David Pratt: Democracy is on the backfoot – it’s time we woke up

But the pandemic aside, other forces have been shaping the geopolitics of our time. Even as the pandemic continued, major crises broke out, like the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Then there’s that still ongoing conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray to contend with before even considering Russia’s menacing presence on the border with Ukraine and China’s ambitions with regards to Taiwan. Each of these and other individual flashpoints like them that dominated the headlines in 2021 can be viewed separately, but I often think it’s more helpful to our understanding to see them through the prism of much broader themes that characterised the past year.

As 2021 rolled in it seemed that it might bring some measure of resolution to some of the major upheavals that had occupied the international space in 2020.

At last, the Trump presidency was to become a thing of the past as Joe Biden entered the White House restoring what many in the US and elsewhere believed would represent a more traditional, safe handed presidency.

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“America is back” declared Biden all but promising the start of a new era of supposed “relentless democracy” from Washington. At first it was all rosy enough as Biden moved quickly upon taking office to fulfil his promises and America’s allies applauded as the US returned to the Paris Climate Agreement, World Health Organisation and made efforts to revive the Iran nuclear deal. But as the year draws to a close you can’t help but feel that America is far from out of the woods and back on track. For me it remains a nation still haunted by those images of Trump supporters storming the US Capitol.

And if this attempted right-wing putsch represented one colossal shock to America’s global standing, then the Republican party’s dogged refusal to stand up to the man chiefly responsible only compounds continuing concern. Right now, Biden’s approval ratings are sinking at home and every day the odds that Republicans will retake one or both houses in the 2022 midterm elections grow.

In short, America continues to face an erosion of democratic norms and its credibility right now remains as undermined by domestic polarisation and political dysfunction as by Biden’s ability to alarm allies, especially in Europe, with his tendency to take unilateral action.

In other words, America currently is in very dangerous political territory. That’s not just my view but that of Barbara F Walter a political science professor who serves on a CIA advisory panel called the Political Instability Task Force. Set up to monitor countries around the world and predict which of them are most at risk of deteriorating into violence, Walter recently applied the predictive techniques herself to the US and the findings threw into sharp focus the threat faced to US democracy. “We are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe,” concludes Walter, laying out the argument in detail in a forthcoming book How Civil Wars Start, which is published in January.

The reason all this matters should be obvious, for if 2021 has shown anything, it is that in the years ahead, the US will likely exert efforts to defend its global leader position, something it cannot do effectively if wracked by division at home. Not that Biden hasn’t tried, inviting about 110 leaders to a virtual Summit For Democracy earlier this month at which he sounded the alarm over the rising tide of authoritarianism and led discussions on how to counter democratic backslide.

Which brings me to the interconnected wider theme that has dominated the past year, the way that democratic governance, not just in the US, but elsewhere too has continued to be eroded across the globe. Participants at the summit might have launched a “year of action” dedicating themselves to implementing the pledges and commitments they made. But frankly they will have their work cut out for just about everywhere you look, democracies are facing challenges and states are leaning in on autocracy as the chosen model of political governance.

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THIS of course is not just a symptom of 2021, but a trend unfolding for some years now. But what’s most worrying is that it shows no sign of slowing as economic stasis, self-serving leadership, and political fragmentation all contribute to the heightening sense of discontent with the state of the world’s democracies. In ways not witnessed in years the landscape of democracy lies open and vulnerable to exploitation by autocratic regimes and leaders. Such is this gradual but relentless spread of authoritarianism that many states are today being run by “strongman” rulers who seek to extend their terms in office either by changing constitutional term limits or manipulating election results. In so many places too corruption is also worsening, including here in the UK.

If America is “backsliding in democracy” as it was described by the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance a few months ago, then it has no shortage of company on that front. In Brazil, India and Belarus, there are crackdowns on critics by President Jair Bolsonaro, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and autocratic leader Alexander Lukashenko respectively. In Myanmar, Sudan, Mali, Guinea, and Chad fledgling democracies have seen coups this past year. In Russia opposition leader Alexei Navalny was imprisoned after returning from Germany to Russia, while China, as events only yesterday confirmed, continues to tighten its grip on Hong Kong shutting down one of the last pro-democracy media organisations there, Stand News, and arresting senior staff.

As 2021 comes to an end, we look back on a year in which we have all tended to peer inwards while out there in the wider world another pandemic has been eating away at countries and communities. Democracy is dangerously on the back foot and that for me has been the most significant theme of 2021. As we look to a new year, it’s high time we recognised the threat this poses and do all we can to guard against any further erosion of those values so difficult to replace once they are gone.