Deep Dive with Shawn

The Final Bulwark Against Authoritarianism: Free Elections and the Courts (w/ Dr. Laura Gamboa)

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America stands at a democratic crossroads, facing threats not from invasion or coup, but from methodical dismantling from within. This is the reality: federal agencies are gutted, political opponents are targeted, judges are being arrested for not advancing Trump's agenda, and courts are delegitimized with alarming speed.

Dr. Laura Gamboa, democracy expert from Notre Dame University, and author of the book Resisting Backsliding: Opposition Strategies against the Erosion of Democracy, joins the pod and brings critical insight from her studies of democratic backsliding across Latin America. What makes our current crisis particularly insidious is how democratic institutions themselves become weapons against democracy. Unlike military coups, this erosion happens gradually enough that many citizens fail to recognize the danger until it's too late.

The courts represent our most significant remaining bulwark, but they cannot stand alone. Gamboa explains how Colombia's constitutional court successfully blocked President Uribe's authoritarian ambitions – but only because they received visible public support and political allies in Congress. When judges feel abandoned, as happened in Venezuela, they become reluctant to oppose even clearly unconstitutional power grabs.

For resistance to succeed, several strategies prove essential: protests need focused goals rather than diffuse expressions of discontent; democracy defenders must build coalitions beyond partisan lines; and Americans should learn from countries that have successfully resisted democratic erosion rather than reinventing strategies. Dr. Gamboa outlines some innovative tactics beyond traditional demonstrations that we need to start considering, particularly focused on protecting electoral integrity.

The window for action is narrowing daily. Once courts are fully co-opted and election administration compromised, reversing democratic decline becomes exponentially harder. 

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Dr. Gamboa:

In Colombia, what Álvaro Uribe did was to literally make them the target of right-wing militias, like kind of suggesting that they were somehow helpers of the left-wing guerrilla, and so I think there are various ways in which this could happen. I don't think it has happened yet. I think we're seeing a lot of justices incredibly brave justices fighting back, and I think they need protection now, once the judiciary is co-opted, then, I don't know, there would be a like. I think we wouldn't have a conversation. Whether this has caused a Rubicon or not, I think it would be very clear it has.

Shawn:

Welcome to Deep Dive with me, s C Fettig. America is not immune. For decades, we have believed that democratic erosion was something that happened elsewhere, in fragile states, in young democracies, in places that hadn't yet matured politically. But we were wrong. Today, the United States is facing a very real threat a democratic crisis not born of revolution or war, but of deliberate dismantling from within. We are now several months into Donald Trump's second presidency, a presidency that began with vows to punish political enemies, rewrite the rules of governance and remove what he calls vermin from American life. The Justice Department has been repurposed to target journalists and critics, federal agencies have been gutted and staffed with loyalists, allies have been alienated and the US is now cozying up to one of the most aggressive and anti-democratic leaders in the world, vladimir Putin. Investments in soft power have been canceled, the rhetoric has turned darker, more authoritarian, and federal and state-level Republican lawmakers are introducing laws that limit voting rights, restrict academic freedom and give partisan actors unprecedented control over every aspect of our lives. This isn't hypothetical. It's happening now, and the question is no longer, if American democracy is in trouble, it's how bad it gets and what can still be done, if anything can still be done to save it, to help us understand this dangerous moment and what we might learn from countries that have been down this road before.

Shawn:

My guest today is Dr Laura Gamboa. She's a professor of democracy and global affairs at the University of Notre Dame and author of the book Resisting Backsliding Opposition Strategies Against the Erosion of Democracy. Her work focuses on how democracies erode and, more importantly, how opposition movements can resist that erosion In a very real sense. Dr Gamboa offers something we are in desperate need of right now not just a diagnosis, but a path forward to save democracy and, if it's already gone, maybe some ideas for how to regain it. We recorded this episode when my seasonal allergies were really kicking my ass, and you can kind of hear it in my voice. So if you're wondering why, I might sound a little off, well, that's why. All right, if you like this episode, or any episode, please give it a like, share and follow on your favorite podcast platform and or subscribe to the podcast on YouTube. And, as always, if you have any thoughts, questions or comments, please feel free to email me at deep dive with Shawn at gmailcom. Let's do a deep dive, dr Gamboa. Thanks for being here. How are you?

Dr. Gamboa:

Thank you so much, Shawn, for inviting me. I'm good.

Shawn:

Good, good.

Shawn:

So since Donald Trump's first presidency, we've been talking seriously about democratic backsliding in the United States, and it's really difficult to quantify or objectively identify the moment, if or when democracy has failed. And it's really difficult to quantify or objectively identify the moment if or when democracy has failed. And for many people in the United States, january 6th was the moment. For others it was when the Republican Party refused to impeach you know, which was a sign that perhaps the Republican Party wasn't in a place in which they were willing to, you know, hold Trump accountable. And then for others, it was when Trump said he'd be a dictator, at least for day one, or when he deported people legally in the United States without any due process. And then for others, it was if or when Trump openly defies the courts.

