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The Covid-19 pandemic is unfolding at a time when democracy is in decline. According to data compiled by Freedom House (2020), democracy has been in a recession for over a decade, and more countries have lost rather than gained civil and political rights each year.

A key concern is that Covid-19 will turn the democratic recession into a depression, with authoritarianism sweeping across the globe like a pandemic. As the New York Times puts it, China and some of its acolytes are pointing to Beijings success in coming to grips with the coronavirus pandemic as a strong case for authoritarian rule (Schmemann 2020). Even the World Health Organization (WHO) has called its forceful lockdown perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment in history. This raises the question: Is China is an exception, or have autocratic regimes in general been able to take more stringent policy measures to restrain people from moving around and spreading the virus? And if so, have they been more effective?

To explore these questions, we examine the institutional and cultural underpinnings of governments responses to the Covid-19 pandemic (Frey et al. 2020). To measure the strictness of the policies introduced to fight the pandemic across countries, we use the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT), which provides information on several measures, including school and workplace closings, travel restrictions, bans on public gatherings, and stay-at-home requirements. To capture the effectiveness of these responses in reducing travel and movement in order to curb the spread of the virus, we employ Googles COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports.

Figure 1 shows that travel fell in a number of selected countries as more stringent policy measures were introduced. However, the figure also shows that there is large dispersion in cross-country mobility, even for similar levels of policy stringency.

Figure 1 Lockdown measures and cross-country reduction in mobility

Sources: OxCGRT; Googles COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports

To be sure, it is possible that political divisions and strong business interests make it harder to introduce stringent lockdowns in democracies. To test this, we employ the democracy index of Freedom House (2020). We find that more autocratic regimes have indeed introduced stricter lockdowns and have relied more on privacy-intrusive measures like contract tracing. However, our regression analysis also suggests that when democracies employ the same mobility restrictions as autocratic regimes, they experience steeper declines in mobility. This result also holds when we add a host of controls, like state capacity, GDP per capita, latitude experience with past epidemics, as well as country and time fixed effects. Using a complementary measure on political and civil rights, we similarly find that greater freedom is associated with greater reductions in movement and travel (Frey et al. 2020).

Though these correlations cannot be interpreted as causal, they provide suggestive evidence that while autocratic regimes tend to introduce stricter lockdowns, they are less effective in reducing travel. Indeed, while Chinas strict lockdown has received most media attention, other East Asian countries have arguably mounted a more effective response to Covid-19.

Another theory is that some cultures are more obedient than others, prompting people to better follow more stringent lockdown measures. While societies differ on many cultural dimensions, cross-cultural psychologists view the individualism-collectivism distinction as the main divider (Heine 2007, Henrich et al. 2010, Schulz et al. 2019).

Scholars have shown that individualism has a dynamic advantage leading to a higher economic growth rate by giving social status rewards to non-conformism and innovation (Gorodnichenko and Roland 2011). In particular, individualistic cultures, like those of the US Sweden, or the UK, are more innovative and take out more patents (Gorodnichenko and Roland 2017).

The flipside of an individualistic culture, which encourages experimentation and innovation, is that it can make collective action, such as a coordinated response to a pandemic, more difficult. This is because people in more individualistic societies tend to pursue their own interest rather than the collective good. Collectivism, on the other hand, which emphasises group loyalty, conformity and obedience towards ones superiors, makes collective action easier (Gorodnichenko and Roland 2015).

To measure the variation in individualism-collectivism across countries, we employ Hofstedes (2001) widely used scale which integrates questions about goals, achievement-orientation, and family ties. In addition, we construct an index on attitudes towards obedience based on data from the World Value Survey (WVS). Our regression analysis shows that similar levels of policy stringency reduced mobility less in individualistic cultures, and more in obedient ones. Figure 2 presents the result graphically. It suggests that collectivist countries have mounted a more coordinated response to Covid-19 in terms of reducing movement and travel. We also find that movement related to non-essential activities, like going to parks, exhibits a particularly sharp mobility declines (Frey et al. 2020).

Figure 2 Individualism, obedience and the reduction in mobility

Note: Each dot in the charts represent, for each country, the change in mobility index that is not explained by the policy stringency index. The obedience index is the first component of a Principal Component Analysis based on World Value Survey (WVS) data.Sources: Authors own calculations based on Hofstede (2001); WVS; OxCGRT; Googles COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports.

Democracy has been in recession for over a decade (Diamond 2019) and many fear that Covid-19 will accelerate this trend. In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte has seized even greater power and threatened martial law-style enforcement of a monthlong lockdown. And on 30 March 2020, the Hungarian Parliament passed the Coronavirus Act, which grants Viktor Orbns government unprecedented emergency powers for an indefinite period of time.

