Hans Kundnani
Good afternoon, everyone. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, depending on which part of the world you’re joining us from, and welcome to this Chatham House webinar on Threats to Freedom and Democracy. My name’s Hans Kundnani and I am delighted to be joined by three great panellists for this discussion: Sarah Repucci, who is the Vice President of Research and Analysis at Freedom House and she’s joining us from New York. Anthony Smith, who is the Chief Executive at the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and he’s joining us from Scotland, and Joan Hoey, who’s the Editor of the Democracy Index at The Economist Intelligence Unit and she is also in London. So, before we get started, just a couple of, sort of, housekeeping points.
This discussion is on the record, so you can tweet, we – in fact, we encourage you to tweet using the #CHEvents, and when we get to the discussion, after the three panellists have spoken, I’m going to be asking you to use the ‘Q&A’ function to indicate whether you want to – if you want to ask a question and then what we’ll try to do is invite you to come on camera, if you’re willing to do that, but you’re welcome also to use the ‘Chat’ function to, sort of, have a discussion, but I won’t be following that so closely. So, if you want to ask a question, make sure it is in the ‘Q&A’ function.
So, our subject is threats to democracy. Some of you may have attended a webinar that we had a few months ago with Larry Diamond, who was talking about the democratic recession. Behind that phrase and this, kind of, sense that democracy is, sort of, in decline, there’s, I think, quite a lot of complexity, geographical complexity, in terms of different situations, in different parts of the world, but also, sort of, a conceptual complexity around what a functional democracy actually looks like. We all think we know what a good democracy is, but I think when you start to discuss it, it becomes clear that it’s actually quite a complex picture and that what some people see as a problem, other people see as a solution. And so, I’m hoping that we’re going to be able to bring out some of that complexity, in the course of the discussion.
Each of the speakers is going to speak for about five minutes, again with a slightly different geographical focus in each case, and I have asked them – each of them to tell me, or tell us, how they understand democracy and what they see as the main threats to democracy, all in five minutes. So, let’s start with Sarah, and you’ve just published your Freedom in the World Index, and I guess you’re going to talk a little bit about that. I guess one question for you would be whether you distinguish between freedom and democracy or whether they’re the same thing to you, ‘cause I think the rest of the panellists may be talking more about democracy rather than freedom. So, how do you understand democracy and how do you see the threats at the moment?
Sarah Repucci
Sure, yeah, thanks, Hans, and thanks to everyone. So, I think, you know, for us, freedom is, sort of, the broader umbrella, but most of what we’re thinking about is democracy. So, what I – sometimes I use them interchangeably really, but, you know, specifically, from our perspective, we’re always looking through the lens of our Freedom in the World report primarily, and our other methodologies. So, for Freedom in the World, we look at 25 different indicators of worker rights and civil liberties. So, this is covering elections, political participation, the functioning of the government, fundamental freedoms like press, belief, assembly and association, rule of law, and individual rights. And I think that the main thing I would say is that when we’re thinking about democracy, it’s always about more than elections, and I think that’s probably cliché among this audience, but I think it’s worth repeating because undemocratic leaders continue to make outrageous claims, based on the fact that they went with emotions on election day. So, it’s always important to think about democracy in that broader lens.
In terms of the greatest threats to democracy by Freedom House measures, 2020 was the 15th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. 75% of people now live in a country where democracy is in decline, so I’ll call out three broad trends from the latest Freedom in the World report in this context of decline. So, the first one I’ll mention is the way that the Chinese Communist Party is not only crushing freedom at home, but exporting repression to less authoritarian settings. The CCP may claim that it’s not pushing a particular ideology, but in fact, for many years, it has been systematically working to promote a positive image of its model of repression with populism, and at the same time, undermining positive perceptions of democracy.
I think the CCP’s diplomacy, over the past year of the pandemic, is really indicative of this trend. Beijing has engaged in a global campaign of disinformation and censorship. Once people realised that it had been covering up the scale of the health threat and the spread of COVID, it attempted to sway global opinion against the concept of democracy, through things like highlighting the failure of the US to control the virus, while ignoring democratic successes, like Taiwan. And at the same time, democracy supporters have been losing, or maybe just disengaged, from the propaganda war, which means that they’re failing to convince people that democracy is, in fact, the best method for bringing sustainable peace and prosperity.
Last thing on China I’d mention is that the CCP is increasingly committing rights abuses abroad. It’s been meddling more in domestic political discourse of foreign democracies, especially Australia, and it’s a lead offender when it comes to transnational oppression or physically targeting its critics overseas. It’s been undermining the human rights standards that had reigned supreme in multilateral institutions, like the UN Human Rights Council, and that gives itself more latitude for abuse.
The second trend I’ll mention is the failure to consolidate democratic gains that had been popping up over the past few years. So, one example is Armenia, which seemed to be trending upwards after the 2018 elections, when a reformist government came to power. And, of course, in 2020, after Azerbaijan reignited the frozen conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia’s Prime Minister, Pashinyan, capitulated in that war, the country became destabilised and now we’re seeing a new political crisis, since the military called on Pashinyan to resign last month.
