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Dear Editor,

I note that my friend and CARICOM Brother, Dr. Ralph Gonsalves of St. Vincent and the new CARICOM Chairman, seems determined to throw stones towards Guyana.

Statements which are certainly premature.

As one of the most experienced leaders in the Region, and the longest serving Prime Minister, I remain disappointed that he has not taken a page out of the Book of many other CARICOM Heads of Government and Leaders of political and social groupings.

That is to maintain a level of cohesion and comradery within CARICOM.

When we behave this way, we earn the disrespect of outsiders and weaken the foundation pillars of CARICOM.

No sensible leader should contribute to the creation of this kind of environment.

I read a report by the Opposition Leader of St. Vincent. He certainly did not glorify democracy in St. Vincent.

Mr. Gonsalves and others use the term democracy with gay abandon. He must know that throughout modern history, democracy is a chameleon term used for a variety of reasons and those of us who ought to know better should be careful not to ply this term without providing detail and credible information.

The truth is democracy means different things to different people and experienced political figures ought to be careful when we apply the term without providing data. In a few hours, we will be celebrating the Independence anniversary of the United States of America.

A country and the people I believe the majority of Guyanese cherish. A place where Guyanese have a family-member, relative, or friend resident there and in the majority of cases, enjoying the American way of life with the many avenues for upward mobility and where we happily refer to as the land of opportunities.

There and elsewhere the struggle to define and refine democracy is ongoing.

I quote from the Book, The Challenge of Democracy written by Janda, Berry and Goldman which states in the first chapter of the second edition, as follows: Which is better: to live under a government that allows individuals freedom to do whatever they please or under one that enforces strict law and order? Which is better: to allow businesses and private clubs to discriminate in choosing their customers and members or to pass laws that enforce equality among races and sexes?

For many people, none of these alternatives is satisfactory. All of them pose difficult dilemmas of choice. The dilemmas are tied to opposing philosophies that place different values on freedom, order, and equality. End of quote.

Even before we cut the umbilical cord with Great Britain, Demerarians (as Guyanese were then called) looked to the US for guidance and succor.

We can be reminded, however, that the first twelve Presidents beginning with George Washington, James Maddison, James Munroe, Andrew Jackson and others were slave owners in that democracy prompting Martin Luther King (jnr), a century after the American Civil War to note and I quote I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed We hold these truths to be self -evident, that all men are created equal.

President David A. Granger has neither violated our Constitution nor broken our laws but yet we see so many throwing stones at him and the government he leads.

And I wonder, Dear Editor, if the underlying philosophy of these stone throwers is that they regard our erect and proper leader as being one of the other folks.

I wonder, for I can find no valid reasons for this relentless stone-throwing by a few people in the US, Guyana and the Caribbean. I wonder.

Yours faithfully,

Hamilton Green

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Mr. Gonsalves and others use the term 'democracy' with gay abandon - Stabroek News

Democracy can refer to a system of government or to a particular state that employs this system. The word entered English around the 1570s, from the Middle French dmocratie, but it originally comes, via Latin, from the ancient Greek demokratia, which literally means rule (kratos) by the people (demos). The Greek demokratia dates all the way back to the 5th century b.c., when it was used to describe the government in some city-states, notably Athens.

There are two kinds of democracy: direct and representative. Direct democracy is when the people are directly involved in governing the state. Representative democracy, which characterizes the U.S. system, occurs when people elect representatives to ensure their interests in government. When we think of democracy today, we usually think of a representative one in which all or most people are able to participate. This concept didnt originate until a very long time after democracys ancient roots.

In 507 b.c., Cleisthenes, the leader of Athens, introduced a series of reforms designed to allow the people to have a voice in ruling the city. It included three different political bodies: the governors, the council of representatives, and the courts. Only male citizens over the age of eighteen could vote, excluding those from outside the city, slaves, and all women. This system of government lasted until around the 400 b.c., when it began to waver, with conquests by neighbors gradually weakening it further. Athenian democracy was probably not the first example of democracy in the ancient world, but it is the best-known early version, and it is from here that we draw the word and its governmental philosophy.