Judging by how autocratic regimes have responded to the crisis, however, we do not expect that the democratic recession will accelerate. First, the lack of transparency in autocratic regimes has been an undisputable drawback in fighting the pandemic. In Turkmenistan, people have been arrested solely for discussing the outbreak in public and medical doctors are banned from diagnosing Covid-19. And while China successfully mobilised a strong national response once President Xi Jinping gave green light, the initial lack of transparency delayed decisive measures to curb the virus before it spread across China and globally (Ang 2020). Second, our research suggests that even though autocracies have introduced more stringent lockdowns, democracies have been more effective in reducing travel and the movement of people in their countries. Thus, while autocrats often seek to capitalize on perceived threats, their handling of the pandemic on these dimensions seems unlikely to look appealing to the outside world.

China is not just an autocratic regime; it also has a strong state (Fukuyama 2011) and a highly collectivist culture (Talhem et al. 2014). But the same is true of democratic countries like South Korea and Taiwan. Building on a large literature, we find that a countrys capacity to enforce its mobility restrictions, as well as its culture, are more relevant variables in explaining how countries have fared during the pandemic. Following in the footsteps of cross-cultural psychologists, we show that collectivist societies have been more successful in managing the outbreak. Our findings speak to the intuition that a collectivist culture, which rewards conformity and group loyalty, and obedience towards ones superiors, makes collective action easier (Gorodnichenko and Roland 2015; Schulz et al. 2019). In East Asian countries, which are highly collectivist on Hofstedes (2001) scale, the habit of mask-wearing to protect fellow citizens markedly contrasts with Western attitudes.

However, while collectivist societies are well placed to deal with epidemics that require collective action, collectivist cultures have historically experienced slower economic growth (Gorodnichenko and Roland 2011), less dynamism and innovation (Gorodnichenko and Roland 2017), and tend to focus on incremental innovation rather than radical breakthroughs (Chua et al. 2019).

Fighting Covid-19 will require coordination to curb the spread of the virus, but also innovation in order to find treatments and vaccines. Pandemics are global by definition and hence a global response that leverages the innovative capacity of individualist countries, and the coordination and production capabilities of collectivist ones, will be needed.

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Gorodnichenko, Yand G Roland (2015), Culture, institutions and democratization, National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No w21117.

Gorodnichenko, Y and G Roland (2017), Culture, institutions, and the wealth of nations, Review of Economics and Statistics 99(3): 402-416.

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Schmemann, S (2020), The Virus Comes for Democracy Strongmen think they know the cure for Covid-19. Are they right?, New York Times, April 2.

Schulz, J F, D Bahrami-Rad, J P Beauchamp and J Henrich (2019), The Church, intensive kinship, and global psychological variation, Science 366(6466).

Talhelm, T, X Zhang, S Oishi, C Shimin, D Duan, X Lan and S Kitayama (2014), Large-scale psychological differences within China explained by rice versus wheat agriculture, Science 344(6184): 603-608.

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Covid-19 and the future of democracy | VOX, CEPR Policy Portal - voxeu.org

With a global toll of over four-and-a-half million confirmed cases and over 300,000 deaths and counting, the coronavirus (COVID-19) is leaving devastated healthcare systems, economies, and societies in its wake. It is a global crisis that presents particularly unique challenges for democracies. The evidence is clear that social distancing is crucial for flattening the epidemic curve and many governments have responded by imposing strict lockdowns and even surveillance measures on its citizens. For democracies, the implementation of such draconian measures, even if only temporarily, places pressures on democratic institutions which, in turn, risk undermining public trust that democratic freedoms are being protected. In the face of these unprecedented challenges, a variety of malign actors have looked to exploit these crises with pandemic propaganda and disinformation. It is no coincidence that the worlds democracies have been the target of such malign influence efforts by the global champions of authoritarianism and violent extremists alike.

For example, despite COVID-19 being traced to the city of Wuhan in November 2019, and the Chinese governments inaction, coverups, and lies all but guaranteeing the viruss global spread, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials have actively championed conspiracies that the U.S. Army is the source of the virus while engaging in a broader soft power campaign to present itself as the worlds public health leader and threaten economic coercion against nations that criticize it. The CCPs aggressive approach offers hints to its possible post-pandemic aspirations. Meanwhile, the Russian government has broadly followed its customary playbook with multilingual campaigns, spreading false and provocative messages designed to sow discord and mistrust in western democracies. On the other end of the threat spectrum, violent non-state actors from far-right extremists to jihadis have variously framed the pandemic as either indicative of or a catalyst for the collapse of democratic and free market systems. Whether stated explicitly or implied, the theme that binds much of this pandemic malign influence currently targeting western nations is that democracy, both as a system of government and a set of values, is incapable of dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak.

