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The surprise Indian election result earlier this month upended the established consensus on Indian politics that had been crafted not least by incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself.

There was this kind of inevitability written by not just exit polls, not just the mainstream media, but very much the way Modi himself has fashioned his rule, Shruti Kapila, author of Violent Fraternity: Indian Political Thought in the Global Age, tells New Lines Surbhi Gupta on The Lede.

Modis failure to win his party a simple majority in parliament, explains Kapila, was a shocker of a result because his own slogan of 400-plus was also asking for a two-thirds majority of the Indian Parliament. The number, she explains, reflected Modis ambition and intention to win the necessary majority to make major changes to the Indian constitution.

The result, says Kapila, has broken the spell of Modi as infallible. His power is very fragile, even though he remains prime minister.

Before Modi, coalition governments had been commonplace in India for the previous three decades, but the strongman prime minister had enjoyed majorities in parliament since coming to power in 2014. Now, for the first time, Modi will have to learn coalition politics, explains Kapila. Hes been forced to play and behave like any other Indian politician. Hes been cut to size because hes now going to have to sit at the table and negotiate with other partners who will demand things in return for their support, she says.

The checks and balances, which were expected from other organs of government, and which have been nearly absent in the last 10 years will now be given by the political stakeholders who are sitting with [Modi] in government, Kapila adds.

The defeat of Modis party in the same state where he had erected a hugely controversial Hindu temple speaks to a wider lack of support for his Hindu nationalist project, says Kapila. The project came undone, she says. Im not saying its finished. I just think it has absolutely dented and thwarted the inevitability of a Hindu-first India that many were expecting. The Indian electorate have really given Modi the biggest shock in this election.

Kapila sees a major strength of the resurgent opposition in its ability to offer new language and ideas to counter right-wing populism. I think theres a new kind of vocabulary emerging, a new political grammar emerging, which is not simply socialism, its not simply populism, its not simply progressive populism, she says.

The opposition Congress party, once again at the forefront of Indian politics, has done something I had not expected it to do, which was to use its loss of power to discover its core principles.

The takeaway from this election, says Kapila, is that India remains instructive for global democracy, because in a way I would say that the age of populism has come to an end.

Further listening: The War on Indias Free Press With Manisha Pande and Samar Halarnkar Indias Political Hinduism With Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay

Further reading: Why the Indian Election Results Present Modi With a Defeat Within a Win The Recent Elections Demonstrate Indias Growing Democratic Deficit

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The End of Populism in the World's Largest Democracy? With Shruti Kapila - New Lines Magazine

Commentators have taken note recently of the publics loss of faith in many of the institutions and pillars of our society that have long been anchors of trust and reliability. These include the press, organized religion, government institutions, political leaders and the electoral process itself.

Even colleges and universities, which have been viewed as ivory towers of relative harmony, until recently, have come in for assault. They are now battlegrounds in the culture wars for those preaching political correctness and those opposed to wokeness. A Gallup poll released in July 2023 showed that only 36% of Americans have quite a lot of confidence in higher education. This is down from 48% in 2018 and 57% in 2015. The percentage is probably even lower now.

The loss of trust in the basic elements of our society that have kept America strong and growing is most concerning, and potentially most dangerous, in the declining view of the presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court.

President Bidens approval rating as of early August 2023 was less than 42%; when Donald Trump left office, his approval rating was 34%. Barack Obamas average approval rating of 48% during his two terms was hardly a ringing chorus of trust.

According to an April 2023 report by The Pew Research Center, 72% of Americans had an unfavorable view of Congress. The Pew Center also found that less than half of Americans had a favorable opinion of The Supreme Court a figure that is much lower than in recent years.

One can speculate about the reasons for this universal decline and what actions and policies can be undertaken to reverse it. Until such actions and policies are successful, we have to deal with the potentially serious consequences of the current situation.

Congress makes the laws. The president enforces them, and the Supreme Court interprets them. Voluntary obedience to a person or institution of authority is generated by respect and sometimes fear for that source of authority. Historically, our government has relied on respect and has only used fear in extreme cases.