Shawn:

But then the goalposts shifted over time and it's become if he defies the Supreme Court, and what it feels like is that we're all just trying to hold on to something that might be a fiction, which is that our democracy can withstand all that Trump and Trumpism is throwing at it, and I tend to feel like the fact that we are where we are suggests that democracy in the United States is vulnerable, and it has been so weakened that we're already maybe past the Rubicon that even if there is some check that kicks in whether it's public opinion or some belated pushback from within the Republican Party or whatever the fact that we got where we are, that we blew past so many checks and balances to me that signals that we're in trouble. So, given that this is something you've studied and you've written about, I guess my first question to you is how bad is it?

Dr. Gamboa:

I think it's pretty bad. So I'll tell you what I tell my students. I think the definition of democracy what is and what is not is kind of the dark hole of political science, because it's such a broad concept that some people think about it and many people think about it differently. But the way I think about it is I think about democracy as a regime in which there are free and fair elections, and in order to have free and fair elections, you need to have other things like freedom of the press, impartial referees. The opposition needs to be able to campaign, they need resources, they need access to media outlets, you need to have independent courts so that people are not, you know, sent in jail for saying the wrong thing and opponents are not persecuted but using the state apparatus and all sorts of things that I think are essential to be able to have a government for the people, by the people.

Dr. Gamboa:

I think in general, the democracy in the United States has been eroding for a while now. I think definitely at the national level, I mean since since January 20. But I actually think subnationally, there has been incredibly concerning situations in states where were literally elections are manipulated in a way that the majority of the people does not get their will right, and so I think I think, subnationally, if before January 20, if you lived in Vermont, democracy was awesome, but if you lived in Texas or Georgia, it was less so Right. So I think, in general in the United States, this is this is kind of acceleration of that at speeds that I don't think I've seen before. So what we have seen is the executive taking over other branches of government and using them to persecute opponents. Send them to El Salvador, opponents. Sent them to salvador.

Dr. Gamboa:

They have been uh trying to to undermine law firms that could potentially help these opponents. Um, they are undermining the courts, not only by uh ignoring their decisions, but also by using a language that delegitimizes them. Literally, in this administration, if you're a friend of the, of the, you get pardoned. If you did your job and follow the law, you are persecuted. The way universities are being penalized using tax law, using federal resources, I think this is unprecedented. I think it's unprecedented not only in the US, I think it's unprecedented in the world and I think it's incredibly, incredibly concerning. So much that one of my concerns is that when people tell me well, we'll have to wait until the midterms, and my main concern is I don't know that the midterms are going to be free and fair enough that the opposition will have a decent chance to succeed.

Shawn:

I guess I want to follow one of the thoughts here that's embedded in your response, which is this attack on universities, and it's also on the media, it's also on law firms, but I think one of the things that's starting to come into focus as a result of it that I think is really alarming and perhaps is not getting enough attention for the damage that it's doing, is this attack on universities, in the sense that even if eventually, the courts were to somehow put a stop to this and Trump were to acquiesce to a court decision, people are leaving. People in the academic world, researchers and scientists are talking about exoduses and purges, and I read some story about how 40 academics in the last month or so have already accepted positions in France, and the reason I'm bringing this up is because this is its own form of self-deportation and these are people that are actually contributing to American excellence and I don't think we get that back post-Trump, you know.

Dr. Gamboa:

I think you're right.

Dr. Gamboa:

I think we won't get the these people back, like one of the one of the most standard outcomes of most dictatorships is a brain drain, right?

Dr. Gamboa:

Well, we saw it across Latin America, with Argentinians and Chileans and Brazilians and Uruguayans leaving their countries to establish themselves in other places, particularly if they were sort of upper middle class academics, because it's not only that they want to leave, is that they have the resources to do so, right?

Dr. Gamboa:

I think, however, that what I see at universities that I think is even more serious is some sort of self-censorship. So, uh, one of the things that you start seeing is universities canceling certain events, or academics like me not that I have censored myself, but academics like me who study things like democracy or, you know, like Palestine or Israel, just not talking about it in public. Right, they put their hands in the sand, they do their projects, they publish in their journals, and, as much as I enjoy the political science journals, these are journals that are not widely read journals. These are journals that are not widely read, and so, to a certain extent, I think the other thing that I think is more concerning and in the interest of the government is for a lot of academics who would have been otherwise very vocal, to just quiet out because they're threatening their future. Right, like I can tell you, we all work really hard to get into these jobs and the government is threatening our future.

