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Raisa and Mikhail Gorbachev. (Michael Setboun / Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

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On the eve of Mikhail Gorbachevs birthday this March, Time magazines cover featured Anna Rivina, leader of Nasiliu.net, a Russian nonprofit to support victims of domestic violence that had just been branded a foreign agent by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation. A symbolic coincidence. The independent womens movement in Russia, born in the years of Gorbachevs perestroika, became a prominent phenomenon outside the country, a part of the international struggle for gender equality. This is yet another obvious result of that unique process of liberation and renewal that began in the mid-1980s in the USSR and became an important factor of subsequent history.

Speaking of Gorbachevs lessons, during his birthday celebrations prominent Russian and international experts, political figures, and analysts spoke mostly about disarmament and freedom of speech, economic and political reforms, the release of prisoners of conscience, changes in the vector of politics, and recognition of the value of individual rights. These were truly revolutionary changes, many of which are irreversible despite the challenges of the times. Perestroika liberated the minds of millions of people, expanding the borders of their understanding of the world. Including the place of women in society and politics.

It was under Gorbachev that womens councils were instituted at work enterprises, so that women could have their say about the workplace and societal changes. It was during perestroika that independent womens groups appeared, along with the slogan Democracy without women is not democracy, the banner of a new Russian feminism. The Russian womens groups began to work with international womens initiatives. Women on East and West, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, tried to find and hear one another and make the world a better place. The 1990s Wild West market years with their painful social consequences would have been much more tragic if not for the active womens organizations that tried to organize daily life in hundreds of cities. The womens groups helped to overcome unemployment and poverty, forming groups of mutual aid, support, and training in new professions, essentially saving themselves and their families.

The independent womens movement grew in the last years of the USSR on a wave of changes, like many other civil initiatives. It did not always meet with understanding. Many architects of perestroika did not think that women had any problems, since Soviet ideology held that men and women were equal and there was a 30 percent quota for women in elected bodies. The majority of members in these bodies had to be from the working class and collective farmers, who, just like women, were often window dressing and voted for decisions made in Party offices. The hypocrisy of the Soviet regime in the Brezhnev stagnation period made people in the intelligentsia reject all Soviet postulates, including gender equality, for many years afterward.

But women wanted to be part of perestroika. Womens councils were formed in scientific centers and large enterprises throughout the country. There were more women than men with a higher education in the USSR. Yet, top positions in government and industry were held by men.

Gorbachevs support of womens councils was attributed to the influence of his wife, Raisa Gorbachev. Far from everyone in the USSR approved of her public activity, her meetings with other first ladies. However, the role of Raisa Gorbachev, the scholar rather than spouse, is hard to overestimate; she dismantled the Soviet tradition of secrecy about the leader and his family and set an example for new forms of international cooperation among women at all levels. Womens peace initiatives, the Russian-American Alliance for Women in Business, and the dozens of joint organizations and consortiums were the result of the breakthrough made during perestroika.

Perestroika was broader and more powerful than expected, touching on the deepest layers of society. As a result, gender issues have become part of the public discourse, no longer part of research labeled secret.Current Issue

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In 1989, Kommunist magazine published How Do We Solve the Womens Question? by Academician Natalya Rimashevskaya and two young sociologists, Natalya Zakharova and Anastasia Posadskaya. It was the first to talk about the gender gap and gender discrimination in the USSR. It caused a great stir in the academic world, and soon under the auspices of the Rimashevskayas new Institute of Socioeconomic Problems, the Moscow Center for Gender Research was founded and headed by Posadskaya. The center attracted researchers from many countries and served as a discussion platform and a laboratory for new experiences and the promotion of gender research in academia.

At the same time, womenengineers, designers, analystsorganized discussion groups about the role of women in government. In 1991, not long before the disappearance of the USSR, the First Independent Womens Forum gathered several hundred women in Dubna, near Moscow. Nothing like that had ever been done in the USSR, and it was a revelation to Russians and Westerners alike. Just before that, Colette Shulman and Katrina vanden Heuvel (The Nations editorial director and publisher) began publishing a newsletter in America about the womens movement in the USSR and the US called Vy i My, You and We. In a few years, You and We evolved into a magazine published in Russia. Its hard to overestimate the significance of the publication, whose articles were reprinted by national and federal media in Russia and the countries of the former USSR. It was a bridge between cultures and social practices.