It is therefore important not to view pandemic propaganda and disinformation solely through the lens of the COVID-19 bubble. It is also the latest instrument of anti-democratic malign influence designed to erode a trinity of trusts in democratic populations: social trust, trust in authorities/expertise, and trust in democracy. Understanding pandemic propaganda and disinformation in this way highlights the importance and urgency of confronting it, especially given the immense pressures democratic institutions will face in the coming months. All this is at a time when democracy has been in global decline for over a decade, a phenomenon known as the global democratic recession. A recent series of War on the Rocks articles argued that new frameworks through which to understand propaganda and disinformation threats are needed to improve strategic-policy discourse and decision-making. The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the pertinence of that appeal. In many ways, this article is a response to that call. It argues that anti-democratic malign influence is a useful framework through which to not only understand propaganda and disinformation threats, but to devise strategies that are complementary to broader national security and to foreign and public policy objectives.

A Torrent of Malign Influence and the Need for New Frameworks

The U.S. governments interagency will be severely tested by a confluence of forces in the coming months. Three are particularly significant. First, the immense pressures being placed on all parts of the U.S. interagency by the COVID-19 pandemic will be significantly compounded by a workforce weakened by illness and social-distancing restrictions. The agencies responsible for confronting malign influence threats, such as the Department of Homeland Security, the State Departments Global Engagement Center (GEC), and the broader intelligence community, will need to deal with a surge of pandemic-related activities with an overstretched workforce and potentially constrained budgets. International allies, so crucial to effectively monitoring and confronting malign influence threats, will be dealing with their own resource and personnel limitations, further weakening overall efforts.

Second, the COVID-19 pandemic and the draconian government responses necessary to lessening its impact will cause significant social upheaval and financial volatility as health systems are put under strain and unemployment soars. The world is facing an economic recession that may deteriorate into an economic depression. Fear, stress, and uncertainty will have a profound psychosocial impact on individuals and communities all over the world. Studies have shown that extreme stress impairs cognitive function, making it harder (i.e., more time and energy intensive) to switch from automatic to deliberative thinking, thus rendering people more susceptible to cognitive biases. These conditions will increase individual and collective vulnerabilities, potentially broadening the pool with whom malign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation resonates.

Third, the wave of malign influence activities targeting the November presidential election is yet to hit in full. Given the practical and symbolic importance of free and fair elections in the democratic system of government, elections are a high-value, high-impact target for malign influence actors, especially those buoyed by the turmoil caused during the 2016 presidential election. The Democratic primaries were targeted by Russian government and pro-Kremlin entities in ways which suggest that new tools, strategies, and troll farms have been added to that information arsenal. The coronavirus has already caused the postponement and cancellation of some Democratic primaries and, with the prospect of the pandemic remaining a public health threat through the fall, there are growing concerns that the integrity of the presidential election is at risk.

The overall picture that emerges is deeply concerning. With the capacity of the United States and its allies potentially being overstretched and distracted while vulnerabilities in target populations are exacerbated by pandemic-induced crises, opportunities will be ripe for exploitation by malign state and non-state actors. Under these conditions, gaps in the U.S. posture to deal with propaganda and disinformation threats will be exposed.

The policy paper Persuade or Perish assessed the U.S. posture to confront foreign malign influence threats based on a year of interviews with State Department officials and exclusive access to internal GEC assessments. Recognizing that posture is as much the product of institutional history as it is of contemporary decisions, the policy paper offered historical context for National Security Strategy 2017s assertion that U.S. efforts to counter the exploitation of information by rivals have been tepid and fragmented. U.S. efforts have lacked a sustained focus and have been hampered by the lack of properly trained professionals. The history of the U.S. governments foreign policy and national security information sector is characterized by a century-long trend of intermittently building, dismantling, then rebuilding its central mechanisms. Since 2017, however, a concerted effort has been made to enhance interagency legislative, strategic-policy, and operational capabilities. For the GEC, this included its codification into law, the appointment of Lea Gabrielle as Special Envoy, and the implementation of an internal strategy for managing the GECs growing responsibilities, budget, and personnel as the overarching coordinating mechanism for the U.S. interagency and its multisector partners. More broadly, the introduction of a suite of legislative changes in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2019 enabling a full spectrum approach by the U.S. interagency is a significant step in the right direction. Efforts have also been made to address specific threat vulnerabilities, such as the appointment of Shelby Pierson as the nations top election security official to improve federal, state, and local coordination.

But decades of fluctuating support for the U.S. governments national and foreign policy information sector will take time to overcome. It is little wonder, then, that the policy paper identified inadequate efforts to retain institutional knowledge and limited mechanisms for strategic and communicative coordination as crucial gaps in the current U.S. posture. Additionally, in interviews with State Department officials, many expressed the urgent need for a new overarching framework to understand the spectrum of state and non-state malign influence threats targeting the United States and its allies. Without such a framework, counterstrategy efforts risk being siloed around certain threats (e.g., jihadi) while other threats are inadvertently given the space to evolve until focus and resources belatedly shift (e.g., Russia, China, far-right). Moreover, the ways in which malign influence threats are understood, and counterstrategies are developed, need to synchronize with broader national security, and with foreign and public policy objectives. Anti-democratic malign influence is a framework that looks to broadly satisfy these requirements.