Armenia’s reversal, in a democratic trajectory, is particularly significant, I think, because it was a bright spot in a region that’s otherwise full of these really deeply entrenched Dictators and without the consolidation of these bright spots, we can’t turn the decline around. Ethiopia is a similar case, when Prime Minister Abiy came to power in 2018, he lifted restrictions and opened up political space. He was appointed not elected, so we’d hoped that the 2020 elections would be a chance for voters to give him a mandate to continue his reform agenda. But the underlying ethnic tensions boiled over, especially in Tigray region, and now the country seems to be headed for more instability.
And the last trend I’ll highlight is the role of the United States. For better or worse, the United States is the world’s most visible democracy and what happens here matters, both in terms of being a benchmark that other countries measure themselves against, and also, in terms of our ability to support or abandon the global fight for democracy. So, I’ll say a bit about each of those. On democracy in the United States, the Trump administration was very damaging to US democracy. The United States remains a free country in our ratings, and we were actually already seeing a decline in US democracy before Trump was elected, but that decline accelerated over the past four years.
Trump’s relentless and unfounded accusations that there was fraud in our electoral process has sown doubt in our system, among a sizable proportion of the American public, and that’s damage that’s going to be carried forward to the next election, if we don’t address it. Also, the fact that people doubted whether we would have a peaceful transition of power in this country, wasn’t just nerve-wracking for Americans, it was fodder for authoritarians around the world who could easily feign their superiority. And I would say that’s a false claim, not least because our institutions held firm and we have a new President, but it can be pretty convincing for people in other countries when they don’t have all the facts and they’re seeing armed protestors storm the Capital on video.
And support for democracy globally, for most of the post-World War Two era, the United States has placed democratic values at the heart of its foreign policy. And, of course, there have been exceptions and many mistakes, but US Diplomats spoke out against abuses and our foreign aid supported people advocating for their own system of government in their own countries. The early rhetoric from the Biden administration indicates that they’re returning to placing democracy front and centre, I really hope that this will be the case. Even if the US image has been damaged by what has happened over the past months and years, I still think that it can serve as a positive model, I’m a democracy supporter, even in the very fact of getting its own democracy shored up and improved as an example to other countries that also can improve.
So, I’ll stop there, and turn it back to you.
Hans Kundnani
Great, and thanks, Sarah, and apologies, I know that the sound quality is not great, maybe we can fix that. Before I turn to Anthony, just a couple of things I’d just like to, sort of, clarify. So, first of all, you said that, you know, at the beginning, that democracy is not just about elections, were you saying though that the quality of democracy is – you know, it’s essential to have free and fair elections, and if you don’t have those, you can’t call yourself a democracy, or you were saying even if you have free and fair elections, that still doesn’t make you a democracy?
Sarah Repucci
Yeah, so I’d say, you know, you could have a very free and fair election day, but the campaign period could be very controlled, the media could be not in a position to explain exactly everything that’s going on, people could not be experiencing rights in their own homes, or when they interact with government, and so these are, sort of, all the things that go into the democratic system.
Hans Kundnani
And that brings me to the second question about the US, and I’m glad you’ve brought up the US, because I think there is a tendency, at least in the, sort of, foreign policy world, to, sort of, blame the problems in our democracies on external actors, like China and Russia, right? But I think what is abundantly clear, not least since the 6th of January, is that, you know, the real threats are internal rather than external. So, I was curious though, because you said that the problems in the decline in American democracy began before Trump, can you say just a little bit more about that? How was American democracy declining before Trump?
Sarah Repucci
So, first of all, as a baseline, we’ve long had problems of equal treatment of the population, and especially among Black Americans, but other people of colour in this country, so that’s a longstanding problem. Then in terms of some of the decline that we saw that started about a decade ago, some of the initial things that were happening were the impact of jerrymandering, so the way that our districts are drawn, and they’ve been manipulated to keep incumbents in power, and the influence of special interests in our political system and the way that money has, kind of, worked to the ability for people’s votes to – for people to feel like their votes are really mattering.
Another issue I’d raise is there have been increasing problems with equal voting rights and opportunity to vote and the – from the Supreme Court throughout the Voting Rights Act, the provisions that were protecting certain places that had historic discrimination. So, you know, and then, you know, some other, sort of, small problems along the way, I think that, you know, the main point here is that US democracy was never perfect. But no democracy is perfect, and we all need to keep working on our democracies, and people sometimes think once you’ve achieved democracy, it’s an endpoint and you’re there forever, and the example of the United States proves that more than anything and that’s not true.
Hans Kundnani
So, I can’t resist but ask, so using your methodology, when did America become a democracy?
Sarah Repucci
So, we’ve only been doing this since 1972. We would say that the United States has been a democracy in that time. We only divided…
Hans Kundnani
Was it from 1965, that would be my question?