Once the public loses faith in those who make, enforce and interpret the rules of the game, it hardly takes a great leap to where the public may begin to ignore or disobey the rules themselves. The events of Jan. 6, 2021, at the Capitol indicate the horror that could begin to happen on a broader scale.

The common belief that the system is basically run fairly has been an anchor preventing our nation from falling into a state of anarchy. We revere and obey the constitution, but it has been referred to as nothing but a rope of sand if it were not voluntarily obeyed. If everyone followed only the laws with which he or she agreed, the consequences would obviously be disastrous.

An instance in which our constitutional structure was not obeyed did occur, nearly 200 years ago. President Andrew Jackson refused to enforce a decision of the Supreme Court regarding the removal of Seminole Indians from Florida. Jackson famously said: The Supreme Court has made its decision, now let them enforce it. Fortunately, that resistance by Jackson stands as a rarity in terms of acts that have seriously threatened the very basis of our system of government. However, it does reflect how fragile our form of government can be. It depends on an ongoing common consensus to follow the laws and rules that the institutions of authority have set down.

If disrespect for those institutions becomes widespread, the contempt expressed by Jackson and the chaos that would result could threaten the very fabric of our nation. There was a time when that threat seemed too remote to consider seriously. That time has passed. Voters need to recognize and work against candidates who try to encourage and mobilize this loss of faith in our institutions. Otherwise, it could be converted into a threat to the very structure for which our institutions are a vital support.

Kenneth S. Birnbaum (kbirnb@aol.com) has served in the legislative branch as counsel to a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and in the executive branch as director of congressional relations for the U.S. Department of Transportation.

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Deteriorating public trust is a threat to democracy | GUEST COMMENTARY - Baltimore Sun

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Today, a Democracy Now! special on this, the newly created Juneteenth federal holiday, which marks the end of slavery in the United States. The Juneteenth commemoration dates back to the last days of the Civil War, when Union soldiers landed in Galveston, Texas it was June 19th, 1865 with news that the war had ended, and enslaved people learned they were freed. It was two-and-a-half years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

In 2021, President Biden signed legislation to make Juneteenth the first new federal holiday since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The day after Biden signed the legislation, I spoke to the writer and poet Clint Smith, author of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America. I began by asking him about traveling to Galveston, Texas, and his feelings on Juneeteenth becoming a federal holiday.

CLINT SMITH: As you mentioned, I went to Galveston, Texas. Ive been writing this book for four years, and I went two years ago. And it was marking the 40th anniversary of when Texas had made Juneteenth a state holiday. And it was the Al Edwards Prayer Breakfast. The late Al Edwards Sr. is the state legislator, Black state legislator, who made possible and advocated for the legislation that turned Juneteenth into a holiday, a state holiday in Texas.

And so I went, in part, because I wanted to spend time with people who were the actual descendants of those who had been freed by General Gordon Grangers General Order No. 3. And it was a really remarkable moment, because I was in this place, on this island, on this land, with people for whom Juneteenth was not an abstraction. It was not a performance. It was not merely a symbol. It was part of their tradition. It was part of their lineage. It was an heirloom that had been passed down, that had made their lives possible. And so, I think I gained a more intimate sense of what that holiday meant.

And to sort of broaden, broaden out more generally, you spoke to how it was more than two-and-a-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and it was an additional two months after General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, effectively ending the Civil War. So it wasnt only two years after the Emancipation Proclamation; it was an additional two months after the Civil War was effectively over.

And so, for me, when I think of Juneteenth, part of what I think about is the both/andedness of it, that it is this moment in which we mourn the fact that freedom was kept from hundreds of thousands of enslaved people for years and for months after it had been attained by them, and then, at the same time, celebrating the end of one of the most egregious things that this country has ever done.

And I think what were experiencing right now is a sort of marathon of cognitive dissonance, in the way that is reflective of the Black experience as a whole, because we are in a moment where we have the first new federal holiday in over 40 years and a moment that is important to celebrate, the Juneteenth, and to celebrate the end of slavery and to have it recognized as a national holiday, and at the same time that that is happening, we have a state-sanctioned effort across state legislatures across the country that is attempting to prevent teachers from teaching the very thing that helps young people understand the context from which Juneteenth emerges.

