The world in a crisis of democracy: Prof. Dr. Boris Vormann publishes new book Legitimizing Authority: American Government and the Promise of Equality

Prof. Dr. Boris Vormann has recently published a new book, Legitimizing Authority: American Government and the Promise of Equality. Co-written with Christian Lammert, the book explores American politics while presenting theories that apply to the broader global political system. In an interview for Bard College Berlin, Vormann discusses the book and its implications.

Vormann states that the world is currently facing an upheaval, characterized by authoritarianism, ethnonationalism, and inequality, among other symptoms. “Why are we seeing this crisis of liberal democracy across otherwise very different contexts?,” he asks in the interview. The explanation, he and Lammert propose, does not lie in any one simple answer such as specific institutions or the media, but is rather something bigger: a crisis of legitimacy. Their book Legitimizing Authority explores how legitimacy works in modern states and what mechanisms make a political regime legitimate.

Tracing political history from the seventeenth century onwards, when states no longer rooted legitimacy in monarchs under divine law, Vormann and Lammert argue that states gain legitimacy in three ways, which they define as three “I”s: identity, institutions, and indifference.

The idea of identity is based on the principle of equality, that “people who govern us should be the same as us,” as Vormann explains. But, he continues, “It's not enough just to have someone who is of the same identity—a German or French person” to make a government of equals legitimate. As he points out, “You need a set of institutions to make sure that power is actually checked… such as the media, protection of individual rights, protection of minority rights.” These institutions, as well as the education systems and social protections for citizens required to uphold them, began to be largely provided by states in the North Atlantic region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Finally, the third aspect of legitimacy that Vormann and Lammert claim in the book is indifference: “Sometimes political regimes can also be legitimate not just if they provide these institutions and satisfy these identitarian claims, [but if] they also create indifference. If people are indifferent because they can consume cheaply for example—they have cheap goods coming in from somewhere else or cheap credit—this keeps the system afloat... So a liberal democracy might function, not because it has particularly good democratic citizens, but because it has satisfied customers.”

However, Vormann explains, “We seem to be hitting the limits of that regime because we are facing planetary boundaries; not everyone can simply consume and be indifferent.” Thus, the crisis of liberal democracies that the world is currently seeing is at its core a crisis of legitimacy. Nations like the United States can no longer rely on indifference to maintain their legitimacy, and now have to turn to other means.

“I think what we're seeing in many cases,” Vormann states, “is simply that we have a range of illiberal, authoritarian, or proto-authoritarian leaders, such as Trump and others who are saying, ‘Well, the state isn't really delivering, and it's not delivering for the true people—we should be focusing on white, male Americans.’” This response is characterized by a turn toward ethnonationalism, often accomplished through fear, particularly of foreigners. 

However, Vormann and Lammert also theorize other potential scenarios. Another scenario is that of reinforcing the social welfare state. Vormann explains, “We're thinking a little bit in the book about Biden… He's invested massively in infrastructure, in particular through the Inflation Reduction Act but also the CHIPS Act. Infrastructures, education, and the transition towards a sustainable economy were attempts by Biden, I think, to reinvent this idea of the social welfare state and update it for the 21st century.”

What can individuals do amidst these crises of democracy and indifference? While Vormann asserts the issue is primarily a larger social task, it can also be an individual responsibility “for us to not just be consumers (passive and disgruntled as soon as our consumption choices aren't fulfilled), but also think about the public good. We need something more than just rational value maximizers. Somehow we have to develop a sense… of what it means to be a good citizen.” But ultimately, he continues, “We also need systems that support that kind of thinking. So we need a certain type of education system. We need what has been called decommodification… And maybe at a global level, we have to talk about what kinds of public goods we need for democracies to flourish, because what we're seeing right now is the opposite—that democracies are coming apart and that public goods are also dwindling.”

Vormann is a regular commentator on American politics and the crisis of liberal democracy in both scholarly publications and international media outlets. View the full interview about Legitimizing Authority: American Government and the Promise of Equality on YouTube, and view options to purchase the book at the publisher’s website.

By: Sophia Paudel, Bard College Berlin Communications

Post Date: 01-05-2024