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Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the joy that greeted the rejuvenation of democracy in Central and Eastern Europe has dissipated to a considerable degree.

The region is confronted with great challenges that sometimes make the promise of democracy seem like a mirage. Over time, regimes such as those in Poland, Hungary, Serbia, and Bulgaria have taken action to curtail the civic space, undermine checks and balances, or concentrate power in the hands of a few.

Aspiring authoritarian leaders and populist politicians are encouraged by the divisive politics within the regions mainstream parties. Inspired by role models such as Russian President Vladimir Putin or Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, they feel emboldened to carry out blatant attacks on civil liberties.

Democracys expansion and the accompanying enthusiasm of the 1990s was followed by a more sober assessment of its dividends in the 2000s.

Now, following the end of the third decade since the fall of communism, scepticism has set in and political leaders openly talk about preferences for more illiberal forms of democracy.

Political regimes from Poland to Hungary, from the Czech Republic to Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria, have retreated from the liberal notion of democracy by branding them as Western impositions. In doing so, they have stripped democracy of its many constitutive attributes in favour of a more minimalistic version, built around the act of free and fair elections.

However, this means that those same regimes are using election results as a carte blanche to exert uninhibited power without too many cumbersome layers of checks and balances. And in the process, they tend to assault the judiciary, weaken parliamentary oversight, interfere in independent media, and stifle civil society and freedom of expression. As a result, although the region of Central and Eastern Europe remains democratic, the past decade has not brought significant advancements in the quality of democracy.

Instead, the phenomenon of democratic backsliding has been chipping away at the region as a constant reminder of a creeping authoritarianism and populism.

Civil and political liberties: A luxury we can do without?

The 2019 report The Global State of Democracy: Addressing the Ills, Reviving the Promise from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), dedicates a chapter to the state of democracy in Europe. It provides a health-check on current democratic trends in Central and Eastern Europe.

The analysis finds that more than half of democracies in Europe suffer from democratic erosion. Even more worrisome is that six out of 10 democracies in the world currently experiencing democratic backsliding are in Central and Eastern Europe (Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, and to a lesser extent, Ukraine), and Turkey. Democratic backsliding here is defined as the intentional weakening of checks on government and civil liberties by democratically elected governments.

The data from International IDEA shows that the governments of the above countries have been intentionally curtailing parliamentary oversight and the independence of the judiciary as a way to accumulate more power for the executive. Furthermore, they have taken steps to limit freedom of speech and freedom of expression and are stifling civil societys room for manoeuvre.

As the governments themselves see it, such actions are taken to expedite government procedure, without the hassle of an active opposition. Liberal notions such as freedom of speech, freedom of expression and freedom of association, on the other hand, are construed as foreign implants whose real aim is to frustrate the business of daily governance. This dangerous trajectory which shows all the signs of democratic backsliding is one of the main reasons why the quality of democracy has stagnated in the last decade in Europe.

Nevertheless, democratic backsliding may not necessarily end in an authoritarian political regime. Democratic legitimacy continues to be a requirement and constraint of incumbents seeking to monopolise power. However, weakened checks and balances harm the substance of democracy: they enable incumbent governments to avoid public blame for policy failures, sustain unsubstantiated performance claims, and practice exclusionary decision-making. Moreover, unchecked executives can appropriate state resources for partisan or private purposes and expand informal patronage networks of loyalists to penetrate society.

The answer is, and should continue to be, the people

How can democratic backsliding be reversed? At times of political uncertainty and social polarisation, when some governments do not necessarily seem to be bulwarks of liberal democracy, who do we turn to? What is the remedy that will most effectively fight the democratic malaise?

The answer is the people.

However, there is a problem with this solution. Suggesting that the people will reawaken the liberal values of democracy tends to ignore the fact that it is the people who voted for the same political leaders who are putting at risk those liberal values.

