Are democracies doomed to gridlock and dysfunction?
From France to South Korea, US democratic allies are descending into political chaos
ANTHONY WALLACE / AFP
A protester holds a poster with an image of South Korea President Yoon Suk Yeol during a candlelight rally calling for the ouster of the president in Gwanghwamun in Seoul on December 5, 2024.
Are democracies doomed to gridlock and dysfunction?
It’s Debatable: The Stimson Center’s Emma Ashford and the Atlantic Council’s Matthew Kroenig debate pressing issues for policymakers.
Matt Kroenig: Hi Emma! I believe you had some travel planned in this period. Where in the world are you today?
Emma Ashford: I’m in Paris. I was supposed to be here talking about European security and the future of transatlantic relations under the incoming Trump administration, but—I don’t know if you’ve heard—there are a few other things going on here this week. Would it be too much to ask for every US ally not to have a constitutional crisis at the same time?
MK: Yes, people love to point out polarisation in the United States, but Washington does not have a monopoly on political dysfunction. This week, we saw a vote of no-confidence in France, martial law declared and overturned in South Korea, and widespread antigovernment protests in Georgia.
I’d hate to tear you away from your café au lait, but maybe you could report on what’s going on in Paris?
EA: It’s midnight here, the French government just collapsed, and, trust me, people have moved on from coffee to something stronger.
But let’s back up a bit. The drama in Paris is only the latest problem in Europe’s shaky governance. The German government, you might recall, collapsed just days after the US presidential election; we won’t get new elections and a new governing coalition in Berlin until well into 2025. Now, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National party has succeeded in passing a no-confidence motion against the minority government of Michel Barnier, which has only been in power for a few months. Barnier was shoehorned into that position by President Emmanuel Macron, who was looking for a way to keep both the RN and left-leaning French parties out of government.
French Prime Minister Michel Barnier removes his glasses after he delivered a speech during a debate on two motions of no-confidence against the French government on December 4, 2024.
Now that the vote has succeeded, Le Pen can act in concert with the left to veto other prime ministerial candidates that Macron proposes. I suppose it’s possible that Macron could propose a left-leaning candidate who could cobble together enough support from the left and centre to form a government, but the left couldn’t agree on a government this summer, and it would be tantamount to undoing his own policy legacy! He also can’t dissolve the assembly, and a caretaker government can’t manage a budget. It’s an absolute mess. Macron could potentially resolve it by resigning, but few think he would go voluntarily.
The EU’s two biggest powers are potentially out of the geopolitical picture for months.
MK: This reminds me of comparative political science debates about the advantages and disadvantages of presidential, parliamentary, and semi-presidential constitutional systems. Our readers may be surprised to learn, given my current interests, that my first book was on legislative powers.
EA: Let me guess: first-strike coalition management? Invoking the “nuclear option” in the US Senate?
MK: Ha! Well, that research did help me understand why democracies outcompete autocracies in great-power rivalry. And a major advantage of presidential systems is their stability. Love or hate Trump, he will almost certainly be in office for the next four years. Political scientists debate whether parliaments are stronger in presidential or parliamentary systems. But the ability of parliaments to remove a sitting executive with a simple vote of no-confidence is a pretty amazing power.
In theory, a semi-presidential system, like France’s, is meant to combine the strengths of both. But we are seeing now that even semi-presidentialism is not immune to the instability induced by making executives vulnerable to a vote in parliament at any time.
France and South Korea's leaders might have been more in line with what the US wanted but were often out-of-step with their own people
Emma Ashford
EA: Well, the French are often the first in figuring out how political systems can fail, from the Bourbon monarchy to their various empires and republics. This is exactly the kind of conflict—a deadlocked parliament and no strong executive—that collapsed the French Fourth Republic back in the 1960s! It was undoubtedly more extreme: At that time, the war in Algeria was spiralling out of control, leading to popular unrest and a variety of right-wing conspiracies to overthrow the government. But the underlying problem was the same: Partisan divisions in the national assembly created gridlock, preventing any reasonable response to the crisis.