The struggle against domestic violence and discrimination played an important part in the magazine from the start, as did the dialogue among women, which supported and expanded the political dialogue and is still a colossal resource for building relations between Russia and the US. This is part of the discussion at the Raisa Gorbachev Club, which continues its work in Moscow after her passing, with international cooperation an important priority.

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Another impressive example of Russian-American public diplomacy and cooperation during the Gorbachev era is a dialogue between women writers and scholars that began in spring 1991 at the Conference Glasnost in Two Cultures in New York. Three dozen women, American Slavists, feminists, translators, and Russian women writers, gathered in an extraordinary meeting challenged by some misunderstanding of each others cultures. But relationships were born and continue to this day helping to create a stable and vital movement and bearing fruit in, among many ways, translations of womens short stories collections, occasional conferences, a Russian arm of Womens World Association, new publications.

Women writers conversation about feminism helped turn a new page in gender awareness in the USSR and later in Russia, brought to light new problems and approaches to them, and promoted gender equality in art. It changed popular culture; today young women writers write scripts for TV serials using gender glasses, promoting gender equality that challenges neoconservative and nationalistic trends in contemporary Russian public opinion.

Democracy without women is not democracy has not lost its importance in Russia. The dozens of new womens initiatives, the gender section of the social democratic Yabloko Party, the hundreds of pickets and protests against discrimination, harassment, and violence in cities and regions of Russia all speak to that. New generations are continuing the struggle that began during perestroika. This is the clear and inarguable success of Gorbachevs policies. So is the portrait of a Russian activist on the cover of Time.

Translated by Antonina W. Bouis

Read more:
Democracy Without Women Is Not Democracy - The Nation

Welcome to The Political Fix by Rohan Venkataramakrishnan, a newsletter on Indian politics and policy. To get it in your inbox every week, sign up here.

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Will Indias illiberal turn under Prime Minister Narendra Modi hurt the countrys chances of engaging with the West?

We asked this question on the Political Fix six months ago:

The challenge of living in a state that has moved away from pluralism as its stated aim is one that Indians will have to grapple with. Over the last few months, this drift has also led to a debate among those who follow Indias strategic thinking and foreign policy efforts

American scholar Ashley Tellis kicked off last weeks round of the debate, arguing that the community of liberal democracies internationally stands to lose if domestic unrest fueled by confrontational politics stymies Indias growth or if India enlarges its material capabilities only by sacrificing its liberal character. Either outcome would dilute the Wests eagerness to partner with India.

Still, knowing that the West has often been more than happy to work with despots and dictators though, will Indias recent moves actually harm its chances?

The last few weeks have seen the West, or at least its public sphere, become much more cognisant of the democratic backsliding under Modi.

US-based non-profit Freedom House in its annual report downgraded the country from free to partly free, saying rather than serving as a champion of democratic practice and a counterweight to authoritarian influence from countries such as China, Modi and his party are tragically driving India itself toward authoritarianism.

Swedens V-Dem Institute went a step further, saying the worlds largest democracy has turned into an electoral autocracy.

This led to a burst of coverage of developments in India, with the BBC examining the question of this democratic downgrade and The Washington Post carrying a piece titled, India, the worlds largest democracy, is now powered by a cult of personality.

While for some, terms like electoral autocracy or partly free conjure up images of rigged elections and widespread political violence, Milan Vaishnav, director of Carnegie South Asia, explained in Foreign Affairs that,

Indias drop in the democracy league tables has less to do with the nature of its elections which are largely free and fair than with the shrinking democratic space between them These grim assessments point to several troubling political developments in the country: the consolidation of a Hindu-majoritarian brand of politics, the excessive concentration of power in the hands of the executive, and the clampdown on political dissent and on the media.

The Indian government naturally pushed back against these assessments, citing both a genuine grouse about wayward and inconsistent Western readings of the country as well as less grounded claims of some sort of anti-India agenda from these organisations.