Therefore, the question that ought to be explored is why people are voting for those leaders that end up eroding liberal values in the first place? In other words, relying on the people as a panacea for all societal ills, without understanding the underlying causes of democratic backsliding and authoritarian encroachment, tends to become a rather a lazy solution offered by opinion-formers to solve problems which are more complex and require deeper dissection.

At the same time however, people are indeed the solution. A formula for more equitable representation, more accountability and transparency, and more emphasis on the liberal tenets of democracy, lies with the people.

However, we should also recognise that mainstream political parties are to a large degree responsible for losing electoral support as they have not been sufficiently attentive and responsive to the concerns of all citizens. These parties need to renew their engagement with their electorates. Decentralised and inclusive deliberation and decision-making within these parties is one way to bring people back onside.

Party leaders and party representatives holding public office also need to revise public policies that meet citizens expectations. In particular, policies should reach out to those groups of society that have felt excluded from decision-making and from the fruits of economic development. Responsive policies are not tantamount to myopic spending or fiscal irresponsibility. Policy trade-offs and cost-benefit considerations can be explained to citizens, so as to ensure a sound knowledge basis for informed choices. Political elites should engage in rational, problem-solving dialogues with citizens. These public consultations should be guarded by procedural and institutional arrangements preventing misinformation or demagoguery.

When such actions are undertaken by politicians and mainstream political parties, the peoples choice will be clearer. Establishing appreciative, considerate dialogue between political representatives and citizens is a strategy that can revive the trust of citizens in political institutions.

By contrast, populist politicians usually substitute meaningful dialogue with fictitious claims about understanding the will of the ordinary people. Electoral majorities are then re-interpreted as popular mandates to ignore and erode institutional checks and balances, promising policies that will serve the people directly.

To address populist challengers, supporters of democracy need to expose these tactics. Only then can they light a path towards a more responsive democracy with stronger institutions that uphold the checks and balances that ensure democratic accountability.

Excerpt from:
Rekindling democracy in Central and Eastern Europe - Emerging Europe

Joe Bidens younger brother is facing allegations of financial fraud in civil court proceedings. According to a lawsuit filed in federal court by a pair of medical firms, James Biden promised investors at the for-profit hospital chain Americore Health that hed leverage the Biden family name to attract a large investment from the Middle East. The money never materialized, and Americore has since entered bankruptcy proceedings but not before James Biden allegedly walked away with a $650,000 personal loan from the company that he has yet to repay. Politico reports James Biden introduced Americores founder to his older brother Joe Biden at a September 2017 fundraiser for the Beau Biden Foundation. A Biden campaign spokesperson denied Joe Biden ever discussed Americore with his brother or expressed support for the business. James Bidens ties to Americore came under increased scrutiny following an FBI raid on the companys Ellwood City hospital in Pennsylvania in January. The reason for the raid is unknown.

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Joe Biden's Brother Faces Fraud Allegations over For-Profit Hospital Ties - Democracy Now!

Self-proclaimed democratic socialist Bernie Sanders is one of three candidates still vying for his partys presidential nomination.

When the Vermont senator calls himself a democratic socialist, he refers to Franklin D. Roosevelts philosophy that the government should take responsibility for the health, well-being and security of American citizens, says Barnard College political science professor Sheri Berman.

This means democratic socialists in the U.S. support a generous welfare state which today includes policies like universal health care and free college education, she says.

But when Sanders critics call him a socialist, they mean something quite different. President Trump and other Republicans often use the word socialism as a slur, conflating it with communism.

During Franklin Roosevelts presidency, socialism was often linked to Soviet Union policies. Now, Berman says the theory is associated with countries like Venezuela and North Korea where the government also controls the economy and doesnt allow its citizens political freedom.

For Republicans, both then and now, socialism is something much scarier, she says. We're talking about two very, very different things but oftentimes using the same term.

Sanders often talks about Scandanavian countries like Denmark as a model of democratic socialism. These countries have long-standing democratic socialist parties and some consider themselves a social democracy, she says.

