The Letter on Justice and Open Debate published on 7 July 2020 and signed by 150 noted authors, academics, and public intellectuals cuts straight to a key fault line in liberalism. A collection of privileged individuals are claiming an unfettered right to say or write whatever they wish on the grounds that this right is the “lifeblood of a liberal society”. If this highly contestable claim is correct, it can then be asked if a liberal society is justifiable.
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Confronting the dramatic trends taking place in the rates of global warming, destruction of the environment, extinction of biodiversity, and global social injustice urgently requires unprecedented societal and economic transformations. Can major democratic economies overcome the combination of disillusionment with government and distrust of experts, and position themselves to bring about the transformations these crises demand?
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A survey of Central and Eastern European countries exposes the shallow roots of liberal democracy, with significant numbers indicating that they would trade off democratic freedoms for greater security, welfare, and preservation of traditional values. In only half of surveyed countries would a majority of the respondents choose liberal democracy over an autocratic leader.
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Is the pandemic not just a test for healthcare systems around the world, but an international contest for which country has the best political system? Did democracies really respond to the Covid-19 pandemic less swiftly than authoritarian systems – and if the determining factor is not the political system, what are the key elements in crisis response?
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The latest BTI Transformation Index shows that the rule of law and political freedoms are being eroded in an increasing number of democracies, and the number of people who are governed poorly and less democratically is increasing worldwide. The BTI ratings for quality of democracy, market economy and governance have dropped to their lowest level.
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One of the more disturbing tendencies of modern governments is ‘securitisation’ – transforming policy problems into threats, thereby elevating them into the national security domain. In many western democracies security is accorded pre-eminent status among the various domains of public policy, creating the preconditions for securitisation to elevate the levels of state intervention in a way that displays, emphasises and enhances the power of the state and its control over its citizens.
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Bruno Tertrais proposes a provocative list of trends might be exacerbated or accelerated by the COVID-19 crisis. The list begs the tantalising question of how each of these trends might impact on the progress and direction of the others. How might the decline of globalisation affect the rise in authoritarianism and the risk of conflict? How might sovereignism and isolationism retard responses to the ecological and climate crises of the Anthropocene?
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The Belgrade Centre for Security Policy (BCSP) has produced a disturbing report on what it describes as the “deliberate political undertaking in which political actors use the consequences (both real and imagined) of the previous government as justification for the complete capture of the state’s institutions” in Serbia. At a time when the EU is struggling to live up to its core political values, the Serbian government’s commitment to the rule of law and separation
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Should US presidential hopeful Joe Biden prevail in November, the grounds will have been laid for Donald Trump to cry foul – with the potential for a crisis of political legitimacy. Australian policymakers, struggling with balancing the economic relationship with China and the security relationship with the US, should be following domestic trends in America with nervous apprehension.
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Positioning the adversarial relationship with China as one of morally superior western democratic nations in competition with a somehow illegitimate and malevolent China is an exercise in historical amnesia. The democratic United State’s 1890 – 1920 trajectory from western hemisphere state to global power has some economic, military and foreign policy parallels with authoritarian China’s growth in the twenty-first century.
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According to a report released in January 2020 by the Bennett Institute (Cambridge), many large democracies are now at their highest-ever recorded level for democratic dissatisfaction, including the UK, US, Brazil, Mexico and Australia. Many large democracies are now at their highest-ever recorded level for democratic dissatisfaction, including the UK, US, Brazil, Mexico and Australia A report released in January 2020 by the new Centre for the Future of Democracy at the Bennett Institute, University
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In government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, Evgeny Morozov sees a ‘feast of solutionism’ being unleashed. [W]e can see two distinct strands of solutionism in government responses to the pandemic. “Progressive solutionists” propose that timely, app-based exposure to the right information could “nudge” people to behave in the public interest, while “punitive solutionists”, by contrast, want to use surveillance infrastructure to monitor and manage daily activities. The risk, he argues, is that the pandemic will supercharge the solutionist state, … creating an excuse to fill the political vacuum with anti-democratic practices.
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The COVID-19 crisis will affect the global geostrategic situation in a number of ways. Economic conditions within nation states and across the globalised world will have shifted; governments will be juggling austerity policies, tax increases and welfare demands. Liberal and democratic values, and confidence in political leadership, are likely to have suffered. And internationally, the future geostrategic situation could turn on whether China or the US bounces back best from the current predicament.
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While it is difficult to see an inflection point during a crisis, missing that moment is potentially catastrophic. To subsequently persist with former paradigms when the world has shifted is folly. The artefacts of neo-liberal economics—globalised production, transnational supply chains, international finance, the erosion of the welfare state, and the abandonment of responsibility to the faceless market by governments—have produced a world not-fit-for-purpose in a crisis.
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In an article in The Guardian, David Runciman shows how the pandemic has removed “one layer of political life to reveal something more raw underneath”. He writes, “As Hobbes knew, to exercise political rule is to have the power of life and death over citizens. The only reason we would possibly give anyone that power is because we believe it is the price we pay for our collective safety. But it also means that we
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Gloomy assessments of the status and prospects for liberal democracy are increasingly common, reflected in numerous surveys and a range of research which variously blames neoliberalism, globalisation, capitalism, media and the failure of democratic institutions. Governments’ responses to the Covid-19 pandemic seem likely to at best aggravate the current trend and at worst accelerate it. The prognosis for liberal democracy post-Covid-19 is not auspicious.
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LIberal aspects of democracy, in particular civil liberties and the rule of law, are essential to a democratic system worthy of this name. Majority decisions taken in illiberal contexts are not a sufficient basis for political action: there is no such thing as an “illiberal democracy”.
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Past US presidents used the potency of the American liberal democratic ideal to rally like-minded nations and to rein in and chasten the world’s miscreants. The liberty and justice rhetoric appealed to and generated hope among peoples suffering under autocracy and oppression. The ideal inspired, and could be leveraged for influence. But under President Trump, the important institutions of constitutional democracy and international law have suffered serious damage, and the long-term prospects for peace and stability have been undercut as a result.
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In German politics, a strong party taboo was broken when Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Party joined with the centrist Free Democrat Party leader in Thuringia, Thomas Kemmerich, to form a government with the support of the right wing Alternative for Germany. The breaking of the taboo might reflect the passing of the generation of Angela Merkel, shaped by the complex social, political and economic legacy of the Nazi past, a divided Germany, post-Soviet national reunification and the emergence of the European Union.
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According to Mike Pezzullo, Australians are like ‘comfortable hobbits’ – blissfully unaware of the grave dangers that exist beyond their borders and ill-prepared for the ‘emerging … “dark universe”’ of globalised ‘terror, crime, and indeed evil’. Pezzullo’s proposed response is radical and revolutionary and alarming.
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