Tuesday, 23 January 2018
Dreamers Feel Betrayed After Senate Democrats Break Their Promises
Guess what? It is not all about you. Some people are trying to get you a better deal and all you have is criticism?
Labour’s NEC Set To Confirm Trans People Allowed On All-Women Shortlist
All women short lists because women are such delicate flowers that they could not possibly win on their own?
Democracy is more fragile than many of us
realised, but don’t believe that it is doomed
The end of the Cold War accelerated what is
sometimes referred to as “the third wave” of democratisation in the late 20th
century. The peoples of eastern Europe were liberated to choose their own
governments. African presidents-for-life were sent into retirement. Much of
Latin America, once a grisly tableau of coups, insurgencies, juntas and death
squads, embraced the tenets of democracy. India was no longer a shining
exception to autocracy in developing Asia, as more of the world’s most populous
continent followed the democratic path. By the turn of the century, more than
100 countries could be reasonably classified as democracies, albeit often
flawed ones. A hundred years before, you could barely find 10 democracies on
the world map. If your definition of democracy includes, as really it ought
to, women having the vote, then there was New Zealand by 1900 and some
bits of Australia and that was it.
Labour’s NEC Set To Confirm Trans People Allowed On All-Women Shortlist
All women short lists because women are such delicate flowers that they could not possibly win on their own?
Andrew Rawnsley 21.1.18 The Observer
Democracy is more fragile than many of us
realised, but don’t believe that it is doomed
Nothing ages
so badly as visions of the future. When the fall of the Berlin
Wall was followed by the implosion of the Soviet Union, Francis
Fukuyama celebrated by publishing his bestseller, The End of History and the Last Man.
The book argued that, with the demise of its main ideological competitor, the
world would belong to liberal democracy. He has been much mocked since for
failing to foresee that democracy would face the emergence of fresh threats and
the resurgence of old foes in new guises in the shape of nationalism, religious
extremism, autocratic capitalism, unaccountable tech titans, cyber warfare and
even, in the case of North Korea, legacy Stalinism. But fair’s fair. For a
while at least, his thesis was true.
The end of the Cold War accelerated what is
sometimes referred to as “the third wave” of democratisation in the late 20th
century. The peoples of eastern Europe were liberated to choose their own
governments. African presidents-for-life were sent into retirement. Much of
Latin America, once a grisly tableau of coups, insurgencies, juntas and death
squads, embraced the tenets of democracy. India was no longer a shining
exception to autocracy in developing Asia, as more of the world’s most populous
continent followed the democratic path. By the turn of the century, more than
100 countries could be reasonably classified as democracies, albeit often
flawed ones. A hundred years before, you could barely find 10 democracies on
the world map. If your definition of democracy includes, as really it ought
to, women having the vote, then there was New Zealand by 1900 and some
bits of Australia and that was it.
Democracy won the 20th century. The hubristic mistake was to think that this
trend was so powerful that it could not be reversed. The size of that error is
illustrated by the latest report from Freedom House, a non-partisan think-tank
that conducts an annual audit of global freedom. The fundamentals of
democracy, particularly regular and honest elections, a free media, the rule of
law and the rights of minorities, are under attack around the world. Last year
was the 12th consecutive one in which the number of countries becoming more
free were outnumbered by those becoming less so. The report’s authors conclude
that “democracy is in crisis”.
Does the evidence justify this alarming assessment? Some autocratic brutes have
been given the boot, among them Robert Mugabe, whose removal at least
gives the possibility of a better future for Zimbabwe. Many countries remain
robustly democratic. Britons may feel a squeak of patriotic pride that Freedom
House awards a high 94 points to our country. You have to be Scandinavian to
achieve the maximum 100.
It is hard, though, to disagree that the big picture is a negative one. From
Venezuela to the Philippines, more countries have become less free. And many of
those countries that remain democracies are becoming more dysfunctional. The
charnel house that is Syria is a daily reminder that the hopes associated with
the Arab spring have crumbled into the dust. Tunisia, democracy’s lonely
outpost in the Arab world, is now very troubled. Closer to home, there is the
slide into autocratic rule in Turkey and creeping authoritarianism
in Poland and Hungary, countries that had been presumed to be permanent
gains for liberal democracy. The danger here is not so much the old spectre of
tanks on the streets. The dismantling of freedom begins with attacks on what
some call “the soft guard rails” of democracy: unfettered media, an independent
judiciary, a basic level of respect for political opponents. Freedom is not
devoured in one gulp, but in a series of bite-size chunks.