Shawn:

The other thing that I wanted to talk about is the opposition party, because a lot of folks will argue that a healthy democracy needs an opposition party, a strong opposition party, and they point to the United States as being a country that has a history of strong opposition parties and so that, to them, is a lifeline, it's an object of hope. But at the same time and I don't know how much this extends beyond just the Democratic base, but there's a lot of hand-wring definitely seemed to be more of a strong opposition party in elections that they lost by wider margins, right. So that's a little demoralizing to some people to see the Democratic Party now. But you study opposition parties and you study how they can resist or enable democratic erosion. So what do you think is going on with the Democratic Party and how effective are they right now?

Dr. Gamboa:

I think the Democratic Party is facing a couple of problems. I think problem number one is very unique to the United States and is the fact that, unlike what has happened in Hungary, in Venezuela, in Colombia, argentina, el Salvador, the United States does not recognize this phenomenon. It's hard to identify what is happening because, at least to a certain level, it has never happened before. I would contest that in the sense that I think this country really didn't democratize until the Voting Civil Rights Act, but that's a different story. Until the Voting Civil Rights Act, but that's a different story. In general, my sense is that part of the response has been the result of at least the faction of the Democratic Party believing that this is business as usual, that what they need to do is leverage sort of the chaos that the administration is going to be and kind of gear up for the midterms. Of course, what I would say to that is well, we don't know if there's going to like if, when it's springing to action, there might not be midterms. The second thing that I think happens and I think this is actually more common, it has happened, I've seen it happening in other countries is actually so sort of recently, uh, with the news about newsome criticizing uh one holland's trip to el salvador. One of the things that I see, there is a clash between sort of your individual ambition to protect your brand and to appeal to a group of voters that you want to appeal because you want to run for president, or to be more generous, because you think that that's kind of the winning message for the democratic party more broadly, and and sort of the, the need to, to, to just launch yourself in defense of, of democracy and make democracy popular again, and and and I've seen these in Venezuela, which is one of the countries I study the most what you observe, what I have observed throughout the last 25 years, is opposition leaders self-sabotaging a fairly decent efforts to democratize Venezuela at various points in time, because they don't want to damage their brand for what they hope is going to be a future presidential election right. They don't want to be unpopular, they don't want to negotiate with the government, they don't want to uh, you know like. They don't want to run with the wrong message because they are afraid that that might hamper their ability to run for for president when the transition to democracy happens. Of course, what ends up happening is because there isn't a collective effort or is very rare. There is no transition to democracy, ergo there is no presidential campaign. So I think that that's happening too.

Dr. Gamboa:

And then the third thing that I think is happening, I think has to do with a longer problem in the Democratic Party I think it's also true for the Republican Party which is a lack of party structure. So if this was Latin America, I would be talking about party system deinstitutionalization, but I don't think that's really what we're observing here. What we're seeing here is the Democratic Party relying a lot on what others have called satellite organizations in order to mobilize people. So they rely on groups. Just to give you a couple examples like you know, lgbtq plus groups or, you know, like African-American groups, and in order to be able to get those groups to mobilize voters, they need to give all of these groups something.

Dr. Gamboa:

And so I think, in the long term, that has turned sort of democratic politicians in particular, very afraid of saying the wrong thing and antagonizing the wrong group. Well, I think it turns out that parties, one of the roles that parties have to fulfill, is prioritizing some of these things. It's not that politicians cannot agree with all of these things, it's that they cannot say yes to everybody at the same time, right. And so I think right now less so now than two months ago the Democratic Party was like paralyzed, like if you're afraid that anybody's going to yell at you if you say something. Well, you just don't say anything. Right, and so I think that that is a problem, because right now, what needs to happen is we need to see movement. We need to see Van Hollen going to El Salvador. We need to see Cory Booker doing the filibuster. We need, we need to see some, some, some movement doing the filibuster.

Shawn:

We need to see some movement.

Shawn:

I'm glad that you bring this up, because I do think that we, the general populace, perhaps gives too much credit to politicians to be understanding the moment they're living through and to be strong enough to confront that moment.

Shawn:

I think Newsom's a great example here with what he's been doing lately is that it seems like a lot of these politicians that are potential leaders in the party and clearly have aspirational goals to higher office seem to be trying to thread a needle right now needs, and so I would argue that that is some type of democratic resistance right or action taken to save democracy.

Shawn:

And what I feel like is happening is either one of two things or both. One is that they don't see the moment that's right in front of them, or two, as I think you talked about, their aspirations and their goals supersede in some narcissistic way the moment that we're living through, and I guess I feel, like you know, nobody gets to really choose the moment that they're living through, and we would all love to live through a moment that's very peaceful and everybody can succeed and we can all make a lot of money and die happy right, but unfortunately that's not the moment that's been handed to us and I feel like what's happening is that a lot of the people that could be leaders in the Democratic Party are placing their own futures in front of an existential moment.