Sarah Repucci
So, we weren’t doing this then, so I can’t give you a methodological answer to that, but certainly the, you know, the fact that so many people in this country were disenfranchised for so many years. I mean, when we look at the global level and we compare to other countries, that’s certainly an issue that we’re taking into account, and so, I’m not going to go back and do it historically, but it definitely has been a big issue in our history.
Hans Kundnani
Okay, we may want to come back to that in the discussion. Anthony, you’re based in Scotland, as I said, or you’re based in Scotland at the moment, but you work in developing countries, how does the picture look, in terms of the democratic recession, if there is one, from where you sit?
Anthony Smith
Thanks very much, Hans, and thanks so much for inviting me to this discussion and it’s a real privilege to be interacting with Chatham House, as an institution, and its members, who are hugely knowledgeable. Well, just to go to the way you phrased the two questions earlier, how do you understand democracy? Very briefly, on what could be an all-day discussion, I would say that for us, for me, democracy is a set of behaviours and processes that does three things. One is, and perhaps most important, it tries to limit the abuse of power by the Executive.
Second, it protects personal freedoms that enable individuals and communities to pursue objectives that they have. And third, in an international context, or an international development context, I see democracy as a fundamental part of a country’s development road journey. And then, our strategy at WFD, we have three quotes that encapsulate this, and I won’t read them out, but one is the Churchill quote about “democracy being the worst form of government, except for all the others”; there’s a Cyril Ramaphosa one, and Amartya Sen, and they, sort of, bring together three really important elements of why democracy matters to us.
On the threats, yeah, we work in developing countries, transitioning countries as well, so Eastern Europe, the Balkans as well, and what we’ve seen in the threats, and we follow the work that Freedom House does, that The Economist does, that others like V-Dem do as well, and we see both traditional threats and some new threats. So, the traditional threats are the ones of individuals or groups that seek to retain power against popular will, and you see that in many places. Look at Myanmar at the moment, look at Venezuela, other places where elections are rigged, etc., and the individual circumstances will differ in all of those examples. But the underlying theme is the same and it’s one that’s been around for a long time, namely of a powerful elite trying to hold onto power without popular legitimacy.
In terms of the new threats, there are a couple that stand out and there’s a bit of crossover with what Sarah said. The first new threat is really a political threat, and it’s the shift to favour good governance over democratic governance, and I’ll explain what I mean by that. And this has been a gradual, but I think a significant shift, and I was the other day looking back at the UN General Assembly Declaration that adopted the Millennium Development Goals in 2000 and comparing that to the Declaration that was made when the Sustainable Development Goals were adopted in 2015. So, the first one in 2000 was full of strong commitments about democracy and democratic practice, and commitment to it, commitment to protect it and promote it.
The more recent one doesn’t mention democracy, and I think that change illustrates the shift that coincided with the end of, if you like, the idealisation of democracy, the assumption that democracies were successful and autocracies were not successful, and the financial crisis started to undermine this paradigm and it was weakened further by China’s growth and a bit by COVID as well. The new paradigm, and this is where I crossover with Sarah, does relate to China, and China’s argument is that good governance is more important than democratic governance. So, their model of efficient administration, economic success, matters more than democracy and that it is a legitimate model not just for themselves, but also for them to export to others.
They’ve been quite open about this, quite blatant about it. I remember reading an article, and a Chinese article, that said, “The old dichotomy between democracy and autocracy is dead and the new dichotomy is between bad governance and good governance.” So, that’s their justification, and this is a political shift that actually matters, and you hear this argument every day in our work, from one leader or another saying that “We have to work for stability, these rights are not ones that we prioritise,” and actually we, in democracies, sort of supported this to some extent. If you look at how a number of development stars, like Rwanda, Uganda, Ethiopia, until recently, were supported in their work to achieve the MDGs, or the SDGs, despite serious concerns about democratic practice. So, we need to pushback on that, and that’s a new political threat.
The second threats are around – they’re more technical and technological. So, if you look at the data from Freedom House, or The Economist, or others, it shows there’s a trend towards what we are starting to call DINOs, democracies in name only. They’re partly free in the Freedom House language, or hybrid regimes in, I think, The Economist language. They’re electoral democracies or electoral autocracies. They have the form of democracies, but they don’t have the reality of democracy. And those changes are important because they are a more sophisticated way of ensuring that those in power can remain in power. They enable election day to run well, but all of the control has been exerted in the year, two years in advance of the elections, restricting political and civic freedoms. So, those are important issues, and it often starts with controlling what I guess is called legacy media, but the digital sphere is important as well.
And then, I’ll end just by saying that, for me, there’s a positive in all this, and that comes from our work around the world, and most countries in the world, if you look at the spectrum between democracy and autocracy, now most countries are in the middle. You’ve got Denmark at one end and North Korea at the other end, and they are not going to change their position. The ones in the middle are the ones where democracy is under threat, there are challenges, but you’re living with both things at once: good democratic practice and bad democratic practice, and there’s an opportunity to help people to turn that round and to find champions of democracy in all of those countries and to work with them, and we should help them, and we can help them. Thanks.
