“Today, we face our own 1945 moment,” the United Nations Secretary General, António Guterres, said as he opened the UN’s 75th General Assembly in September last year.
The General Assembly was taking place as the COVID 19pandemic, which began as a global health crisis had developed into an economic and social crisis. Now it is also fuelling a crisis for democracy and human rights. The scenes in Washington D.C in early January providing the perfect background tapestry to exemplify the shaky ground democracy now sits on.
The Secretary General’s speech in particular highlighted one important fact. A major crisis of any kind reveals existing fault lines and often acerbates them. This is true of the COVID 19 pandemic. The current pandemic is exposing inequalities in societies (we are all in the same storm but not in the same boat); discrimination and xenophobia; and regressions in democracy and human rights.
Currently there is considerable discourse on how the pandemic is negatively impacting on democracy and human rights. Based on the experience of previous crisis these concerns are wholly valid.
The most frequent form of global crises are financial ones (see analysis). Politics usually takes a right turn following financial crises. For example the gains of extreme right-wing parties were particularly pronounced in a number of countries after the global crises of the 1920s/1930s and after 2008. Governing too tends to become more difficult after financial crises. Government majorities shrink and parliaments fragment. People take to the streets too. The average number of anti-government demonstrations almost triples, violent riots double and general strikes increase by at least one third.
These crises present clear political opportunity. Vladimir Putin came to power in the 1990s as reformer following the financial crisis in Russia in the 1990s. Recep Erdogan followed a similar trajectory to power in Turkey.
In many cases, these trends tend to taper out as some kind of stability emerges. But not always and a crisis be it health, financial or political have always presented opportunity for malign intentions. Hitler came to power (democratically) by appealing to the middle ground. In 1933 the poorest people in Germany voted for his opponents, the Communist Party and the moderate left-wing Social Democrats. Most of the rest – lower-middle classes, the bourgeoisie, the unorganized workers, the rural masses, and the older traditionalists switched their votes from the mainstream centrist and right-wing parties- backed him.
Hard economic times usually mean hard times for democracy, particularly when it is new and fragile. According to an analysis by Adam Przeworski who charted Democracies between 1950 to 1990, when democracies face a decline in income, they are three times more likely to disappear than when they experience economic growth. While the chance that a democracy will wither is 1 in 135 when incomes grow during any three or more consecutive years. The message is clear. Recessions are bad for democracy. The economic disorder of the late 1920s and 1930s saw the end for a number of democracies in Europe and Latin America.
We are in that moment now with current threats against the four main pillars of democracy – holding free and fair elections, upholding the rule of law, recognizing the idea of legitimate opposition and protecting the integrity of rights.
A global survey (Freedom House) of experts and activists on democracy and human rights, found by more than a fourfold margin they agreed that “overall, the coronavirus outbreak has been a setback for democracy and human rights in my main country of focus.” Some 64 per cent agreed that this negative impact would persist over the next three to five years, suggesting the setback for democracy may well outlast the health crisis.
There is much evidence to support this.
The pandemic is leading to a rapid expansion of executive power around the world. Countries from Hungary, the Philippines to Cambodia have all enacted legislation to deepen emergency powers. Hungary’s “Draft Law on Protecting Against Coronavirus” gives vast powers and although the act had a 90-day sunset clause, the government has already used the powers to make it illegal for transgender individuals to alter their birth records, hardly a public health priority.
Freedom of expression similarly has been restricted in many countries ostensibly to limit disinformation but often with nefarious intent. The Chinese government has censored information about its response and detained journalists who reported on the outbreak. In Thailand, citizens and journalists who criticize the government’s handling of the crisis face imprisonment. In Jordan, the Prime Minister now has the authority to suspend freedom of expression. Health concerns rightly have limited the number of public gatherings but suspicions abound of governments using legislation to limit or squash the right to demonstrate.
The crisis is also accelerating governments’ use of new surveillance technologies. China’s effective response to Covid-19 has increased global demand for its digital public health tools. These tools have been very effective as a public health mechanism but they provide governments with extraordinary abilities to track and monitor citizens. This technology poses a particular risk to fragile democracies and countries in the developing world, where independent institutions are weak.
One thing that fuels anti-democratic forces is the narrative that ‘autocracies’’ do better than democracies. This does not stand up to any rigorous examination. According to “10 rules of successful Nations” by Ruchir Sharma democracies dominate the list of countries with the steadiest growth. Together, Sweden, France, Belgium and Norway have posted only one year of growth faster that 7% since 1950. However, over that time all four have seen average incomes increase five to six fold. This is the stabilizing effect of democracy. Every large economy that has seen average income approaching $10,000 is a democracy. China with an average income approaching that number is trying to become a large rich autocracy. It would be the first.
Democracies generally remain the world’s wealthiest societies and the most open to new ideas and opportunities. When people around the world are asked about their preferred political conditions, the principles that underpin democratic societies emerge strongly.
Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan speaking in Greece in 2017 noted that Liberal democracy almost died in the 1930s, but liberal democracies eventually defeated Nazism, Fascism and Democracy. It is,he argued, arguably the most successful political system the world has ever seen.
However, a critical appendage to democracy is economic development coupled with social justice. What has consistently plagued the failed and failing democracies over the past decades has been bad governance. One thing that can help are independent institutions such as independent trade unions, organizations representing of business, civil-society organizations, institutions to support a free press, mechanisms to support human and political rights. These are critical countervailing forces, who can speak truth to power.
“Social partnership” the structured dialogue between trade unions and business and employers organizations has shown in 2020 just how invaluable a tool it is. It is doubtful that many of the momentous decisions would have been made without it, certainly not as swiftly or without rancour. The ability of representative organizations to mobilize the views of the real economy and put together proposals and solutions in hours and days should not be underestimated. It has been a critical tool in this crisis. The efforts of social partners have provided social ballast to societies, rocked by the voracity and suddenness of the virus. In all of the chaos, it was reassuring see key parts of society pulling as one.
Independent institutions from civil society, trade unions along with business groups can be critical gatekeepers in protecting democracy. There are many examples, such as the Tunisian ‘quartet’, which received the Nobel peace prize in 2015.
Promoting and protecting these institutions along with the appending rights that underwrite them, such as freedom of association, expression and assembly will increasingly need to be at the forefront of the work of development organizations and the wider UN system in the immediate years to come.