And so, I think that we recognize that, as a symbol, Juneteenth is not that it matters, that it is important, but it is clearly not enough. And I think the fact that Juneteenth has happened is reflective of a shift in our public consciousness, but also of the work that Black Texans and Black people across this country have done for decades to make this moment possible.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you explain more what happened in Galveston in 1865 and, even as you point out, what the Emancipation Proclamation actually did two-and-a-half years before?

CLINT SMITH: Right. So, the Emancipation Proclamation is often a widely misunderstood document. So, it did not, sort of wholesale, free the enslaved people throughout the Union. It did not free enslaved people in the Union. In fact, there were several border states that were part of the Union that continued to keep their enslaved laborers, states like Kentucky, states like Delaware, states like Missouri. And what it did was it was a military edict that was attempting to free enslaved people in Confederate territory. But the only way that that edict would be enforced is if Union soldiers went and took that territory.

And so, part of what many enslavers realized and realized correctly was that Texas would be one of the last frontiers that Union soldiers would be able to come in and force the Emancipation Proclamation if they ever made it there in the first place, because this was two years prior to the end of the Civil War. And so, you had enslavers from Virginia and from North Carolina and from all of these states in the upper South who brought their enslaved laborers and relocated to Texas, in ways that increased the population of enslaved people in Texas by the tens of thousands.

And so, when Gordon Granger comes to Texas, he is making clear and letting people know that the Emancipation Proclamation had been enacted, in ways that because of the topography of Texas and because of how spread out and rural and far apart from different ecosystems of information many people were, a lot of enslaved people didnt know that the Emancipation Proclamation had happened. And some didnt even know that General Lee had surrendered at Appomattox two months prior. And so, part of what this is doing is making clear to the 250,000 enslaved people in Texas that they had actually been granted freedom two-and-a-half years prior and that the war that this was all fought over had ended two months before.

AMY GOODMAN: During the ceremony making Juneteenth a federal holiday, President Biden got down on his knee to greet Opal Lee, the 94-year-old activist known as the Grandmother of Juneteenth. This is Biden speaking about Lee.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: As a child growing up in Texas, she and her family would celebrate Juneteenth. On Juneteenth 1939, when she was 12 years old, a white mob torched her family home. But such hate never stopped her, any more than it stopped the vast majority of you Im looking at from this podium. Over the course of decades, she has made it her mission to see that this day came. It was almost a singular mission. She has walked for miles and miles, literally and figuratively, to bring attention to Juneteenth, to make this day possible.

AMY GOODMAN: And this is Opal Lee speaking at Harvard School of Public Health.

OPAL LEE: I dont want people to think Juneteenth is just one day. There is too much educational components. We have too much to do. I even advocate that we do Juneteenth, that we celebrate freedom from the 19th of June to the Fourth of July, because we werent free on the Fourth of July, 1776. That would be celebrating freedom do you understand? if we were able to do that.

AMY GOODMAN: And that is Opal Lee, considered the Grandmother of Juneteenth. And, Clint, one of the things you do in your book is you introduce us to grassroots activists. This doesnt come from the top; this comes from years of organizing, as you point out, in Galveston itself and with people like not that theres anyone like Opal Lee.

CLINT SMITH: Yeah, no, absolutely. Part of what this book is doing, it is an attempt to uplift the stories of people who dont often get the attention that they deserve in how they shape the historical record. So, that means the public historians who work at these historical sites and plantations. That means the museum curators. That means the activists and the organizers, people like Take Em Down NOLA in New Orleans, who pushed the City Council and the mayor to make possible the fact that in 2017 these statues would come down, several Confederate statues in my hometown, in New Orleans.