Dr. Gamboa:

I think that's right. I think all of these groups coexist right. Like the ones that put their own personal future or aspirations in front of the existential moment, I think there is the ones that truly believe that this is just business as usual because they don't know anything else. I was telling somebody else today that I think for me, as a Latin American, seeing images of somebody being put in a van by officers with masks and without identification is just such a trigger. It's such a trigger. I give that image to most people, at least my age or my parents' age, and they will tell you right away that's a disappearance. Like we have the language and we have the because, because we have lived it, and we have a collective memory of this. I was taught these things in school. My parents, friends and and and and sort of colleagues were, were, some of them were people who were victims of these regimes. Like you know, there is a collective memory of these that I don't think exist in the US, even though, again, I think African-Americans in the 30s, 40s, 50s were living sort of through an incredibly repressive time, but we don't talk about it in this way in this country. So I think that that is true, I also think, and so I'm going to be a little bit generous here with politicians.

Dr. Gamboa:

It is tough, right, and I think it's tough because, of course, one of the main characteristics of democratic backsliding, the way we live it today, is that these leaders use the levers of democracy to undermine democracy. Right, they argue that they want the majority, they claim that they have a mandate, they mobilize people, they use the levers of democracy to undermine democracy, and so that creates a very weak signal. If Donald Trump had launched a coup with military officers, that would be a very clear signal and you wouldn't have a question. You would say well, yeah, this is a rupture of democracy, period, end of the story. But because this is done with the levers of democracy, it's just very uncertain, and so I mean, to a certain extent and again to be a little empathetic with what leaders are living through right now is hard to tell. What I will say, however, is that so, not doing anything is definitely not an option.

Shawn:

It's definitely not an option, and as a person who studies these, and as a person that comes from a region with a collective memory that we have, I can say this is not business as usual this is probably true of the Republican Party, although they're just in a different space right now, but the Democratic Party is really trying to hold together a very big tent with the diverse viewpoints, often viewpoints that don't converge with each other, but I do wonder if the one thing that transcends that, the one thing that could bring all disparate groups together, is this idea that this is a moment in which democracy is under attack. American democracy is under attack and needs to be saved, and I feel like that's a good leading message that the Democratic Party could lean into. That transcends all of these other issues in the moment, right Like, it's simply a matter of making the case that all of this other stuff is important, but it needs to be put aside in this moment, right now.

Dr. Gamboa:

I think that that is partially true. So I have a colleague here under the name that studies sort of voting behavior in competitive authoritarian regimes, and what he would tell you is democracy does not mobilize voters. Voters mobilize for specific issues. What I will say to that, however, is that I think A they're not exclusive. It's not like you cannot mobilize for a particular issue and mobilize for democracy at the same time. But I also think politicians should not react to public opinion, they should lead public opinion.

Dr. Gamboa:

I think there is a way to connect democracy to the things that people enjoy and to the things that people value on their more sort of day-to-day life, and I think it's upon civil society leaders, politicians, to make those connections for people. So, instead of talking about democracies under threat, one way to talk about it is the courts. Here I'm kind of entering a space in which I am not an Americanist. I study Latin America, right, so I can think about ways in which this could happen in Latin America. But again, Latin America is different because we have a collective memory of dictatorship and so for us, democracy or the absence of democracy, to put it that way has a whole different meaning. Right, If I were to say again somebody in my generation, my parents' generation, what does dictatorship look like? They have a very clear image of what it looks like. That does not have to go all the way back to Nazi Germany.

Shawn:

One of the things that we talked about earlier and I want to circle back to is the acquiescence, so the pressure that the Trump administration is putting on independent agencies and organizations and institutions like universities, the media, law firms, administrative agencies. We talked a little bit about how they're being pressured into some type of acquiescence, but there is another side to this coin, which is not only that these institutions acquiesce, but that they can then also be weaponized against democracy, which is something that you've written about. What does that look like? Or how could the moment that we're living through right now then transition into some type of a weaponization? And are there other institutions that you're keeping an eye on?

Dr. Gamboa:

So, right this second, I'm keeping an eye on the courts. I think the courts are where the battle is being fought right now and, more concerningly, keeping an eye on sort of electoral management bodies. So the way democratic backsliding works is the farther you go, the harder it is for the opposition broadly conceived to stop democratic backsliding or transition back to democracy, because, of course, the more resources that the government has, the less resources the opposition has. So right now, I think the government has a stronghold of the executive and has been able to empty out the state, and it's actually very similar to Guatemala. People think about Nazi Germany.