The Strategic Logic of Anti-Democratic Malign Influence

As detailed in a recent article for the Royal United Services Institute, a diverse spectrum of state and non-state propaganda and disinformation threats targeting democracies like the United States are best understood as anti-democratic influence activities due to their shared strategic logic of intents and effects. As illustrated in Figure 1, anti-democratic malign influence seeks to erode a trinity of trusts in target populations: social trust (i.e., trust in others), trust in authority/expertise, and trust in democracy. Of course, malign influence activities inevitably have other, shorter-term aims, such as terrorist propaganda, which may seek to recruit or incite, while disinformation from state actors may seek to divert or distract its audiences. While this framework is complementary to understanding those more immediate goals, it brings into focus broader psychosocial and strategic effects that are especially pertinent in the medium and long terms. It is useful to consider examples.

Figure 1: The strategic logic of anti-democratic influence activities. (Graphic by the author)

Anti-democratic malign influence targets whether strategically or incidentally a trinity of trusts in the population that are crucial to a functioning democracy. From jihadis to racist far-right groups, violent extremist propaganda targeting democratic populations not only seeks to polarize and antagonize identity differences, but to highlight the inadequacies of the democratic system to justify calls for violence against it. In a 2013 article in Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsulas Inspire English-language magazine, the author compels Western Muslims to realize that the promises of democracy are made to all but them because your belongingness to Islam is enough to classify you as an enemy. They do not consider our citizenship and the childhood we spent in their neighborhoods. A central narrative in the strain of the racist far-right propaganda that inspired mass murders in Norway and New Zealand is that, to varying degrees, liberal democracy is destroying the white race, its legacy and future in a process described as the Great Replacement. The COVID-19 crisis has been opportunistically exploited by violent extremists. For example, the Islamic States al-Naba newsletter framed the coronavirus as Gods punishment against idolatrous nations (e.g., secular democracies) while far-right extremists responded in a variety of ways from blaming minority groups (i.e., eroding social trust) to highlighting how the pandemic would exacerbate systemic weaknesses inherent to democracies.

This broad strategic logic is evident in the influence efforts of adversarial state actors, too. When the Russian Internet Agency targeted antagonistic political groups with disinformation to incite opposing protest actions during the 2016 presidential election, its broader purpose was to erode social trust. Chinese government efforts to coopt academics and politicians have clear short-term objectives, such as the championing of CCP-approved talking points and policy ends. However, this coopting of academics and politicians also may have the effect of reducing public trust in authorities and experts over time. Adversarial state actors have been especially active in leveraging COVID-19 in their malign influence activities. For instance, Chinese officials have actively tried to degrade trust in not only American experts and authorities by championing discredited conspiracy theories, but trust in the capability of democracies more broadly to deal with the crisis. Pro-Kremlin pandemic propaganda and disinformation has attempted to incite anti-NATO attitudes in Eastern European audiences while a European Union report highlighted how Russian disinformation efforts attempted to sow mistrust and worsen the health crisis in Western countries. In March, Chinese agents used a similar strategy by disseminating messages in the United States that were designed to sow panic and distrust amongst Americans just as the pandemic was surging. That China, Russia, and Iran have adopted largely similar propagandistic talking points championing anti-American conspiracy theories, highlighting the supposed ineptitude of western responses, and dismissing calls for transparency as petty politics while praising each others responses is in many ways reflective of a shared anti-democratic logic.

The framework proposed here is useful for not just understanding a spectrum of threats, but appreciating the potential effects of such activities on target populations over time. The research underpinning this model suggests that, with ongoing exposure, target populations may become more susceptible to polarizing narratives that offer bipolar explanations for and solutions to their perceptions of crisis. Think, for example, of the rise of populist leaders whose narratives typically refer to an idealized history tied to a small but pure constituency that must overcome the mongrel hordes and corrupted elites. A weakening trinity of trusts in a population can also lead to increasing attitudinal support for undemocratic forms of government or even, at the more extreme end, engagement in politically-motivated violence. Moreover, because anti-democratic propaganda and disinformation tends to exploit extant vulnerabilities, over time it may broaden the pool of those for whom such malign influence resonates. This underscores the importance of actively pushing back against anti-democratic malign influence, especially during times of crisis when the populations vulnerabilities are heightened. After all, even before the spread of COVID-19, democracy around the world was on the slide.

A Global Democratic Recession on the Precipice of Crisis

Since 2006, and in stark contrast to the preceding thirty years, there has been a decline in both the number of democracies and the level of freedoms within democracies around the world. A recent Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index report described democracy as being in retreat globally. It is a finding echoed by a Freedom House report that suggests democracys thirteen-year drop has resulted in 116 countries experiencing a net decline in key measures of democratic health, compared to 63 with a net improvement. While the failure of second and third wave democracies, especially in Africa and Asia, accounts for some of this drift, perhaps the most troubling trend has been the freedom decay in established, prosperous first wave democracies. The trinity of trusts inside the worlds democracies are often fragile and commitment to democracy itself is suffering. For example, a Pew Research study polling across 38 countries found that only about a quarter of the respondents were committed democrats while almost half were non-committed democrats, and a further 13 percent supported nondemocratic forms of government.

