Summary of Moisés Naím's The Revenge of Power

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 Autocrats are political leaders who reach power through a fairly democratic election, and then set out to dismantle the checks on executive power through populism, polarization, and post-truth.
#2 The second strategy used to gain and keep power is polarization. Relentlessly demonizing opponents and portraying wedge issues that divide the nation are the divisive tactics that often yield great results.
#3 Polarization eliminates the possibility of a middle ground, pushing every single person and organization to take sides. In our age, it is facilitated by the dynamics of fandom and identity.
#4 The 3P framework is a system for taking, wielding, and maintaining unlimited power in a world that doesn’t recognize that kind of power as legitimate. It solves that problem by faking fealty to the liberal consensus, all the while eating away at it from the inside.

Sujets

• Politique
• Democracy
• Ideology

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 24 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669359517
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Moisés Naím's The Revenge of Power
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Autocrats are political leaders who reach power through a fairly democratic election, and then set out to dismantle the checks on executive power through populism, polarization, and post-truth.

#2

The second strategy used to gain and keep power is polarization. Relentlessly demonizing opponents and portraying wedge issues that divide the nation are the divisive tactics that often yield great results.

#3

Polarization eliminates the possibility of a middle ground, pushing every single person and organization to take sides. In our age, it is facilitated by the dynamics of fandom and identity.

#4

The 3P framework is a system for taking, wielding, and maintaining unlimited power in a world that doesn’t recognize that kind of power as legitimate. It solves that problem by faking fealty to the liberal consensus, all the while eating away at it from the inside.

#5

The need for this new technology for aspiring autocrats arose only recently, in the twenty-first century. In the twentieth century, dictators did not need to hide their dominance over the political sphere. They could wield it openly through force of arms or by offering fealty to one of the dominant superpowers.

#6

3P power is a reaction to the fragmentation and degradation of traditional forms of power. It is a way for those determined to wield power without limits to adapt to a world where the power of incumbents is under constant challenge and where tenures are rare.

#7

3P power is a form of autocracy that hides in the background until it is no longer necessary to hide. It then strikes, and by the time it sets aside the cloak of stealth, it’s often too late.

#8

The revenge of power is when leaders attempt to dismantle existing checks and balances to consolidate power. This can be seen in Poland, India, Bolivia, and the United States, which all have leaders attempting to unseat their respective Supreme Courts.

#9

3P autocrats around the world have developed a common set of strategies and tactics to reconstitute absolute power in a moment that is hostile to it. They bend the institutions of the state to their will.

#10

The most basic problem in designing a government that truly answers to the people it governs is so old it’s best known in its Latin form: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes. Who will guard the guardians.

#11

Pseudolaw is a corrupt facsimile of the rule of law that is, in fact, its enemy. It borrows the outward appearances of law to pervert it and make it meaningless. It is used to attack mainstream science and delay government regulations that could hurt profits.

#12

Pseudolaw is often used by autocrats to cement their power. It is typically built on the thin foundation of obvious nonsense, and is used to concentrate power into the hands of a few.

#13

To truly understand the 3P power, you must learn to spot pseudolaw and understand the nihilism at its core. This can be difficult, as it often seems like the post-truth goals of these regimes’ pseudolaw are simply to generate enough confusion and doubt about what is and isn’t legal to allow them to proceed with their plans.

#14

Term limits are meant to prevent rulers from accumulating too much power by making it impossible to stay in power for too long. This Putin-Medvedev arrangement made a mockery of the term limit’s intent. But it shredded the spirit of the rule without technically breaking it.

#15

In recent years, presidential term limits have become increasingly difficult to uphold. Amending the constitution is the most common path to extending term limits, followed by rewriting it entirely.

#16

One of the clearest cases of a democratically elected leader who sets out to terminate term limits is that of Sri Lanka’s president Gotabaya Rajapaksa. In mid-2020, his party won a majority in parliament, which meant that the president’s brother, Mahinda, could continue as prime minister.

#17

America’s most distinguished contribution to the canon of pseudolaw is gerrymandering, the art of drawing election district lines to maximize one party’s representation over another. This practice has been completely transformed and deeply radicalized in the twenty-first century by the development of sophisticated mapping software.

#18

Gerrymandering is one of the most aggressive examples of 3Ping, but the United States is not the only country that does it. Other countries also stack their judiciary with political appointees.

#19

Right-wing populists have also used the 3P framework to gain power in central and eastern Europe, most notably in Hungary and Poland. In Hungary, PiS took power in 2015 and moved quickly to make sure meddlesome judges could not short-circuit its governing program.

#20

Trump’s appointment of conservative judges, especially in the Supreme Court, was worrying, but not the most worrying aspect of his approach to justice. The more disturbing aspect was his disregard for the rule of law, which he showed in his appointments of unqualified judges and his disregard for traditional norms of behavior in office.

#21

Another example of how 3P autocrats attempt to gain and consolidate power is Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In 2010, Erdoğan’s AKP party put a referendum to Turkey’s voters that dramatically strengthened his control over the judiciary. The proposal deprived sitting senior judges of their long-standing role in vetting the appointments of junior judges, giving the AKP’s majority in parliament final say over the board that makes judicial appointments.

#22

One way to control a court system is through court-packing, which is when you expand the number of seats on a court to create a majority of cronies. This was done in 2004 by Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, and in 2016 in North Carolina when the Republican-led legislature realized a number of GOP-appointed appeals court judges would reach retirement age in the coming years and their replacements would be appointed by the new Democratic governor.

#23

Autocrats would rather eliminate elections altogether, as they are fickle and can be swayed by the electoral defeat of an aspiring autocrat. Once these tricks become established in a country’s political culture, it becomes extremely difficult to root them out.

#24

Lame-duck session laws, which are passed during the last few months of a government’s existence, can be used to strip powers from an incoming government and give them to the previous one. This is what happened in Poland when the Law and Justice Party won the 2015 parliamentary election, and what is happening in North Carolina right now.

#25

Autocratic governments often spread by imitation. For example, Poland’s Law and Justice Party, which admires Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, did not arrive at its political and economic reform program by chance.