The Fifth Republic that replaced it strengthened the presidential component of the system, but evidently not enough. On the other hand, we have the Germans, where their highly proportional, purely parliamentary system always yields coalition governments, which often fail to get things done because the coalition parties fundamentally disagree.
But even systems that political scientists have always believed to be extremely strong—the Westminster system in the United Kingdom, for example—have had their problems in recent years. In 2010 and 2017, the UK had its first hung parliaments since the tumultuous 1970s. And for 14 years until July, the Tories were able to hold onto power even though the party often couldn't decide what policies it wanted, thanks to facing a massively unpopular Labour Party and the disappearing Liberal Democrats.
It's enough to make one wonder whether democratic systems are simply not responding adequately to the pressures of the current moment: economic, social, geopolitical. And if that's the case, can reforms happen, or is it going to be something more dramatic? I doubt we're headed for a Sixth Republic in France, but you never know.
MK: Well, should we turn from the failures of parliamentarianism to the failures of presidentialism? In Seoul this week, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol declared martial law. Hours later, the national assembly—after many members scaled the walls of the legislative complex that had been cordoned off by soldiers—voted 190-0 against the measure, causing the president to back down.
Now there are huge questions about the future of governance in Seoul. Will Yoon resign, leading to snap elections? Will he be impeached? Will he try to hang onto power, turning himself not just into a lame duck, but a dead duck, until the next scheduled election in 2027?
What is your take?
Protesters hold placards during a candlelight vigil to condemn South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol's surprise declarations of the failed martial law and to call for his resignation in Seoul, South Korea, December 5, 2024.
EA: Honestly, the problem in Seoul is very similar to the problem in Paris—although I doubt Macron is about to declare martial law! But in both cases, we have a lame-duck president whose term exceeds that of his popular mandate and who is highly reluctant to allow the parliamentary majority to govern as they see fit.
In France, we got Macron's installation of Barnier as a minority wedge between the far right and the far left. In Seoul, Yoon has railed against the opposition and now tried to remove it from power. We shouldn't minimise the scope of what Yoon tried to do here; I don't know if it was technically illegal or unconstitutional, but it was certainly antidemocratic. At the same time, I see both Macron and Yoon as essentially trying to solve the same problem.
MK: Well, you worried about the implications of German and French instability for geopolitics. I am equally worried about what instability in Seoul means for US interests in the Indo-Pacific. Yoon broke from his predecessors in a willingness to deepen trilateral cooperation with Tokyo and Washington and to more openly clash with China.
These positive developments may be tarnished by Yoon's legacy, and a new South Korean leader may take the country in a different direction.
The strengthening of US-South Korea ties under Yoon might be one reason Washington was slow to condemn his imposition of martial law. In fact, a group of South Korean officials had just touched down in Washington for meetings of the Nuclear Consultative Group at the Defense Department, but they had to turn around and head back to Seoul due to the crisis at home.
EA: Well, that's another interesting parallel with Macron: Yoon's foreign-policy choices weren't always popular among South Koreans, particularly his decision to patch up relations with Japan. Korean society is still highly ambivalent about closer relations with Japan, which occupied Korea for decades, brutalised its people, and tried to erase their culture.
It might be half a century or more in the past, but it still matters. And Macron has been far more forward-leaning on foreign policy than his critics on the right—who think his commitments to potentially send troops to Ukraine go too far—and the French public, 69% of whom are opposed to doing so. From Washington, we see that these leaders might have been more in line with what the US government wanted, but to the public in these states, the leaders were often out-of-step with their own people. Yoon's call for martial law described the opposition as aligned with North Korea, for example.
In the South Korean case, it looks like we will find out sooner rather than later what the alternative is. Parliament is already seeking to impeach and remove Yoon from office. In France, there will be gridlock and budgetary uncertainty.
