March 29, 2023 - 10:00am
The Economist Intelligence Unit warns of “democratic stagnation”. Global freedom has declined “for the seventeenth consecutive year”, according to Freedom House. Civicus Forum has officially labelled the UK’s democracy as “obstructed”. Like the Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C. — the world capital of the NGO industrial complex — the release of alarmist reports on the state of global democracy has become a venerable spring tradition.
The organisations that produce these reports have slightly different methodologies — the EIU and Freedom House are respectably centrist while Civicus Forum, a newer institution, exhibits a progressive bent — but their basic approach is remarkably similar.
International watchdogs of varying stripes launder their political and ideological preferences through scientific language to produce high-minded warnings about the future of democracy. These reports generate frightening headlines but are often misleading, inaccurate, or straightforwardly biased.
Attempting to quantify the health of individual countries’ institutions beyond the broadest strokes inevitably involves subjective, value-laden judgements. Comparing America’s expansive First Amendment with more restrictive, European-style hate speech laws is one such example. Another is Canada’s 2022 invocation of the Emergencies Act, which allowed the Government to freeze anti-lockdown protesters’ bank accounts without due process. The EIU report briefly mentions this measure but actually raises Canada’s overall score from the year before, citing favourable factors like its centrist “political culture”. One might argue that a moderate political climate counts for more than the temporary freezing of dissidents’ financial assets, but that’s a judgement call, not a scientific finding.
Detailed appendices on methodology can’t obscure this fundamental problem, and where subjective judgments arise, these reports reliably lean Left. To restore its tarnished reputation on civil liberties, Civicus Forum helpfully suggests that the UK start “dismantling colonial practices”. Freedom House’s latest report warns that Right-wing populists often “seek cooperation with authoritarian powers”, which conflates foreign policy realism with domestic rights abuses. The EIU helpfully informs readers that the representation of Right-wing parties “is not necessarily anti-democratic” but goes on to warn that such parties could undermine democracy by “promoting intolerance”, whatever that means.
It is tempting to dismiss these reports as unimportant or irrelevant, but a similar logic has insinuated itself into the corridors of power. Concerns about democracy and civil liberties have become cudgels to punish countries that offend centre-Left sensibilities, which is why supporting Ukraine has suddenly become a key barometer of democratic legitimacy.
Poland and Hungary, two Eastern European countries governed by populist conservatives, used to be lumped together as democratic backsliders. Over the past year, Poland’s reputation has miraculously recovered as it ships arms and supplies to Ukraine while Orbán remains the bête noire of the Western press. According to the EIU, Poland showed some of the “strongest improvements” in civil liberties over the past year. Congratulations may be due to the Poles, then, on the sudden renewal of their civic freedoms.
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SubscribeAh but, Will, democracy has to be the right type of democracy to be valid.
Trump isn’t “democratic”, nor is Brexit, Meloni and certainly not Orban. Wrong sort of democracy don’t ya know!
The right type is the democracy of the supranational organisation and the unelected bureaucrat.
Which makes China and Russia very democratic.
Which makes China and Russia very democratic.
Ha! We need to cancel and censor all who disagree to protect democracy!
The right type is the democracy of the supranational organisation and the unelected bureaucrat.
Ha! We need to cancel and censor all who disagree to protect democracy!
Ah but, Will, democracy has to be the right type of democracy to be valid.
Trump isn’t “democratic”, nor is Brexit, Meloni and certainly not Orban. Wrong sort of democracy don’t ya know!
Valid points. A too partisan view of how countries may be rated just erodes credibility.
Prompts the important question though about how we might determine a healthy democracy or not. It shouldn’t really be about who might have recently won an election, but more about the resilience and support for democratic institutions. For example Trump may have been elected POTUS but the Constitution still retained key checks and balances – Bill of Rights, Congress, Judiciary. Plus other critical things to a pluralistic democratic society – free press, Trade Unions etc.
Where the rating may more legitimately show a ‘down-score’ is if those elected start to erode these other elements that critically go towards a democratic society. A case example might arguably be the attempts to further limit the Supreme Ct in Israel without other checks and balances in place. Obviously a separate debate but you get the point.
Once asked this sort of question it’s not unhelpful to go back and read some of thinking behind the Founding Fathers and what led to separation of powers in the US Constitution. It doesn’t mean the exact same elsewhere should always apply, or that they got everything right, but democracy is a little more than the potential tyranny of the last franchise outcome and for good historical reasons. Understanding how the FFs worked through that challenge and why still has resonance today.
Good comment. It’s interesting to contrast the “Founding Fathers” way of establishing the democratic principle, and the way it’s evolved in a much older nation such as the UK or England, if we wish to go back not just to 1215 but to before 1066; in other words, evolutionary democracy with no written Constitution.
