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The Dallas Morning News is publishing a multi-part series on important issues for voters to consider as they decide who to vote for president this year. This is the second installment of our Whats at Stake series, and it focuses on foreign policy. Find the full series here.

Latin America has been rocked by protest movements, the rise of populist leaders and economic stagnation. The region has witnessed dramatic ups and downs, at times taking bold steps to confront corruption, promote human rights, and strengthen rule of law, and just as frequently sliding backward on all these fronts. The trends are not new, but what has changed is the United States narrow focus and increasingly limited presence in Latin America.

Over the last few years, the U.S. has shown a rhetorical commitment to democratic governance, economic prosperity and security. The U.S. administration has taken steps to support these objectives, such as pushing through the U.S.-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) Trade Agreement and recognizing Venezuelas President Juan Guaid as the countrys democratically elected leader. However, the U.S. administration has also taken a range of actions to pursue an America First policy or limit migration that have undermined these very same interests. These include withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, slashing foreign aid across Central America and increasing political tensions with Mexico.

Several principles should govern U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America.

At the center of any comprehensive U.S. policy toward Latin America should be a focus on strengthening democratic governance and anti-corruption efforts. This would mean supporting allies around the region that are taking steps to build up their democracies and applying targeted U.S. foreign policy pressure on countries, such as Venezuela and Nicaragua, that are moving in the opposite direction. The U.S. should also support efforts to root out corruption regionally and make this a hallmark of its foreign policy. Its unlikely that well see the return of the most high-profile anti-corruption efforts, such as the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala, given recent governmental pushback. However, these efforts should serve as a foundation for future programs and policies.

A second principle for any U.S. policy should be a push for increased economic prosperity and integration. This pillar would include promoting regional trade, investment, and job creation; raising labor and environmental standards; and paying special attention to historically marginalized communities. These efforts will be even more important now amid the COVID-19 pandemic, given the sharp economic contractions throughout the hemisphere, and Chinas expanded presence in the region. Yet, in a push for economic integration, we must also prioritize support and retraining for workers who find themselves in sectors that are more negatively affected by these agreements. This is true in the United States, and U.S. policy should encourage other countries to do the same.

Along with economic integration, U.S. foreign policy should also continue to embrace regional energy interconnectedness. By linking countries and their electricity grids, Latin America can build resilience and reduce energy costs for citizens and businesses. This would include investing in energy projects along the U.S.-Mexico border and seeking to connect Mexico and Central Americas electricity grids. It should also include supporting Latin Americas transition toward clean energy sources. However, to have a significant effect, these economic and energy objectives would have to be combined with a strong rule of law to ensure contract compliance and business confidence.

The third fundamental pillars for U.S. foreign policy toward the region must be unequivocal support for human rights. This means taking human rights into account throughout U.S. policy design, holding other countries to high standards, and supporting civil society organizations that conduct this vital work. It will also mean accepting responsibility for U.S. policies that have contributed to human rights abuses or where the United States continues to work on improving its own performance domestically. Equally important, it means championing a robust and independent press that holds all governments accountable.

Along with these overarching principles, the United States should not overlook the power of people-to-people connections. To build a successful and resilient hemisphere, we need Americans who understand Latin America and Latin Americans who understand the United States. We can help to foster this mutual understanding through area studies and language programs, study abroad programs and professional exchanges. These exchanges benefit U.S. and Latin American citizens who master another language, spend time in another culture, and share academic, scientific or other expertise. Simultaneously, they also build the ties that shape our economies and regional relations far into the future.

Essential to U.S. policy toward Latin America is our relationship with Mexico. Too often, Mexico is viewed solely in the context of U.S. domestic challenges. However, this approach fails to realize the relationships full potential. Mexico should be the United States key strategic ally in the region. With an intertwined economy, society and history, our two countries should be cooperating bilaterally on a host of issues including economic, climate, health, security and migration policy and working together on a broad range of regional and international issues.

The United States should take this moment of historic upheaval and commit to a principled and forward-looking policy for Latin America. This approach would both support U.S. objectives and address shared interests within the region. Latin America is a critically important region for the United States on a daily basis and U.S. foreign policy should reflect it.

