Mediaboss Marketing

Nigeria celebrates Democracy Day as a national holiday. The day commemorates the commencement of the longest continuous civilian rule since Nigeria's independence from the colonial authority in 1960 when the military handed over power to an elected civilian government in 1999. It is observed every year on June 12th. Importantly, sending your countrymen and loved ones happy Democracy Day wishes is a great way of marking the day.

Send one of these lovely happy Democracy Day wishes and quotes that will make your fellow citizens smile and remind them of the long history behind this unique day. You can also include photos with Democracy Day quotations to share with them.

As a patriotic Nigerian, there is no better way to celebrate this holiday than by wishing your fellow countrymen a happy Democracy Day. As you celebrate this lovely day, here are some of the best wishes you may offer to your family, friends, and coworkers.

PAY ATTENTION: Follow us on Instagram - get the most important news directly in your favourite app!

Democracy Day is one of the essential festive seasons to remember as wonderful, passionate, and patriotic citizens. Here are some cute messages to share with your fellow people as you celebrate another year of democratic governance.

A happy life is completely free, and you should make every effort to live it. It is also your responsibility to protect your ecosystem. Here are some inspiring words to share during Democracy Day in Nigeria.

Every year, Nigeria celebrates Democracy Day, a public holiday that commemorates the country's return to democracy. The event that is currently observed every year occurred in 1999 when Olusegun Obasanjo was democratically elected the President of Nigeria, ending the country's decades-long military rule.

Democracy Day is celebrated on June 12th every year.

You can send your family and friends the above Happy Democracy Day wishes and quotes. Sharing messages is an important aspect of remembering your past and educating future generations about your countrymen's struggles.

READ ALSO: WAEC recruitment in 2022: portal, how to apply, vacancies, closing date

Legit.ng recently published a post about WAEC recruitment in 2022, including how to apply, vacancies, deadlines, and more. The West African Examinations Council has grown to become one of the largest and most well-known exams in West Africa since its establishment.

Qualified applicants are invited to apply for available positions at the Nigeria National Office. Check out this post for information on how to apply and all of the open positions.

Source: Legit.ng

Read this article:
50+ Happy Democracy Day wishes to send to your friends and family - Legit.ng

Although a welcome development, the recent US and European escalation of arms shipments to Ukraine is insufficient to curb Russian President Vladimir Putins designs on expanding illiberalism.

Thats because the Kremlin isnt alone: Both Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping view the expansion of democracy as a threat to their grip on power and key to the advancement of US and allied influence around the world. Disrupting democracy and strengthening authoritarianism globally are therefore central elements of their strategic competition with the United States.

Before Putins brazen invasion of Ukraine, both he and Xi had long recognized that interference in open societies to advantage illiberal friends is preferable to and far less costly than military invasion. There is no shortage of examples: In Ethiopia and Kenya, for instance, Beijing has invested in training the ruling parties on the same strategies and tactics the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses to stay in power. It has also poured money into countries such as Cambodia and Serbia without demanding progress on human rights or democratic development, reinforcing authoritarian trends there. For its part, Russia actively uses a range of online information operations to advantage illiberal populist allies abroadfrom bolstering euroskeptic actors in the Netherlands to promoting a Kremlin-friendly narrative in government-controlled media in Hungary.

Chinese and Russian efforts to undermine democratic institutions and bolster illiberal leaders also frequently complement one another.Russian disinformation campaigns and efforts to exacerbate societal divides are often more effective in countries that are increasingly dependent on Chinese investment and convinced by its promotion of an authoritarian development model. While these efforts are typically undertaken independently, there is mounting evidence of coordination, particularly on propaganda and disinformation.

