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Afghanistan is one of nine countries that have become outright dictatorships in the last two years, according to researchers at the University of Gothenburg. (Photo: Omer Abrar / AFP / NTB)

The global levelof democracy is back to where it was in 1986. This means that 35 years ofdemocratic progress have been reset over the past decade.

Nine countries have become pure dictatorships in the last two years:

Afghanistan, Chad, Guinea, Haiti, Iran, Mali, Myanmar, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

Another term for these is closed autocracies, see fact box.

These trends have been documented by the Varieties of Democracy project at the University of Gothenburg, also called V-DEM. They have measured the level of democracy in the world by examining how many of the world's inhabitants live with democratic rights.

The V-Dem reportdistinguishes among four forms of government: closed autocracies, electoralautocracies, electoral democracies and liberal democracies. Autocracy is thesame as a dictatorship.

In closedautocracies, either no elections are held, or elections are held, but the headof state is not exposed to any real competition in the elections.

In electoralautocracies, elections are held between different parties, but the electoralprocess does not meet democratic standards.

In electoraldemocracies, free and fair elections are held. In addition, the population hasa number of institutional democratic rights, such as freedom of expression andthe right to organise.

In liberaldemocracies, the legislature and the judiciary also supervise the executive,and the rule of law and individual freedom of citizens are protected.

Source: Politicsand Governance

yvind sterud, a professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo(UiO), has contributed to V-DEM's latest report as a country expert.

He points out thatsome of the most authoritarian countries in the world such as China and nowIndia are extremely populous. This has an impact on the measurements. But themore-or-less authoritarian states are also in the majority when the number ofstates is used as the unit of measurement.

sterud believesthat the decline in democratic governance is often due to economic setbacks.

There will likelybe more dissatisfaction, more polarization. The authorities tend to tighten upa bit because there is more unrest, so economic crises are an important part ofthe explanation for the decline in democratic governance, he said.

Some countrieswith authoritarian rule, such as China, have also been very successfuleconomically.

This means thatan authoritarian form of government has become a development model for othercountries, because democratic regimes have been very poor at delivering welfareand growth, he said. Many democratic states have stagnated and experiencedrising unemployment.

The democraticdecline is particularly evident in the Pacific region, in Eastern Europe and inCentral Asia. There has also been a decline in Latin America and the Caribbean.

There arenevertheless examples of countries that have moved in the opposite direction,from authoritarian rule to democratic rule. Bolivia, Bulgaria, the CzechRepublic, the Dominican Republic, Malawi, Moldova and Zambia have all seen anevolution from authoritarian rule to democracy over the past three years.

sterud believesthis may be due to the fact that they have managed to pursue an economic growthpolicy, which in turn means that they deliver more to the population.

These countries aretrying to implement redistribution policies, which means that the difference betweenpoor and rich becomes somewhat smaller. The southern and south-eastern Europeancountries are also characterized by membership of the EU, which has enabledthem to reduce unemployment by exporting labour to richer parts of Europe, hesaid.

This means thatthe living conditions for many improve, and then the conditions for democraticgovernance are more favourable, he said.

yvind sterud is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo. (Photo: UiO)

Are there anycountries that are currently governed in an authoritarian manner that couldmove in a more democratic direction in the coming years?

sterud is not certain.

It is verydifficult to predict that, because it depends very much on the development inthe country, whether they manage to reverse the trend in the direction ofsmaller tensions between ethnic groups, and dampen internal tensions, he said.

He neverthelesssees Ukraine as an opportunity in the longer term.

It is possible tothink that at one point or another, when the war is over, Ukraine will becomedependent on Western support for reconstruction. As of today, Ukraine is a kindof hybrid regime, as it is called, with strong authoritarian features andenormous corruption, and it is reasonable to believe that things will improvewhen the war is over. With dependence on Western support and a strongerorientation towards the West, there will be pressure in the direction of tryingto overcome some of the corruption and to get a government that is responsiveto the population, he said.

Translated by Nancy Bazilchuk

Reference:

Evie Papada et.al.: Defiance in the Face of Autocratization. V-Dem Institute Democracy report, 2023.