Antonio Garza served as the U.S. ambassador to Mexico from 2002 to 2009. He is now counsel to the law firm of White & Case in Mexico City. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.

More here:
America First policy in Latin America undermines U.S. interests for democracy and prosperity in the region - The Dallas Morning News

But Miss, why think about the future for? the 13-year-old said.

No one had ever asked me that before.

I was visiting a class of year 7 students in Sydneys south-west with the Story Factory, a not-for-profit creative writing organisation who work with young people to draw out their skills and stories. I was there to talk about the work I do and how I think about the future, explaining the dizzying ways the world of work, communication and creativity have turned upside down in the relatively short span of my life.

These students were writing their own future-focused fiction: during quiet writing time, I imagined them flashing forward to an inspiring, sustainable world, and writing about their place in it. I thought Id done pretty well, until this kid called me over and stumped me with that startlingly simple question.

Because youll live in the future, I finally responded. In a couple of decades from now, youll be my age. And youll want clean water to drink and air to breathe. Youll need to earn money, you might want to have kids, and youll be interested in what kind of world you all live in I trailed off.

She gave me the kind of gently condescending look that 13-year-olds the world over are masters of.

Sure, miss, OK. But who cares what I think about the future? I mean, its just going to happen anyway, no matter what I think.

When you think about the future, do you feel like that kid? There are too many of us who feel that despite whatever the public protests against, or supports in opinion polls politics today doesnt reflect our values or priorities, inaction on climate change being one of the starkest examples.

Its exciting to see the rise of youth-led social change movements like Fridays for Future or the Sunrise Movement in the USA, but as this high schooler taught me, not everyone feels empowered to have their say. Since I was a teenager growing up in Sydneys western suburbs, Ive seen the opportunity gap between rich and poor grow, with policy choices that entrench disadvantage, and pool wealth and access on one side. Structural barriers exclude and limit access particularly for those in places where youre likely to earn less, spend more time to get to work, cop more heat in heatwaves and even see your life expectancy cut short. Getting by is hard enough, let alone figuring out how to have your perspective heard.

The problems we face at this moment are too vast and complex to be solved by a privileged few, and limiting access to information and limiting the voices at the table only serves to sow unease and division. When we fail to explain the systemic causes of our environmental and economic instability, conspiracies and suspicion rush in to fill the information vacuum.

But around the world, there has been a flourishing of new ways to do democracy that gives me hope amid the gloom of 2020. Bottom-up and participatory democratic processes that recognise the potential we all have to contribute; that make political engagement active and part of everyday life, something everyone can do.

Representative democracy has a lot of positive elements to it. The problem is that its not been upgraded for 100 or 200 years

I realised that the best thing I could do for those who didnt have faith in the future was share the most compelling visions Ive encountered, because more people need to hear that there are very real alternatives to the status quo. My search for civic change-agents spanned the planet and became my first book, Glimpses of Utopia.

Citizen participation through collaborative budgeting, online platforms, assemblies and juries can have a huge impact. After a series of political and financial scandals rocked Iceland and Estonia, trust levels in politicians plummeted but Robert Bjarnason and the Citizens Foundation had one thing on their side: for most people, social media has become second nature. The Citizens Foundation used an online platform to make it easy to participate in democracy between elections, from allocating resources in local communities to raising citizen-led petitions to be debated by parliament. Representative democracy has a lot of positive elements to it, Bjarnason told me, but the problem is that its not been upgraded for 100 or 200 years.

Taiwans visionary digital minister, Audrey Tang, has also taken the tools of tech to politics, engaging citizens and stakeholders to help the country regulate digital disruptors like Uber through consensus.

And in France this year, 150 citizens aged 16 to 80 selected randomly by their phone numbers took on a huge task: breaking the impasse on climate change, and deciding how the country should dramatically cut their carbon emissions.

Over the past nine months, the Citizens Convention for the Climate heard from hundreds of experts and pored through policy proposals and impact statements, then debated and selected projects to land on fair and effective climate policy. In late June President Macron accepted all but three of the Conventions 149 recommendations, pledged to take them to parliament in an omnibus bill, and budgeted an additional 15bn euros for climate action.