The Kremlins evident failings in Ukraine will likely spark fear among among Putin, Xi, and their elite support networks that this could snowball into more democratic successes in their neighborhoods. As this perceived threat escalates, so too will the dedication among the leaders of Russia and China to advance illiberalism and undercut democratic movements. Beyond its immediate periphery, Beijings protection of its expanding global interests will increasingly result in efforts to prevent inconvenient political transitions.Its recent deal with the Solomon Islands allowing it to send security forces to assist in maintaining social order is only a harbinger of things to come. Meanwhile, Russias war has injected new life into the NATO alliance and broader transatlantic relationship.

The United States needs to strike while the iron is hot to establish deeper collaboration with allies to shore up democracy. There are two steps that can keep the West ahead of Putin and Xi as they shift their promotion of authoritarianism into overdrive.

First, the United States must secure the resources necessary to protect democracy from Beijing and Moscowin Eastern Europe and beyond. While President Joe Bidens proposed fiscal year 2023 budget rightfully includes increases for the Pentagon (bringing its budget to $773 billion) to enable US armed forces to address simultaneous threats from China and Russia, the challenge from Moscow and Beijing is not a unidimensional military one. From Ukraine to Taiwan, Central African Republic to El Salvador, Putin and Xi use a multiplicity of political, economic, and diplomatic tactics to exert influence and undermine fledgling and established democracies.

Democracy has not faced as significant a challenge from expansionist authoritarianism in decadesyet the US budget to protect and promote democracy by non-military means is a mere $3.2 billion, or less than one-quarter of the cost of a single aircraft carrier.

Congress must address this discrepancy between todays threat profile and the resources at the disposal of the United States. Swiftly passing legislation such as the bipartisan Democracy in the 21st Century Act, introduced late last year by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Chris Coons (D-DE), would be a good place to start: The bill provides forty million dollars to a Fund to Defend Democracy Globally. These modest funds could go a long way toward girding vulnerable democracies against adversaries attempts to undermine institutions, discredit elections, spread disinformation, and co-opt elites.

Second, the United States also must capitalize on Europes newfound recognition of the protracted contest it faces with both Russia and China, having watched Beijings craven response to the tragedy in Ukraine. They must collectively amplify a powerful allied narrative about the need to protect democracy and punish adversaries who seek to undermine it. This is essential at a time when Beijing is trying to redefine the very meaning of democracy, claiming the concept as its own while gleefully cataloging the failures of US democracy and promoting its own repressive system of governance.

The United States has done well to rally European and key Asian allies against Russia, bringing them together to levy sanctions, transfer arms, and present a joint diplomatic front. This same grouping can do more to support and fund democratic activists and critical journalists working to expose opaque deals between their own governments and the CCP and the Kremlin. Electoral processes, the lifeblood of any democracy, must also be shored up against Russian and Chinese interference and corruption.

Democratic allies also need stronger partnerships with platforms and regulators to share best practices on combating disinformation. Chinas brazen campaign amplifying Russian lies about the horrors unfolding in Ukraine underscores their joint challenge to the global information ecosystem.

To achieve maximum strategic impact ahead of an expected uptick in authoritarian pressure on democracies, developed democracies must play to their strengths. The United States and its allies should together determine how national aid agencies, diplomats, development finance institutions, and democracy promotion and civil society organizations can combine forces and split responsibilities to bolster critical institutions and democratic actors in countries targeted by China and Russia.

To its credit, the Biden administration has updated the shopworn sanctions playbook by going bigtargeting Russias foreign currency reserves, for instancerather than using the meager measures deployed after Putins annexation of Crimea and invasion of the Donbas in 2014. The United States should build on this by exploring forceful penalties other than sanctions that are sufficiently consequential to alter the behavior of adversaries.

At the moment, Russia and China are employing the equivalent of hypersonic weapons to undermine democratic processes, while the United States and its allies are fighting with something akin to Cold War-era rifles. To defeat Putin and confront the long-term challenge both he and Xi pose together, the democracies of the world need to arm Ukraine but also redouble their arsenal in support of democracy.

Patrick W. Quirk is senior director for strategy and research at the International Republican Institute and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. Previously, he served on the US Secretary of States policy planning staff.

