In 2022, one to Washington, DC, with the purpose of assassinating Brett Kavanaugh, justice of the American Supreme Court. He was outraged by the Court’s vote on abortion. Arriving at the judge’s residence, he sent a farewell message to his sister. He talks about the suicide he would commit after the act. The sister managed to dissuade him and encouraged him to call 911, which allowed his capture.
Who or what was at risk in this episode? Certainly the judge whose life hung in the balance. But American democracy was not at risk; conclusion that would not change if the plan had been successful. It was an isolated action, but with unequivocal party-political content: “I could at least take one of them, which would change the votes for more than a decade, and I’ll shoot three. All the main decisions in the last ten years they have been partisan, so if you have more liberals than conservatives they will have power.”
Is the near-attack a product of recent political polarization in that country? Evidence suggests that polarization encourages undemocratic behavior, but not necessarily violence. There are similarities between this case and that of . Even if the action — and it involved a bunch of lunatics — the conclusion would be the same: they are attacks and not threats to democracy. Conspiracy for a coup d’état, however, is part of another class of actions.
Threats to democracy can be observable or not, that is, only known later, such as . In the first case, they can trigger concomitant responses from institutions and society. But they may be merely rhetorical, without concrete measures. If these exist, the responses take the form of actions by the Legislature, Judiciary and society. Here the resilience of democracy is visible and measurable. But it also manifests itself as deterrence: the perception of the robustness of institutions and also their dysfunctionalities (e.g. party fragmentation hindering radical changes) has an inhibiting effect.
It is too early to draw any conclusions, but the failure of the plan has institutional anchoring. This is what he and his chief of staff suggest: “Five (generals) don’t want it, three really want it and the others, their comfort zone. That’s it. Unfortunately.” “There are dissidents, there are bastards… there, there are, it’s already proven. But we know it’s a collegial body.” “Four lines of the Constitution sucks! We are at war.” The coup plotters were clearly in the minority, which should not come as a surprise.
The conclusion of the Lula government captures part of the dynamics at play: “there was no coup because people were loyal to the Constitution.” Why did most generals say no? Here individual factors (about which we can never be certain) and institutions combine. But it is fundamentally the institutional complexity that makes the plan perceived as an undesirable adventure. These conclusions would not change even if the plan had not been aborted. As with Kavanaugh, the risk to many individuals was high; but democracy was low.
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