Treating all criticism, whether it comes from Indians or foreigners, as agenda-driven efforts from enemies of the nation is of course one of the indicators of the Indian governments illiberal turn.

Political scientist Paul Staniland looked at V-Dems earlier assessments of India to see if charges of bias against the Bharatiya Janata Party were accurate in an insightful thread:

While Twitter debated these things, in the country itself the question of whether India had become less free seemed, quite literally, academic:

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a vocal critic of the Narendra Modi government, had resigned as professor of the Ashoka University on Tuesday, less than two years after he stepped down as the universitys vice chancellor. The university had refused to say whether his writings and criticism were connected to the resignation. Economist Arvind Subramanian also quit after Mehtas exit

In his resignation letter to Ashoka University, political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta said he was quitting because it had become abundantly clear to him that his association with the university may be considered a political liability.

My public writing in support of a politics that tries to honour constitutional values of freedom and equal respect for all citizens, is perceived to carry risks for the university, Mehta wrote. It is clear it is time for me to leave Ashoka.

Mehta, who is very well known in academic and intellectual circles, had in his regular columns for the Indian Express been writing about Modi and the BJPs impact, with a recent piece titled the real darkness on horizon is the turn Indian democracy is taking.

Though some have questioned Mehtas own analysis of Modi in the past and others have asked why developments at an expensive, private university have garnered more attention than the steady attacks on academic freedoms at public ones, the news undoubtedly added to the international impression of speech being threatened in India.

Political scientist Suhas Palshikar, who looked recently at questions of how to define India under the BJP, decided to read the tea leaves:

The recent negative reports about Indias democracy have given a convenient handle to pseudo-intellectuals of the regime to commence this offensive of redefinition.

A time will come when it will be argued that democracy is a western notion unnecessary for true and spiritual emancipation moksha. It will be claimed that there is an indigenous meaning to democracy. Liberalism and individual rights are a western fashion, institutional autonomy is a fetish, freedom of expression is a superfluous luxury (and of course, no freedom is absolute)

The simplistic binary between electoral and non-electoral needs to be set aside. Regimes which initially hide behind the democratic fig-leaf often overemphasise the virtue of electoral victories and the will of the people

The moment individual citizens or minorities and marginalised sections are silenced into self-censorship born out of the lure of social approbation or risk of repression, democracy based on the claims of so many votes begins to resemble its opposite.

Whether or not to call that opposite of democracy by the name of autocracy, authoritarianism, or partial freedom, is less important because non-democracy, by any name, will smell as odious it will crush the people in whose name it has enthroned itself.

So, will all of this hurt Indias chances of engaging with the West?

As of this week, self-evidently not.

Modi joined US President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suge and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison in the first-ever leadership meeting of the Quad, a group of countries that has come together to support a shared vision for an Indo-Pacific region that is free, open, resilient and inclusive.

For nearly two decades now the four countries have coordinated on a few shared activities and discussed cooperating on many more. The grouping has also been seen, accurately, as an effort to contain China, as its influence in the region grows.

In last weeks summit, however, the leaders sought to convey the impression that the group aims to do much more than just counter Beijing militarily.

In an Op-Ed jointly written by the four leaders, the story of the Quad begins with the countries putting together a joint response to the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. Among the biggest agreements from the first summit was a decision to have India manufacture the Johnson & Johnson single-shot Covid-19 vaccine, with financing from the US and Japan and logistical support from Australia to distribute the vaccines across South-East Asia and Pacific countries. The gathering also saw added commitment to work together on things like climate change and critical technology.

Still, as Indrani Bagchi writes, theres no doubt a resurgent, aggressive and hegemonistic China is the wind beneath the Quads wings The Quads the thin end of the wedge in what promises to become an expanding toolkit of a massive counterbalancing exercise.

Well have more coverage and links to outcomes from last weeks Quad summit and further developments in coming days.

But to return to the question, how does Indian democratic backsliding play into all of this? After all, in the joint Op-Ed, the four leaders wrote that our foundations of democracy and a commitment to engagement unite us.

Just a few days later, US Defence Secretary General Lloyd Austin III visited New Delhi, to meet Modi, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. The meetings led to a number of major agreements, such an enhanced Indian cooperation with a number of US military commands as opposed to just the Hawaii-based Indo-Pacific one and collaboration on information sharing, artificial intelligence, space and cyber.