David O. Shullman is senior director of the Global China Hub at the Atlantic Council. Previously, he served as deputy national intelligence officer for East Asia on the National Intelligence Council.

Image: Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping hold talks in Beijing, China, on Friday Feb 4, 2022. Photo by Eyepress via REUTERS

See the article here:
Putin and Xi are accelerating their push against democracy. Here's how the US can fight back. - Atlantic Council

Gretchen A. Peck

Gretchen A. Peck | for Editor & Publisher

The Washington Posts newsroom is well-experienced at deep-diving journalism and covering news of national significance. Still, this year, The Post is making a significant investment in telling the story of America in this precarious moment when democracy itself seems under assault. The Washington Post hopes to begin telling that story with meaningful coverage of states where there's an erosion in trust related to elections, and the very right to vote is being challenged.

Managing Editor Steven Ginsberg, Deputy National Editor Philip Rucker and National Editor Matea Gold introduced the Washington Posts Democracy Team in mid-February 2022. Gold spoke with Editor & Publisher (E&P) via video conference in early April to expound on the initiative and how the team is coming together.

National Editor Matea Gold seen here with her colleague Deputy National Editor Philip Rucker introduced The Washington Posts Democracy Team in mid-February 2022. (Photo courtesy of The Washington Post)

The idea for this team grew out of our coverage of the 2020 campaign and then what ensued in 2021, Matea Gold told E&P. I was running our voting coverage and our political investigations team at the time. We put together sort of a precursor to this team really, a group of reporters around the room who we aimed at the question of how voting would work in the pandemic.

They actually ended up covering a long-running effort to subvert the results of the 2020 election, and as we documented and mapped what followed, throughout 2021, we realized that this was an ongoing story that was going to be something we needed to bring sustained resources to cover it, because theres now such a widespread sense of distrust spread across the country and in many communities, about whether our elections are freely and fairly held, she continued. People are questioning whether they have fair access to the ballot. People are questioning whether results are fairly counted. And we feel that its part of The Posts public service mission to document this in an authoritative and revelatory way.

Peter Wallsten, senior national investigations editor, will lead the Democracy Team. (Photo courtesy of The Washington Post)

The plan is to deploy journalists to three initial posts, covering Georgia, Arizona and the upper Midwest. Those journalists will be the boots on the ground, reporting on the local, state and regional perspectives, but theyll also collaborate with The Washington Posts investigative journalists for national context. Politics Editor Peter Wallsten will lead the Democracy Team.

Its very important to us that the news and developments of whats happening on the ground informs our bigger thematic stories, Gold said. We want the reporters who are experts and deeply sourced in those communities to be surfacing the pieces and the trends that we want to write about in a big way.

One of the first state-based journalists to be named to the team is Matt Brown, who will cover Georgia. Brown is himself a Georgia native, and before joining the Democracy Team in late March, Brown reported for USA Today, where he was a White House correspondent. He has experience covering issues of national importance, including misinformation, conspiracies and social and racial justice protests.

In addition to Matt Brown in Georgia, Griff Witte was appointed editor of the Democracy Team on April 19.

One of the things we want to do is make sure that theres kind of a constant interplay and collaboration between the reporters based in the states and reporters who are covering this as part of a 30,000-foot elevation, Gold explained.

In a mid-term year, voting and elections are at top-of-mind for the team, but the coverage and the team itself may grow.

Democracy is a very broad term, Gold acknowledged. These reporters are going to be examining and documenting and digging into changes to voting laws across the country how the rules of ballot access are being shaped by different advocacy groups, and how theres a growing divide in our country about your experience of voting, depending on geography. And then well also have a big focus on election administration, which is an aspect of coverage that news organizations, I don't think, had ever historically spent much time on because it usually was so non-controversial. But we have seen such a sustained effort to sow doubt about whether votes are being counted accurately.

Another area the team will explore public distrust.