Another well-known example of early democracy was the Roman Republic. Like Athens, it wasnt what we would think of today as a full democracy. Again, only adult male citizens were eligible to participate. Italy continued the tradition in a few of its medieval city-based republics. Venice, and Florence particularly, had governmental systems that included political participation by the people, if in a limited way.

Democracy also found its way into monarchical European states through the concept of the parliament, which was a council that advised the monarch. For the most part, only those who already had power could participate in parliaments, though Sweden allowed peasants to participate in its council (the Riksdag) starting in the 15th century.

The Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries brought a greater questioning of established authority to mainstream philosophy and discourse. This trend had a strong impact on the fledgling United States, which, when it won its independence from Great Britain in 1783, set up a system of representative democracy to represent its people. France was also impacted by this model. The French Revolution in 1789 was an attempt to achieve democracy, though the country didnt achieve it until the mid-1800s.

It was not until the 20th century that universal or broader suffrage, or the right to vote, was extended in most countries, and it was in the 20th century that democracy spread. By the beginning of the 21st century, almost half of the countries of the world had some variety of democratic or near-democratic system.

Types of democracies are classified according to various distinguishing features, including constitutional democracy, democratic socialism, Jeffersonian democracy, liberal democracy, parliamentary democracy, or presidential democracy, to name a few.

Democracy is also used for non-governmental organizational systems, such as a workplace democracy, which applies democratic principles in professional contexts. An advocate of democracy or democratic values is called a democrat, not to be confused with a member of the U.S. Democratic party.

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Democracy | Definition of Democracy at Dictionary.com

In both a republic and a democracy, citizens are empowered to participate in a representational political system. They electpeople to represent and protect their interests in how the government functions.

In a republic, an official set of fundamental laws, like the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, prohibits the government from limiting or taking away certain inalienable rights of the people, even if that government was freely chosen by a majority of the people. In a pure democracy, the voting majority has almost limitless power over the minority.

The United States, like most modern nations, is neither a pure republic nor a pure democracy. Instead, it isa hybrid democratic republic.

The main difference between a democracy and a republic is the extent to which the people control the process of making laws under each form of government.

Pure Democracy

Republic

Power Held By

The population as a whole

Individual citizens

Making Laws

A voting majority has almost unlimited power to make laws. Minorities have few protections from the will of the majority.

The people elect representatives to make laws according to the constraints of a constitution.

Ruled By

The majority.

Laws made by elected representatives of the people.

Protection of Rights

Rights can be overridden by the will of the majority.

A constitution protects the rights of all people from the will of the majority.

Early Examples

Athenian democracy in Greece (500 BCE)

The Roman Republic (509 BCE)

Even when the delegates of the United States Constitutional Convention debated the question in 1787, the exact meanings of the terms republic and democracy remained unsettled. At the time, there was no term for a representative form of government created by the people rather than by a king. In addition, American colonists used the terms democracy and republic more or less interchangeably, as remains common today. In Britain, the absolute monarchy was giving way to a full-fledged parliamentary government. Had the Constitutional Convention been held two generations later, the framers of the U.S. Constitution, having been able to read the new constitution of Britain, might have decided that the British system with an expanded electoral system might allow America to meet its full potential for democracy. Thus, the U.S. might well have a parliament rather than a Congress today.

Founding Father James Madison may have best described the difference between a democracy and a republic:

The fact that the Founders intended that the United States should function as a representative democracy, rather than a pure democracy is illustrated in Alexander Hamiltons letter of May 19, 1777, to Gouverneur Morris.

In a pure democracy, all citizens who are eligible to vote take an equal part in the process of making laws that govern them. In a pure or direct democracy, the citizens as a whole have the power to make all laws directly at the ballot box. Today, some U.S. states empower their citizens to make state laws through a form of direct democracy known as the ballot initiative. Put simply, in a pure democracy, the majority truly does rule and the minority has little or no power.