Read the Norwegian version of this article at forskning.no

Link:
There are now more dictatorships than democracies in the world - Sciencenorway

Why has so little been done about social and economic inequality? There are multiple hypotheses. The commitment to freedom, after all, means that within the capacious boundaries of the law, no one should prevent anyone else from thinking, saying, or doing whatever they like. That sensibility helps explain not only skyrocketing salaries and lower taxes but also how a mendacious serial swindler could become president of the United States, incite a mob to sack the nations Capitol, and (at least so far) pay no price for it. If freedom now trumps every other value, then solidarity and social obligation are for suckers. If only a lucky few can feast in our less regulated economic environment today, so much the better for them. If others are starving, say neoliberals, they should become entrepreneurs and get rich.

The problem, of course, is that the ideology of self-help is no more tied to reality now than it was during the first Gilded Age. Millions of Americans work more than one minimum-wage job or try to stay afloat as independent contractors in the gig economy, while others cruise ahead. False as its promise has proved for most Americans, neoliberal ideology has seeped into every part of our culture. The top 1 percent, those at the pinnacle of our economic pyramid, attract so much attention and criticism from progressives that less has been said about the top 10 percent, the segment of professionals and denizens of the new knowledge economy whose household income is more than $212,110 a year. Such upper-class Americans (who often consider themselves merely upper-middle-class) once voted Republican. Recently they have become, along with nonwhite voters, the backbone of the Democratic Party. Since the New Deal coalition fractured during the 1970s, the party now depends on a different set of voters.

This is a global phenomenon. Thomas Piketty, Amory Gethin, and Clara Martnez-Toledano at the World Inequality Lab (WIL) in Paris have studied voting across fifty democracies since 1948. The evidence in Political Cleavages and Social Inequalities (Harvard, $39.95, 656 pp.) shows that, whereas less well-educated voters in blue-collar and low-skilled service jobs voted consistently for social-democratic parties in the postwar period, they have now gravitated to conservative parties. Parties on the Left now rely on a core of highly educated voters who work in the knowledge economy. The standard explanation for that phenomenon in the United States has stressed cultural backlash against racial unrest, the counterculture, and feminism. But the shift of less-educated voters toward conservative parties in Europe predates by decades the mass immigration of non-Europeans often cited as its cause. The class-based party cleavages of the twentieth century, in short, have been replaced by multi-elite party systems. Conservative parties represent high-income and low-educated voters; liberal parties have become the parties of higher-educated voters.

In the spring of 1787, Madison argued in Vices of the Political System of the United States that democracies can fracture along multiple lines, of which class is only one. Among other factors, Madison also identified religion, region, occupation, culture, and the irrational attachment of some voters to individual leaders. The WIL groups evidence confirms Madisons analysis. Class is now one among other divisions, including collective beliefs concerning tradition, cosmopolitanism, authoritarianism, and the adequacy of neoliberal reliance on market mechanisms. In a recent working paper, Brahmin Left versus Merchant Right, Piketty argues that left parties have abandoned redistributionist programs thanks to near unanimity on the adequacy of capitalism. Moderate left parties acceptance of neoliberal ideas has made cultural conflicts more prominent, especially the resentment felt by the less educated toward the more educated.

By adopting the cosmopolitan worldview that, thanks to our education, seems to us self-evidently correct, we members of the college-educated elite have distanced ourselves from the cultures of those who lack not only tertiary education but also the privileges such education brings. Forgetting the advantages that the well-educated usually enjoy growing up, including intact families that prioritize schooling and instill self-discipline, we have consciously or unconsciously embraced the idea of meritocracy. Our preferred politicians, from schoolteacher McGovern and engineer Carter to technocrats Michael Dukakis, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and Obama, hold not only bachelors but also graduate degrees from the nations most selective universities. Culturally, these people inhabit a different world from the rough-and-ready cowboys Ronald Reagan and George W. Busheven if they were only fake cowboysand the celebrity wheeler-dealer Donald Trump, even though he was only a bankrupt con man. Political scientist Walter Dean Burnham noted evidence of increasingly polarized cultural conflict in the United States as early as 1970. The battle lines have since become much more deeply entrenched. As Carlos Lozada showed in his exhaustive study of the books published during Trumps presidency, What Were We Thinking (Simon & Schuster, $17, 272 pp.), four years of listening to the presidents unhinged harangues only intensified progressives bewilderment over his election. Four years of listening to Trumps critics belittle his voters as ignorant dupes or racists only intensified their resentment.