In Europe, the presence of a social democratic party helps citizens better define the term and understand what policies social democrats stand for, but in America, its less clear, she says.

Because we've never had a party that has called itself social democratic or democratic socialist, the term is much more difficult to pin down, she says.

Roosevelts New Deal is the closest thing to a social-democratic movement or policy in the U.S., she says. Roosevelt put policies in place to protect both capitalism and democracy, which is more comparable to Elizabeth Warrens platform than Sanderss call for revolution, she says.

He sought to mitigate capitalisms negative effects out of fear that if they grew too severe, citizens would lash out against both capitalism and democratic governments for not being able to deal with those consequences, she says.

But Roosevelt avoided the socialist label because he understood the terms negative resonance in the U.S., Berman says. Though he never called himself a socialist, his policies echoed what social democrats were advocating for in parts of Europe during the 1930s.

Europes democratic socialists grew out of Marxism, she says, as did communism. But after the 19th century, the two ideologies grew in different directions regarding democracy.

Communists didnt believe in democracy, free markets or private property, while social democrats were some of the strongest advocates for democracy in Europe, she says.

Social democrats accepted capitalism, she says, but knew the government needed to protect citizens from its negative downsides for this economic system to work.

Today in the U.S., Berman says the support for Sanders and the idea of democratic socialism stems from the 2008 financial crisis and everything that succeeded it including growing income inequality, declining social mobility and increased geographic divides particularly between young people based on whether they could afford college.

Americans who feel insecure and disaffected are gravitating toward socialist ideas since most capitalist critiques of the 19th century emerged from socialism, she says.

Critiques of capitalism, not surprisingly, tend to arise at times when significant numbers of people feel the system is not working for them, she says.

On the difference between the terms liberal and progressive

That's a hard question to answer separate from context. In this country, liberal and progressive are often used interchangeably. Although in this election cycle, progressive has been stressed much more than liberal, simply because I think a lot of people think of liberal now as somehow tainted with the liberal globalized order in Europe. Of course, liberal has a different connotation than in the United States. It's much more hooked up with or linked to a classical liberal tradition, one that actually favors things like free trade, but also protection of individual rights and things of that nature. So a lot of these terms have been used for so long and in so many different contexts that it is often hard to pin them down.

On populism

We're seeing [populism] again come back in full force in this election cycle, not only because Trump is often referred to [as] a populous, but growing numbers of people feel like there are some aspects of Sanders' appeal that should be characterized as populist. And by that, they generally mean not just a strong anti-establishment message, but a sort of sense that, you know, the polity or society is divided into good and bad, that there's some kind of elite that is blocking somehow the sort of needs and demands of the masses from being heard, that there is some kind of evil cabal. Again, that's kind of working behind the scenes to kind of undermine democracy. So there are some aspects of that that we can see in the Sanders campaign a little bit. We can certainly see it in Trump's rhetoric and appeal, and we see it in a wide variety of parties, mostly on the right in Europe and also other parts of the world.

On her belief that Warren is a progressive but not a democratic socialist or a liberal

I think that that's really where she's trying to position herself as the kind of, you know, person at the crosscurrents of all of these different trends and debates that are going on within the Democratic Party. Now, look, she has made very clear that actually in some ways she's closer to what Roosevelt said and did because she claims she's a capitalist and that the incredible number of policy proposals that she's put forward are not designed to so much transform the system from capitalists to something else, but rather to sort of save it from itself to kind of correct all of the negative consequences that it's had.

Julia Corcoranproduced and edited this interview for broadcast withKathleen McKenna.Allison Haganadapted it for the web.

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What Democratic Socialism Means In The US | Here & Now - Here And Now

The mainstream media imposes some serious certainties on the 2020 presidential election that drive me into a furious despair, e.g.:

Even though Bernie Sanders, winner of the first two Democratic primaries, is now leading in the national polls, he cant and wont be the partys nominee because in coming weeks, writesLiz Peekin The Hill, Democrats will make sure that Socialist Bernie does not get the nomination. More will realize that he will lead the party to a calamitous loss, and they will look for an alternative. Overwhelmed by ads, underwhelmed by others in the race, they will come to realize that Mike Bloomberg is the best theyve got.