The concept of democracy can be traced back to around 500 BCE in Athens, Greece. Athenian democracy was a true direct democracy, or mobocracy, under which the public voted on every law, with the majority having almost total control over rights and freedoms.

In a republic, the people elect representativesto make the laws and an executive to enforce those laws.While the majority still rules in the selection of representatives, an official charter lists and protects certain inalienable rights, thus protecting the minority from the arbitrary political whims of the majority. In this sense, republics like the United States function as representative democracies.

Perhaps as a natural outgrowth of Athenian democracy, the first documented representative democracy appeared around 509 BCE in the form of the Roman Republic. While the Roman Republics constitution was mostly unwritten and enforced by custom, it outlined a system of checks and balances between the different branches of government. This concept of separate governmental powers remains a feature of almost all modern republics.

The following statement is often used to define the United States' system of government: "The United States is a republic, not a democracy. This statement suggests that the concepts and characteristics of republics and democracies can never coexist in a single form of government. However, this is rarely the case. As in the United States, most republics function as blended representational democracies featuring a democracys political powers of the majority tempered by a republics system of checks and balances enforced by a constitution that protects the minority from the majority.

To say that the United States is strictly a democracy suggests that the minority is completely unprotected from the will of the majority, which is not correct.

As a republics most unique feature, a constitution enables it to protect the minority from the majority by interpreting and, if necessary, overturning laws made by the elected representatives of the people. In the United States, the Constitution assigns this function to the U.S. Supreme Court and the lower federal courts.

For example, in the 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court declared all state laws establishing separate racially segregated public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional.

In its 1967 Loving v. Virginia ruling, the Supreme Court overturned all remaining state laws banning interracial marriages and relationships.

The constitutionally-granted power of the judicial branch to overturn laws made by the legislative branch illustrates the unique ability of a republics rule of law to protect the minority from a pure democracys rule of the masses.

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Republic vs. Democracy: What Is the Difference?

Black-clad security forces armed with riot shields advance on a mass of peaceful demonstrators. Rubber bullets and gas canisters fly. The embattled head of state, flanked by his top prosecutor and general, emerges from his estate to stake a claim for order. The scene looked like something out of a banana republic, but it unfolded in Washingtons Lafayette Square on June 1. And soon after, an obscure nonprofit got a call from a state attorney generals office, asking the perennial questions of the Donald Trump era: Can he do that? How can we stop that from happening here?

These are questions the nonprofit Protect Democracy was founded to answer. When the call came in (from a state the group declines to name), its lawyers got to work on an analysis of the Insurrection Act of 1807, aiming to equip local leaders to fight back if the Administration seeks to send in the military over their objections, as President Trump has threatened to do. And they began rounding up bipartisan signatories for a statement on behalf of Department of Justice veterans decrying Attorney General Bill Barrs conduct.

Since the beginning of the Trump presidency, Protect Democracy has cast itself in the role its name suggests: defender of Americas system of government against the threat of authoritarianism. Started by two former Obama White House lawyers who were concerned that the new President would undermine the rule of law, the group has filed lawsuits to block Trumps retaliation against critics and to curtail his use of emergency powers. It has organized groups of civil servants to speak out against what they say is Trumps politicization of law enforcement. And it has built bipartisan congressional support to rein in presidential powers.

Protect Democracy has notched some big wins. The groups lawsuits invalidated Trumps emergency declaration for the southern border and blocked the Administration from making it harder for low-income green-card holders to become citizens. They successfully argued in New York federal court that the Presidents retaliation against media outlets may violate the Constitution, and helped ensure that a defamation lawsuit brought by a former mistress could proceed in state court. Their advocacy has gotten states to reform election procedures and Congress to act to limit Executive power.

Its an impressive record for a three-year-old startup. They are innovative, imaginative, energetic and extremely effective, says Benjamin Wittes, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and editor in chief of Lawfare, whose work with the group led to the release of the Watergate prosecutors road map that had been sealed for more than 40 years.