Political scientists are conducting a lively argument about how worried we
should be and what has caused this global retreat, but I think we can pick out
some clear drivers of what has gone wrong. Start with the democratic victors of
the Cold War. Their cohesion and confidence are being corroded by economic
pressures, social inequalities, rebellions against the consequences of
globalisation and a resurgence of nationalism and regionalism. Populists of
left and right have exploited voter anger to gain support and parliamentary
seats across Europe. The result is that they have got into power in some places
and in others made it harder for mainstream parties to form viable coalitions,
as in the Netherlands and Germany. This wave has not yet broken. Ahead
of Italy’s elections in March, populists of left and right lead the
polls and have cornered two thirds of the electorate.
Populists have profited at the ballot box by telling voters that democracy is a
sham or a scam rigged in favour of outsiders or an elite or both. The populist
prescriptions are nearly always snake oil, but their diagnosis has resonance
with many voters because the economic discontents are real. It is no
coincidence, as the old Marxists liked to say, that western democracy has come
under so much stress since the Great Crash of 2008 and the protracted squeeze
on living standards that has followed it
In western countries that previously promoted liberal values, there is
what Human Rights Watch calls a “frontal assault on the values of
inclusivity, tolerance and respect”. America is mesmerised by Trump.
Britain is obsessed with Brexit. Germany struggles to put together a
government. All have become fractiously inward looking. This has bloody
consequences for the rest of the world, by helping to allow mass atrocities in
Myanmar, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen to continue with near impunity.
The United States has shrunk from its traditional role as exemplar of democracy
and global champion of it. America was always extremely imperfect in this role,
but its postwar leaders at least paid lip service to the idea that the shining
city on the hill should be a beacon of liberty. The Oval Office is occupied by
a president who has spent his first year in office trashing democratic norms at
home while expressing no sense of responsibility to be an advocate for
universal human rights. He has triggered a plunge in international
respect for American leadership to a record low. The United States has
often in the past been an enabler of undemocratic regimes, but never before has
it had a president who expresses so much open admiration for
authoritarians in the Kremlin and elsewhere, and so much undisguised
contempt for his country’s traditional allies among the other democracies.
Division and disarray among democracies has encouraged the pursuit of an
aggressively anti-freedom agenda by the major autocracies, China and Russia.
During the optimism of the third wave, it was presumed that democracy had a
world-winning formula. The more prosperous countries became, the more they
would want to be free; the more free they were, the more prosperous they would
become. The belief that a richer China ought to become a more liberal China is
not shared by President Xi Jinping. He is intensifying repression at home
and promoting the Chinese model of autocratic capitalism as a superior recipe
for stability and prosperity. It was Xi’s recent boast that China is “blazing a
trail” for developing countries to emulate. China’s autocrats blaze while the
democracies fiddle.
As is their way, political scientists have seen a disturbing phenomenon and
given it geeky labels. Some call it “democratic deconsolidation”. Others go for
“democratic recession”. I prefer “recession”, because at least that description
implies a seed of hope that this trend does not have to be permanent.
Recessions can and usually do come to an end.
Reading the recent flurry of reports about the endangerment of liberty around
the world, you could be driven to the despairing conclusion that democracy is
dying. That fatalism would be as large an error as the assumption that
democracy would be everywhere and permanently triumphant. Democracy has a lot
going for it, not least that it is a better form of government than any other
type that the human race has yet managed to design. Millions of South Koreans
are not trying to flee to the north. There was something both bizarre and
fantastic about watching the White House physician take questions from
reporters about the most intimate details of the president’s health
on live and global television. They don’t do that in dictatorships.
Democracy is not doomed. The lesson of the past decade is the subtler one that
democracy is more fragile, vulnerable and contingent than many liberals have
often complacently supposed. The arc of history is not irreversibly bent in
favour of freedom. The case for it has to be renewed and reinvigorated for each
generation. The biggest mistake we make about democracy is to take it for
granted.
# posted by Had It in Holland Park @ 08:03 
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