Hey progressives, America is not a socialist country! Get it?

As this certainty imposes itself on the election coverage, in both obvious and subtle ways, I find myself juxtaposing it with another emerging tidbit of news:

Parts ofOrgan Pipe Cactus National Monumentthe part s with indigenous burial grounds and other rare, historically important areasare being bulldozed and blown up to make way for the border wall that Mexico is supposedly going to pay for.

The Trump border wall proceeds, slicing through, and destroying, a complex ecological wonder that also happens to be indigenous sacred ground. The wall, writes evolutionary biologistKelsey Yule, is turning the landscape into an ecological dystopia.

The Department of Homeland Security is leveling this precious habitat with absolutely no regard for the delicacy of this places unique cultural and ecological resources, ravaging one of the most iconic sites in the Western hemisphere. Theyre even blowing up mountains like Monument Hill. . . .

And: "Over the last few months, the Trump administration has been draining millions of gallons of groundwater to mix the walls concrete."

Furthermore the $5.7 billion wall is cutting directly through the soul of theTohono Oodham Nation, an indigenous people whose ancestral land in the Sonoran Desert, approximately the size of Connecticut, spans both the United States and Mexico. Too bad. The Department of Homeland Security rules and its going to build the damn wall no matter what.

As Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva put it: To DHS, nothing is sacred.

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Well, thats not quite true. The bureaucracy is sacred. No matter now stupid and destructive they are, the rules are sacred. The border is sacred. And this same mentality, so I believe, is doing everything it can to ensure that the progressive base of the Democratic Partyrepresented, to a large extent, by Bernie Sandersremains on the wrong side of the wall, barred from having an actual influence on the American political process.

Elections arent supposed to be about core values. Those values are already decided and Socialist Bernie (psst, socialist is the same thing as communist) doesnt get to mess with them.

These values, of course, mean as little as where you were born. These values are about who has power. Big Money rules and will always rule, right? Thus the election coverage doesnt look deeply beneath the surfaceat who we are or how we ought to relate to the planet and to life itself. Maybe Trumps wall is creating an ecological dystopia, but Bernie Sanders is a socialist. And look, here comes Michael Bloomberg to save the day.

Im not saying that change is simple or that a national and global course of action, in the face of war and climate crisis and the growing phenomenon of refugees trying to find a home, is in any way obvious. But our collective focus should be bigger than the needs and limits of corporate centrism. Do we not all have a stake in the future of this planet?

If you consume a lot of mainstream news coverage, you might be thinking that no one has quite the stake in the future that Bloomberg, the $60 billion man, does. He has bought his way into the election process.

In a staggering milestone in what critics have characterized as an effort to buy the Democratic nomination,Common Dreamsreports, billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg has already poured more than $350 million of his own personal wealth into television, digital, and radio advertising since launching his 2020 presidential campaign last November.

This is our country: up for sale. No matter that Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City, pushedstop-and-friskpolicing when he was in office, inundating minority neighborhoods with police a.k.a., the occupying army and stopping everyone who looks suspicious for a humiliating pat-down and possible arrest. A federal judge eventually ruled the practice unconstitutional, calling it checkpoint-style policing. But Bloomberg has continued to quietly defendracism-based security, infamously maintaining, in a 2015 speech, that 95 percent of murderers are male, minorities, 16-25.

So what we have here is a political system that continually surrenders to us-vs.-them thinking: leadership that requires an enemy to keep the country united. This kind of thinking cuts cruel social gouges everywhere its in place, creating endless harm to some and insecurity for everyone.

American democracy continues to be up for sale, but only to bidders who support The Wall.