Dr. Gamboa:

I think Guatemala, because what sort of the corrupt elite coalition in Guatemala did at least since 2016, was take over the oversight agencies, including the general attorney's office, take over the courts and then leverage those two to provide impunity and protect corruption for their entire coalition in a way that the coalition was happy, happy, just moving the levers to stay in power. So I think, to an extent, that's what is happening here. Like you, you empty the state, you take away the state's ability to provide oversight, to punish corruption, to, to, to avoiding puny and, and in doing so, you keep your authoritarian coalition happy and supporting you, and of course this is a double-edged sword, because double-edged sword is not the right way to say, but it's a double weapon because on the one hand, I mean, you keep them happy because you keep them free and you keep their businesses going and stuff like that, but at the same time there is the threat that if they step out of line then you're going to use the law against them. So I think right now the executive has a hold over the judiciary, but I do think if politicians and civil society don't step up to protect the justices that are fighting against the administration, eventually that's going to happen, either because the justices decide this is not worth the fight and so they retire or they acquiesce or so on, or something like that, or or even something more drastic right Like they get removed or harassed, or who knows right In Bolivia, they lower their salaries. So at some point it was just not possible to keep living with the salary of a justice.

Dr. Gamboa:

In Colombia, what Alvaro Uribe did was to literally make them the target of right-wing militias, like kind of suggesting that they were somehow helpers of the left-wing guerrilla, and so I think there are various ways in which this could happen. I don't think it has happened yet. I think we're seeing a lot of justices incredibly brave justices fighting back and I think they need protection Now. Once the judiciary is co-opted, then I don't know there would be like I think we wouldn't have a conversation, whether this has passed the Rubicon or not. I think it would be very clear it has.

Dr. Gamboa:

Now, the only institution that I'm very concerned is the elections, because of course, one of the good opportunities to fight back will be the November elections. But electoral management bodies in this country are very diverse. They're very localized and in many ways, are very ad hoc. In Latin America we have these electoral management bodies that are very well structured. Everything that they can do or they cannot do, or who can participate, is written into law very strictly, very specifically. Here there's more flexibility and I do worry a lot that the government is going to target specific electoral management bodies in a way that could potentially hinder Democrats' ability, or independent or sort of pro-democracy Republicans' ability to win elections in November.

Shawn:

I think there are. I mean, I agree with you that elections matter. I just don't know that I think you kind of alluded to this that we're going to have them again. But the other two kind of backstops we have are, as you mentioned, the people themselves. So I guess this would almost be like protest, although I have concerns there because, as you also mentioned, Americans don't have a memory of strong protest, right, we're very orderly people when it comes to regime change. We just go stand in lines and we cast a ballot and we assume everything's going to be fine. So there's not an institutional memory there.

Shawn:

But then the other is the courts, and while I am heartened by some stuff coming out of the courts, I think Trump has made very clear that even if the courts were to all push back against him, they have no enforcement power, right, and I don't know that he's taken, that he's crossed that Rubicon yet, but I don't doubt that he would be willing to do that. So the question that's embedded in all of this is you know, maybe we can draw on some of your knowledge and your research related to Latin America. Where are some places that you saw the courts play an actual active, successful role in girding democracy, and where do you think that the courts have failed?

Dr. Gamboa:

um. So the the best example for courts protecting democracy is colombia. Colombia has a very strong constitutional court, is also a very legitimate court. People really like the constitutional court and at the end of the day, with the help of opposition in Congress, the court ended up being the backstop for Alvaro Uribe's attempts to erode democracy, including his attempt to get reelected for a third time, and it was a court that shut him down at the end of the day. In my book I emphasize and I make an entire argument explaining how the court by itself couldn't have done it, that it needed legal resources that were eventually provided by people in Congress, as well as sort of visible shows of support from the streets in Colombia that of people who supported Uribe himself but did not support his attempt to reform the constitution, to stay in power for a third time, and people who did not support Uribe. And they organized and they went and stood in front of the constitutional court with candles to illuminate the court to make the right decision. Right and, based on my interviews, justices really took that at heart. They knew that this was a show of support and if they ruled against a very popular president like Alvaro Uribe, sort of people were going to have their back.

Dr. Gamboa:

I think another example where courts have been incredibly successful is Brazil, where the courts were able to again this was with the help of politicians in Congress and in other sort of federal positions. They were able to curtail some of Bolsonaro's attempts to erode democracy democracy and after he was out of power, they were very active in prosecuting his crimes, so much that he was not able to run for office in 2022. Now there's a couple of situations I guess the best example of this would be Venezuela where the courts were unable to stop the erosion of democracy, and I think this plays in two times. I think the first point in which the courts could have been able to at least slow down Hugo Chavez was early on when he tried, when he launched his call for a constitutional assembly, and there's a lot of like details to these, but the the nut of the sort of the heart of the story is chavez creates a decree that calls for a constitutional assembly and hands out the rules to elect the delegates, which, of course, benefited the courts, which, at the time, were, uh, not necessarily as legitimate, not did not get as much support from the people. People were not that impressed with them decide that this decree is unconstitutional, but they're not going to stop it. And they're not going to stop it because they're not going to rule against this very popular president, because they don't feel supported by the people.