And part of when I think about someone like Miss Opal Lee, part of what I think about is our proximity to this period of history, right? Slavery existed for 250 years in this country, and its only not existed for 150. And, you know, the way that I was taught about slavery, growing up, in elementary school, we were made to feel as if it was something that happened in the Jurassic age, that it was the flint stone, the dinosaurs and slavery, almost as if they all happened at the same time. But the woman who opened the National Museum of African American History and Culture alongside the Obama family in 2016 was the daughter of an enslaved person not the granddaughter or the great-granddaughter or the great-great-granddaughter. The daughter of an enslaved person is who opened this museum of the Smithsonian in 2016. And so, clearly, for so many people, there are people who are alive today who were raised by, who knew, who were in community with, who loved people who were born into intergenerational chattel bondage. And so, this history that we tell ourselves was a long time ago wasnt, in fact, that long ago at all.

And part of what so many activists and grassroots public historians and organizers across this country recognize is that if we dont fully understand and account for this history, that actually wasnt that long ago, that in the scope of human history was only just yesterday, then we wont fully understand our contemporary landscape of inequality today. We wont understand how slavery shaped the political, economic and social infrastructure of this country. And when you have a more acute understanding of how slavery shaped the infrastructure of this country, then youre able to more effectively look around you and see how the reason one community looks one way and another community looks another way is not because of the people in those communities, but is because of what has been done to those communities, generation after generation after generation. And I think that that is central to the sort of public pedagogy that so many of these activists and organizers who have been attempting to make Juneteenth a holiday and bring attention to it as an entry point to think more wholly and honestly about the legacy of slavery have been doing.

AMY GOODMAN: During an interview on CNN, Democratic Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called out the 14 Republican congressmembers all white men who voted against making Juneteenth a federal holiday.

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: This is pretty consistent with, I think, the Republican base, and its whether its trying to fight against teaching basic history around racism and the role of racism in U.S. history to you know, theres a direct through line from that to denying Juneteenth, the day that is widely recognized and celebrated as a symbolic kind of day to represent the end of slavery in the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: If you could respond to that, Clint Smith, and also the fact that on the same day, yesterday, the Senate minority leader said they would not be supporting the For the People Act?

CLINT SMITH: Yeah, I mean, I think

AMY GOODMAN: The Voting Rights Act.

CLINT SMITH: Absolutely. I think, very clearly, the critical race theory the idea of it is being used as a bogeyman, and it is being misrepresented and distorted by people who dont even know what critical race theory is, right? So we should be clear that the thing that people are calling critical race theory is just that is the language that they are using to talk about the idea of teaching any sort of history that rejects the idea that America is a singularly exceptional place, and that we should not account for the history of harm that has been enacted to create opportunities and intergenerational wealth for millions of people, that has come at the direct expense of millions and millions of other people across generations.

And so, part of what is happening in these state legislatures across the country with regard to the effort to push back against teaching of history 1619 Project, critical race theory and the like is a recognition that we have developed in this country a more sophisticated understanding, a more sophisticated framework, a more sophisticated public lexicon, with which to understand how slavery how racism was not just an interpersonal phenomenon, it was a historic one, it was a structural one, it was a systemic one.

AMY GOODMAN: I want you to talk more about your book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America. Can you talk about the journey you took you were just mentioning where you grew up, in Louisiana, the map of the streets of Louisiana and why you feel it is so critical not only to look at the South, but your chapter on New York is something that people will be many will be shocked by, the level of when people talk about the South and slavery, that New York, of course, had enslaved people?

CLINT SMITH: It did. It was really important for me to include a chapter on New York City, and a place in the North, more broadly, in part because, you know, while the majority of places I visit are in the South, because the South is where slavery was saturated and where it was most intimately tied the social and economic infrastructure of that society, it most certainly also existed in the North.

What a lot of people dont know is that New York City, for an extended period of time, was the second-largest slave port in the country, after Charleston, South Carolina; that in 1860, on the brink of the Civil War, when South Carolina was about to secede from the Union after the election of Abraham Lincoln, that New York Citys mayor, Fernando Wood, proposed that New York City should also secede from the Union alongside the Southern states, because New Yorks financial and political infrastructure were so deeply entangled and tied to the slavocracy of the South; also that the Statue of Liberty was originally conceived by douard de Laboulaye, a French abolitionist, who conceived of the idea of the Statue of Liberty and giving it to the United States as a gift, that it was originally conceived as an idea to celebrate the end of the Civil War and to celebrate abolition.

