The coronavirus pandemic is disrupting the world we live in. It is accelerating technological changes in society, exacerbating economic inequality, and calling into question the current global system. One key area the pandemic is affecting is global democracy. In the wake of the coronavirus, the world faces the prospect of significant democratic decline.
Last year, Freedom House and The Economist considered democracy to have receded. During the pandemic, human rights have been undermined, elections have been postponed, global inequalities have been exacerbated, and the reputations of leading democracies have suffered. Without a global response to the pandemic ensuring an equitable recovery, global democracy could enter a lasting recession.
The UN Secretary General has written of a “pandemic of human rights abuses” connected to the coronavirus. Using the virus as a pretext, governments in countries from Cambodia to Kazakhstan have cracked down on opposition activists, human rights defenders, and the judiciary. Freedom of speech has been restricted in 72 countries. The pandemic has escalated distrust of and open attacks against the media. Countries such as Hungary have undermined the freedom of the press and others, such as Russia, have increased censorship.
Police violence has accompanied the enforcement of public health measures in countries such as Zimbabwe and India. At the same time, surveillance systems have been expanded, fuelled by the need to track the virus’s spread.
Minorities have suffered during the pandemic. In some cases, abuses against minority groups escalated as international travel restrictions and a distracted global community gave governments a window of opportunity to escape scrutiny. In Myanmar, the persecution of the Rohingya has intensified. More generally, in many countries, refugees and immigrants became scapegoats and were blamed for spreading the virus. In the United States and Europe, hate crimes against Asians grew exponentially.
Most obviously, global democracy has been weakened through the suspension or postponement of elections. Faced with a dilemma between public health and democratic norms, countless elections were subordinated to the health crisis – and for good reason. Many were held later, but others were postponed indefinitely. In many cases, the postponement of elections has compromised their integrity. Many elections held during Covid, such as in Burundi, went ahead without foreign observers, undermining public trust.
What is more, across the world, parliamentary oversight or non-emergency legislation debates have been suspended. This includes the United Kingdom, New Zealand, France, Spain, and Canada. In Hungary, Turkey, and Israel, state powers have been greatly expanded, granting the executive branch a wider latitude for action. In Sri Lanka, the parliament was dissolved, leaving the President to rule by decree for five months. Such emergency measures can be deeply damaging for a democracy, especially if they are not time-limited. Once such powers have been granted, and the longer they last, the more difficult it will become to undo them.
Worryingly, the current ebbing of global democracy is unlikely to end when the pandemic does. Rather, its most destabilising effects will become evident in the aftermath of the health crisis itself. In particular, the lasting economic ramifications exacerbating economic inequality will cause widespread political instability and erode democracies across the world. Developing countries are accruing huge amounts of government debt that will be impossible to repay. Schools have been shut. Around 124 million more people will fall below the poverty line this year.
The pandemic is also set to last longer in areas outside Europe and North America. Whilst ~75 per cent of all vaccinations have been administered in only 10 countries, 130 countries have yet to receive a single dose. The entire continent of Africa will likely only reach widespread vaccination by 2023. As these global inequalities grow, they have the potential to be highly destabilising, which will in all likelihood cause democratic decline.
Democracy’s international reputation has also suffered during the pandemic. The United States’ disastrous handling of the crisis undermined its reputation across the world even as their President sowed doubts about the democratic process. Western democracies’ handling of the pandemic has generally given rise to theories about the flaws of democratic governance. Authoritarian regimes have been quick to stress the shortcomings of democracies to legitimise their rule. It has been left to Taiwan and New Zealand to demonstrate how democracies can successfully contain a public health crisis.
The international community at large has been distracted by individual countries’ domestic response to the crisis. As such, the erosion of democracy in other countries is more likely to go unnoticed. This was evident in Belarus, where Alexander Lukashenko faced unprecedented protests, but has managed to cling to power. The recent coup in Myanmar was met with some condemnation and harshly worded statements, but the military is unlikely to relinquish power as a result. With the self-anointed ‘guardians’ of the liberal world order preoccupied at home, governments across the world feel they can get away with more.
The question that arises is what can be done to prevent this. Should the world rely on certain hegemonic powers with patchy track-records to spread and guarantee democracy? Short of military actions or sanctions that harm the poorest in a society, the ability of Western democracies to ‘guarantee’ democracy across the world is limited at the best of times.
A more effective way of preventing a more permanent democratic recession is to ensure an equitable recovery from the pandemic, which requires international cooperation. Economic dislocation and hardship are usually accompanied by an erosion of democratic governance. As people become increasingly desperate, they are willing to sacrifice freedoms to improve their lot. With the unequal and individualised trajectory currently being pursued, it is in many ways already too late.
When future scholars look back at the 21st century, they will likely point to the current pandemic as an inflection point. Whether it marks a mere glitch in democracy’s wider trajectory or the beginning of a recession remains to be seen.
Image: Mason Vank’s Maps via Wikimedia Commons