Democratic regression in comparative perspective: scope, methods, and causes
From TFA: &quot;Democratic regression is particularly visible among the G-20 countries&quot;.  This is the money-shot.  I went back <i>after</i> I speculated that the big deal would be if <i>existing</i>, strongly &quot;democratic&quot; countries were sliding and found this quote.  Strong democracies are sliding which is a much bigger deal than young, weak democracies doing so.<p>I&#x27;m in the US (so this comment is US-centric).  As with so much else over the past 6 months, the tension between federal powers and state powers is being thrown into relief.  In particular, the popular idea that democracy is good&#x2F;right has long been suspect: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.history.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;electoral-college-founding-fathers-constitutional-convention" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.history.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;electoral-college-founding-fath...</a> .<p>This is the effect of the Internet and of the &quot;Long Tail&quot;: the monetization&#x2F;politicization of the &quot;long tail&quot; is in segmenting and then aggregating bits of the long tail into larger and larger groups of marginalized members of the population.  With poor communication, &quot;the fringe&quot; is only a fringe locally; with near-infinite communication, the fringe is everyone: FB and the various tailored news feeds drape a comfortable bubble over us and cause us to see our view as (manifestly) the only view (since it&#x27;s <i>our</i> only view, it must be the <i>only</i> view).<p>As a &quot;Republican&quot;, I point the finger at Republicans, a political group which has been a 10x political operation.  Wedge issues have come home to roost and we&#x27;re much worse off for it.  And Republicans have played the state&#x2F;local-politics game very, very well.<p>As others have noted, democracy is a game best played locally but our pervasive communications systems are forcing it to be played globally and this is happening quickly enough that our political systems haven&#x27;t come to grips with it yet.