If you think that democracies are the only systems under stress, think again.
In an article written in the non-partisan magazine Foreign Affairs, Thomas Caruthers, Senior Vice President for Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, notes that dictators are facing major problems as well. The problem, he writes, is a global crisis in governance in democracies as well as dictatorships.
“Gloom about the state of democracy pervades Washington and other Western capitals. Restless, insecure, and alienated citizens in many democracies are challenging their leaders on the streets, electing illiberal demagogues, or simply rejecting all of the political choices available to them. Meanwhile, China, Russia, and several other authoritarian powers are growing more assertive and self-confident, claiming that democracy’s time has passed and working to bolster fellow autocrats.
Yet all this attention on the decline of democracy has obscured a story that is just as important: many authoritarians, dictators, and other nondemocratic leaders are also in trouble. Just like their peers in free countries, many citizens in nondemocracies are deeply frustrated with their political systems and have in the last several years been acting on that unhappiness by challenging those in power. The central political dynamic of the current moment is thus not the gradual eclipsing of democracy by authoritarianism. It is, rather, the growing difficulty of political elites in all types of regimes to satisfy the demands of their citizens.
What the world is witnessing is less a crisis of democracy than a broader crisis of governance. The likely result is increased political flux across all types of political systems. Regardless of what kind of regime they lead, only those leaders who get serious about responsiveness and accountability will survive; those who don’t will see their grasps falter.”
A quick look at key points:
“The last few years have seen a remarkable wave of unrest push a number of authoritarian leaders to resign under pressure….
Meanwhile, other autocratic leaders and parties have been humbled at the ballot box and replaced by more liberal rivals…
Even some elected strongmen who for years have seemed politically untouchable have been dented by recent electoral setbacks.
Of course, some of these cases of authoritarian reversal or liberalization could well deteriorate in the face of pushback from deeply entrenched power structures or in reaction to new tensions released by liberalizing changes..
But there is little doubt that the many recent cases of authoritarian collapse and slippage highlight a crucial fact: the factors that have brought down many established parties and institutions in democratic countries have close parallels in autocracies. This is true especially when it comes to the economy…
Corruption is another problem that often comes up in analyses of what ails democracy…”
Additionally, he notes, ideologies and agendas of parties in democracies and nondemocratic regimes are increasingly finding that many find their ideologies and agendas have become stale, offering little that is new. Some in democratic counties say the Internet has now made it easy to spread information -but social media and the age of the Internet has also made it more difficult for non-democratic systems to “repress dissent, stamp out citizen mobilization, and limit access to sources of independent information.”
He concludes:
All political systems are in for a hard road ahead as people everywhere continue to know more, want more, and do more. In the face of rising popular pressure for answers and results, it’s hard to maintain democracy. But it is equally hard—and maybe harder—to maintain autocratic rule. The instinctive approach of most democratic governments to make partial concessions and engage in negotiations with angry citizens often leads to muddled politics and stalled reforms. Yet compared with the authoritarian instinct to crush dissent and stonewall change, the messy conciliation of democracy is more likely to allow a government to survive and even renovate itself. There is no single right formula for responding to the gnawing public hunger for accountability and justice. But in the long term, plugging one’s ears and denying the legitimacy of those demands is a bad bet.
The above are only the key points. There is a lot more so go to the link and read it in its entirety. Must reading.
PERSONAL NOTE:
I lived in three countries under this kind of stress when I was a freelance journalist overseas 1973-1978. I was in India September 1973-May 1975. Authoritarian tendencies were displayed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. I was the credentialed stringer (paid per piece) for the Chicago Daily News and self-syndicated stories and op-eds for a slew of newspapers worldwide. Several articles dealt with a looming threat to Indian democracy. After I left in 1975 Mrs. Gandhi imposed a state of emergency which lasted two years. Mrs. Gandhi used her powers to censor the press and jail most of her political opponents. When it ended, India went back to being the largest democracy in the world.
During that trip to India I also spent several weeks in Bangladesh, which was led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who became Bangladesh’s first President in 1971 and later its first Prime Minister. When I was there he and his family were becoming highly unpopular amid allegations of corruption, a famine, and his decisions to impose one party rule. I wrote a long feature story on it for the Chicago Daily News. Two months after I left India in May 1975 he and most of his family were assassinated in a coup by some military members and martial law was imposed. Wikipedia notes that in 2004 a BBC poll named him as the greatest Bengali.
When I arrived in Spain in May 1975, dictator Francisco Franco’s regime was in its final chapter, amid anti-fascist demonstrations, attacks by the Basque separatist ETA, and a host of other matters. By the time I had arrived, Franco had relaxed some press and police restrictions: the creaky regime had begun to cautiously adapt to a new age. Franco’s last hurrah came when he executed five people in September 1975. Suffering from Parkinson’s disease, he died two months later. Once Franco died Spain inched faster to democracy, culminating in approval in 1978 a national vote on a new democratic constitution. There were some ultra-right beatings of pro-democracy journalists during the post-Franco transition. I wrote for the Chicago Daily News there and later became The Christian Science Monitor’s credentialed “Special Correspondent” (a super-stringer). I also self-syndicated to newspapers and did two audio reports for NPR.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.