Original post:
The Wall: Separating Democracy From Voters - Common Dreams

The country is built on faith in the electoral process, but that's been severely dented in the 20 years since the 2000 Bush v. Gore debacle over Florida's hanging chads. Since then, we've added foreign interference to a mix that's long included voter suppression, gerrymandering and an antiquated Electoral College that routinely gives the person with fewer votes the White House.

Put together all these very real and different challenges to the American system and it's hard to fight the feeling that this experiment in democracy is teetering.

The end result is there is still no clear winner for the first 2020 primary contest.

The Iowa Democratic Party made things worse by hiding the issue behind its delayed results for hours on caucus night. Then, it released only a portion of results.

That opened the door for campaigns to sow doubt about the numbers.

Nobody, including Biden, is actually suggesting the results are so flawed that Joe Biden's current fourth place showing in Iowa is incorrect. But there are serious problems with the results.

"This is just one moment in time," said Maria Cardona, a Democratic strategist and CNN political commentator. "Democrats are going to fix it and move on from it and focus on the priority, which is beating Donald Trump."

Trump likes to question US democracy

The President built his political career calling American democracy into question.

When Trump criticized the electoral process for being "rigged" against him in 2016, he was rightly criticized. It felt at the time like he was building an excuse for when he lost. But he won the White House even though he got fewer votes than the other candidate.

Turned out the process wasn't rigged, but built in such a way that a divisive nationalist intentionally appealing to white voters could win with fewer votes than the other person.

And that's even without factoring in that Russians were trying to influence it by spreading fake information on social media and hacking the Democratic party.

Trump didn't stop with his "rigged" allegation, even after he won.

Meddling from the outside

And that was before Democrats impeached him for pressuring Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden while holding up needed security aid to the country and Republicans, deciding they were okay with that behavior, acquitted him in the Senate.

It's clear from testimony by the US intelligence community and others that Russia is still actively trying to influence the 2020 election with misinformation that spreads on social media. The question is how successful they will be.

Voter suppression and voter fraud

All of that, taken together, is a pretty clear pattern that could shake Americans' faith in the electoral process. It is the faith in that process, and the peaceful transfer of power, that is the ground upon which the entire American experiment in self government is built and Trump has been criticized for trying to undermine it.

Who can vote in red states vs. blue states

But he added that "both political parties look to create electoral processes that likely advantage their political fortunes."

Republicans, generally, favor more restrictive practices and Democrats favor making voting easier.

"Access to voting really depends on where you live and how competitive the parties are in your state," he said. "Differences among the states allow for legitimate concerns to be brought up over who is shut out or invited in when it comes to the electoral process."

Changing the process

Rather than seek the national spotlight as a Senate or presidential candidate, Abrams has turned making US elections more fair a call to action.

Her Twitter feed in the aftermath of the Iowa debacle is a documentation of how the Democratic primary process isn't actually that democratic and how the party is taking minority voters, in particular, for granted.

"Regardless of the tech issues, Iowa uses a caucus system that excludes people who cannot participate because of work or family obligations. The most democratic process invites all eligible voices, which is why early and mail-in voting and a full Election Day are essential," she tweeted.

She also called for the entire early primary system to be overhauled.

"The Iowa Caucus is a long and storied tradition, but traditions can and do change. As we build a more accessible election process, we should revisit how Democrats launch our primary season," she said, later adding, "Suppression exists when voices are intentionally silenced AND when no one is willing to admit or fix the problem. Voter suppression awaits millions of voters in November unless we organize against efforts to block and discourage voters."

Democrats wanted to make election reform their calling card in 2020.

Likewise, Trump's complaints about a rigged system are unlikely to be as effective. He is, after all, the President.

"In 2020, it will be clear that Trump can win re-election and those who wish to see him unseated will be far more likely to turn out to vote to do so," said Alexander, who added there will be an equal concern among some of his opponents that the system is actually rigged for him -- "whether they view it through Russian interference or voter suppression."

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Iowa's mess is a threat to democracy - CNN