The picture is simple and unequivocal: the global democratic recession is sliding towards democratic depression. To add insult to injury, democracys decline has been partnered by a global authoritarian resurgence. It would be wrong, however, to suggest that this authoritarian resurgence and the spread of anti-democratic malign influence has caused democracys slump. Rather, the most destructive wounds to the democratic cause have been self-inflicted. It is perhaps little wonder that faith in democracy is waning, even in the most prosperous and established democracies, after years of politicians telling electorates that certain democratic promises and freedoms need to be diluted or temporarily suspended in the name of counterterrorism with democratic institutions and processes being cynically used to make undemocratic reforms. Larry Diamond, a leading democracy scholar, identified reductions in per capita income and weak constraints on executive power as key drivers of the fragility of a democracy. These considerations may prove especially pertinent now amidst a global pandemic given the weakening global economy and the necessity of draconian measures to stifle COVID-19s spread. Rest assured that malign state and non-state actors will continue to use influence operations to opportunistically exploit vulnerabilities, especially the say-do gaps between democratic promises and reality. On the other hand, Diamonds study points to the importance of a supportive international environment for increasing resiliencies within democracies. With 2020 emerging as a crucial year in both the struggle against the COVID-19 virus and the global democratic cause, the question is what should the United States and its allies do?

Persuade or Perish

While pandemic propaganda and disinformation represent a crucial public health threat, this article has argued that these actions are also part of a broader and varied range of anti-democratic influence activities designed to destabilize democratic societies and catalyze the dysfunction of democratic institutions. This has important implications for practice. First, this framework provides multisector practitioners with an overarching paradigm that brings into focus both the intended psychosocial and strategic effects, and the vulnerabilities that these malign influence activities seek to exploit. Consequently, rather than a whack-a-mole approach, targeting malign influence actions as they emerge, operational and strategic planning can be guided by a more coherent and encompassing program. Second, government officials should look to frame pandemic propaganda and disinformation as not only an assault on public health but on democracy in their addresses. The more that international allies, the private sector, media, civil society, and the general public can be educated about the systemic and ongoing effort to erode the trinity of trusts in democracy, the better equipped those sectors will be to identify threats, respond appropriately, and call out those who purposely or inadvertently amplify malign influence efforts.

Echoing the recommendations outlined in an earlier assessment, U.S. efforts to counter propaganda and disinformation threats would benefit from strategic guidance, broadly similar in intent to the Reagan administrations National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 75, which clearly outlines a set of broad interlocking principles, intents, and objectives to synchronize messaging and action across the interagency. NSDD75 detailed a comprehensive and flexible agenda to coordinate the U.S. governments interagency as the Reagan administration shifted from a posture of containment to rollback against the Soviet threat. Whether such a document is developed specifically for confronting COVID-19 propaganda and disinformation or the broader threat of anti-democratic malign influence, strategic coordination is a crucial mechanism for achieving a more coherent and less siloed approach. The development and dissemination of a new NSDD75 would also help to improve communicative coordination to avoid the type of messaging schizophrenia that can emerge across a diverse interagency dealing with a rolling crisis.

Finally, democracies around the world need to establish a unified front against these anti-democratic adversaries. At first, this may be largely symbolic and ad hoc. But, over time, it will be important for a shared understanding of these threats to inform the foundations of a more coordinated global effort of not only intelligence and knowledge sharing, but of messaging and action as well. There is an opportunity in the midst of this crisis for democracies to demonstrate transparency and accountability (especially when it will hurt) and show how a free and open society is in fact best positioned to deal with a crisis that demands factual, evidence-based strategic-policy decisions. It is precisely because of the weakness of these values and practices that authoritarian regimes like those in China, Russia, and Iran are inherently disadvantaged. Their ruling elites will instinctively prioritize self-protection, censorship, and propaganda over the alternative, to the detriment of their own people (their most exposed victims) and, in the case of COVID-19, the world.

Errors will inevitably be made along the way. Already the greatest hits to the credibility of democracies around the world have come from the mistakes of their own governments and of its leaders. As Wallace Carroll, the former deputy-director of the Office of War Information, wrote in his exceptional book Persuade or Perish in 1948: The psychological war is like that; it is fought, not on two roughly parallel linear fronts, but over the whole 360 degrees of the circle, and the most dangerous and telling blows are sometimes struck by those who in the linear war are on your side. There is something that all the worlds democracies could do right now, and that is publicly join Australia in its demand for an independent inquiry into COVID-19s origins and transparency around the CCPs initial response. If the hyperventilating rhetoric of Chinese officials is enough to intimidate other democracies from publicly supporting Australias call, then the world can expect more CCP aggression in the West Philippine Sea, crackdowns on pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong, and a variety of other anti-democratic actors feeling empowered to act out.