In late 2019, I saw a citizen jury in action at the City of Sydney: we wanted direction and feedback on our guiding plan for the next decade, and gathered more than 2,500 ideas from residents, ranging from postcards and childrens drawings to detailed submissions and surveys. Fifty Sydneysiders, randomly selected, gave up their Saturdays over several months to turn these suggestions into a grand vision. Watching them present their final report gave me goosebumps: they challenged us to create a city that isnt just sustainable but is regenerative; a city which doesnt just limit damage but that cleans the air and the water, that gives back more than it takes.

Opinion polls or the usual consultation format cant generate public participation like this. The way we do politics today underestimates the capacity of the average citizen for big-picture thinking. They need to be empowered and informed, and we need to cast the net wider than the usual suspects.

More of us might feel more hopeful about the future if we were offered better ways of helping shape it, as active and valued citizens. Imperfect Not-Yet utopias are being created by people all over the world every day, incomplete but promising. I owed it to every young girl I spoke to in that class to not only sow those seeds of potential, but to show them that a better future needs us to shape it, and that we can start to claim our place in it now.

Glimpses of Utopia by Jess Scully is out now, through Pantera Press

Jess Scully is the deputy lord mayor of Sydney

Read the original here:
There are new ways to do democracy that give me hope. More voices could change everything - The Guardian

[Note: This article was co-published with OC Media, here. It was written by Rati Shubladze, a Policy Analyst at CRRC Georgia. The views expressed in this article are the author's alone and do not represent the views of the Embassy of the Netherlands, CRRC Georgia, or any related entity.]

The COVID-19 outbreak generated discussion about whether support for democracy would decline during and after the crisis. While reported support increased, this did not necessarily match support for democratic means of governance.

Data from the CRRCs COVID-19 monitor shows that more people in Georgia reported support for democracy compared to the pre-crisis period. However, as before the crisis, support for democracy does not seem to be grounded in the values commonly associated with democratic governance.

Compared to a study with the same question conducted before the virus outbreak, support for democracy increased.

The Caucasus Barometer 2019, conducted before the pandemic, shows that nearly half of Georgians (49%) thought that democracy was preferable to any other kind of government. The rest did not report explicit support for democracy. The share of people explicitly supporting democracy rose to 60% during the COVID-19 outbreak.

A previous article looked at how support for democracy was not associated with liberal values, such as support for gender equality and acceptance of different ethnic or religious groups.

Data collected during the COVID-19 Monitor suggests that support for democracy is also not associated with preferences for democratic rules of governance.

The COVID-19 survey asked Georgians for their opinions regarding different approaches to governance, citizens attitudes toward the government, and restrictions to overcome the crisis. The data shows ambiguous results.

The majority (59%) said it was acceptable for the public to critique the government, and nearly two-thirds said it was unacceptable to restrict citizens rights without going through institutional checks and balances.

At the same time, for most Georgians (53%), said efficiency, not institutional accountability, is what matters. Moreover, most said they supported strong, unaccountable leaders (68%) to get the country out of crisis.

Regressions testing whether the above data are correlated with support for democracy, controlling for socio-demographic variables like gender, age, education, settlement type, employment, household wealth and ethnicity, were run. They suggest that there are no statistically significant associations between attitudes towards the above forms of governance and support for democracy.

Contrary to many commentators expectations, support for democracy increased during the COVID-19 crisis. However, as previous studies have indicated, support is not associated with democratic values and considerations.

This analysis shows that explicit supporters of democracy on many levels do not hold different views from non-supporters regarding the means of governance, decision making, and institutional accountability.

This again leads to the question, why do so many in Georgia report support for democracy if not for the content of that idea?

The data presented in this blog post is available here. Replication code for the above analysis is available here.

Continue reading here:
Support for democracy increased in Georgia during COVID-19, but what does that mean? - Social Science in the South Caucasus

IN DECEMBER IT will have been ten years since Muhammad Bouazizi, a Tunisian street peddler, set himself on fire. He was protesting against harassment by local police, who often demanded bribes to let him carry on earning his modest living. His death inspired the Arab spring: a series of popular uprisings that toppled autocrats, Tunisias included, across the Middle East.