But over time, that meaning has been even through the conception of the statue, right? The original conception of the statue actually had Lady Liberty breaking shackles, like a pair of broken shackles on her wrists, to symbolize the end of slavery. And over time, it became very clear that that would not have the sort of wide stream or, wide mainstream support of people across the country, obviously this having been just not too long after the end of the Civil War, so there were still a lot of fresh wounds. And so they shifted the meaning of the statue to be more about sort of inclusivity, more about the American experience, the American project, the American promise, the promise of democracy, and sort of obfuscated the original meaning, to the point where even the design changed. And so they replaced the shackles with a tablet and the torch, and then put the shackles very subtly sort of underneath her robe. And you can but the only way you can see them, these broken chains, these broken links, are from a helicopter or from an airplane.

And in many ways, I think that that is a microcosm for how we hide the story of slavery across this country, that these chain links are hidden, out of sight, out of view of most people, under the robe of Lady Liberty, and how the story of slavery across this country is very as we see now, very intentionally trying to be hidden and kept from so many people, so that we have a fundamentally inconsistent understanding of the way that slavery shaped our contemporary society today.

AMY GOODMAN: Clint, before we end, you are an author, youre a writer, youre a teacher, and you are a poet. Can you share a poem with us?

CLINT SMITH: Id be happy to. And so, when youre a poet writing nonfiction, that very much animates the way that I approach the text. And so, this is part of the this is an adaptation or an except from the end of one of my chapters, that originally began as a poem that I wrote when I was trying to think about some of these issues that I brought up.

[reading] Growing up, the iconography of the Confederacy was an ever-present fixture of my daily life. Every day on the way to school, I passed a statue of P.G.T. Beauregard riding on horseback, his Confederate uniform slung over his shoulder and his military cap pulled far down over his eyes. As a child, I did not know who P.G.T. Beauregard was. I did not know he was the man who ordered the first attack that opened the Civil War. I did not know he was one of the architects who designed the Confederate battle flag. I did not know he led an army predicated on maintaining the institution of slavery. What I knew is that he looked like so many of the other statues that ornamented the edges of this city, these copper garlands of a past that saw truth as something that should be buried underground and silenced by the soil.

After the war, the sons and daughters of the Confederacy reshaped the contours of treason into something they could name as honorable. We called it the Lost Cause. And it crept its way into textbooks that attempted to cover up a crime that was still unfolding; that told us that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man, guilty of nothing but fighting for the state and the people that he loved; that the Southern flag was about heritage and remembering those slain fighting to preserve their way of life. But, see, the thing about the Lost Cause is that its only lost if youre not actually looking. The thing about heritage is that its a word that also means Im ignoring what we did to you.

I was taught the Civil War wasnt about slavery, but I was never taught how the declarations of Confederate secession had the promise of human bondage carved into its stone. I was taught the war was about economics, but I was never taught that in 1860 the 4 million enslaved Black people were worth more than every bank, factory and railroad combined. I was taught that the Civil War was about states rights, but I was never taught how the Fugitive Slave Act could care less about a border and spelled Georgia and Massachusetts the exact same way.

Its easy to look at a flag and call it heritage when you dont see the Black bodies buried behind it. Its easy to look at a statue and call it history when you ignore the laws written in its wake.

I come from a city abounding with statues of white men on pedestals and Black children playing beneath them, where we played trumpets and trombones to drown out the Dixie song thats still whistled in the wind. In New Orleans, there are over 100 schools, roads and buildings named for Confederates and slaveholders. Every day, Black children walk into buildings named after people who never wanted them to be there. Every time I would return home, I would drive on streets named for those who would have wanted me in chains.

