In 1920, Laura Kellogg (Oneida) proposed to use the law of incorporation to shield Indigenous communities from hostile government policy and corrupt practices. Her plan was meant to secure 鈥渟omething in the order of self-government鈥� at a time when genuine self-government was impossible and when many Indigenous leaders had turned away from their traditions. As a model for organizing Indigenous life, incorporation was a sustainable solution to community disintegration. However, it was (and is) neither an antidote to colonialism nor a template for Indigenous self-determination.
Some scholars argue that democratic stability requires political elites to practice forbearance: roughly speaking, 鈥渞estraint in deploying their institutional prerogatives鈥� (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018). The paper proposes a novel account of forbearance and the mechanism by which it stabilizes democracies. Public officials exercise forbearance when they refrain from actions of 鈥渄ubious legitimacy,鈥� actions that, while in fact compatible with democracy鈥檚 constitutive rules, are not commonly known to be.
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