We really want to tell illuminating stories that help people understand what it means if you lose faith in the idea that your elected representatives were actually elected and fairly? What does it mean for your belief in your government, Gold said. And what does it mean for those public officials who are facing this level of doubt? Those are the three main areas of coverage, but I imagine we will go in lots of different directions, depending on how the story unfolds.

Another question the team will explore is why America is so polarized and how that political division seeps into voting, election lobbying and legislation.

One of the things I hear from readers all the time is a real sense of questioning the direction the country is taking because they don't recognize each other. Whether youre in a red or a blue state, I hear that from people all across the political spectrum, and the mission I laid out for the national staff this year is that we have a real responsibility to explain America to itself at this moment, Gold said.

We really need to understand what the fissures are dividing us and how can we bring a sense of illumination and understanding to some of the big issues that are reshaping how we live our lives and how we believe our system of governance should work, she suggested. And, so, the story of democracy is a much bigger story. Its a story of America at this moment.

Gretchen A. Peck is a contributing editor to Editor & Publisher. She's reported for E&P since 2010 and welcomes comments at gretchenapeck@gmail.com.

Link:
The Washington Post deploys Democracy Team: State-based reporters to collaborate with national journalists to cover elections, voting rights and other...

Hillary Rodham Clinton:

I think a lot of Americans just took for granted that, despite opposition to reproductive choice, it would not go away. There was a complacency, an acceptance.

I remember, during the 2016 campaign, I gave speeches about this. I talked about the dangers that would be posed to this right and other rights if my opponent were elected, because of the promises that he'd made to the extreme factions within the Republican Party.

And, honestly, Judy, people didn't believe me. They their attitude was, oh, that sounds really farfetched. That will never happen.

So, oftentimes, in politics, the entrenched status quo position is just not as vigorously defended as the opposition position. And so those who wanted to overturn Roe, those who wanted to turn the clock back were very motivated. And those who said, oh, well, that's settled law, including people sitting on the court who are going to vote on this decision, when asked in their confirmation hearings, gave every reason to reassure the American public.

Oh, no there's such a thing called stare decisis or, yes, I follow precedent.

Either they have had some kind of brain change, or they were deliberately misleading the American people. So, yes, the energy was on the side to overturn. Now I hope that energy will shift to the side of those of us who want to protect the progress we have made.

Go here to see the original:
Hillary Clinton on war in Ukraine, democracy and Roe v. Wade - PBS NewsHour

Global democracy is sick.In the United States, Donald Trump's supporters in the Republican Party continue to steamroll the Democrats and other pro-democracy forces. To say that the latter have for the most part been hapless, uncoordinated and paralyzed by denial is not overstating the case.

Political scientists and other experts have warned that in the wake of the Trump presidency and the coup attempt of January 2021, the country is now an "anocracy," hovering in limbo between naked authoritarianism and a slowly failing democracy.

As I have repeatedly warned this is an existential struggle: If the Republicans and the larger white right achieve their goals the United States will become a living nightmare for anyone who is not a rich white "Christian" heterosexual male, or otherwise deemed to be a "real American" and one of the MAGA-elect Trump cultists.

RELATED:Putin's war and the battle for democracy: How this conflict raises the global stakes

Writing at the Financial Times, columnist Martin Wolf describes this moment of peril and impending disaster:

"An American 'Caesarism' has now become flesh." I wrote this in March 2016, even before Donald Trump had become the Republican nominee for the presidency. Today, the transformation of the democratic republic into an autocracy has advanced. By 2024, it might be irreversible. If this does indeed happen, it will change almost everything in the world.

Thus, health permitting, Trump will be the next Republican candidate. He will be backed by a party that is now his tool. Most important, in the words of David Frum, erstwhile speechwriter for George W Bush, "what the United States did not have before 2020 was a large national movement willing to justify mob violence to claim political power. Now it does." It does so because its members believe their opponents are not "real" Americans. A liberal democracy cannot long endure if a major party believes defeat is illegitimate and must be rendered impossible.

