal institutions of our constitutional republic, by eroding the informal democratic norms of mutual tolerance and institutional forbearance, âhe has increased the likelihood that a future president willâ (p. 203).
With the institutional erosion of democratic norms, what political lessons can we draw from How Democracies Die? Given our polarized political environment, how can we save democracy from itself? âWhere institutional channels exist,â Levitsky and Ziblatt state, âopposition groups should use themâ (p. 217). That is because the use of extralegal means and other political measures to oppose a potential demagogue will only generate a set of consequences that are undesirable to proponents of democracy, namely to increase political polarization and legitimize the erosion of the rule of law by further stripping democracy of its remaining protective guardrails. Therefore, opposition to authoritarian tendencies in democracy âshould seek to preserve, rather than violate, democratic rules and normsâ (p. 217).
This all implies that the reduction of political polarization requires that political parties escape the clutches of special-interest groups, as the authors argue (p. 223). However, the elimination of political polarization fundamentally requires the elimination of political discretion, the basis upon which interest groups not only lobby for special privileges, but also the basis upon which authoritarianism is built. As Levitsky and Ziblatt argue, most âelected autocrats begin by offering leading political, business, or media figures public positions, favors, perks, or outright bribes in exchange for their support or, at least, their quiet neutralityâ (pp. 81â82). Therefore, the road to authoritarianism can only be prevented if political parties are prevented from writing laws and offering privileges that are intended to benefit one interest group at the expense of another. To quote F.A. Hayekâs The Road to Serfdom, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994, p. 79), if âdemocracy resolves on a task which necessarily involves the use of power which cannot be guided by fixed rules, it must become arbitrary power.â
How Democracies Die is both an important and interesting work of political science, and contains many implicit, yet important themes that complement those from Constitutional Political Economy, Public Choice, and Austrian Economics. These themes include the importance of a dual level of institutional analysis, the capture of political institutions by politicians, the dynamics of interventionism, and the importance of congruence, or âstickinessâ between formal democratic institutions and informal democratic norms (see Peter J. Boettke, Christopher J. Coyne, and Peter T. Leeson, âInstitutional Stickiness and the New Development Economics,â American Journal of Economics and Sociology 67 [April 2008]: 331-358). Scholars working across these traditions will certainly find much to learn, unpack, and develop from reading How Democracies Die.
Ketika rembulan emas tenggelam di cakrawala angin mati dan laut pun terdiam. Hening di sekeliling bumi sunyi, sepi, mencekam menunggu keputusan sakral, arif, dan bijaksana
Saya masih belum percaya bahwa Jokowi adalah pemimpin otoriter.
Buktinya? Dia dan jajarannya tetap tidak berdaya menghadapi ormas-ormas Islam dengan segala bentuk intoleransinya.
Pilpres kemarin Jokowi menang mutlak hingga lebih dari 75% di wilayah non-Muslim. Tapi nyatanya dia masih mencoba merangkul atau lebih tepatnya membiarkan perilaku kalian-kalian ini, dan membiarkan kami ditindas.
Begitu juga dengan Kemenag. Katanya mau memberantas radikalisme, omong kosong. Umat Kristen di Dharmasraya tetap dilarang merayakan Natal. Renovasi Gereja Katolik di Karimun tetap digagalkan.
Kata buku itu betul kok, pemerintahan akan diuji ketika menghadapi krisis. Tapi dalam kondisi seperti ini pun dia tetap tidak seperti pemimpin yang otoriter. Demo tetap dibiarkan. Yang mau menyambut habib juga dibiarkan. Tidak ada tindakan tegas bagi mereka yang berkerumun tanpa masker dan social distancing.
Apakah pemerintahan Jokowi akan tumbang??? Mungkin saja. Tapi jika penggantinya adalah pujaan ormas Islam seperti kalian, saya tidak akan rela.