The June 1 spectacle at Lafayette Square seems to have brought some reticent figures closer to Protect Democracys view of things. Former President George W. Bush and former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis were among those who spoke out in favor of the protesters. When you see military helicopters above the streets of D.C., using tactics from war zones, using tear gas on peaceful protesters exercising their First Amendment rights, says Ian Bassin, co-founder and executive director of Protect Democracy, these things so match what people imagine when they think of the toppling of democracies that it struck a chord.

From the beginning, however, Protect Democracy has argued the onset of authoritarianism in America would come not with a flash-bang grenade but with the whimper of institutions gradually succumbing to the erosion of long-standing norms. Ideas that seemed far-fetched three years ago have become routine: a President who declares himself immune to congressional or judicial oversight; whose Attorney General seeks to exempt the Presidents friends from responsibility while prosecuting his political enemies; whose lawyers argue in open court that he could, in fact, shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without consequence. The events of recent days appear to validate the groups concerns, with Trumps former National Security Adviser accusing him of corrupting the electoral process and the Administration firing a U.S. prosecutor whose office was investigating the Presidents close associates. Trump continues to sow doubt about the integrity of the upcoming election, recently declaring on Twitter that it would be the most RIGGED Election in our nations history.

As the election nears, Protect Democracy is focused on securing the Nov. 3 contests against foreign and domestic meddling. The group, which is officially nonpartisan, is funded by foundations and individual donors, including the LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Boston-based investor Seth Klarman, who before Trump was the GOPs largest donor in New England. Protect Democracy is lobbying and advising states on election procedure with an eye to ensuring a legitimate result. Yet the group is also looking beyond Trump, seeing him as a symptom of a system whose weakened defenses leave it open to abuse, and figuring out what can be done to strengthen American democracy in the future, regardless of who is in the White House next year.

Trump tours a section of the border wall in Otay Mesa, Calif., on Sept. 18, 2019

Evan VucciAP

If you believed your government was slouching toward dictatorship, what would you do about it? The answer, to judge from Protect Democracys routine, can seem mundane. On a recent Monday, 55 people are assembled as squares on a screen in a Google Meet video chat. Long before COVID-19 turned nearly all white collar workers into video-chat adepts, Protect Democracy was a work-from-anywhere organization, its 66 employees scattered from coast to coast. (Bassin is based in the Bay Area, co-founder Justin Florence in Boston; the group maintains a lease on a WeWork space in D.C.)

But the topics on such calls reach to the highest levels of government. Im working on a letter calling on the Justice Department inspector general to open an investigation into Barrs involvement in Lafayette Square, Justin Vail, a lawyer for Protect Democracy, tells the team. Vail, a former Obama White House and Democratic Senate aide, tells the group hes assembled more than a thousand signatories, former federal prosecutors from Republican and Democratic Administrations.

These sorts of current and former government insiders are disdained by the President and his allies as the deep statepetty bureaucrats dedicated to undermining Trumps necessary disruption of the status quo. But a competent, nonpolitical civil service is an important component of democracy. In America, officials from the President to the lowest-ranking soldier swear an oath pledging loyalty not to any ruler, Administration or party, but to the Constitution itself.

For many civil servants, that nonpartisanship has traditionally extended from one Administration to the next, and even past their time in government. Its hard to overstate how unusualbasically unprecedentedit is to have former career officials speaking out in this way, says Ben Berwick, who spent six years in the DOJs Civil Division during the Obama Administration. He left a few months after Trump took office, and became one of Protect Democracys earliest hires. The group has now massed hundreds of DOJ alums on a series of letters like the one Vail is preparing. Among the most high-profile was one stating that any ordinary American who committed the acts described in Robert Muellers Russia report would have been prosecuted for obstruction of justice, and another deploring Barrs extraordinary move to request a lighter sentence for former Trump campaign aide Roger Stone.