Yet in Bouazizis hometown of Sidi Bouzid, deep in the hinterland, few people plan to commemorate him. He escaped to his maker and left us with this misery, says Haroun Zawawi, one of several young jobless men sitting near the roundabout where Bouazizi lit the match. On a nearby wall someone has mockingly scrawled revolution upside down. People dont feel it has improved their lives, says the citys MP, Naoufel ElJammali. Theres nostalgia for dictatorship.

Tunisia is often praised for being the first Arab country to throw off the yoke of autocracy, and the only one where genuine democracy survives. Elections are still held, the secret police are relatively docile and women participate extensively in public life. But most Tunisians judge the revolution based on the performance of the economy, which has not improved under the new dispensation. Incomes have fallen by a fifth over the past decade; unemployment has been stuck above 15% for years. Powerful unions block reforms. Illegal migration to Europe is up fourfold on last year. Bickering politicians give people little reason to stay.

Tunisia is one of the few countries where more educated people are less likely to find work. So parliament recently passed a law granting jobs to graduates who have been unemployed for a decade. It could not afford to keep that promise, even before covid-19 forced it to lock down the country from March until May. The coronavirus has disrupted important sources of revenue, such as remittances, trade and tourism. The government expects the budget deficit to widen to about 7% of GDP because of the pandemic; the economy is expected to shrink by 6.5% this year.

Tunisia had been in talks with the IMF about a loan, but those were suspended in July, when the prime minister, Elyes Fakhfakh, resigned over allegations of a conflict of interest. His replacement, Hichem Mechichi (Tunisias eighth prime minister in ten years), wants to form a technocratic government without political parties. That is, in part, because the parties cannot agree on much. The largest is Ennahda, which is Islamist. Its leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, who is the speaker of parliament, has feuded with Kais Saied, the president, over nominees and power. Mr Ghannouchi himself narrowly survived a confidence vote last month after being accused of exceeding his authority.

Nine years ago Ennahda won Tunisias first free election, promising something new. Now its members look tired. Asked what is his biggest achievement, Mr Ghannouchi replies: Jalusna (Were sitting here). Whereas Islamist movements elsewhere have been crushed, Ennahda is still at the forefront of Tunisias politics. But critics say it has acquired the traits of the regions old patriarchies. Mr Ghannouchi, who is 79, has led Ennahda (or its precursor) for 50 years. In 2012 the party decided that he would serve only two more terms as leader, ending this year. Now he wants to change the rules. He preaches Muslim democracy but rules like a traditional Arab, says Abdelhamid Jlassi, a former deputy leader of Ennahda who quit in March. The disillusion is spreading. In parliamentary elections last October the party mustered only a third of the votes it won in 2011.

In a presidential election the same month Mr Saied won in a landslide, attracting a huge share of the youth vote. A stiff law lecturer and political outsider, he promised to stamp out corruption. But he also appears hungry for power. The president is in charge of the army, security forces and foreign policy. Mr Saied also wants more say over domestic policy, which parliament claims as its turf. He sparred with Mr Ghannouchi over who should pick the prime minister before choosing Mr Mechichi, a loyal bureaucrat. In the long term Mr Saied would like to move to a system of indirect elections for parliament, with local councils holding more power.

There are some in parliament who seem inclined to do away with democracy altogether. Abir Moussi was a high-ranking official in the party of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the old dictator, and she is nostalgic for the old days. She calls the Arab spring a spring of ruin, blaming Ennahda for the upheaval. Like Mr Saied, she is openly homophobic. She now heads the Free Destourian party, which won 16 seats (out of 217) in last years elections and led the challenge to Mr Ghannouchi. Members of the middle class who fared better under Ben Ali like her calls to restore the order of pre-revolutionary Tunisia (when Ennahda was outlawed). According to recent polls, she is the countrys most popular politician.

Western diplomats say Tunisias democracy has proven surprisingly resilient. Its politics are broadly rooted. Its Islamists have been restrained and conciliatory. There has been very little of the bloodshed that characterised the clash between old and new systems elsewhere in the Arab world. But many Tunisians are less sanguine. Protesters demand jobsyet make matters worse by blocking oil and phosphate exports. Voter turnout is trending down. Even in the capital of Tunis no big events are planned to mark Bouazizis death. Politicians play down the anniversary or, like Ms Moussi, curse it.