Political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon echoed these concerns in a widely read essaylast December in the Globe and Mail, warning that American democracy could collapse by 2015, "causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence, and that by 2030, "if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship":

We mustn't dismiss these possibilities just because they seem ludicrous or too horrible to imagine. In 2014, the suggestion that Donald Trump would become president would also have struck nearly everyone as absurd. But today we live in a world where the absurd regularly becomes real and the horrible commonplace.

Leading American academics are now actively addressing the prospect of a fatal weakening of U.S. democracy. Once Republicans control Congress, Democrats will lose control of the national political agenda, giving Mr. Trump a clear shot at recapturing the presidency in 2024. And once in office, he will have only two objectives: vindication and vengeance.

In the shadow of such darkness we must not surrender to despair. That is how the global right and the fascist movement wins. Instead, those who believe in true social democracy and the liberal democratic project must stare unflinchingly into the darkness, exile the hope-peddlers and nave optimists who believe that compromise with such evil is possible, critically assess the reality of the crisis, and then organize and rally to victory.

Two months ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin, a hero and champion of the global right, unleashed a devastating war of aggression against Ukraine. The Ukrainians have resisted valiantly, andRussia's military has been embarrassed. What many experts foresaw as a quick campaign of conquest appears that it will now be a long slog of grinding death and destruction. The United States and its NATO allies have rallied to the aid of Ukraine; for the moment, at least, Western democracy seems (superficially) renewed through conflict with its former Cold War enemy.

French President Emmanuel Macron recently defeated Marine Le Pen and the far-right National Rally Party in that country's recent elections. However important that victory appears during this moment of democratic crisis, one should still be cautious for what it ultimately means about the power of the global right and its power in France and other Western European democracies. In her newsletter Lucid, historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat unpacks the larger significance of Le Pen's near-miss, which could have led to "the first female-led far-right government in Europe":

In the conclusion to my 2020 book on the subject, I singled Le Pen out in suggesting that such a shift is inevitable. "That male model of authoritarian power... may give way in the future as female-led authoritarian states emerge. ... Yet a female-led rightist state would pose no threat to authoritarianism's appeal as a legitimating force of misogyny, kleptocracy, and, in many countries, White racial domination." ...

For some voters, her "softer" feminine image likely goes a long way in making her seem acceptable. Her tasteful and understated clothing blunts the brute force of her racist proposals, such as her idea of eliminating birthright citizenship to more easily target French Muslims for discrimination. ...

In fact, as the global right doubles down on its attention to families claiming it is a priority to protect children and schools from pedophilic homosexuals, satanist Soros puppets, childless left-wing radicals, and more being a mother, who can mobilize other mothers, will become an advantage in politics.

In the coming years, shifts in far-right tactics intended to normalize extremism and the aging of the current strongman cohort will likely produce a new wave of illiberal female leaders.

While these authoritarians won't pose bare-chested, in the tradition of Benito Mussolini and Putin, they will be just as racist, corrupt, and violent as like-minded male leaders, and just as dedicated to using disinformation to create the alternate reality they need to stay in power.

A hopeful commitment to the basic idea that progress and societal improvement are attainable constitute the beating heart of the centuries-old Western democratic project. The fascist tide can be beaten back by leaning into those democratic and pluralistic values and dreams and then making them real for the mass public.

The global democracy crisis is real; the future remains unwritten and what happens next is very much in flux.

What do we know and where do we go from here? In an effort to answer these questions, I recently spoke with Andrew Viteritti,a senior member of the global forecasting team at the Economist Intelligence Unit,about its recent report, "Democracy Index 2021: the China Challenge."

In this conversation, Viteritti explains the unit's findings that how global democracy has fallen to its lowest levels since the Economist began tracking it in 2006. He also reports that in many "advanced" or "mature" democracies there is growing cynicism and distrust of government and its ability to solve problems such as price inflation or the COVID pandemic, and that those sentiments are being exploited by illiberal and other anti-democracy forces. Viteritti also discusses the challenge that China's "state capitalism" model represents for global democracy, and what Donald Trump's coup attempt of 2021 and related events tell us about extremepartisan political polarization and how it has imperiled the basic functions of government.