The group says such letters have brought concrete changes. We have seen [current Justice officials] resign, withdraw from cases, object and file internal complaints as a result, Vail says. Its a reminder that people on the outside support them having the courage to stand up and continue to work with integrity. As the group was preparing its 2,500-signatory letter on the Stone case, Barr publicly distanced himself from the Presidenta sign, the group says, that he was feeling pressure in his ranks. The department subsequently backtracked on its sentencing recommendation. On June 23, a former prosecutor testified to Congress that Stones softened sentence had been the result of heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice to cut Stone a break because of his relationship to the President.

Protect Democracys founders, Bassin and Florence, both served in the White House counsels office during the Obama Administration. By the time Trump took office, both had left government and moved on to other thingsBassin to international antipoverty work, Florence to a comfortable gig at a top law firm. But as the new Presidents actions set off alarm bells, the two began corresponding. They realized that there was no single organization doing what they were talking about: safeguarding basic principles, like checks and balances, and the idea that no one is above the law, against a perceived threat to democracy itself.

Bassin and Florence began consulting scholars who study authoritarianism abroad, hoping on some level that experts would say they were out of their minds. But the scholars shared the same worries. The scary thing was that no one rolled their eyes; nobody said, Oh, come on, really, youre being hysterical,' Bassin says.

Experts pointed to places like Poland and Turkey, where authoritarian leaders won elections and turned their countries into what scholars of the region describe as Potemkin democracies by curtailing civil rights and undermining popular control of the government. Democracies today die in a much more subtle fashion than they used to, says Harvard political scientist Steven Levitsky, co-author of the book How Democracies Die. Its pretty rare to see the generals all at once seize power, dissolve the constitution, and imprison dissidents and the press. Instead you see elected leaders graduallyimperceptibly to many citizenstransform the machinery of government to protect their friends and harass and punish their enemies.

Bassin recalls one early, telling example. Under Obama, one of his jobs had been to advise Executive Branch officials on how to follow rules set out in thick binders and handed down from Administration to Administration starting with President Eisenhowers in the 1950s. Many werent laws so much as norms and codes intended to embody the spirit of public service. Among the precepts, for example, is a 14-page memo dating to the Carter Administration that lays out specific rules for when and how White House officials could contact the Justice Department, to avoid the perception of politics influencing law enforcement. In February 2017, then White House chief of staff Reince Priebus contacted the FBI to ask the agency to publicly refute a New York Times report about contacts between Trump associates and Russian agents, and the White House openly acknowledged he had made the contact. It was already clear back thenbefore Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, before Mueller began his investigation, before Ukraine and impeachment and everything elsethat the new Administration was not interested in the binders and memos, the rules and norms, that had prevailed for generations.

Bassin and Florence wanted their organization to be bipartisan. It really is something that Republicans and Democrats, all people of good faith, should be able to agree on, that the President is not a monarch who is above accountability of any kind, says Jamila Benkato, who joined the group after clerking for a federal judge in California. But most of the groups early hires were liberals. Even Trump-skeptical conservatives wanted to give the new President a chance to grow into the job. And the group has struggled to establish a public identity that transcends its liberal roots.

Yet the mission has attracted some Republicans. Protect Democracys employees include a former GOP presidential campaign operative and consultant for the Koch brothers political outfit; a former clerk to the conservative federal judge Edith Brown Clement; and a former GOP Senate staffer and writer for the conservative Weekly Standard. In March, the group assembled 37 former Republican members of Congress and Administration officials to file a friend-of-the-court brief in Trump v. Vance, arguing that the Presidents accountants must comply with a subpoena for documents related to his hush-money payments to alleged mistresses.

From a conservative standpoint, its clear to me that the President is offending the rule of law generally and the Constitution specifically, says Stuart Gerson, who headed the DOJs Civil Division under President George H.W. Bush. Gerson worked with Protect Democracy on its successful lawsuit in a conservative court in Texas, which thwarted Trumps attempt to build his border wall without permission or funding from Congress. Im an apostle of the unitary executiveI argued all the war-powers cases in the Bush Administration, Gerson says of the idea that the Constitution gives the President expansive powers over the workings of the Executive Branch. But that [doctrine] puts the President in charge of the Executive Branch, not the other two.