Dr. Gamboa:

That is kind of your first part. Then of course, there's a constitutional assembly and Chavez is originally able to put enough people inside the court. That makes ruling in favor of the opposition not impossible. They actually did it, but very, very, very hard. And then of course the opposition. The courts are kind of split it in half. Half of them were kind of pro-government, the other half were kind of pro-opposition, to put it that way. And then the opposition decides to boycott congressional elections. Chavez gets 100% National Assembly and with that 100% control over the National Assembly he's able to fully co-opt the courts. This is to say that I think the courts were unable to stop Chavez. I think they were at a disadvantage. But I also think that had the opposition supported them in that initial moment and participated in the congressional elections, it would have been harder for Chavez to rule democracy. He might have been able to do it anyway, but it would have been significantly harder, which in turn would have opened other windows of opportunity for the opposition.

Shawn:

So we've talked a little bit about protest or the power that the people have, and so I want to spend a little bit of time on it, because we are starting to see the last couple of weekends there have been some protests in response to some of Trump's executive orders, and I have a feeling that we're going to be experiencing a lot more protests in the next handful of years. But protest can be a very powerful tool in forming and formulating policy, but it can also backfire and can be used against themselves. This kind of makes sense to me, right Like if protest is violent, then they can be painted as criminal, as threats, etc. All to the benefit of the ruling party. What advice would you give to people that are trying to formulate some type of organized protest to speak to some of the stuff coming out of the White House right now? That would be effective, and how would you suggest that they avoid certain things?

Dr. Gamboa:

So I think nowadays, people organizing violent protests intentionally are very rare. I think nonviolent demonstrations have become the norm across the world, not only in the US, and I think that that's great. What I also think, however, is that there's always one or two people with a Molotov cocktail, or one or two people who get um beaten by the police, and so another two or three people decide to respond with violence. Right, and I think it's that french violence, not. It's not that the, the organizers of the demonstration, say we're gonna protest violent, it's more like that. French violence can be very dangerous. It can put in danger other protesters, it can generate more repression, but, more importantly, it can end up with the entire movement painted as violent and kind of delegitimized in the eyes of voters. So the first thing that I think is important is I think there's an important muscle in this country, one that maybe is not as activated as it was I don't know 34 years ago, but there's a muscle of like organization, right, like there are ways to organize and train people to protest, what nonviolent protest is and how you do it. So that would be the first one. I don't dare to speak because I'm not an activist and so I don't dare to speak to say if that's happening or it's not happening, but if it's not happening, let's do it, and if it's happening, fantastic.

Dr. Gamboa:

The second thing that I will say is what I have seen about Democratic backsliding suggests that the most successful protests are the ones that have a very clear, oftentimes single, goal. I love the fact that we're going out to protest, but I was in my local protest a couple of weeks ago and I was watching the signs and the signs were all over the place. All things that I personally approve of right, like protect immigrants, my hands off, social security, elon Musk, suck Like. All of these things are things that I agree with, but I don't know that this is the most effective way to translate protest into action, because to a certain extent, it's kind of it's more of a expression of discontent rather than kind of a movement that could potentially translate into some kind of effective action by the people who have the ability to act on this. The third thing that I think is important to keep in mind is that I think democracy in the streets or outside the streets in general protection, is not a small tent effort. It's a big tent effort, and so I think one of the things that we need to start thinking is how do we reach states or places, towns, cities that may not be sort of part of, or might not be blue cities or might not be blue states?

Dr. Gamboa:

Right, I think a lot about Utah because I used to live in Utah for eight years and so, to a certain extent, I was very unfamiliar with politics in Utah, and it was very interesting for me how the pro-democracy movement in Utah was very different from the sort of national pro-democracy movement promoted by organizations like MoveOn or Indivisible, even in the sense that this movement was geared towards the specific characteristics of Utah. Utah has a very significant population that is Republican, but it's not necessarily Trumpist, and so local movements would get together, would use rallies and meetings to register Democrats, people who are visibly Democrat, as Republican, with the understanding that there is no way that you as a Democrat are going to affect change. But if you can vote in Republican primaries, you could potentially kind of keep the balance for the pro-democratic Republican. Does that mean that many of us ended up voting for people whose policies we don't agree with? Yes, does that mean that we also avoided the election of election deniers of? You know, people with radical ideas. That is also true as well. Last elections in Utah there were usually last primaries. There were MAGA Republicans and non-MAGA Republicans, and in all but one of the elections the non-MAGA Republicans won, and I think that that's a victory. It might not be a victory for sort of your more progressive Democrats, but I think it's certainly a victory for democracy.

