Crisis mode

Housekeeping — I’m getting my writing sea-legs back under me. This is not as well-researched or expressed as what I’m used to expecting from myself, so please bear with me.

So, one thing that has been bothering me, a lot, in our 21st century fiasco, is how every single election, lately, has resulted in an inconclusive clusterfuck.

Let’s go back in time…

1. First, we have the narrow, contested Bolivian election, where the official results had Morales winning with less than a majroity and a tiny sliver enough of a lead to avoid a runoff.
   This stew combined to create protests and eventually Morales’ departure from office and exile to Mexico. This of course, has led to counter-protesting and the two sides accusing the other of illegitmacy, illiberality, and forming a coup. The situation is chaotic and unlikely to resolve soon.

 

2. Then, you have this pair of Spanish elections ending with no clear winner and minority governments.
3. In Israel, the same basic story persists, with two consectuive elections unable to form a conclusive result.
   As of this writing, Benjamin Netanyahu has been unable to form a government, and Benny Gantz, the former opposition leader, is has three days left on his one-month deadline to form his own government (and rumors say that he’s seeking a historical minority government backed by Israeli Arab parties
4. Not to mention the famous paralysis in the British political system, where Theresa May held an election in an attempt to extend her narrow majority, and instead lost it, and then found the Brexit process hijacked by Ulster Unionists. The situation persisted to have a broken Parliament deliberate over Brexit in a broken way until another election, to be held December 12, was finally decided. UK polling is famously horrible, but if you look at it, it is all over the place (remember that single member districting is even more distorting in the UK than in the US, and national polls are not good predictors of Parliament seat totals
5. Hell, even famously stable Sweden had this mess of an election result last year.
6. Italy is also in crisis as the traditional parties have collapsed, and you have unstable coalitions between unorthodox parties and the remnants of the mainstream flickering in and out of life. But then again, political instability is hardly new to Italy.
7. And of course, indecisive results are the new normal in the United States, with being the last time the presidential election was won with a majority of the vote and by more than five points (though you could argue 1996 was pretty decisive).

There are counterexamples, but they kind of prove the point, like Obrador winning decisively in Mexico on an anti-establishment platform, or Macron winning decisively in a runoff against the far-right Marine Le Pen in a runoff after a very, very narrow four way statistical tie in the first round, and the recent dominance of the BJP in India, but bringing up the BJP brings us to my point — the places that seem to actually be creating decisive election results are also the places that are actively undermining the institutions of liberal democracy, whether it’s Modi putting all of Kashmir under house arrest, Ergodan’s suppression of his Kurdish population and politically motivated arrests, or the the political crisis in Thailand, and of course, the rise of Putinism.

What does all of this mean? One can certainly piece together any number of causes. But it certainly seems really strange that every country in the world seems at its own throat with a 50/50 standoff unless one side or the other has opted to descend into authoritarianism. Or maybe we’re just in another 1848, with the old way of being falling apart, and the new way of being not quite being ready.

And it scares me, becuase I see a lot of stalemate, a lot of things that are broken, but no one is really offering any solutions.