Democratic presidents, while in office if not before or after, have shown no greater interest in the economic condition of struggling Americans than have Republicans. Millions, especially but not exclusively in the heartland, have watched their middle-class livesand those they envisioned for their familiesvanish along with the well-paying jobs that, between the Depression and the oil crisis, secured that status. Republicans tell voters that cultural elites are to blame for their situation; Democrats give them little reason to disagree. If an unstoppable force of nature reshaped our economy, as neoliberals have claimed for half a century, and if one party loudly endorses American traditions of patriotism, self-reliance, Evangelical Christianity, and white male supremacy while the other party makes fun of all that, then the choice for many voters will be clear.

Calhoun, Gaonkar, and Taylor borrow terminology from David Goodhart, who contrasts somewheres, whose lives are rooted in particularand often decayingplaces, with anywheres, whose cosmopolitan experiences and preferences shape their very different sensibilities. Joan C. Williams has been pointing out for decades, most recently in White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America (Harvard Business Review Press, $22.99, 192 pp.), that those who provide service work and care work for the young, the old, the sick, and wealthy midlife professionals are understandably tired of elites condescension. Unctuous expressions of gratitude do not make up for long hours and lousy pay. Preserving your self-respect is hard when the entire culture undervalues your work while overvaluing those who, as John Adams put it, do nothing but push money around.

Wealthy Americans once voted Republican because they preferred low taxes and an unregulated economy. Evidently, despite their redistributionist rhetoric, so do most Democrats, whose tepid reforms offer somewheres little of economic value while supplying them with a steady stream of scorn. For that reason, Alan Abramowitz has argued, promises of economic redistribution might not persuade less skilled manual workers and service workers to return to the Democratic Party. We wont know unless the party at last delivers FDRs Second Bill of Rights or Rustins Freedom Budget. Even before Trump was elected, Larry M. Bartels and Christopher H. Achen provided evidence in Democracy for Realists (Princeton, $29.95, 408 pp.) that most people vote not on issues but on their personal situations, which have not improved for decades, and on their social identities, defined for millions of Americans by educational elites disdain.

Few Americans at the lowest rungs of the economic ladder even bother to vote, as Jan-Werner Mller points out in Democracy Rules (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $27, 256 pp.). We are witnessing what Mller terms a double secession of the rich, who have escaped the world of public services for private enclaves, and the poor, who understandably feel excluded and ignored. The failure of Democrats and Republicans to take seriously the problem of intergenerational poverty helps explain why. Perhaps the answer, as E. J. Dionne Jr. and Miles Rapoport argue in 100% Democracy: The Case for Universal Voting (The New Press, $23.24, 224 pp.), is to follow the two dozen nations where citizens are required to vote, or to follow states such as Oregon, which have instituted citizen-led initiatives to foster participation. Sadly, neither party seems interested in reforms to address the disengagement that plagues U.S. politics.

Beyond neoliberals upward channeling of profits from labor to capital and the role of tertiary education in distancing a new elite of cosmopolitans from other Americans, two more factors help explain our current condition.

The media landscape has been transformed by technology, by the blurring of reality through disinformation, and by the paradoxical consolidation of the sources providing information. Everyone understands how the internet has created echo chambers in which Americans find their own perspectives confirmed, amplified by passion, and intensified by endless repetition. When the primary criterion of truth is what those on my side believe, Calhoun, Gaonkar, and Taylor write, partisanship becomes almost epistemological. Trumps lies were central to his presidency, delighting his loyalists while outraging everyone else. The 24/7 news cycle of our political entertainment complex requires ever more sensational stories, or at least ever-renewed outrage at the other sides perfidy. Before the 1949 Fairness Doctrine was killed by Reagan in 1987 and the libertarians at WIRED magazine succeeded in making the digital world a new Wild West, nearly every community had its own local newspaper focused on local concerns. Most mid-century big-city newspapers either aspired to objective news coverage or had a competing newspaper to balance their perspective. Because most local papers have shrunk or vanished, many Americans now know less about community issues that really matter to their lives. Filling that vacuum, Mller argues, are obsessions with the largely symbolic, highly charged issues of the culture wars.

See more here:
Is American Democracy Coming Apart? - Commonweal

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Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken will participate in the second Summit for Democracy on March 28-30,2023in Washington, D.C. The Summit will be co-hosted by the United States, Costa Rica, the Netherlands, Republic of Korea, and Republic of Zambia. Below is a list of events Secretary Blinken will participate in as well as the corresponding press coverage. The Department of State will provide preset and final access times on the Department of State daily public schedule.More information on the Summit can be foundhere.