Go straight for two miles on Robert E. Lee, take a left on Jefferson Davis, make the first right on Claiborne. Translation: Go straight for two miles on the general who slaughtered hundreds of Black soldiers who were trying to surrender, take a left on the president of the Confederacy who made the torture of Black bodies the cornerstone of his new nation, make the first right on the man who permitted the heads of rebelling slaves to be put on stakes and spread across the city in order to prevent the others from getting any ideas.

What name is there for this sort of violence? What do you call it when the road you walk on is named for those who imagined you under a noose? What do you call it when the roof over your head is named after people who would have wanted the bricks to crush you?

AMY GOODMAN: Clint Smith, author of the book How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, speaking on Democracy Now! in 2021, the day after Juneteenth became a federal holiday.

Coming up, the pioneering musical artist Rhiannon Giddens. She won a Pulitzer Prize for her opera Omar, about Omar ibn Said, a Muslim scholar in Africa sold into slavery in the 1800s.

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Juneteenth: Historian Clint Smith on Reckoning with Legacy of U.S. Slavery - Democracy Now!

There is a huge gap in Colorado between campaign rhetoric on political issues and what voters in the state say they want candidates to talk about: democracy and good government.

Many voters worry that democracy is vanishing and public institutions are threatened. Candidates rarely touch on this topic in their pitch to voters. But they should.

Colorados primary elections are Tuesday, when voters will determine which candidates go on to represent their party on the ballot in the November general election. If the victors next week want to address a top concern of constituents throughout the state, they will add to their stump speech an explanation of how they would reinforce democracy and improve the health of government functions.

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Colorado Newsline and more than 30 other news organizations in the state have undertaken an unprecedented effort this year to gauge whats most important to voters. The project, called Voter Voices 2024, centers on a survey we distributed across the state, and respondents told us what candidates should focus on as they compete for votes. Voters had the opportunity to respond in their own words, and they also selected from a list the three issues that are most important to them. (The survey will be open throughout the 2024 election season. Click here to fill it out.)

The results were striking. Among those who identified themselves as liberal or moderate, most, by far, said democracy and good government were their top issues. Other major concerns included the economy/cost of living, immigration, the environment, abortion and health care.

Conservatives generally put democracy and good government in third place ahead of 10 other issues on the list.

Part of the goal of the project was to enable journalists to challenge candidates when their rhetoric doesnt match the priorities of the people they mean to represent.

One respondent to the Newsline survey said they want candidates to talk about how they will protect the federal and state constitutions from wannabe dictators. Another hopes candidates will describe their understanding of the relationships between our American Democracy, our national economy and our international partnerships. One said simply: Democracy and our way of life is on the ballot.

Many respondents complained about a related matter: the vitriolic tone of contemporary politics and the erosion of bipartisanship. Newsline reporter Sara Wilson recently conducted Q&As with primary candidates for statehouse seats. In one question, she mentioned that voters told us theyre concerned about democracy and good government, and she asked, Do you find any common ground with members of the opposite party, and how important is bipartisanship in your political philosophy?

Almost every candidate was quick to answer that they value working across the aisle to get things done. But some candidates, both Democrats and Republicans, said there are limits to their willingness to work with the other side. And some do not seem to be interested in bipartisanship at all.

I do not find a lot of common ground with Democrats, Terri Goon, a Republican running in House District 11, said, while Tim Hernndez, an incumbent Democrat whos running in House District 4, said, Good governance is contextual, and in our current context, it means that rather than asking if we should work with a super-minority on the other side of the aisle we should be asking why we are not passing bills that supermajorities of our Democratic constituents are asking us to.

And when Wilson asked candidates to name their top three priorities, exactly one Rep. Elisabeth Epps, a Democrat running for reelection in House District 8 specifically included good governance, citing such values as transparency and compliance with open meetings law. Its her No. 1 priority, she said.

Neglect of an issue that voters told us is important is apparent elsewhere, on campaign websites, during debates and across other avenues of candidate communication. We might not have recognized this disparity without the Voter Voices project. But now we do.

Part of the goal of the project was to enable journalists to challenge candidates when their rhetoric doesnt match the priorities of the people they mean to represent. As winners emerge after the polls close Tuesday and general election candidates begin retooling their campaigns for the months ahead, they should consider their response to the question, What will you do to protect democracy and ensure the health of government?

