South Africa: Democracy On a Tightrope As Balance Between Expertise and Elected Power Grows Increasingly Fragile

By Pedro Abramovay and Gabriela Lotta

As we launch Democracy on a Tightrope in South Africa, we are struck by how familiar the global democratic landscape feels in both of our countries.

Across continents, people grow weary of politics, technocrats present themselves as saviours who promise to bypass democratic messiness, and strongmen rise by claiming that only they can "fix" the state - by force, by managerial efficiency, or by moral cleansing.

From Donald Trump to Narendra Modi, Viktor Orbán to Jair Bolsonaro, contemporary authoritarianism feeds on a simple but dangerous premise: that politics - the very substance of democracy - is the problem rather than the path.

Democracy on a Tightrope emerged from observing this dynamic inside the Brazilian state. For years, we watched elected officials and bureaucrats negotiate, clash, collaborate and sometimes undermine one another. We came to understand that the everyday relationship between politics and bureaucracy is not technical detail - it is where democracy is lived, and where it breaks.

Democracies falter when politics ignores evidence and does not respect rules and procedures, but they also falter when bureaucracies present themselves as morally superior to political choice. The balance between them is delicate, and its disruption - whether through technocratic arrogance or political disregard for institutions - creates the opening through which authoritarianism flows.

Brazil's democratic experience since the 1988 constitution provides a vivid illustration of this complexity....

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