Hans Kundnani
Brilliant, thank you, Anthony. Again, just a couple of just quick follow-ups, so, first of all, at the beginning of your remarks, you talked about democracy as part of development. There’s been this, sort of, discussion in, sort of, democracy studies in the last few years about the way that this assumption that democratisation went hand-in-hand with economic development has been somewhat shattered, right? That it turns out that it’s not the case that if you have a capita income of $13,000, that, you know, therefore you’re never going to go back to, sort of, pre-democratic, kind of, system. Has this changed the way you think about this relationship between democracy and development?
Anthony Smith
Well, it hasn’t changed the way I or my organisation thinks about it, but hopefully, the way that the wider western community is thinking about it has changed. You’re absolutely right, there used to be a view that democracy could wait, so when I mentioned what I thought of democracy, that was the Amartya Sen, the Economist’s view that countries aren’t made fit for democracy, but they’re made fit through democracy. And, yeah, I think it’s clear that there are many examples of strong states, states with strong institutions, that are able to exercise executive power very well, that are not democratic and they’re not democratic ‘cause they’re strong states and institutions benefit certain people who are in power. So, they do not automatically translate into democratic accountability and the ability to alternate who’s in power.
Hans Kundnani
Right, and then, in a way, this leads onto perhaps what Joan is going to talk about, because she’s going to talk about Europe. But I was thinking as you were talking about, you know, a lot of these, particularly these new threats, this replacement of democratic governance with good governance and so on, and, you know, powerful elites holding onto power without legitimacy, and this, kind of, sense of the form of democracy still existing but not really, the reality is a, sort of, hollowed out democracy, I was thinking that, you know, a lot of people would say that these things have been happening in the West too. And I don’t mean here driven by the populace, and it’s interesting that term hasn’t come up so far, but by the centrists, as it were, that there’s been this process of the hollowing out of democracy. And here the EU I think is a really interesting case, over the last few decades, but you seem to refer this more to the, sort of, China threat rather than something, which has been a broader trend throughout the West in, the last few decades.
Anthony Smith
I think it’s possible to conflate the number of issues there. I think the democracy, in name only, hollowed out democracy, is a phenomenon that has been around for a while. I think that the international community has made great strides in the work to support election observation and support to electoral practice in many countries, and that’s one reason why people who want to cheat the system don’t bother doing it on election day anymore, they do it in other ways. That is part of a, sort of, playbook, which can exist where elites get hold of key institutions, and you’ve seen it in – within the EU as well, in countries like Hungary and Poland, get hold of the media, control of the media, control of the judiciary, and prevent political freedom and civic freedoms that would challenge their power.
The Chinese model is, I think, a slightly different concept, but maybe it’s used in the same way sometimes, that it is legitimate to do that. That it’s legitimate to preference efficiency and delivery over rights and freedom, and we would challenge that.
Hans Kundnani
Yeah, very interesting. Okay, Joan, over to you. You manage an index, like Sarah’s, does the picture look, kind of, the same to you, or different?
Joan Hoey
Yes, I’m afraid we’re all following the same trend of regression and I’ll get to that. Just to say, first of all, thanks very much to you, to Chatham House for hosting this discussion, very important one, and it is indeed an honour and a pleasure to participate in it with my co-panellists. So, onto the two big questions: how to conceptualise democracy and what do we see as the main threats? So, this is a contested discussion and there’s a huge literature about it, which, you know, we can’t get into, all I can do is try and define how we see democracy and, in our Democracy Index, how we try to measure it. So, democracy, for me, has a practical and a moral dimension.
Democracy is fundamentally about people and democratic systems are supposed to be designed to serve the needs of people, and a proper functioning democracy is a political system in which people have a choice among real alternatives, represented by competing political organisations, political parties, and if politics is not competitive, democracy will atrophy, and the people will not be sovereign. So, you can see that I’ve stated the position in, you know, the particular, you know, debate here about representative democracy, which, you know, has also two dimensions. I guess one that emphasises more the, kind of, popular sovereignty element, and another which emphasises more of, kind of, constitutional mechanisms and rule of law and checks and balances and so on.
So, I said also democracy has a moral dimension, and that’s – what I mean by that is democracy demands not only the involvement of people, but it also expresses an attitude towards people. So, for Democrats, all people are equal, and democracy stands against any special status or privilege, based on wealth or class or race or gender or, indeed, education. So, democracy isn’t selective or reserved only for certain types of people.
So, that’s the concept and how do we operationalise it and measure it in the real world? So, our model is quite demanding and it is distinct from the Freedom House model. It’s what we call a thick measure of democracy, and what the literature refers to as a thick measure of democracy, rather than the, kind of, thinner measure that Freedom House – this combination of the political freedoms, civil liberties indexes of Freedom House is a rather thinner measure. So, that means that we don’t just look at electoral process and pluralism and the civil liberties, but we also look at functioning of government, which, to some degree, obviously Freedom House does look at some elements of that. We also look at political participation and, again, in a much more detailed way than other measures, and we also look at political culture. And so, our model assumes that although free and fair elections and civil liberties are indeed essential to democracy, they’re not in themselves sufficient to create a flourishing democracy.
