The New Normal

Eduardo del Buey
Foto: Afp
La Jornada Maya

Martes 15 de mayo, 2018

When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, many observers concluded that the era of democracy was at hand, and that Western democratic thought and models had won the ideological wars of the 20th Century.

The hope was that strong democratic institutions would emerge (parliaments, free and effective media, free and fair elections, constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression and assembly, and an independent judiciary, among others) and that voters would elect leaders fully committed to respecting these institutions.

Things haven’t quite worked out that way. Voters have in many cases increasingly voted for authoritarian leaders that since elected are bent on weakening democratic institutions to ensure that they remain in power indefinitely.

To begin with, rabid nationalism and populism appear to be on the rise while the core values of democracy appear to be under attack in many parts of the world, including the United States and European countries such as Austria, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, as well as Venezuela, Russia, and the Philippines.

Indeed, in its 2017 Democracy Index, The Economist found the United States to be a “flawed” democracy for the second year in a row – identifying the cause as a diminishing lack of confidence and trust in government, elected representatives, and political parties by U.S. citizens. The study found that less than 5 percent of the world’s population lives in a “full” democracy, while about 45 percent can be classified as living in “flawed” democracies. The report cites the fact that the percentage of Americans who say that they have faith in their government has dropped from 70 percent in the early 1960’s to below 20 percent in 2016. These are the conditions under which populists and “outsiders” can begin to appeal to the electorate with many of the results that we are already witnessing.

Populist parties have formed the major opposition in France, Italy, The Netherlands, and Germany, leading many to ask if the world is evolving into a post-democracy era. India is also increasingly veering towards a more nationalistic model of government as intercommunal relations under the Modi government deteriorate.

Many voters are increasingly questioning the relevance of democracy in governance by electing populist governments whose stated goal is to create a strong national state while consciously disparaging traditional democratic institutions and separation of powers. The fact that they are doing so by electing undemocratic leaders democratically is disconcerting to this observer.

Is the axis of global leadership simply shifting from a Western orientation towards an Eastern one, with Asian and African value systems recovering their pride of place in lieu of imported Western models?

Is globalization changing from a Western-led phenomenon to a multipolar one?

Will China, a military superpower today and a growing economic superpower, see its values and leadership increasingly influence the governance decisions of many client countries?

Is the global economy going to be more Chinese-led, with Western importance in global governance, trade, and finance reduced?

Are western democratic values as we have known them for the past hundred years going to yield increasingly to authoritarianism capable of guiding populations further out of poverty in exchange for giving up their power to freely and fairly elected leaders and exercise basic freedoms?

A Latinobarómetro poll taken in 2017 throughout Latin America (with a polling sample of over twelve thousand) found that only 53 percent of Latin Americans still believed that democracy is the best form of governance – down from 61 percent in 2012. The region is not homogeneous, and the poll found that support for democracy fell to a low of 43 percent in Brazil and 38 percent in Mexico but rose to 78 percent in Venezuela, as that country has struggled since 1998 against an increasingly aggressive authoritarianism and populism. Indeed, only 22 percent of Venezuelans supported the current form of governance – no surprise, given the current government’s abysmal track record in terms of governance and economics.

In Eastern Europe, we are seeing the emergence of illiberal democracies – in countries that thirty years ago suffered under the yoke of Soviet tyranny. Leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orban are welcoming increased Chinese investment in infrastructure as being non-intrusive with respect to governance, unlike that of the European Union that is pressuring Orban to remain within democratic boundaries.

The Middle East played briefly with democratic dreams during the Arab spring, only to fall back into authoritarian models of government and severe limitations on freedom of expression and political participation. Tribalism, religious hatreds, and traditions of strong-man politics continue to be the models on which the region continually falls back on after experimenting with Western ideas and models.

In Egypt, the military stole a democratic result from the people after the Arab spring, with General al-Sisi taking power and winning rigged elections. Turkey’s President Erdogan has done away with many of the trappings of democracy as he concentrates power in his own hands.

So, although leaders today are elected in some way or another, does the fact that they are “elected” make them democratic? Are they motivated by democratic values, or are they motivated by personal power at the expense of the majority?

Around the globe, China is now playing its economic hand, and the effects on democratic governance could well be affected. The economic results of Chinese involvement – investment and jobs without democratic development sound good to many governments interested in remaining in power indefinitely.

Can China contribute to African economic development, paying for its resources with the necessary capital and technology to allow Africa to emerge as a major producer and market without demanding respect for human rights and democratic practices in return?

Is the Chinese “Belt and Road” initiative powerful enough to transform many developing country economies into wealth generators to increase standards of living and access to essential services without the need for transitions towards democratic governance?

China’s leadership has embarked on a new environmental focus as its model for economic development in the 21st Century. While China still has enormous environmental problems and challenges to address, this is a step in the right direction – and doesn’t require enhanced democratic governance in order to produce results.

China has to address its own political and social challenges successfully as the divide between rich and poor increases. The gap between older members of society who grew up during the Cultural Revolution and the rapidly growing youth segment will also pose a clash of mentalities much like that experienced in the West in the 1960’s. It remains to be seen if China can address the aspirations of those who seek greater freedom now that they enjoy the fruits of economic development.

So, the question remains: for the majority of people around the world, is life becoming better, worse, or simply different?

For many in the developing world, infant mortality rates (a key indicator of economic and social development) are improving. In 2016, the World Economic Forum reported that enormous strides have been made in reducing child deaths, cutting the under-five mortality rate by more than half (53 percent) between 1990 and 2015.

To further underscore how far we have come, Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari states that today more people die from suicide than from human violence or war and that one is more likely to die from being overweight than from starvation.

In a speech on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. in 2016, former U.S. Agency for International Development administrator Gayle Smith said that, “I think everyone in the room knows that this is a moment of extraordinary progress. Over the last 30 years, extreme poverty has been cut in half. Boys and girls are enrolling in primary school at nearly equal rates, and there are half as many children out of school today as there were 15 years ago”.

These are but a few indicators that life is getting better for many previously disenfranchised population groups.

But many of these population groups live in governance systems that have eschewed Western democratic models of governance.

Can Western democratic leaders reverse the current slide towards authoritarianism and populism? Can democratic leaders in other parts of the world wrest power from authoritarian leaders and develop strong democratic institutions? Can democratic leaders everywhere once again connect with voters and offer them a pluralistic democratic choice free from authoritarianism?

Will the West eventually have to accept that there will always be different models of governance, and that Western values will not necessarily become global values, or can it find ways to better promote democratic values abroad to convince voters everywhere that there is a better way?

In some ways, there really is no choice as failure to persevere may well threaten the future of western democracies themselves.

This is a challenge that could well dictate geopolitics for the foreseeable future.

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