Among the things Austin brought up were questions of human rights abuses, which he had been urged to bring up by the chairperson of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Austin said he spoke to members of the Indian Cabinet about violations of human rights of Muslims in Assam, among other things, adding India is our partner and a partner that whose partnership we value. And I think partners need to be able to have those kinds of discussions.

The Indian government, however, claimed this didnt happen via anonymous sources:

As many expected, under US President Joe Biden, questions about human rights and liberal values are indeed more likely to come up, in ways that will be embarrassing for the Indian government under Modi.

Whether that will prevent the two countries from collaborating is a different matter altogether. One explanation for why it was relevant came from the Hudson Institutes Aparna Pande in a Friday Q&A last year, pointing out that Indias democratic reputation is a reason for its seat at the table:

If India was growing at 8%-10% economic growth, if India had the military, which could stand up to China, then maybe we could turn around and say, you know, Why are you [criticising our move away from liberalism]?

But actually we seem to have it bad on all fronts. Economic growth has slowed down. We havent invested in human capital as Covid shows us right now. Our military modernisation has not gone as planned. And we have political and social tensions What is India offering aside from its image?

What is India offering aside from its image? The answer might be quite simple: A willingness to take on China.

If, as the other Quad countries have concluded, that competition with Beijing will be the defining geopolitical contest of the decade, some amount of Indian democratic backsliding could well be ignored by the West as long as New Delhi stays firm on China.

In both West Bengal and Kerala, several people have found their names on the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate lists without asking to be on there or in some cases not even being members of the party.

This untranslatable interview is the outcome of those developments:

Thanks for reading the Political Fix. Well be back on Friday with a Q&A and links to pieces from around the web. Send feedback to rohan@scroll.in.

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The Political Fix: What does India's democratic backsliding mean for the Quad? - Scroll.in

Opinion: the way we are treated at work can shape our beliefs about how others should be treated

ByLorraine Ryan and Thomas Turner, University of Limerick

Garda Commissioner Drew Harris drew widespread criticism when he claimed that both far left and far right factions were involved in recent anti-lockdown protests in Dublin. He subsequently clarified that there was no 'corroborated evidence' that any far-left groups were involved, and the protests were conducted by anti-vaccine, anti-mask and anti-lockdown protestors, far right groups, and those intent on trouble and disorder.

Across the Atlantic, far right groups were said to have initiated the Capitol Hill riots, an event that tragically included the deaths of five people and was described by many as an assault on democracy. There are other recent examples across Europe and the rest of the world of a weakening of support for democracy and a rise in extreme right-wing or populist political groups. Such groups typically draw on a mass movement led by an outsider or maverick seeking to gain power by using anti-establishment appeals. They are also often linked with racist or anti-immigrant sentiments. Debates around Brexit are a prime example.

An individual'spolitical views are shaped by many personal characteristics and life circumstances including socio-economic class, education, social networks and family. However, our work environment can also have a significant influence on our beliefs and attitudes.

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FromRT 2fm'sLouise McSharry,career psychologist, Sinead Brady on crying at work

Workplaces are microcosms of society and democratic societies require democratic workplaces. How individuals are socialised in the workplace can shape their views and behaviours in important ways. Socialisation refers to the influence of environmental factors (such as workplaces) on social attitudes, including political ones. Most people spend a great part of their life at work and so exposure to democratic or authoritarian work environments influences the extent to which there is a positive or negative spillover into democratic behaviours in society.

Democratic work environments are those where power is dispersed and workers can influence their working conditions, hold management accountable and participate in decision-making in matters that effect their working lives. Democracy does not require consensus and harmony among groups, but rather its bedrock is a recognition of pluralist interests and acceptance of difference. Equality and voice are cornerstones of democracy.

Factors that facilitate democratic work environments include the size of the organisation (larger workplaces tend to be more democratic), mechanisms for worker participation and the presence of a trade union. At root, trade unions are democratic institutions that have long provided an independent voice for workers.