Tuesday, March 28, at the Department of State

9:00 a.m.Secretary Blinken chairs a virtual panelsessiononA Just and LastingPeace in UkrainefeaturingPresident of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy.(VIRTUAL OPEN PRESS COVERAGE)

1:00 p.m.Secretary Blinken delivers remarksatThe Status of Women is the Status of Democracyeventin the Dean Acheson Auditorium, at the Department of State.(OPEN PRESS COVERAGE)

Wednesday, March 29

Summit for Democracys five co-hosts the United States, Costa Rica, Netherlands, Republic of Korea, and Zambia will officially kick off the Summit, with each co-host leader hosting a live, fully virtual, thematic, Leader-level plenary session. The Secretary will participate in virtual plenary sessions.

Thursday, March 30, at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center

12:30 p.m.Secretary Blinken delivers opening remarks and moderates the first session focusing on Advancing Democracy and Internet Freedom in a Digital Age,at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.(OPEN PRESS COVERAGE FOR CREDENTIALED MEDIA)

5:45 p.m.Secretary Blinken delivers Summit for Democracy closing remarks,at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.(OPEN PRESS COVERAGE FOR CREDENTIALED MEDIA)

All Summit for Democracy events listed above will be livestreamed onhttps://www.state.gov/summit-for-democracy-2023/. Additional high-resolution downloadable footage of the livestream will be provided after the conclusion of the sessions.

For more information on the second Summit for Democracy please email the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor atDRL-Press@state.gov. For information on credentialing please contact summitmedia@state.gov

Link:
Secretary Blinken's Participation in the Second Summit for ... - Department of State

BEIJING, March 27, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Hosted by the State Council Information Office of China, organized by Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China Media Group and China International Communications Group, the Second International Forum on "Democracy: The Shared Human Values" was held in Beijing from March 22nd to 23rd. Hundreds of Chinese and foreign distinguished guests from more than 100 countries, regions and international organizations adopted a combination of offline and online communication to discuss topics such as "democracy and sustainable development", "democracy and innovation", "democracy and global governance", "democracy and the diversity of human civilization", "democracy and the road to modernization" and so on.

Opening Ceremony of the Second International Forum Democracy: The Shared Human Values

The participants believed that democracy is the common value of all mankind, and there are many forms of realizing democracy. The coexistence and symbiosis of different civilizations is the way to the healthy development of human civilization. All countries should respect the diversity of world civilizations, respect the democratic development path of other countries, strengthen exchanges and mutual learning, and promote the construction of a community of shared future for mankind. The Communist Party of China proposes and develops people's democracy in the whole process, and continuously transforms the value concept of the people as the masters of the country into scientific and effective institutional arrangements as well as concrete and realistic democratic practices. The people enjoy a wide range of democratic rights, and the people's democratic participation continues to expand, which has condensed consensus and strength for the modernization in Chinese style.

At the meeting, the foreign guests discussed the topics of the forum. Former Prime Minister of Thailand, Abhisit Vejjajiva pointed out that the international community needs to play a constructive role and firmly practice multilateralism, which is an effective way to promote the multipolarization of the world and the democratization of international relations. Jos Lus Centella, chairman of the Communist Party of Spain, pointed out that China insists on taking the people as the center to promote the modernization process and improve the people's living standards in an all-round way. It is to strengthen the international cooperation in poverty alleviation, food security, and green development, and work together to solve the most direct and realistic interests of the people. Mushahid Said, chairman of the National Defense Committee of the Senate of Pakistan, pointed out that China's Initiative "Belt and Road" has brought more than 100 countries and international organizations together. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is one of the flagship projects under the construction of "Belt and Road". It represents the concept of a community of shared future for mankind with win-win cooperation. Xu Qingqi, chairman of the Centre for New Inclusive Asia of Malaysia, pointed out that the problems in the world now are different from those in the past. We are all one family upon the globalization, the progress of science and technology, China proposing a community of shared future for mankind. Therefore, we must look at global governance beyond the range of a specific country.

Story continues

Contact: Liu QuanpingTel.: 0086-13911163556Email: liuquanping@cass.org.cn

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View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/the-second-international-forum-on-democracy-the-shared-human-values-kicked-off-in-beijing-301782059.html

SOURCE Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

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The Second International Forum on "Democracy: The Shared Human Values" kicked off in Beijing - Yahoo Finance

On Thursday, March 23, the #SpeechMatters 2023 conference was hosted by the National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement. The meeting was held in the Student Union room 3110 where people gathered to watch the virtual conference from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

The #SpeechMatters movement is a group that is fighting for Democratic Freedoms in the United States. According to the Free Speech Center, In this panel, experts representing industry, faculty, and advocacy groups consider the intersection of technology and expression, answering the essential question: is social media helping or harming democracy?