This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline "Ten years after the revolution"

Continued here:
In Tunisia, cradle of the Arab spring, protesters want jobs - The Economist

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What is likely to replace the first republic? When? How? Can we still save the republic? What is to be done?

These are the most critical and difficult questions of our time that political sense and political science must confront. They do not admit of a correct answer, at least as long as history admits the inescapability of contingency. Let me only, in conclusion, sketch three possible courses that the journey of democracy may take in the near future, without assigning probabilities.

The first route leads to a long Indian summer. We may be witnessing a quick transition from the first socialist, secular, democratic republic to a quasi-democratic, firmly majoritarian, and crony-capitalist republic. We could date the inauguration of the second republic to 2014, when the BJP started consolidating its electoral, ideological, and coercive power into a new one-party dominance system. Unlike the famous Congress system of consensus, the new BJP system is based on a concentration of power, a sectarian ideology, and the social exclusion of minorities. This second republic need not have a new constitution for as long as the Modi regime can define and redefine the threshold of tolerance for deviations from constitutionally mandated procedures. The constitutional form of parliamentary democracy may remain untinkered with, yet for all practical purposes India could become a Latin American-style presidential democracy where the supreme leader draws power from the people and is answerable only to them. The public could be continuously mobilised to undo the republic.

In such a new dispensation our political system, while retaining the label democracy, would in practice be describable as competitive authoritarianism. Elections would be held without fail, but only in order to affirm the supreme leaders popularity. Instead of being one among many episodes in a representative democracy, elections might then become the only available democratic episodes. Any form of political contestation outside the electoral arena dissent, protests, and human-rights struggle or civil-society activism would be ruthlessly suppressed. For its survival and popular endorsement, the second republics ruling dispensation would depend on occasional electoral endorsement, a massive propaganda machine, formal and informal regimentation of the independent media, indirect control of the judiciary and other autonomous institutions, continuous crusades against internal enemies, and regular military adventures, especially preceding an election.

Also read: India attracted the world once. But it wasnt because of its ambition to be a Hindu Rashtra

India may never formally be declared a Hindu Rashtra. It would be unnecessary, for the second republic is likely to be a non-theocratic majoritarian state with a de facto hierarchy of religious communities. An American style melting pot model could be tried in India, with the pot bearing a distinct Hindutva stamp. We are unlikely or so I hope despite the Delhi riots of February 2020 to witness large-scale anti-minority pogroms, in part because the regime would like to avoid the international outcry that is bound to follow such violence. In any case, since the need of the day in our second republic would be to reduce the minorities, mainly Muslims and Christians, to the status of second-rung citizens, quotidian put-downs and symbolic violence would suffice.

Dalits and adivasis may not face the same kind of onslaught, because the ruling regime in the second republic would be cognizant of the political benefits of accommodating them, at least symbolically. To grind their noses into the dust would in any case seem unnecessary, given a de facto hegemony of upper-caste Hindus. In our New India the politics of social justice would effectively have taken a back seat, with any expression of Dalit or Adivasi upsurge being nipped in the bud or tamed. While the imposition of Hindi on non-Hindi states would be deemed an unnecessary upsetting of the apple cart, cultural homogenisation in all other respects would be the states agenda. Our second republic may not be quite the Hindu Rashtra of Savarkars dreams, but as close to its 21st-century version as required and feasible.

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And now to consider the second possible route. This would involve a period of uncertainty, a no-mans land between the first and the second republic. It may result from simultaneous movements in both directions, preventing either a firm hegemony or its effective reversal. The counterbalancing could come from various directions. The BJP might keep losing power in the states while continuing its success story at the centre. The regional forces might, belatedly, offer effective resistance to the BJPs political hegemony and its drive for cultural homogenisation. Or the BJP might lose national power in 2024, only to bounce back sooner or later, as Indira Gandhi did quite soon after her defeat in 1977. This might delay the transition to the second republic. Though unlikely, opposition might even come from within. An intense power struggle within the BJP, however inconceivable it seems at the moment, might possibly defer or deter this transition. We cannot rule out another version of this internal challenge: a party other than the BJP might use the template of nationalism and Hindutva, or its milder versions, to defeat the BJP in elections. As a popular advertisement has it, Impossible is Nothing.