Toward the end of this conversation, Viteritti expresses optimism that despite all these challenges to democracy in the U.S. and around the world, democratic institutions have shown themselves to be much stronger than many expected, which should be a source of hope for the future.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

How are you feeling about democracy and the overall state of the world, as it faces so many political and other crises?

The most recent edition of the Democracy Index shows that we've seen another bad year for democracy. The average global score has continued to decline. It is now at an all-time low by our measurements, 5.28 out of a scale of 10. That is a bigger decline than what we saw even in our previous studies, in the 2020 study, which is remarkable when you consider that was the year when the coronavirus pandemic hit. That had many implications for the state of democratic institutions, and also public perceptions towards government.

Our average global score for democracy has continued to decline, and is now at an all-time low. ... The decline we saw in 2021 was only matched once before, in 2010, in the shadow of the global financial crisis.

It is important to note that the decline that we saw in 2021 was only matched once before in our history of the study, which started in 2006. That was in 2010, in the shadow of the global financial crisis.

In our new study, many of what we call "full democracies" have also now fallen down to the "flawed democracy" category. We saw the number of authoritarian regimes increase as well. We also saw every region suffer a decline in its average score, except for Eastern Europe. The score there was unchanged. It is a very reasonable response to all this to feel very concerned and very discouraged.

The public mood, both here in the United States and around the world, is that something is very wrong. How do we quantify that?

One of the tools that we use for scoring individual countries is called the World Values Survey. It's authoritative, it's global in focus, it's up to date and it's standardized. We have results for the 165 countries and two territories that we cover in the Democracy Index. What we are seeing is that there is certainly a souring of public attitudes worldwide toward political institutions, the capacity of governments to respond to pressing concerns about the state of the economy and economic security, political concerns and also social concerns.

This is a trend that we've seen become acute in specific regions across the world as well as in specific countries, the United States included. These trends were at play before the coronavirus pandemic happened, but the pandemic accentuated and aggregated these trends, and even made these negative trends appear in countries where we had not seen evidence for such attitudes before. One example would be Canada, where there is a growing skepticism towards the ability of government to respond to these big societal and economic and political issues.

Canada just endured mass protests and disruptions by a so-called Freedom Convoy of truckers supposedly protesting COVID restrictions and protocols. What do we know about such anxieties and anger?

That reflects an increasing skepticism toward government and the capacity of governments to act effectively to solve collective problems. Canada is a very mature and strong democracy. But we still have seen a slippage in that country's ranking in our study in the functioning of government and measures of the health of political culture.

There has also been a hardening of attitudes. This has manifested itself in various countries. For example, in the United States there is intense polarization. Society has become incredibly divided, to the point where public consensus has virtually collapsed on even basic fundamental issues such as election results and public health practices around the pandemic. That was a trend that we discussed at length in our 2020 report for the Democracy Index and another trend that we explored in our most recent 2021 edition for the United States.

Polarization has become the biggest threat to U.S. democracy, making it very hard for political institutions to function. Looking at the data, there is little to suggest we're going to see things get better anytime soon.

Polarization now has become the biggest threat to United States democracy, because not only has it generated an intense cleavage in United States society where we have these two camps that do not see eye to eye, but it has translated into the fact that it is now very hard for political institutions and democratic institutions to function. Looking at the data, there is little to suggest that polarization and that hardening of attitudes is going to ease up anytime soon. Reproductive rights are a big fault line right now. And of course, we're in a period where key elections are approaching, the midterms this year and the presidential election in 2024. Both Republicans and Democrats are going to frame these elections in existential terms. This does not bode well for the state of polarization in the United States, nor does it suggest that we're going to see things get better anytime soon.

Whatever happened to the "end of history" and the ultimate triumph of liberal democracy?