Haroro J. Ingram is a senior research fellow with the Program on Extremism at George Washington University and a member of the RESOLVE Networks Research Advisory Council. Alongside Craig Whiteside and Charlie Winter, he coauthored The ISIS Reader published by Hurst (UK) and Oxford University Press (USA). Twitter: @haroro_ingram

Image: Adam Singer

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Pandemic Propaganda and the Global Democracy Crisis - War on the Rocks

When students and prodemocracy activists took to the streets of Jakarta and other major cities in the country on May 20, 1998, and one day later rejoiced at the departure of Soehartos authoritarian regime, they never thought that a global pandemic would pose a grave threat to Indonesias fledgling democracy more than two decades later.

After 22 years, we could all certainly have expected that the danger was over, that Indonesian democracy could finally be consolidated and that it would ultimately be the only game in town.

Yet, here we are today, worrying about the current state of our democracy, and as we abide by the stay-at-home order, we grow more concerned whether the COVID-19 pandemic has become the cover for the current political leaderships authoritarian instinct and intent.

The administration of President Joko Jokowi Widodo, who was directly reelected for a second term in 2019, certainly has not chosen the path taken by leaders of some populist regimes in the world, who have quashed democratic rules and norms and accumulated power in their hands, which they claim could help deal with the pandemic more effectively.

But as COVID-19 has ravaged Indonesias economy and put massive strain on the countrys healthcare system, President Jokowi has in recent weeks taken measures that could weaken the basic foundations of democracy and rule of law.

Regulation in Lieu of Law (Perppu) No. 1/2020 is the first major sign of the country running toward an aberration of democracy. Not only has the state budget deficit been extended beyond the legal cap of 3 percent of gross domestic product, officials who order spending for programs related to COVID-19 will be protected from any criminal charges. It was this absence of accountability from Soehartos New Order regime that brought students and activists onto the streets in the late 1990s.

There has also been an increase in efforts to silence government critics during the COVID-19 pandemic. In late April, independent researcher Ravio Patra was dragged from his home in Menteng, Central Jakarta, and sent to a police detention center after sending tweets and writing an op-ed critical of government policies. Ravios arrest followed a series of heavy-handed actions taken by the police in dealing with initiatives by grassroots activists.

In recent days, we have also learned that even on issues not related to COVID-19, the central government has taken steps to accumulate ever more power. Government Regulation (PP) No. 17/2020 on the management of civil servants gives the President full power and very arbitrary authority to promote, demote or fire any civil servant. The amendment of the 2009 Coal and Mineral Mining Law is basically a recentralization of authority to issue permits for mining operations, reportedly in the interest of coal barons.

Up until the coronavirus first struck, we were accustomed to believe that democracy could die from a military coup, the emergence of a populist leader or a communist take-over. However, during this pandemic, with more and more governments following their authoritarian instincts, we could soon see democracy wither in silence and darkness.

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Democracy in time of corona - The Jakarta Post - Jakarta Post

In his First Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln said, We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. To disenthrall means to free from bondage, to liberate.

This column presents two studies of democracy in action. The global crisis, triggered by the COVID pandemic, calls to mind an earlier existential crisis for our nation. Both, as it happens, come to a head during the Easter season: Lincolns tragically but magnificently, Donald Trumps miserably, in a slow motion dance with death.

In 1776 the founders of our country based their claim to being a new nation on the startling proposition that all men are created equal. Eleven years later the Federal Convention drafted and sent out to the states for ratification a Constitution that counted five enslaved persons in a state as equivalent to three free persons.

By the early 1860s, the incompatibility between our founding documents could no longer be ignored. Either all persons were created equal, or it was OK to give some people more weight than others.

In March 1861, Lincoln was inaugurated president. Almost immediately the nation plunged into civil war.

In 1863, at Gettysburg to dedicate a cemetery for the Union dead, Lincoln never used the word slavery. We the living, he said, must highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

By the time the war was over, Lincoln was no longer mincing words. In his Second Inaugural Address, he eloquently summarized what the Civil War was about.

Fondly do we hope fervently do we pray that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

On April 9, 1865, Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses Grant. Five days later, on Good Friday, an assassin shot Lincoln. On Easter Sunday, in churches throughout New England and the mid-Atlantic and mid-western states, Lincoln was mourned as a martyr and hailed as a savior of the Union.

Summing up, historian Jill Lepore writes, A great debate had ended. A terrible war had been won. Slavery was over. However, she added, a more dire reckoning was still required. The war left millions of men, women and children, stolen, shackled, hunted, whipped, branded, raped, starved and buried in unmarked graves. No president consecrated their cemeteries or delivered their Gettysburg Address; no committee of arrangements built monuments to their memory.

A century and a half later, Donald Trump became our president. By early May 2020, a global pandemic was raging: over 1.3 million Americans were infected, more than 80,000 had died. Itwas not just a public health crisis. The nations economy was also crashing: more than 20 million people were out of work; oil at times was fetching less than zero cents per barrel.

To understand how we got to such a state, we must once again confront our nations original sin racism.