So, our index on – which is on a nought to ten scale, it looks at 60 indicators across these five categories that I’ve just outlined, I won’t repeat them, and based on their scores in each of those five categories, countries are then classified as one of four types of regime, which is either a full democracy, a flawed democracy, a hybrid regime, or an authoritarian regime. So, we see, and our model sees, democracy as a continuous rather than a dichotomous concept, so that we can see – we conceptualise states, with varying degrees of democracy in our two categories, full and flawed democracies. So, that’s a little bit about our approach and our measure. I’m sure we can discuss that much more.
So, what are the main threats and have we been living through a democracy recession for the past 15 years, as Larry Diamond famously put it? I agree, there is a democracy recession. I think the important thing is to clarify, as my co-panellists have tried to do I think, what that means, but also to try and say why it’s happening, because we can talk about regression, but it always begs the question why? So, I think we can get more into that. And also, I think we need to look at how that change is depending on which part of the world we’re looking at. And even if we agree that there’s been a global democracy recession, and according to our measure, which has been going since 2006, that certainly is the case, democracy has either been stagnating or in retreat, but we can nevertheless acknowledge that some countries have made progress, even if the majority, in our index we cover 167 countries, even if the majority have regressed, so if we compare the 2020 score, for example, with their 2006 score. So, 68 countries actually out of 167 have improved their score between 2006 and 2020. That’s about 40%, so there’s six in Eastern Europe, there’s 11 in Latin America, 15 in Asia, ten in the MENA region, 21 in sub-Saharan Africa. But if we take the global average score and compare 2020 with 2006, what we see is overall a regression, and compared with 2020, Asia is the only region in our index that has a better regional average score.
Other regions that made progress between 2010, so after the, kind of, big collapse after the – in the global score after the financial and global crisis, we did see then some improvement in sub-Saharan Africa, even in the Middle East and North Africa regions, and they’ve since regressed since 2015. Latin America essentially has stagnated over the lifetime of our index, and the biggest regressions have been in Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and the US, they’ve experienced the biggest decline in their regional average score.
Now, the pandemic obviously has had a major negative effect on the global average score in 2020 and we can discuss that further. But crises usually bring to the surface, or accentuate, existing trends and the pandemic, I think, is no exception to that. It’s turned a spotlight on many problems that we’ve been discussing, all of us, in recent years, in terms of the problems of democracy. So, we probably want to look through the pandemic, given that it was an exceptional event, as what’s been driving this democracy recession and how we see future threats. I see four main threats very quicky.
The first is that the rollback of individual freedoms, the withdrawal of civil liberties, the creation of new state powers, and the democratic backsliding we’ve seen, in many countries over the past year, will persist for some time to come. So, there’s a danger that governments, autocrats will use new threats to justify a continuation of these measures.
The second threat is that the top-down style of often non-accountable governance that’s become the norm in Western democracies, in recent decades, will carry on. In other words, the response to the populist insurgency, which we interpret essentially as a demand for representation and accountability, the risk is that we’ll see a circling of the wagons and a failure to engage in any soul-searching about the democratic deficits that have spurred this populist movement, and we won’t really see any action to address the problems.
The third threat is that in emerging markets in Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, MENA region and sub-Saharan Africa, governments, Presidents, autocrats, authoritarians will respond to the protest movements of recent years by digging in, resisting change, becoming less democratic, cracking down on their opponents. Because we’ve seen, in 2018 and 2019, very significant protest movements in these regions, which have obviously, kind of, been frozen over the past year, and I expect we will see a resurgence of them and it will be interesting then, to see how they fare, and we can discuss that. And the final threat I wanted to just flag is this disturbing trend in recent years to restrict freedom of expression, not only in authoritarian regimes, but in developed democracies too, and during the pandemic we obviously saw many examples of censorship, of dissenting voices closing down of debate. Dissent is as important as consent in a democracy, so we should all be concerned about any clampdown on freedom of speech and media freedoms. Thank you.
Hans Kundnani
Great, thank you, Joan, a really interesting point about populism as a demand for representation. I’d be curious to see whether Sarah and Anthony see populism in that way too, particularly in, Sarah, in the US case, obviously a lot of people see populism more straightforwardly as a threat rather than as a corrective, I’d be curious to get your take on that. But let me take a couple of questions from the audience, and there’s several questions about the pandemic, about the – and Joan just touched on this, but maybe you have more to say on that, how the pandemic has affected democracy around the world. And then I think, sort of, actually quite related to that, several people have asked about technology, in particular one question about social media, is social media an instrument of democracy or not? I mean, is it good or bad for democracy, I guess? And then also on technology, do existing and emerging surveillance technologies, in the hands of both governments and private corporations, pose an existential threat to the democratic rights of individuals? And here, again, it’s quite striking that Larry Diamond, who we’ve mentioned, you know, was quite an optimist about technology, sort of, nearly ten years ago, sort of, liberation technology, and now there’s this very pessimistic mood that, you know, digital technology, in particular social media, is, sort of, destroying that democracy. So, just any thoughts on that, on the pandemic and on technology and how that’s all-affecting democracy around the world? Anthony, do you want to go first?