Protect Democracy has organized former Justice Department officials to speak out against Barr, left, and President Trump

Doug MillsThe New York Times/Redux

Sometime in the coming weeks, the Supreme Court is set to rule on Trump v. Vance and two related cases having to do with the validity of subpoenas into the Presidents private conduct. The cases will test the idea that no one is above the law, by resolving whether a President can be investigated and held accountable for any activities, even those that precede or have nothing to do with the office. Protect Democracys advocates say the cases are part of a broader set of questions about presidential power, which they have been fighting to constrain.

One of Trumps first moves as President was the creation of an election-integrity commission, which sought to examine allegations of voting abuse, like his baseless claim that the 2016 election was tainted by millions of illegal votes. Working with other advocacy groups, Protect Democracy sued based on a technicalitythe Administrations failure to follow the Paperwork Reduction Act, which mandates the procedures for establishing such commissionsand informed states they were not required to provide the Administration with the voter data it sought. The commission, Protect Democracy argued, represented not a good-faith effort to secure the vote but an attempt to sow doubt based on a nonexistent problem. Within a few months, the commission was shuttered.

Later that year, when Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio, the former Maricopa County, Arizona, sheriff convicted of contempt of court for racially profiling Latinos, Protect Democracy filed a brief arguing the pardon was unconstitutional. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed to appoint a private attorney to argue the matter. And when the Administration released a report claiming that immigrants were responsible for most acts of terrorisminformation Trump cited in his 2017 address to Congressthe group sued based on an obscure statute, the Information Quality Act, thats typically used by Big Business to dispute environmental regulations. It was a legally creative approach to a vexing question: If the government decides to simply make up statistics, does the public have any recourse? While that litigation is still pending, the Justice Department admitted in court that the terrorism report was inaccurate.

When the former Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos sued Trump for defamation in 2017 after he called her a liar for accusing him of sexual assault, Protect Democracy filed the only outside brief, arguing the President was not immune from civil lawsuits. It was a little-noticed case, but one the group thought could establish a dangerous precedent. In ruling Zervos suit could go forward, the court drew extensively on Protect Democracys arguments. It is the first time a court has ruled the President is subject to civil lawsuits in state court.

In October 2018, Protect Democracy filed another lawsuit on behalf of PEN America, a journalists organization, arguing that Trump was violating the First Amendment by revoking press credentials to punish journalists and threatening media businesses bottom lines: stalling the proposed merger of CNNs parent company, raising postal rates on Amazon (whose founder, Jeff Bezos, owns the Washington Post) and threatening to revoke broadcast licenses. In March, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled the suit could go forward.

Over the course of this presidency, Protect Democracy has broadened its purview, on the theory that threats to American democracy do not begin or end with Trump, and that many of the weaknesses he is exploiting predate him. Presidents of both parties have steadily expanded executive power, while Congress has willingly ceded more and more of its constitutional authorities. Protect Democracy has worked with both parties in Congress to reclaim some power from the Executive Branch, teaming up with GOP Senator Mike Lee on a bill putting new limitations on presidential emergency powers. The legislation advanced out of committee on a bipartisan 11-2 vote. Protect Democracy is also collaborating with advocates who have been working for years to reassert congressional authority over war powers; the group filed lawsuits to force the Administration to release the memos justifying its military strikes on Syrian chemical-weapons sites and the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.

In 2018, Protect Democracy broke away from its federal work and intervened in recounts under way in two states, Georgia and Florida, where candidates were overseeing elections in which they were also competing. In Georgia, their lawsuit helped prompt gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp to resign as secretary of state. Since then, the group has sought to find and fix weaknesses in voting systems, lobbying and advocating for new voting machines in South Carolina and Pennsylvania. It has also tackled voter suppression, using an old statute aimed at the Ku Klux Klan to stop a Trump ally from harassing Latino voters in Virginia and working with a North Carolina group, Forward Justice, to bring a lawsuit that would force the state to re-enfranchise felons.