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FromRT Radio 1'sMorning Ireland in April 2020,Patricia King from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions on proposals to ensure 'Covid-secure' workplace conditions

The democratic spillover thesis suggests that workplace democracy and participation increase workers' sense of political efficacy, which then transfers to the formal political sphere through, for example. an increased propensity to vote in elections. Research shows that trade union members report significantly higher rates of electoral voting and political activism than non-union workers. Trade unions also often advocate for greater inclusiveness in society, as seen for example in the recent Black Lives Matter movement and the marriage equality referendum. Thus, workers exposed to democratic work institutions such as trade unions are socialised into the legitimacy of equality and voice and the belief that workers can achieve change through a democratic system.

Conversely, authoritarian work environments are those where there is little opportunity for voice and decisions are made by a single authoritarian figure. In such organisations, power is highly concentrated and relatively immune from any challenge. Workers are often subject to strict control and expected to essentially do as they are told.

Authoritarian work environments emphasise conformity to rules, submissiveness to authority and aggression against outsiders. Those working in authoritarian work environments are uncomfortable with others who have dissimilar beliefs to their social group. Workers socialised in such settings are thus more likely to hold negative views towards outsiders such as immigrants and have weaker attachment to democratic values and processes in society.

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FromRT Brainstorm, what might the future of work look like and are we ready for it?

The way we are treated at work can shape our beliefs about how others should be treated as we assimilate the norms and values associated with the organisation in which we spend much of our time. Organisations are integral parts of wider society and contain a significant social nexus and responsibility. Society and the workplace have a mutually reinforcing relationship whereby democracy in society must be mirrored in the workplace and democratic workplaces reinforce democracy in society.

Yet trade union membership and influence are in decline across Europe. Any replacement of the role of unions and collective bargaining faces challenges of legitimacy and independence that are crucial to democracy at work. Public policy interventions at workplace level that provide guarantees to representation and voice for workers can support democracy both at work and in the spillover into society.

Ensuring democratic societies that embrace diverse populations is important in stemming the rise of far-right groups that advocate strong anti-immigrant sentiments. Providing effective voice for all demographic groups is critical in advancing more inclusive and equal societies. The beliefs, values and mechanisms that underpin democratic societies for citizens must be mirrored in the workplaces in which those citizens are employed to encourage active participation in the democratic process and secure the health and robustness of democracy in society.

Dr Lorraine Ryanis a Lecturer in Employment Relations and Human Resource Management at the Department of Work and Employment Studies at theKemmy Business School atUniversity of Limerick. She is a former Irish Research Council awardee.Dr Thomas Turner lectures in Personnel Management and Industrial Relations at the Department of Personnel and Employment Relations at the Kemmy School of Business at the University of Limerick.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RT

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Does where you work influence your political beliefs? - RTE.ie

The Biden administration has rhetorically placed strengthening democracy abroad at the center of its foreign policy. As part of this push, the White House has committed to holdingaSummitfor Democracyto galvanize supportforfightingcorruption, combatingauthoritarianism, and advancinghuman rights.Some foreign policy analysts argue that such a meeting is ill-advised and the administration should instead get to work on these issues at home, while others offer smart recommendations for how to craft the gathering. Since no administration will backtrack after making such a bold announcement, those in the latter camp have made the more useful and practical contributions.

What has been largely overlooked in this debate is what comes before and after the summit as well as how the Biden administration articulates and delivers on its vision for strengthening democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Convening a grouping of established and aspiring democracies to convey Americas commitment to the cause is smart and principled foreign policy, given Chinas rise and Americas unsettling experience with stress on its own institutions. Even as it plans the summit, however, the White House should develop a roadmap for implementing the presidents vision. This means crafting a democracy and human rights strategy and signing an executive action required to cement it as U.S. policy.

The summit is necessary but far from sufficient to address the many global challenges to democracy. Authoritarians are on the march, having used the pandemic as an excuse to expand executive authority and suppress dissent. Kleptocracy is on the rise and often underwrites authoritarians repression. The Chinese Communist Party has mounted an ideological insurgency against democracy by actively promoting an alternative governance model based on centralized control and censorship. Chinese companies linked to Beijing areexploiting and exacerbating governance gaps in vulnerable countries by using corruption and opaque processes to solidify deals that favor elite interests and undermine accountability. Russia uses corruption, attacks on elections, and disinformation to undermine democratic actors and allies with links to the United States and the European Union. Citizens in every major region feel that democracy is not helping make their lives better.