Anthony Smith
Thanks, Hans. Just very briefly on the pandemic, I mean, I think we saw, when the pandemic started a whole set of really obvious threats to democratic practice, and which Joan has set out, and we group them in three ways. First, a direct challenge to normal democratic practice, and we saw that in the UK, you know, we – I remember MPs tweeting about their concerns about the emergency legislation and the need to scrutinise it and that that resulted in changes to that legislation and breakpoints and requirements for Parliamentary confirmation. But in countries with weak democratic structures, that was a real threat and there were lots of emergency measures instituted, with very limited consultation and a weak oversight.
We also have seen everywhere a regression for women, very limited levels of decision-making power for women in many countries, at the same time as huge impact both from direct involvement in fighting the pandemic in the health sense, but also, domestic violence and the balance, in terms of working to compensate for the impact of the pandemic. And third, there was this battle of ideologies, which was around autocrats in China, I think Joan mentioned, saying that they were better at dealing with the pandemic. And I think all of these things have played out in different ways, but there’s also been pushback and I think there has also been protest and innovation by civil society to tackle these issues, and as far as the autocrats are better at handling pandemics issue is concerned, I think, you know, what has come through, I think, is that trust in government is a really important issue in managing a crisis and that applies no matter what your type of regime, democracy or autocracy, and it’s something that is getting a lot more attention with the partners that we deal with. They want to talk through what are they doing wrong, in terms of not gaining public trust. So, that’s something important to look at for us. Thanks.
Hans Kundnani
Great, and Sarah?
Sarah Repucci
Sure, and sorry about my sound, I hope it’s better.
Hans Kundnani
Much better now, yeah.
Sarah Repucci
Good. So, I mean, on the pandemic, yes, definitely, and I think that the big risk is that it’s not all the horrible things that have happened over the past year, but all of the things that will remain in place after the health crisis is over. And I think there’s a parallel with 9/11 and maybe in any situation where the population is scared and they’re willing to give more latitude to governments for certain forms of repression in the name of controlling something scary, but then, those controls stay in place after they’re not necessary anymore. And, you know, we’ve seen instances of laws being passed, emergency measures that then have been codified into law, the constitutional amendments that were pushed through in Hungary at the end of the year, emergency laws restricting free expression in Cambodia, kind of across the spectrum these different kinds of long arm measures that have been put into place. And I think surveillance, if we’re talking transitioning to technology, the role of surveillance in all of this and the ways that people’s privacy has been eroded very gradually, and in ways that people don’t necessarily notice or know the effects of until it’s too late. And, you know, for many of us, we may not be in a position to have reason to worry, but I think it’s – there’s an overall societal shift that we’re experiencing that is very concerning.
On the role of platforms more generally, and technology I would just say that, you know, I wouldn’t say that technology is good or bad. There’s been enormous democratic effects of technology. The effect of getting people online to have a voice who never had a voice, in many of these contexts, is really important. But we also are lacking right now a vision for a free and open internet that promotes rights and doesn’t also restrict them. And so, I do think that we need a new vision for the way that the internet can be used for good, that can counter all of the ways where it very clearly is used for repression.
Hans Kundnani
Does surveillance come into your index, in terms of how you – does it affect the quality of democracy, according to your methodology?
Sarah Repucci
It does, to a small extent, in Freedom in the World, because we do look at people’s ability to express themselves freely and if people are afraid of – that what they say could be used against them and we do consider that a restriction. We look at it a lot more in our Freedom on the Net report, which looks at it in a lot of depth.
Hans Kundnani
And would you agree that, you know, what some people call, sort of, surveillance capitalism is, sort of, eroding the distinction between democracies and authoritarian states?
Sarah Repucci
I wouldn’t go that far, you know, there’s a lot of checks and balances in democracies that counter it and there’s just more accountability, but I would definitely say that we’re seeing kinds of erosion in democracies that we didn’t used to see.
Hans Kundnani
Great, Joan, any thoughts on the pandemic or tech?
Joan Hoey
Yeah, sure. So, I mean, the pandemic was obviously the main focus of the report, not the only one, but it was – the title was In Sickness and in Health? What happens to Democracy? So, obviously, this was, you know, the biggest public health crisis of our lifetimes, you know, a catastrophe basically, and dealing with it has inevitably had huge adverse consequences of many sorts. You know, economic, social, and democratic as well, and so it – many, many scores, for many countries, particularly in democracies actually, were downgraded. So, in the civil liberties category, to do with individual freedoms, also in our functioning of government category as well, which is to do with some of the things that people have talked about already, which is the kind of lack of scrutiny and openness and transparency with which governments went about assuming these extraordinary powers. And also, in that section as well, the degree to which citizens feel they have control over their lives, that, you know, took a dive obviously in 2020. So, it had the big impact across the board, including in the developed democracies.