Dr. Gamboa:

The other thing I keep thinking about when I see these demonstrations is how big they are in certain places and people would say, well, salt Lake City. And I was like, yeah, but Salt Lake City is blue. You really want to see like I think the most impressive protest would be in, you know like maybe Provo though actually Provo had a big protest but like more conservative areas, that's where you want to see them, because you're going to need to build a bigger tent. And the last thing and this is related is I think it's key to use the streets to protect institutions. Institutions will not stand by themselves. They're only as strong as the people who protect them. And I think if the Supreme Court decides to say to stop the government, they are going to need people to mobilize in support of them, all of them, not only the ones we like.

Shawn:

So it's probably a massive understatement to say that we are living through a period of extreme polarization in the United States, and I think there's a tendency to think that the only way that we can reverse this trend is to somehow depolarize. We are living through a period of time in which blue citizens do not cannot live under red state policies and red citizens feel the same about blue state policies, and I just don't see that changing anytime soon. Do you think that depolarization is possible and do you think it's necessary in pursuit of some type of democratic recovery?

Dr. Gamboa:

I certainly think it's possible. I certainly think it's possible. I've seen Latin American countries depolarize, even though the grievances are significantly more serious than the ones we see in the US. We're talking about groups of people that used to kill each other, right, and they have depolarized over time. So I think it's possible. The question is is it possible in the time frame we need it? And that's a whole different question.

Dr. Gamboa:

Recently, the major of Istanbul, who was in prison I don't know if they released him or not In any way, his imprisonment generated massive, massive, massive protests across various groups of people, including people that would normally support Erdogan, and I think though I'm not an expert in Turkey, but I do think that the radical love campaign led by CHP has a lot to do with this right, and the radical love campaign was a campaign that gave tool to activists to bring people in rather than push them out, right and so, and so there were a series of techniques on how to talk to people and how to approach them and like that, that just were designed to bring people in rather than push them out, believe in rather than push them out, and I think the protests we observed, I want to say, last week, are a good show of how, yes, we can actually build bridges across the divide.

Dr. Gamboa:

I think for that to happen, however, you do need some kind of political leadership. You need a unique, a very like. I think you do need very specific goals that are, to put it that way, a partisan like that. They're not. They're not the goals of one party, they're just a partisan, but I think it's possible. I might be thinking like this because I am the progressive that has lived in red states her entire time in the US, except for one year that I lived in Boston, but in general, I do think it's possible. I don't know if it's going to happen in the time span that we need it, but I definitely need. We need to start working towards it because it's going to be needed at some point.

Shawn:

Do you believe that at this stage, the US can actually reverse its democratic backsliding? And I guess the bigger question here is if so, what are the things that we need to be doing now to effectuate that?

Dr. Gamboa:

Oh man. So political scientists are notoriously bad at predicting outcomes, so I'll tell you what I know from other countries. I've seen countries like Guatemala reverse democratic backsliding. I've seen countries that are wealthy and longstanding democracies, like Venezuela, being caught in a well-entrenched authoritarian regime. This is to say, I think either outcome is possible. I think, in order to stop democratic backsliding or reverse autocratization in this country, sort of the immediate steps is to stop the cooptation of courts and oversight agencies, right Like mobilize both sort of from Congress and from governorships and national assemblies, but I also, think, sort of civil society to protect the courts. I think that's key.

Dr. Gamboa:

I also think we need to figure out a way to start talking about what is happening in this country in a way that can be understood by people that are not plugged in to the newspapers, like me. Just recently, I had a conversation with somebody and I was talking about this interview and other interviews that I've been doing, and she said, like oh really, is this bad, what is happening? And I almost fainted. I was like how is it possible that you don't know what is happening? Like are you living under a rock? But here's the deal. I think people like this person I was talking to are actually the vast majority of Americans, and we need to figure out a way to convey the urgency of this, to start talking about it, to start kind of visibilizing what is happening. I'm guessing at some point people are going to stop getting checks from social security and so it's going to become very visible. But I think you need to connect the dots for people. It's not an administrative problem, it's not a, you know, like you need to connect the dots for people. So that's the other thing. I think we need to be ready to contest unfair elections. And when you are contesting unfair elections and there's a wealth of research that shows this there needs to be coordination and there needs to be like you need to leverage the streets to get people to get the incumbent to accept the result. So in normal elections, when the incumbent loses the election, the incumbent says well, I tried, thank you so much, I'll play next time.

Dr. Gamboa:

Right now, what I think may happen is not only is it going to be incredibly harder for the opposition to contest the election, there's going to be even more ID laws, there is going to be even less polling places in blue cities, there is going to be less. More steps you have to take in order to vote. There's going to be more contestation to the voting rolls. All of these things are going to start happening more. But I also think that once the election comes, there's going to be more contestation for the elections and we're going to need every tool at our disposal institutional and extra institutional to protect that result.