Trump in 2016 lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, yet he won the presidency due to the way we count votes. The so-called electoral college was part of a deal struck at the Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787. Delegates representing slave owners in the five Southern states insisted on the 3/5th rule. Enslaved people did not vote, but the effect of the 3/5th rule was to give owners of enslaved persons an increment for each slave in their state.

In 2016, the Federal Conventions deal with slave-owners delivered the White House to a brazen racist, whose incompetence and vanity imperils us all. He dithered when a new virus emerged in China and while it spread around the world. He failed to seek guidance on the dangers of the virus or to heed the warnings of his advisers and other authorities about the vulnerability of our economy.

At one of his daily briefings, he called the pandemic unprecedented, displaying spectacular ignorance about the history of life on this planet. When criticized for such errors, he blamed the media, purveyors of fake news, and dared them to contradict him. The most reputable among them refused to take the bait, but his drumbeat of lies and misinformation ravaged public discourse.

The weakened economy led to other dangers. As tax revenues plummeted, mayors, governors and other local officials struggled to meet their responsibilities with sharply diminished resources. The federal government is encouraged by Keysian theory to use deficit spending as a fiscal stimulus, but state and local governments have no such option. They must somehow contrive to balance their budgets.

Now Trump is encouraging protesters who demand that restrictions designed to keep the virus in check be withdrawn immediately so that the nation can get back to work. When public health experts insist that a hasty lifting of these regulations risks a resurgence of the pandemic, Trump complains about remedies that are worse than the disease.

The United States is proud to be a democratic nation. We need to remember, however, that history is not forgiving to nations just because they have chosen to be democracies.

What then does democracy require? It requires political leaders that are honest, like good scientists, willing to admit what they do not know; smart, capable of finding a viable path forward through complex problems; eloquent, able to frame and deliver compelling narratives; and possessed of a sense of humor, able and willing to deliver self-deprecating anecdotes.

Democracy also requires followers citizens who are demanding, able to find and encourage leaders that are worthy of their trust, and wiling to dismiss the rest; and able themselves to sort through the din of public controversy and willing to rise above the nonsense.

These requirements, of leaders and followers, set a high bar for a democracy. May the Lord temper the wind before shorn lambs.

Read more:
Guest columnist Don Robinson: Lincoln, Trump and the demands of democracy - GazetteNET

ATLANTA I talk with black voters every day, and what I hear keeps me up at night. Their faith in the political system is being eroded by voter suppression and the governments negligent response to the pandemic. It breaks my heart that even black women at church unfailing voters who rally their friends to turn out for every election have asked me, Will our votes even be counted?

These very real challenges require a whole new playbook. Although Donald Trump won Georgia by just 211,000 votes in 2016, some 900,000 eligible black people stayed home, a majority of them Atlanta residents. They were unconvinced that voting for the Democratic candidate would mean getting a president who represented them.

This is a treasure trove of gettable voters. They could overwhelm the political system if Democratic candidates persuade them that voting will get them power to build the kind of state and country they want. But the Democrats are treating black people as though all they need is a gentle nudge the week before the election. If we do not address our shortcomings, I fear we are on track for another catastrophic Election Day.

Part of the problem is the mismanagement of the pandemic. Georgias governor, Brian Kemp, defied science and logic when he started reopening the state on April 24. One model predicts the number of Covid-19 deaths will quadruple by August.

Black people, who make up one-third of the population of Georgia but represented 83 percent of coronavirus hospital patients in March and half of deaths, will continue to be disproportionately harmed. Weve been screaming from mountaintops about the health care crisis in the states rural southwest for years; the region has a dire shortage of doctors and hospitals. Yet a few majority-black counties there have some of the highest death rates in the country.

Republicans in Georgia and other Southern states are weaponizing the virus against black people while ramping up efforts to suppress the vote.

Another part of the problem for November is that we havent addressed the sins of elections past. Southwestern Georgia is also where, long before anyone listened, black people sounded the alarm that Mr. Kemp would try to steal the race for governor in 2018 from his Democratic rival, Stacey Abrams (disclosure: my organization was founded by Ms. Abrams). As secretary of state overseeing his own election, Mr. Kemp served as umpire, player and scorekeeper.

A consultant linked to Mr. Kemp recommended that the board of elections in majority-black Randolph County close seven of its nine polling locations. Why? The bathrooms in the polling locations lacked handrails, which the board claimed violated federal disability law.

But the county had earlier refused to apply for money for the handrails when given the chance. It dropped the consolidation plan only after enormous attention from the news media. Such hyperlocal voter suppression has become rampant since the Supreme Court freed elections officials in Georgia and other states from having to prove to the Justice Department in advance that their voting changes would not be discriminatory.

Yet theres more. As secretary of state, Mr. Kemp purged 670,000 voters from the rolls in 2017 and, weeks before the 2018 election, withheld 53,000 more registrations under a spurious exact match law (70 percent of those registrations were from black people). He also oversaw the shutdown of 214 precincts. Georgia had the longest lines in the country that year and the highest rejection rates of absentee and provisional ballots. Mr. Kemp won the race by just 54,700 votes.