Now, of course, you can say that there was no easy choices for governments here, you know, and it was a very uncomfortable position for democratic governments to be in, to this wholesale withdrawal of liberties that we take for granted. And obviously in places, in democracies where the whole system depends on government by consent, you know, it wasn’t a very comfortable place for many to be. But at the same time, there didn’t seem to be an alternative, any real alternative to social distancing, track and trace, lockdown measures and so on, and that seemed to be inescapable. And I guess, in terms of the whole, kind of, debate then about the lockdown sceptics and all the rest of it, ultimately, you know, you have to say, in the cause of maintaining freedom, you know, what degree, what level of mortality, you know, are you prepared to accept? You cannot necessarily have your cake and eat it.
So, there was this remarkable degree of public compliance, obviously we did see protests and so on, but most people, kind of, drew the conclusion that a temporary withdrawal of liberties, they would put up with that in the cause of saving lives, and I think most governments basically behaved as you would have expected them to. So, you know, the biggest regressions actually were in the authoritarian countries, in terms of the downgrading scores, because those governments, they – and autocrats and some took advantage of the pandemic to crack down, as you might have expected them to, and I think – but it also showed also in the, kind of, more developed democracies, it also highlighted something about the problems of democracy here. So, we saw this, kind of, again it was in keeping with what we’ve seen in recent days, this decades, this top down, kind of, no consultation, not really treating the public like grown-ups, you know, that was the way in which governments went about taking the measures that they did.
On social media, yeah, I agree, it is a, kind of – this is a neutral, but I think, you know, the one thing that is very concerning is the shocking amount of power that is now being wielded by social media organisations, big tech companies. They now have this extraordinary power now to constrain freedom of speech and close down debate and they shouldn’t have that power. I don’t think the argument that they’re private companies any longer hold, given that this is the new, kind of, public square of the modern age, and we can’t allow them, you know, to have – exercise such controls. So, the, you know, the shutting down of the accounts of the sitting President of the US was fundamentally anti-democratic in my view, you know, and I think not necessarily just in that case, but in general, you know, the, kind of, partisanship that’s also been displayed, in some of their actions, is not good either. So, you know, what should be done?
Obviously, some political leaders objected to that, Angela Merkel objected to it, spoke out against it, not necessarily to defend the principle of freedom of speech, you know, but because they want to be the ones to decide on the limits of free speech. Should we give that power to governments and states either? You know, history perhaps suggests that we shouldn’t.
Hans Kundnani
Very interesting, Joan. So, Sarah, we have a question, which I’m going to ask Douglas Andrews to ask himself, it’s quite a long question, but you might also want to respond to Joan on whether it was anti-democratic for Trump to be kicked off Twitter. Douglas, go ahead and ask your question.
Douglas Andrews
Thank you, Hans. Sarah, since you addressed primarily the issue of what’s been going on in the US, I have a question that’s specifically for you, but the other panellists might want to join in. I think there’s a general consensus that US democracy dodged a bullet between the election and the 6th of January. Since a great majority of Republicans still believe that Biden’s election was illegitimate and many Republican controlled state legislatures is striving to restrict the voting rights, are you optimistic that this anti-democratic trend in the US can be contained, or is there now a systemic crisis in democracy in the US?
Sarah Repucci
What I’d say is that we’re not there yet. I mean, in the end, our institutions did uphold the results. The election was considered one of the most secure, the most secure in US history. The Judges from – appointed by Democrats and Republicans gave fair hearing to the disputes, there was a peaceful transfer of power on January 20th. I think, for me, what is most concerning is the way that the concept of democracy itself has become so politicised in this country, and when you have a situation like that, which is not unfortunately unique to the United States, it is very difficult to uphold common values when those values now are being tagged as Democratic or Republican. I – the other thing I would say is that we’ve also been really encouraged by the Republicans who have spoken in defence of our Constitution and of the processes and the institutions in this country. So, I wouldn’t say that there is no hope for bipartisan solutions, but it definitely is very concerning and it’s something that we’re watching very closely.
Hans Kundnani
It seems to me though that it’s not quite that, you know, democracy has become politicised, in the sense that one side thinks of itself as democratic and the other one doesn’t. Isn’t it that both sides think of themselves as being democratic, but they have different understandings of what democracy is, right, which brings us back to this, sort of, definitional question that we started with, right? So, you know, I feel like we’ve, sort of, all agreed that there is a democratic recession taking place, but we haven’t really answered Joan’s really interesting question about why. So, we’ve got three minutes left and I would like each of you to just have a go at that question. You know, if there is a democratic recession, you know, why has it happened and, you know, I guess another way of putting it would be who is to blame for this, assuming it’s not just the Chinese? Joan, do you want to go first?