The Biden administration should use the summit to highlight these challenges, galvanize support for addressing them, and work with like-minded allies to develop solutions. But it must go beyond this to develop a roadmap for success and take follow-on bureaucratic actions to cement progress. This means developing a comprehensive U.S. democracy and human rights strategy that encompasses all the relevant agencies and tools for support.

The strategy must include clear short- and long-term goals and theories of success for achieving them, with measurable objectives for chosen areas of focus. The overarching long-term goal of the United States should be a world where democracy is the predominant form of governance because it is the model with the best chance of delivering peace and prosperity for citizens. The strategy will need to articulate country and regional priorities and visions for success in each, given competing strategic priorities and finite resources.

As I have written elsewhere, five areas of focus warrant attention as part of the Biden administrations democracy strategy. First, it should bolster core institutions of democracy in strategically important countries. Second, democracy strengthening and democracy protection should be coupled to enable countries to prevent and counter Russian and Chinese interference. Third, it should support a positive vision for how technology can deliver on democratic principles and pushing back against digital authoritarianism. Fourth, it should recommit to working with allies to shore up democracy abroad. Finally, it must back these initiatives with forceful and principled diplomacy to stand with democratic activists and speak out against dictators and tyrants.

The administrations democracy and human rights strategy should also include steps to revitalize democracy at home. A dual international and domestic democracy strategy would reflect how the administration has prioritized work on this important issue at home and abroad and lend credibility to efforts overseas by explicitly recognizing (and putting resources against) weaknesses in U.S. democratic practice.

A U.S. democracy strategy should be a main deliverable for the summit. The administration can use the summit to announce the new approach and with it a commitment of significant foreign assistance resources to implement the vision. The Biden administration should enshrine the democracy strategy in a National Security Directive, like it did for the White House approach to COVID-19. Such a directive would establish the strategy as the U.S. policy for supporting democracy at home and abroad and carry with it the direction of the president that the federal government execute this vision.

Presidents have regularly used directives to state their policy on a range of issues. The George W. Bush administration, which issued 66 such directives, outlined its Artic Region Policy in National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) 66 and U.S. cybersecurity policy in NSPD 54. The Obama administration, which issued 43 directives, outlined a new U.S. policy toward Cuba in Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) 43. And the Trump administration, which released 18, outlined U.S. policy on promoting womens global development and prosperity in its National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) 53. Every administration dating back to the Truman presidency has done the same.

Beyond codifying the U.S. approach to democracy and thereby increasing the probability the strategy is effective, a presidential directive sends a strong signal to our allies and authoritarians that the United States is serious about strengthening democracy overseas.

Developing such strategies and directives takes time. The National Security Council (NSC) should start the drafting and planning processes now even as it plans a summit. If it does not, the White House risks this high-level meeting sucking the oxygen out of its democracy efforts and being left, post-meeting, with little to show and the actual work left to do. Arguably, the strategy and not the summit should be the NSCs priority focus on this issue set in the coming months.

Summits are sexy. Policy documents are not. Thankfully, they are not mutually exclusive. The Biden administration is right to hold the summit and in so doing demonstrate to the world the U.S. commitment to democracy. It should use the summit to announce its broader democracy strategy, and ensure that all agencies quickly implement the strategy.

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The Democracy Summit must be paired with a democracy strategy - Brookings Institution

Rached Ghannouchi, Opinion contributor Published 6:00 a.m. ET Feb. 20, 2021

Speaker of Tunisias Parliament: Tunisia is still a democracy in the making, and after the economic damage of COVID, we need help.

Ten years ago, Tunisia made history when Tunisian youth decided to take their fate into their hands and ignited the revolution of freedom and dignity. Tunisia began a pioneering but challenging transition from authoritarian regime to democracy. Since then, Tunisia has become a beacon of hope for those who believe in Arab democracy, holding successive peaceful elections, establishing democratic institutions and enacting progressive social change.