Some strain was placed upon it during the Brexit process, but it proved able to withstand the greatest challenge it faced since perhaps the Civil War.
Both are equally valid and have their own strengths, but it’ll be interesting to see how the two means of arriving at democracy fare under the stresses and strains of the current political environment and that of the near future. Will the one tested over the greater length of time prove to be the more durable?
Yes. The actual current issues in Israel do make one ponder this more as it’s right at the core of this. Perhaps the UK ‘unwritten’ Constitution model and culture only really works where it’s had a v long development period, over decades, even centuries as you imply. Whereas newer democratic nations may not have that long standing development, with all it’s peaks and troughs, and thus needs more of written Constitution to jump start the embedding of democratic pluralism.
At the risk of being boring … the FFs had studied de Tocqueville, the idea of democracy through intermediaries. Today, the internet has cut through this. Democracy is the internet
Wasn’t DeToqueville writing some decades after 1789 reflecting on what the FFs had done?
Internet may have a role in supporting/driving pluralism but suspect Orwell would point out it’s v clear potential to be used in much more malign ways. And of course that mixture is what we have.
Wasn’t DeToqueville writing some decades after 1789 reflecting on what the FFs had done?
Internet may have a role in supporting/driving pluralism but suspect Orwell would point out it’s v clear potential to be used in much more malign ways. And of course that mixture is what we have.
Yes. The actual current issues in Israel do make one ponder this more as it’s right at the core of this. Perhaps the UK ‘unwritten’ Constitution model and culture only really works where it’s had a v long development period, over decades, even centuries as you imply. Whereas newer democratic nations may not have that long standing development, with all it’s peaks and troughs, and thus needs more of written Constitution to jump start the embedding of democratic pluralism.
At the risk of being boring … the FFs had studied de Tocqueville, the idea of democracy through intermediaries. Today, the internet has cut through this. Democracy is the internet
”….. a down-score… if those elected start to erode these other elements that critically go towards a democratic society”.
I agree with you but it makes me worry. When I was at primary school I was taught the three R/s. Today at primary school children learn about:
Guilt for the slave trade. Man has destroyed the Earth. Children are not boys and girls but various mixtures. Unruly kids are not bad, they have ADHD.
If children are indoctrinated in this way at so young an age, the damage has already been done. This comes from government… but why?
Children always been indoctrinated to some degree. Depends on the beliefs of parents and norms/beliefs of the society at the time. You and I both subjected to forms of indoctrination, albeit we might view alot of it as generally benign, albeit that is subjective.
The kids I talk to, esp teenagers, seem more rounded than I/we perhaps were and more impressive for it. Of course there are a few overly zealous, but I remember the teenage SWP or NF believer from 40-50yrs ago and they were pretty bonkers but a minority. Kids do grow up, mostly.
Children always been indoctrinated to some degree. Depends on the beliefs of parents and norms/beliefs of the society at the time. You and I both subjected to forms of indoctrination, albeit we might view alot of it as generally benign, albeit that is subjective.
The kids I talk to, esp teenagers, seem more rounded than I/we perhaps were and more impressive for it. Of course there are a few overly zealous, but I remember the teenage SWP or NF believer from 40-50yrs ago and they were pretty bonkers but a minority. Kids do grow up, mostly.
The FFs never envisaged the existence of institutions like the FBI and the CIA that would seek to undermine the duly elected president in whose name they supposedly worked, trampling on the constitutional rights of individuals in the process. That rendered the US considerably less democratic.
Of course there are some things they couldn’t entirely foresee but in fact there is an argument what they designed had the ‘unforeseeable’ in mind because of the separation of powers and Bill of Rights.
You’re be aware in fact the POTUS wasn’t removed until voted out so in some regards, and even with your specific allegation which I don’t concur with (but different debate), the Constitution was resilient.
CIA and FBI do have some chequered history, but still have democratic oversight and scrutiny, probably more now than in Hoover’s day. V impressed when one gets to see/read stuff scrutinised by House Intelligence cmtte, albeit some things they scrutinise remain classified.
And of course no comparison with the democratic control and oversight of the FBS, MSS or IRCG in those mafia totalitarian regimes.
Of course there are some things they couldn’t entirely foresee but in fact there is an argument what they designed had the ‘unforeseeable’ in mind because of the separation of powers and Bill of Rights.
You’re be aware in fact the POTUS wasn’t removed until voted out so in some regards, and even with your specific allegation which I don’t concur with (but different debate), the Constitution was resilient.
CIA and FBI do have some chequered history, but still have democratic oversight and scrutiny, probably more now than in Hoover’s day. V impressed when one gets to see/read stuff scrutinised by House Intelligence cmtte, albeit some things they scrutinise remain classified.