More than a year ago, Protect Democracy formed a bipartisan election task force to examine such threats and recommend responses. Ironically, one of the crises they originally decided not to plan for was a potential pandemic. Now, as COVID-19 has thrown states election plans into doubt, the group has made a set of recommendations for moving forward with mail balloting and other changes.

For now, Protect Democracy says it wants to ensure that the November election is free and fair, producing a result that can be widely accepted as legitimate regardless of who wins. Whenever Trump leaves office, the group envisions a brief window for Congress to pass reforms, similar to the burst of legislation that followed President Nixons resignation. The organization has been gearing up for this with a 100 days agenda of recommendations for the next President, including changes to election systems, prohibitions on election interference and campaign-finance reform.

In a democracy, the people are the ultimate check on power. Protect Democracys central argument is that institutions dont protect themselves; people have to be activated to use the tools the system provides. In a timely metaphor, the groups leaders compare authoritarianism to a virus sweeping the globe: first you treat the patient by activating the bodys immune system to fight off the illness; over time, you formulate a vaccine to provide immunity in the future.

When Ian and I first started talking about this, we thought it would be an organization that lasted however long Trump was in office, then folded up shop, says Florence, the groups co-founder and legal director. What weve learned is that were seeing a moment that requires a generation-long response. Ultimately, weve got to rebuild our institutions to make our system more resistant to a future authoritarian-minded leader.

With reporting by Leslie Dickstein and Josh Rosenberg

This appears in the July 06, 2020 issue of TIME.

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Write to Molly Ball at molly.ball@time.com.

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Trench Lawfare: Inside the Battles to Save Democracy From the Trump Administration - TIME

In a recent article, The Economist provided compelling evidence that democracies contain epidemics most effectively.

According to the articles analysis:

Most data suggest that political freedom can be a tonic against disease. The Economist has [analyzed] epidemics from 1960 to 2019. Though these outbreaks varied in contagiousness and lethality, a clear correlation emerged. Among countries with similar wealth, the lowest death rates tend to be in places where most people can vote in free and fair elections. Other definitions of democracy give similar results.

Not surprisingly, societies with greater economic freedom through free-market policies also tend to have greater capacity to counter infectious diseases.

Fundamentally, a nations capacity to handle pandemics hinges on the quality of its institutions and economic systems, particularly given the positive linkage between economic freedom and health security capacities to prevent, detect, and respond to significant disease outbreaks, as defined by the Global Health Security Index.

As The Heritage Foundations annual Index of Economic Freedom reminds us, policies and governing systems that promote freedom through improvements in the rule of law and transparency, the promotion of competition, and suitable restraints on the size and economic reach of government turn out in practice to best provide practical solutions to the wide range of challenges that constantly confront the world.

Greater economic freedom tends to create fertile ground for effective and democratic governance, but is also reinforced by it. According to the data, the positive relationship that exists between economic freedom and democratic governance is undeniable.

By empowering people to exercise greater control of their daily lives, economic freedom ultimately nurtures political reform by making it possible for individuals to gain the economic resources that they can use to challenge entrenched interests or compete for political power, thereby encouraging the creation of more pluralistic and inclusive societies.

In an unprecedented period of uncertainty and anxiety, the world is witnessing how countries across the political and free-market spectrums respond to the pandemic and its adverse impact on their societies.

As this critical effort continues, its vital to preserve institutions and policies that advance good governance and economic freedom.

As The Heritage Foundations guiding principle reminds us:

America is strongest when our policies protect our national interests, preserve our alliances of free peoples, vigorously counter threats to our security, and advance prosperity through economic freedom at home and abroad.

It wont be an easy task, but the American people have always risen to a challenge. Now is the time to take decisive and carefully targeted policy actions that uphold the rule of law and reignite economic dynamism to minimize the human cost of the coronavirus and ensure Americas accelerated economic rebound in the months ahead.

Anthony B. Kim, a research manager and dditor of the Index of Economic Freedom, researches international economic issues at The Heritage Foundation with a focus on economic freedom and free trade. This piece originally appeared in The Daily Signal.

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ANTHONY KIM: Why democracy and free markets are the best antidotes to pandemics - SCNow