Yet, despite this progress, we are witnessing the rise of regressive movements that invoke nostalgia for the old regime and seek to return to an authoritarian past of one-man rule rather than the pluralism and compromise of a democratic system. The reasons for this are manifold. First, much of our world, including the United States, is grappling with the rise of populism. Populists have a tendency to thrive in moments of economic crisis and social turmoil, both of which are plentiful in the current climate. Their dangerous narratives are built around an opposition between a virtuous homogenous group of people against a vilified "other" whether it be elites, minorities or any alternative viewpoint. In Tunisia it takes the form of attacking democratic institutions, elected officials and political parties, disrupting their work, and feeding the notion that complex and deep-rooted social and economic challenges can be addressed by returning to a more efficient strong man rule, or installing a benevolent dictator. Secondly, any revolution is followed by counter-revolutionary movements and discourses that seek to block and undo any progress achieved and preserve their own privileges and interests.

Tunisian democracy is still in the making. The riots in some Tunisian cities in recent weeks have highlighted just how much there is that is still to be done. The Tunisian people are frustrated at the slow progress of economic reform since 2011 and have yet to see the jobs and better living standards they rightly expect. Our progress has not kept up with peoples expectations. The revolution inspired huge expectations among us all, with little awareness of how complex change would be. Looking back to other modern transitions not so long ago, like those in Eastern Europe, we can see that it takes several decades to see benefits from difficult reforms. This explains how nostalgia for the past order is a common feature of all transitions.

Nevertheless, we can be proud of Tunisias remarkable achievements in the last 10 years. We have established new democratic institutions, resolved conflicts peacefully, set a culture of political inclusion, introduced protections for human rights, gender equality, rule of law and set new standards for state accountability and transparency. Tunisia has made unprecedented progress, placing it among the fastest democratic transitions in history. This is even more remarkable given that past transitions, such as Eastern Europes, took place in a more favourable regional and global climate for democracy and economic growth than Tunisia has faced.

Protesters on Jan. 26, 2021, in Tunis, Tunisia.(Photo: Hedi Ayari/AP)

However, the feelings of disenchantment are understandable and Tunisians continued demands for dignity and prosperity promised are entirely legitimate. Due to the COVID-19 crisis, unemployment has increased from 15% to18%in 2020. Over a third of small businesses are threatened with closure. The tourism sector, which represents 10% of Tunisian GDP and employs almost half a million people,is among the sectors most affected. The government has provided support to those affected by the repercussions of the pandemic and continues to strive to achieve a fine balance between protecting the lives of Tunisians and preserving their livelihoods.

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After decades of dictatorship, inequality and corruption, Tunisias economy is in need of deep-rooted reforms. We believe a stable government that has the support of the largest possible number of political parties and social partners has the best chance to to enact delayed but necessary reforms. What is urgently needed is to embrace once again the values that won Tunisia a Nobel Peace Prize in 2015 compromise and dialogue between political parties, trade unions, business leaders and civil society around a shared economic vision for the country. The coronavirus crisis creates even greater urgency for undertaking these reforms. In addition, agreement must be reached on reforming the electoral system to enable the emergence of majorities that can provide stable and accountable government for the people.

Tunisia cannot do this on its own. It needs support from its international partners who believe in democracy. The difficulties of our democratic transition must not engender a loss of faith in Tunisias democracy. We have crossed uncharted territory in our region, in the face of regional challenges and an unfavourable and volatile global environment. Tunisia needs to be supported as its success will send a message to all nations that democracy can prevail and is, as we believe, the best system of government for delivering freedom and dignity for all. The alternative to democracy in our region is not stability under dictatorship but rather chaos and intensified repression.

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Continued support for and belief in Tunisias transition to a strong and stable democracy is not just in the interest of Tunisians but for all our neighbors and partners. Despite all challenges, our democratic system has stood firm and, with the necessary commitment and support, will deliver the fruits of democracy that Tunisians have been awaiting.

Rached Ghannouchi is the speaker of Tunisias parliament, the Assembly of Peoples Representatives.

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After decades of dictatorship and corruption, Tunisia cannot thrive as a democracy on its own - USA TODAY