The meeting began with the University of California (UC) National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement Executive Director Michelle Deutchman and UC President Michael V. Drake. Drake said, Like democracy, discovering, creating, and disseminating new knowledge is an endlessly hopeful endeavor. It can give us faith in the power of humans to work toward a better future and to ensure access and opportunity for all to participate in learning and create new knowledge. It is critical to our robust democracy led by citizens empowered to choose their own destiny.

The meeting was moderated by the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Center for SafeSport Jessica Herrera-Flanigan. She began by welcoming the Research Director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy Joan Donovan to talk about the question Is social media helping or harming democracy?

Social medias role in democracy is obviously very paradoxicalSocial media platforms, such as Facebook, were weaponized by different groups, dangerous organizations, and governments to harm populations, said Donovan, Political and financial elites use that affordance usually it is done so in a way to oppress the masses or to shape media agendas.

Donovan also said, Now it is very easy to deliver a payload of disinformation to the public reaching millions of people instantaneously with claims that the election had been defrauded, or that something nefarious is happening in local politics. Also, in terms of money or your life Medical misinformation has become a very important and almost impossible-to-ignore problem facing our societies. There is actually a cost to all of this misinformation.

Herrera-Flanigan then invited Co-Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Free Press and Free Press Action Activist Jessica J. Gonzlez to speak. Gonzlez said, Social media is a tool, and like a hammer, it can be used to build beautiful things, but it can also be used to crush skulls Social media has been used to raise awareness on a range of issues from police violence, to family separation, to womens rights, climate justice, and more.

It [social media] also has helped people participate more fully in our democracy, right? Debating the issues of the day without leaving our homes, especially during the pandemic It also helps us learn from people that are different from us [social media] has lowered the communications barriers for people of color and others, who have never been well represented by mainstream media gatekeepers, said Gonzlez.

Gonzlez continued, There is also a vocal, and extreme minority who seek to use social media to crush skulls If we dont stand up to these bullies our democracy is at risk. White supremacists, white nationalists, conspiracy theorists, are using social media to sew chaos, normalize bigotry, and undermine democratic institutions.

When answering the question Is social media helping democracy?, Gonzlez said, No, right now social media companies profit off selling our attention to advertisers. High-engagement content like divisive hate and conspiracy theories keeps users glued to their screens. So the incentives here are all wrong; Algorithms feed content designed to keep us engaged, and they micro-target ads and content based on a carefully curated dossier of our demographic and other sensitive data. They are appealing to our interests, and even more cynically, to our vulnerabilities. The United States has failed to adequately regulate these companies and their exploitation of our private information which has resulted in human and civil rights abuses.

Afterward, Herrera-Flanigan invited the Director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism Jeff Jarvis. Jarvis cited Nirit Weiss-Blatt who examined media coverage of the internet.

Jarvis said, She found that the moment that it [media coverage] changed from utopian to dystopian. That moment in her data was the election of Donald Trump I fault my colleagues in journalism and media for their coverage of the net because it was simplistic on both sides. It was simplistically optimistic, now it is simplistically pessimistic.

We have to bring perspective into the discussion about the platforms and social media and technology. I fear that what is happening at this very moment where we are right now is that the hearing is going on in Washington about TikTok. A combination of moral panic about technology and about the children we must do something! Xenophobia about China may lead to the banning of Tik Tok. But what I see when that occurs is the printing press of a hell of a lot of people gets torn out of their hands. That is an issue for freedom of expression, the First Amendment in this country, and the value of speech It is not just about the press, as an institution, it is about speech and speech for all. It is also about assembly; it is also about the action of not being able to petition grievances as occurs in the hashtags #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, and #OccupyWallStreet, said Jarvis.

Jarvis said, The greater context here is about speech protecting speech. Which always means that we have to protect bad speech and we have to grapple with it and create institutions to help us ignore it and not spread it so that we can have good speech.

This conference was promoted by UWLs Joint Committee on Free Speech Promotion and the Center for Transformative Justice.

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The #SpeechMatters 2023 conference: Is social media helping or ... - The Racquet