Joan Hoey
Yeah, I guess when this is discussed usually, the recession question, the focus is usually on the kind of authoritarian trends and that – other parts of the world, you know, the problem is over there, and in recent years, we, in the Democracy Index, we’ve very much focused actually on the problems in the developed democracies, which, you know, maybe have been a little neglected, and I guess the basic point is the system is not working. It has not been working for people for a very long time, you know, and we’re all familiar, I think, with the, kind of, trends that we’ve seen, you know, that have been taking place over a very long time, and demise of alternatives, the, kind of, shift towards – well, the growing gap between electorates and parties and political elites, the, kind of, growing influence of non-accountable, unelected bodies, you know, judicial bodies, expert bodies and so on, and that’s been taking place over a long period, and I actually would like to say that perhaps the US and Europe have more in common.
I know now, Hans, your article in the Journal of Democracy was excellent, looking at the problem of convergence in Europe, and then, also addressing the issue of polarisation in the US. And I think there are important differences, and this polarisation that we see in the US is much more extreme. It’s basically a, kind of, culture wars polarisation. I would say there’s more convergence, in terms of the, kind of, more economic issues between the two systemic parties, mainstream parties. So, there are commonalities, but I think the key commonality is that the supposed representative political organisations no longer represented people and that’s why we’ve had this reaction in Europe, and we had it obviously in 2016 in the US.
Now, the US is categorised as a flawed democracy and it has been since 2016, and that predates Donald Trump and that’s to do really with these problems: decline in public trust in institutions, and this huge, kind of, gap that opened up and people were voting for – against the status quo and demanding some change.
Now, obviously, we haven’t had great results, over the past few years, but that’s how I see the problems. There’s a lot in common there, and the problem how you address it. We need a democratic renewal and that’s really hard work. I think it is very problematic to try and really work on what are your alternatives, as a political party, after the discrediting of the Left, the end of the Cold War, you know, discrediting of the, kind of, old alternatives of the 20th Century? You know, it’s very hard, but we still have conflict in our society, we still have people whose interests are different, and they need organisations that represent them. So, we do have to start again. We can’t think that we can just carry on as we were, and that these shells of political parties, you know, can do the job that needs to be done. So, that’s my comment. I would like to discuss that much more, but I’ll stop on that.
Hans Kundnani
Yeah, aery interesting, and there it’s quite interesting that Angela Merkel, who is seen by some as a, sort of, figurehead of liberal democracy, is famous for saying there is no alternative, right, so in that sense perhaps she is part of the problem. Anthony, what’s your answer to the ‘why’ question?
Anthony Smith
I mean, if you look at the protests that have happened in recent years, and 2019 was a highpoint for protests in the world, in terms of how many there have been, declined a bit in the pandemic, but are increasing again. I think they tend to protest about three types of things. One is corruption, a second is government overreach, governments doing – staying longer than they should or doing more than they should, and the third is exclusion. And I got a lot of that from my friends at Carnegie, including Tom Carruthers, who have done a lot of work on protests. So, what people want is honesty, choice and fairness in government. So, I think there has been a problem that has not necessarily – there’s been a problem about the oversight and the accountability of Politicians that have allowed these things to happen. At the same time as there has been a problem, and that has applied in democracies in counties all around the world, and I think Black Lives Matter movement, for me, was about the most powerful thing to come out of the US, in the last 12 months. And its global reach in all of the partner countries where we worked – where we work, there were Black Lives Matter demonstrations, with people taking that and applying it to their own situation where people felt they were being excluded and treated unfairly.
I think the challenges around that go along with the fact that countries are dealing with really difficult policy issues. So, you know, when you’re dealing with social justice issues around the world, you’re dealing with climate, you’re dealing with this unbelievable pandemic and global health challenge and economic recovery. So, dealing with those policy issues well, at the same time as addressing problems in our political systems is really hard, and it’s going to be tough, but we can do something about it. I think that when you go – what my counterbalance is, in a partner country where we’re working, they don’t spend all their time looking at what’s happening in party politics in the UK, they’re worried about how to improve the effectiveness of their own systems, and there is progress being made. I think we can support that progress in lots of countries.
Hans Kundnani
Thank you, Anthony, and, Sarah, last word to you, why?
Sarah Repucci
Well, so, I’d like to end on a positive note and so, while I agree with everything that’s been said, I think what I’d say is that, you know, democracy really – it can deliver. It can give people what they want, and we see this in the, you know, in all the protests that have been happening 2019, but then into 2020, and people risking their lives in Myanmar right now, that this is the system of government that people want. I think it really is a matter of making sure that it does deliver on their interests and on their needs, and there have been, unfortunately, too many situations where an elite has come to power and not served all people in the country, and, you know, we do – we need to do a better job of that, but I do think that we can. So, I’m always optimistic.
Hans Kundnani
Great. Well, I don’t think we’ve quite got to the bottom of this. Like Joan, I would – I’d like to have another hour at least to talk about this. I feel like we’re just getting started really. We will though be having more webinars about this, about democracy. It’s an area that we’re working on in the Europe Programme in particular, so hope to see many of you back for those. In the meantime, thank you very much all for coming and in particular, thank you to our three panellists: Sarah, Anthony, and Joan. And have a good evening or a good afternoon or a good morning, depending on where you are. Thanks all for coming.
Sarah Repucci
Thank you.