Also read: Indias democracy crumbling? Constitution shows how to create democracy in unlikely settings

There are other possibilities as well. The balancing might come from a hidden hand outside the electoral-political domain. Attempts to smother diversities could trigger resistance from other social cleavages, such as caste and language, that the regime might find difficult to overlook or polarise to its advantage. Or, while the regime continues to dominate elections and public opinion, its success might be undermined by abject failure with handling the economy. Signs of such failure are in evidence already: an economic slowdown that does not look just cyclical; farm distress triggered by an agrarian crisis and accentuated by climate change; the highest recorded rate of unemployment, and rising inflation.

So far, the regimes handling of the economy has been amateurish at best; its attempts with data suppression and impatience with ideologically unaligned economic advisers have, to put it euphemistically, raised eyebrows everywhere. It is possible, therefore, that the large numbers of those at the bottom of the pile will begin to connect their economic distress and absence of hope on the horizon with an incompetent government and punish it. Popular movements could channelise such disaffection. Even as the institutions of democracy keep collapsing, powerful movements might, as they have in the past, fill the vacuum for a time and retrieve some democratic balance. Any or all of these counterweights to the BJP might temporarily halt or slow the hegemonic march of the BJP, but not challenge its fundamentals. For all we know, in real life this might be the most optimistic scenario.

A third route, a mirage for the moment, promises a reversal of hegemony and reclamation of the republic by the public. This route too involves a radical transition: there can be no return to the ancien regime represented by parties like the Congress. In this route, the second republic would show a new configuration of power, a renewal of the idea of India, a new social contract. It may be hard to visualise what such a transition might entail, let alone how it can be brought about. The last essay in my book (chapter 15) tries to respond nevertheless to this all-important question: What is to be done? The strategy suggested there (in 2017) remains relevant in its broad outlines. The immediate focus should be on mass movements on the economic front, mainly involving distress-affected farmers and unemployed youth. In the medium run, a political reconfiguration involving existing parties and social movements would be needed. In the long run, there can be no escaping the battle of ideas that necessitates a reaffirmation of nationalism, the recovery of pluralist religious traditions, and a reconnection with our languages.

Also read: Modi calls Constitution a holy book but his government violates its letter and spirit

The strategy and the tactics of this third, counter-hegemonic, route need constant fine-tuning. But two lessons are already clear. First, a struggle to rescue Indian democracy cannot be separated either from the battle to save the Indian model of a diverse nation, or from the need to resurrect the promise of an inclusive welfare state. A single point save democracy or save constitution movement is unlikely to succeed. The political battle has to go hand in hand with struggles in the economic and cultural spheres. And second, the electoral arena may not be central to the historic mission of reclaiming the republic. We are unlikely to witness a repeat of 1977 when an authoritarian ruler quietly stepped down after an electoral defeat. Mass mobilisation and popular resistance outside the electoral arena are going to be prerequisites for any effective reversal of the hegemonic power.

The ongoing anti-CAA movement of 2020 offers a glimmer of what such resistance might look like. It is hard to anticipate how this movement might appear in the mirrors of the future, or even by the time this book is published. It might well turn out to be a short-lived protest of the north-east and the Muslim community. In any case, such a movement is unlikely to become the fulcrum of a counter- hegemonic politics. And yet the dynamics of this movement does have all the elements of what a dramatic turnaround might involve: the outpouring of masses on the street; an outburst of new ideas, slogans, and poems; the sudden fusing of issues and social groups; the evaporation of fear in the face of state repression.

Such hopes appear romantic today. But if democracy is about instituting uncertainty into the heart of public life, there are perhaps no reasons powerful enough to snuff out all hope.

This excerpt from Making Sense of Indian Democracy by Yogendra Yadav has been published with permission from Permanent Black and Ashoka University.

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What will replace the first Indian republic? Three journeys democracy can take now - ThePrint