Dr. Gamboa:

I also think that it is important to start thinking creatively beyond demonstrations. I think demonstrations are great, but I think we need more and different repertoires, even some that may not be stuff that we have done in this country to stop this people to show two forms of ID to be able to vote, and how this is problematic for married women or for people who have changed their names, and so on and so forth. It's like if I was a Democrat, I would be starting a campaign to get passports for everybody today, right now. Right, maybe there are logistical problems with that or other sorts of problems that, because I am not an Americanist and I don't study American politics in general, I might not be seeing, but what I'm thinking is we need to start thinking outside the box, because I think what is happening right now is also outside the box.

Dr. Gamboa:

I think, and the more time goes by, the more I think about this. There is a conversation that needs to happen about how to protect our data, how to protect activists from all sorts of online threats, particularly as individuals like Elon Musk. He keep getting access to more and more and more and more data in ways that we don't even know. I don't know right, and I don't know in part because I don't know anything about this. I used to study democratic erosion. I have no idea. I barely know how to use my email. So I think that these, these are things we need to start thinking Like.

Dr. Gamboa:

I think we need to start getting ahead, ahead of the curve, and I also think that the United States is not the first country to undergo democratic erosion. Certainly, there are specific parts about democratic erosion in this country that are unique and particularly concerning, but I don't think it's the first country to undergo this. So the other thing that I feel sometimes is that I feel that people who are talking about this are not looking outside Of course, not you, s but other people are not looking at other countries, and they're kind of inventing the wheel, and we don't need to invent the wheel. We need a bigger, better wheel, and so we should use our time in building that better, better, bigger wheel and leverage the experiences of other countries okay, final question you ready for it?

Shawn:

yes, what's something interesting you've been reading, watching, listening, listening to or doing lately, and it doesn't have to be related to this topic, but it can be.

Dr. Gamboa:

So, when I'm not panicking about the future of democracy in this country, I've been trying to spend as much time as I can with my family.

Dr. Gamboa:

We just moved to Michigan. I live in Michigan, literally in the border with Indiana, and so we're trying to travel around Michigan and I have been amazed of how beautiful the small towns in Michigan are. They have fantastic restaurants. There is one nearby, like half an hour away from where I live, called Three Oaks, that has these amazing restaurants a distillery, a cute little theater, fantastic bakeries, you know, like the kind of things that you find in bigger cities, the kind of restaurants you find in bigger cities but all spread out in these small towns in Michigan. And I think that question which you sent me, and when you got it I was like, oh man, I don't do anything fun in my life. I think I do and I think that's the thing that I've been doing, that I love the most New Buffalo there's also the Three Oaks, new Buffalo, buchanan, right, fantastic little small towns that are just, you know, like good for the soul, yeah, so I think that that's what I've been doing, that I have loved the most lately.

Shawn:

I grew up in Wisconsin and so I'm very familiar with making that trip down around Lake Michigan. I don't know if you've been to the coast yet, but like the little towns like Douglas on the West Coast of Michigan are really cute Feels almost like being on the West Coast of the United States.

Dr. Gamboa:

Right. So there's San Joe, which is by the lake, which is absolutely beautiful. Benton Harbor is still so beautiful, like you know, like this is absolutely gorgeous. Yeah, and I say this having lived in Utah for years, and Utah is a beautiful state, but these small towns are just like so unique and so like, yes, like they almost feel like a small, like the East Coast at times too. It's really beautiful.

Shawn:

Dr Gamboa, thanks for your time. Let's hope for the best.

Dr. Gamboa:

Yeah, thank you so much.

Shawn:

What we're living through in the United States isn't just political turbulence, it's democratic backsliding in real time. As Dr Gamboa said, democracy doesn't die overnight. It's chipped away, often through legal means, by leaders who understand how to bend institutions to their will. But history also shows us that resistance is possible. It takes strategy. It takes strategy, it takes unity and it takes an opposition that knows the difference between playing politics and defending the democratic foundations we all rely on.

Shawn:

Saving democracy means more than voting every four years. It means supporting local journalism that holds power accountable. It means building broad coalitions across parties, across movements, across identities, to protect the guardrails of democracy. It means organizing locally to monitor elections, run for school boards and fight disinformation at the neighborhood level. It means funding legal defense groups that challenge authoritarian policies in court and pushing universities and tech companies and religious institutions to defend democratic norms. We still have some tools. We still have time, but the window is closing rapidly. The fight to save democracy isn't just in Washington, it's wherever you are right now. If we want to save democracy in the United States, we can't wait for a breaking point. We have to act now, while we still have some of those tools to do so. All right, check back next week for another episode of Deep Dive Chat. Soon, folks. Thank you, thank you you.

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Shawn C. Fettig

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