Well be asking.

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Candidates are almost completely neglecting a top issue for Colorado voters Colorado Newsline - Colorado Newsline

Over the past two decades, the project of European integration has been moderately failing forward. Many issues have accompanied this process and their sum calls for a reinvention of European democracy.

Two decades have passed since the European Unions Big Bang enlargement into Central and Eastern Europe. This anniversary prompts a reflection on the EUs evolution and where the European project stands today. The analysis below is based on the three main processes that have shaped the EU since 2004: widening and deepening, the impact of crises, and the emergence of new political divides.

June 22, 2024 - Ferenc Lacz - Hot TopicsIssue 4 2024Magazine

Illustration by Andrzej Zarba

The first process involves examining the East-West divide and the trends towards convergence. Let me first outline some fundamental aspects of East-West relations within the EU. In terms of demographics, the newer member states account for approximately one-fifth of the EUs population. While some eastern EU countries have made notable progress since 2004, their overall economic contribution still falls significantly below their population share. At the same time, these states wield significant political power within the EU due to the nation-state distribution principle on this basis, almost every second vote or seat now belongs to this group of states. Yet, the citizens of the eastern EU states are still underrepresented in European transnational elite circles.

Easternization

Two conclusions can be made based on these basic observations. First, the Big Bang enlargement has created an imbalance in the EU. Second, it has led governments of eastern EU countries to prioritize intergovernmental cooperation over supranational integration. These shifts have prompted the Easternization of the EU, with both positive and negative outcomes.

Easternization has affected various aspects of EU affairs in the early 21st century, including allocation of funds, immigration numbers, as well as different attitudes toward Russias increasingly radical and violent dictatorship. Perhaps most notably, this has also occurred regarding the debates surrounding democracy and illiberalism.

While EU funds have boosted Eastern European economies, they have not erased disparities within the Union. The EUs enlargement towards the East, driven by economic motives rather than social concerns, has perpetuated core-periphery inequalities. Additionally, the brain drain from Eastern Europe has reinforced conservatism in local societies.

The specific manner of the EUs Easternization can thus help explain why the growing threat of democratic backsliding has often assumed an Eastern European complexion. This threat has been widely linked to the rise of illiberal state-building projects in Hungary and Poland. Many right-wing populists in Western Europe admire the combination of sociocultural conservatism and ethnonational radicalism of Hungarys Fidesz party and the former Law and Justice government in Poland. If Europe continues to Easternize in this manner, it will undoubtedly challenge integration; in such a scenario, EU enlargement would ultimately come at the expense of deeper integration.

Despite recent positive developments in Poland, it is still necessary to address the challenges of illiberalism today. Much of the concern stems from how the European Union has been reshaped and had its reputation tarnished by the series of crises that have unfolded since around 2008. As shown by Luuk van Middelaar in his insider account Alarums & Excursions, in this post-post-historical phase the EUs legalistic-consensual order what the author calls the politics of rules has been increasingly replaced by the politics of events. The cascading crises of these years the financial and economic crisis; the declining quality of democracy and respect for the rule of law; the tragedies connected with refugees and migration; the shambles around Brexit; the global pandemic; Russias ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine (the last two had only begun when the Dutch scholar had completed his manuscript); not to mention worsening environmental degradation often required shift responses and have logically prioritized the intergovernmental aspects of EU decision-making. These crises have also presented opportunities for European integration, some of which European elites have managed to capitalize on.

Failing forward

Failing forward in European integration to employ the suggestive phrase by Eric Jones, R. Daniel Kelemen and Sophie Meunier has been no small feat amidst a significantly worsened global environment. The EUs shortcomings have been notable but not catastrophic in comparison. While highlighting the Unions resilience is important, especially to debunk the narratives of the EUs decline and imminent collapse, it is equally crucial to probe further into how effectively the EU has functioned as a tool for crisis management.