And of course no comparison with the democratic control and oversight of the FBS, MSS or IRCG in those mafia totalitarian regimes.
Good comment. It’s interesting to contrast the “Founding Fathers” way of establishing the democratic principle, and the way it’s evolved in a much older nation such as the UK or England, if we wish to go back not just to 1215 but to before 1066; in other words, evolutionary democracy with no written Constitution.
Some strain was placed upon it during the Brexit process, but it proved able to withstand the greatest challenge it faced since perhaps the Civil War.
Both are equally valid and have their own strengths, but it’ll be interesting to see how the two means of arriving at democracy fare under the stresses and strains of the current political environment and that of the near future. Will the one tested over the greater length of time prove to be the more durable?
”….. a down-score… if those elected start to erode these other elements that critically go towards a democratic society”.
I agree with you but it makes me worry. When I was at primary school I was taught the three R/s. Today at primary school children learn about:
Guilt for the slave trade. Man has destroyed the Earth. Children are not boys and girls but various mixtures. Unruly kids are not bad, they have ADHD.
If children are indoctrinated in this way at so young an age, the damage has already been done. This comes from government… but why?
The FFs never envisaged the existence of institutions like the FBI and the CIA that would seek to undermine the duly elected president in whose name they supposedly worked, trampling on the constitutional rights of individuals in the process. That rendered the US considerably less democratic.
Valid points. A too partisan view of how countries may be rated just erodes credibility.
Prompts the important question though about how we might determine a healthy democracy or not. It shouldn’t really be about who might have recently won an election, but more about the resilience and support for democratic institutions. For example Trump may have been elected POTUS but the Constitution still retained key checks and balances – Bill of Rights, Congress, Judiciary. Plus other critical things to a pluralistic democratic society – free press, Trade Unions etc.
Where the rating may more legitimately show a ‘down-score’ is if those elected start to erode these other elements that critically go towards a democratic society. A case example might arguably be the attempts to further limit the Supreme Ct in Israel without other checks and balances in place. Obviously a separate debate but you get the point.
Once asked this sort of question it’s not unhelpful to go back and read some of thinking behind the Founding Fathers and what led to separation of powers in the US Constitution. It doesn’t mean the exact same elsewhere should always apply, or that they got everything right, but democracy is a little more than the potential tyranny of the last franchise outcome and for good historical reasons. Understanding how the FFs worked through that challenge and why still has resonance today.
A lot of people mistake democracy as the ‘freedom to do whatever you like while government protects you from the consequences’.
A lot of people mistake democracy as the ‘freedom to do whatever you like while government protects you from the consequences’.
A democracy is a system where the citizens guard the guards who guard the guards. The level of trust between these three groups determines a ‘democracy index’. No trust is obviously zero democracy.
A democracy is a system where the citizens guard the guards who guard the guards. The level of trust between these three groups determines a ‘democracy index’. No trust is obviously zero democracy.
Of course these assessments are full of biases. How could it be otherwise. A popular democracy that supported the death penalty, banned homosexuality and excluded communist parties from standing and had little in the way of social welfare would score low on the democratic scale even if the government had been voted in by a majority of the population (which few democratic governments actually achieve).
Of course these assessments are full of biases. How could it be otherwise. A popular democracy that supported the death penalty, banned homosexuality and excluded communist parties from standing and had little in the way of social welfare would score low on the democratic scale even if the government had been voted in by a majority of the population (which few democratic governments actually achieve).
Spot on Collins. These indices have been another left wing cudgel for years. Does a country have feee and fair elections? End of story. Political attitudes about trans rights and blah blah blah have nothing to do with the machinery of democracy.
Disagree. Democracy is coming from the internet, not the voters. The political parties are simply following the internet trends to try to be up to date.
Nonsense. These things are imposed top down by corporations and NGOs, not from the grass roots.
Nonsense. These things are imposed top down by corporations and NGOs, not from the grass roots.
Disagree. Democracy is coming from the internet, not the voters. The political parties are simply following the internet trends to try to be up to date.
Spot on Collins. These indices have been another left wing cudgel for years. Does a country have feee and fair elections? End of story. Political attitudes about trans rights and blah blah blah have nothing to do with the machinery of democracy.
There is a clue there in the first paragraph, : NGOs!
These people worried about endangered democracy should look in the mirror. What I am seeing is an imposed morality (for want of a better word) that has very little to do with democratic principles.
There is a clue there in the first paragraph, : NGOs!
These people worried about endangered democracy should look in the mirror. What I am seeing is an imposed morality (for want of a better word) that has very little to do with democratic principles.
When they say democracy, they mean technocracy.
Very true. VDem and EIU are steeped both in bias and juggling criterion which throws up curious paradoxes as CCP ruled Hong Kong being more ” democratic ” than India.