If Jim Crow laws suppressed votes by forcing black voters to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar, Dr. James Crow, with a Ph.D. in data science, has erected a more sophisticated suppression apparatus sophistication we have to match.

But I have not seen any campaign, political party or elected official address voters pain at having their voices silenced. I know that pain has also spread to Alabama and Mississippi, where people were looking at Ms. Abramss candidacy as a glimpse into what was possible. They also saw the theft. And they saw the world move on as if a major crime against democracy had not been committed. Thats a problem.

When we talk to college students now, the most common refrain we hear is, I know my vote wont count. My organization registered a staggering 18,000 17- and 18-year-olds in the months after the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., in February 2018. They flooded our office with earnest messages, wanting to learn how they could set up registration drives in their schools.

We told them voting was a way to make material improvements in their lives by electing candidates like Lucy McBath, a Georgia representative who cares about gun reform. Then they watched as they were robbed of their civic voice, without any consequences. We have to address that if we want to win in November.

Action is even more urgent because the pandemic is being used as cover for more voter suppression.

At the national level, the Republican National Committee doubled its litigation budget to file even more lawsuits to limit vote by mail access. Republicans aim to recruit up to 50,000 volunteers in 15 key states to monitor polling places and intimidate voters. Those efforts are aided by Donald Trump, who appointed a top Republican fund-raiser to serve as postmaster general, and is withholding a $10 billion loan from the Post Office, which desperately needs the money.

Georgia may be the center of all this. The state has created an absentee ballot fraud task force made up of mostly prosecutors and mostly Republicans to hinder voting by mail. If a county official says my signature doesnt match, Cathy Cox, a Democrat who is a former secretary of state for Georgia, asked a reporter, is this task force going to show up with guns and badges at my office or my home?

Our office continues to receive a troubling number of inquiries about whether absentee ballots will even be counted. The question is common, and for good reason. We asked the 159 counties in Georgia where theyll place drop boxes for those who want to avoid human contact during the pandemic. Only 78 provided locations and more than one-quarter wont have drop boxes.

These are monumental challenges that require a monumental response. We need the courage to act on a scale weve never seen before.

If Democrats invest in an enormous marketing and organizing campaign that persuades black people and young people to participate in our democracy, we will win. That campaign should answer uncomfortable questions about what happened in Georgia in 2018 and explain how this year will be different. Through millions of personal conversations, organizers can connect the dots between who makes decisions that puts their lives at risk and who can make things better. Thats how we can show young people grieving the killing of Ahmaud Arbery in South Georgia that voting is a way to create real change by electing new sheriffs and prosecutors.

Campaigns never balk at investing significant resources to court moderate white men. But when all the data is laid out about black people, why does the political industry hesitate? Black people have long been the most loyal supporters of the Democratic Party indeed, no other major voting bloc is as loyal to a political party as black people.

Every 10 new black voters nets eight Democratic votes, but the party gets only two net votes for every 10 new white, college-educated female voters. Democrats have to stop treating black people as deserving of only mailers after Labor Day and instead see them as the core of the multiracial coalition.

We have to address voter suppression head on, identifying the hurdles and offering solutions now, not in October. My organization is suing Georgia over its practice of throwing out absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day but received after 7 p.m. that night. And for imposing a poll tax by sending absentee ballot applications to voters without prepaid returnable envelopes. This creates obstacles for people unwilling to go out during a pandemic to buy stamps or vote in person.

Vote-by-mail is not a panacea. While it is the safest option we have and it provides a paper trail, some states are using it in a way that creates hurdles.

My organization is building mobile video games to educate new and infrequent voters. Bad actors are online, sowing doubt about basic facts to undermine faith in the democratic process. Thats why we are launching programs to monitor social media and provide media literacy that will compete for black voterss hearts, minds, attention and votes. We also need foundations, state and federal governments and the Democrats to prevent and neutralize disinformation campaigns. Part of that means investing in trusted messengers to spread competing messages with good information, in addition to inspirational candidates who can alleviate voters concerns.

The next federal coronavirus legislation package must include $3.6 billion so states can expand their vote-by-mail initiatives and make voting easier. In addition, states should mount public education campaigns that include infographics and videos in multiple languages about how to cast ballots during the pandemic. In Georgia, the secretary of state must urge elections officials and lawmakers to increase funding and hire and train more staff members to deal with the increase in absentee ballots.

A vibrant, robust democracy is our greatest weapon against authoritarian rule. And black people have been at the vanguard of fighting for that democracy. This year, more than ever, we need overwhelming participation in our elections to neutralize voter suppression and halt the rise of despotic, unaccountable leaders. Our liberty and our lives are at stake.

Ns Ufot (@nseufot) is the executive director of the New Georgia Project Action Fund.

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Black Voters Are Key Witnesses to Crimes Against Democracy - The New York Times