In this year's Democracy Index report we focus on what we describe as the "China challenge." We are in a moment where there is tension and conflict between two very distinct political systems. Is there a "China model" for democracy? What are its features? Is that sustainable? Can it be exported? Does China's leadership even want their system of government to be exported? Our quick answer to that is no.

We also look at the Western democratic model. Is there a democratic recession in the West, which many have been talking about, and which our studies certainly suggest is true over the years? We examine the causes and symptoms, and then ultimately what can be done to stop it. Ultimately, is the Western model of democracy with its supposed superiority sustainable?

There are some reasons to be optimistic when it comes to the state of democracy in the world, including the United States. One, we've seen very impressive voter participation in the United States. There was record voter turnout in the November 2020 elections. There was also record voter turnout in the runoff elections in Georgia that took place shortly afterward. And there are many reasons to believe we're going to see high voter participation and political engagement continue throughout this year, especially in the run-up to the midterms.

It is impossible to not think of the extraordinary events that happened at the beginning of 2021, which was our assessment period for the new study. Of course, we saw Donald Trump refuse to accept the results of an election that was held in a free and fair way. We saw Republican lawmakers also back that effort. We saw a sizable portion of the electorate refuse to accept those results.

It was extraordinary to see that Joe Biden's inauguration took place very smoothly, and during his first year in office he didn't face any major disruptions. That points to the strength and durability of U.S. political institutions.

It was pretty extraordinary to then see that Joe Biden's inauguration took place very smoothly. During Biden's first year in office, he didn't really face any major disruptions. To our eyes, that points to the strength and durability of United States political institutions. It is fair to assume that a smooth transition of power for Biden and a lack of disturbances over the first year in office for the new president would not have taken place in a country with weaker democratic institutions.

But at the same time, it is important not to take those institutions for granted. It remains to be seen whether these institutions can withstand similar types of stresses to those they saw at the beginning of 2021 and even during 2020, whether in terms of frequency or in terms of magnitude.

What do we know about the health of global democracy and how it was impacted by the pandemic?

There is a valid question as to whether, once we emerge from the pandemic, we will see any improvement in the democracy scores in our study. That may very well happen, especially since some of the indicators we use include public perceptions of things like whether governments are responding to crises effectively, and also questions about personal freedom.

There is also a risk that the trends that we've seen in policymaking by governments during the pandemic could in fact become "sticky" and thus could outlast the pandemic. There is an open-ended question as to whether governments will walk away from these restrictions quickly as the pandemic recedes. It's not a question that we have an answer to at the moment, because we're still in the middle of the pandemic.

Where does your optimism come from? I am quite surprised by it.

When we closed out 2020 and started 2021, it was a pretty dark moment for the United States for many reasons. And even just to see that bright spot in terms of the durability of the country's democratic institutions is very valid, valuable and positive, and certainly a reason to be optimistic.

What about what experts call "democratic backsliding," or the many examples of how Republicans are seeking to undermine democracy with their new Jim Crow strategy and other attacks?There is great concern about an existential democracy crisis in America, and perhaps even violent insurrection or civil war.

Polarization is one of the biggest issues in the country, and it hasn't gotten any better over the past year. We're not at the point of civil war, but we do have to keep an eye on this issue of polarization because there's nothing to suggest that it's going to go away immediately.

Where do these global trends bring us? How close are we to democratic collapse?

Our previous report was published at the beginning of 2020. In those two years, we see considerable slippage in terms of democracy at the global level. Certainly, that is alarming. One would assume that if we continue to see that happen next year, it could well be that the decline will continue to gain momentum and become harder to reverse.

What happens once the pandemic eases? There is reason to believe that will relieve some of the pressure that we've seen weighing down on the democracy scores of countries across the world. We will have to wait and see where the data takes us next year.

Read more on "democracy" and its discontents:

Link:
Global forecaster on "another bad year for democracy": Is the world near a dire tipping point? - Salon