Protesters take part in a candlelight rally calling for the ouster of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on the steps of the National Assembly in Seoul on December 5, 2024.
Let's shift gears and move to Syria, where things have gotten out of hand since the last time we talked. It's been years since we've had to talk about the so-called moderate rebels and the Bashar al-Assad regime, but apparently, that conflict was paused, not resolved. The militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) unexpectedly overran the city of Aleppo and surrounding towns, reopening the potential for significant fighting in Syria itself.
Where do you come down on this? Is this a concern for US policymakers?
MK: Let's understand how we got here. The al-Assad regime has been a US adversary for many years, and US interests would be advanced by a stable, pro-American government in Damascus.
I was working on the Middle East desk at the Pentagon in early 2011 when the Arab Spring uprisings came to Syria. Until that point, the instability was only hitting American partners, like Egypt and Bahrain. I thought the possibility of overthrowing al-Assad presented a historic opportunity for the United States, but Washington did not take the opportunity. It endlessly debated intervention, and then, before anyone knew it, the Russians stepped in and sent forces to prop up al-Assad.
But what do we do now? The enemy of my enemy is my friend. With insurgents—backed by NATO ally Turkey—fighting the al-Assad regime, the best policy may be to sit back and let them destroy each other, at least for now.
Islamist-led rebels pose for a picture with a Syria army helicopter on the tarmac at the Nayrab military airport in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on December 2, 2024, after a surprise lightning offensive on November 30.
EA: When the enemy of my enemy was literally part of Al-Qaeda, I feel like things become a little more complicated.
The problem is still essentially the same as it was then: The rebels can't overthrow al-Assad alone, and even if they could, the result could easily be a Libya-style failed state rather than anything coherent. The last time the United States tried this, they got the Islamic State (IS). And today, I think many regional states have accepted that they'd rather have a stable government in Damascus than roll the dice once again on chaos and rebellion.
Just look at the overtures that the Gulf states have been making toward al-Assad, welcoming him back into the Arab League and slowly normalising relationships. The United States' regional partners are actively scrambling right now to try and stabilise al-Assad, not dethrone him! Is Washington now going to tell them to stop?
MK: The problem with a stable Syria is that it is part of the Russian-Iran-Hezbollah axis. That is the other important piece of this development. Russia's struggles in Ukraine and Israel's remarkably successful campaign against Iran and Hezbollah have fundamentally weakened al-Assad's position, and the anti-Assad rebels spotted and seized the opportunity.
So, again, US interests would be advanced with al-Assad out and a stable, pro-American government in. The policy question for which there is not yet a clear answer is: Can Washington now meaningfully affect that outcome at a reasonable cost?
The al-Assad regime has been a US adversary for many years, and US interests would be advanced by a stable, pro-American government in Damascus
Matt Kroenig
EA: I will note that despite the Israeli strikes on Iranian assets inside Syria, it's also the case that al-Assad has been clear he won't get involved in the Hamas war or let Hezbollah escalate from Syrian territory. So he's been walking quite a fine line on support for Iran and opposition to Israel in recent months.
But I think your question is fundamentally the right one. The answer is no, even if one sets aside concerns about the extremism of the rebels, escalation issues with the Russians, the question of whether a stable Syria is better than another potential civil war, or the position of regional allies—and that's a lot of concerns to put aside!
I still don't see what the United States could reasonably do here to improve the outcome. HTS has done well in its recent campaign, but it's hardly likely to unseat al-Assad after all this time. I see this mostly as a reminder of the regional instability that October 7, 2023, and the Israeli war with Hamas in Gaza have unleashed. It's not something Washington wants to further.
MK: Indeed, the past two and a half years have seen the eruption of several new and unexpected conflicts. Let's hope that 2025 will be a year of peace.
But in the meantime, I believe you are late for your aperitif?
EA: That was hours ago, Matt. Most folks watching the French no-confidence vote here with me were well into their second bottle of wine some time ago.