Despite advancements in integration, the EU has failed to counter the fallout from these repeated crises and has not meaningfully reversed internal trends of socio-economic and increasingly political divergence. The measures the EU has implemented to address the crises, deepen integration and promote democracy have to be assessed as modest, primarily because the internal challenges have been mounting amidst a drastically worsening external environment. In this light, the EU has been failing forward only moderately, all too moderately.

What makes the story of the EUs moderate and relative successes more dramatic is that the Union can no longer claim to comply with its discourse of legitimation. EU crisis responses have contradicted its cherished self-image of a union of liberal democracies based on the rule of law and respect for human rights that has developed new forms of multi-layered governance to reach beneficial compromises. In 2024, the European Union can no longer be viewed as a union of liberal democratic states based on the rule of law, as made evident by the concentration of power under the Orbn regime in Hungary. Secondly, the prolonged negative effects of the eurozone crisis on Greece show how the member states failed to develop new forms of multilayered governance to reach beneficial compromises. Thirdly, the unexpected and admittedly also poorly conceived Brexit process testifies to the failure of the EU states to pool elements of their sovereignty in a directional process. Lastly, the avoidable mass tragedies along the Schengen borders speak volumes about the EUs solidarity and respect for human rights.

It is hardly surprising then that recent years have further politicized European integration, prompting urgent questions about the exercise of political power within the Union and its legitimacy. It is true that a rather stagnant centre, preoccupied with crisis management at the expense of greater strategic foresight, has continued to dominate in EU politics over the past two decades. At the same time, the Union has entered a new phase in which the main political cleavage pits the liberal and conservative defenders of the status quo against their right-wing populist challengers. This division, in turn, marginalizes more ambitious reform agendas whether progressive or otherwise within the Unions complex architecture.

What makes the current situation all the more concerning is that constructive and far-sighted reforms have become less likely just as the sharp decline of the centre-right in key member states (not only in the United Kingdom around the time of Brexit or in the notorious case of Hungary but also, and possibly even more consequentially, in countries like France or Italy) casts doubt on future adherence to liberal democratic norms and support for European integration. Moderately conservative, liberal-leaning and predominantly centrist forces, such as Christian democrat parties, played a significant role in shaping mainstream liberal democratic politics in Western Europe after the Second World War. The apparent decline in influence of these centrist right-wing forces at a time when the European political landscape is becoming more polarized between liberal and right-wing populist agendas deserves far more attention than it has received thus far.

Living up to the democratic promise?

This leads me to some more general considerations regarding democracy and European integration. As Kiran Klaus Patel has explained in his insightful Project Europe: A History, the new international organizations formed after 1945 which eventually paved the way for the European Union entered a crowded field. Their agendas were influenced by what other international organizations were not already addressing. The mandates of the European Communities, organizations with economic priorities and a legalistic DNA, were rather narrow and technical during those early decades. Norms, values or democracy were not really in their focus. Viewed through such a historically informed lens, European integration proceeded further as the European Communities succeeded in broadening their mandate and assuming responsibilities in unexpected new domains such as democracy an area where any assertion of European competence is likely to be contentious given the EUs perceived democratic deficit.

As Patel shows, it was only in the context of enlargement to the post-authoritarian states of southern Europe that membership in the EC was more explicitly linked to a liberal democratic regime. Predictably, Greece entering the EC possessed exceptional symbolic weight in this regard. When it comes to the post-communist parts of Europe after 1989, that direct link and claim to expertise were, of course, asserted widely and vocally.

Having made ambitious claims to being an effective supporter and even a guarantor of democracy a democratic union par excellence and having at least one country whose membership directly questions such assertions today, can the EU live up to the promise it once made, now that it has to confront illiberalism in its very midst? The ongoing illiberal challenge indeed raises pragmatic and theoretical questions. Pragmatically speaking, does the EU have appropriate instruments and sufficient willingness to employ them to defend and promote democracy in its member states? On a more theoretical note, can it truly succeed or are its attempts bound to be self-contradictory and maybe even self-defeating?

These moot questions ought to make us reconsider the fraught relationship between liberal democracy and nationalism that is at the heart of the current political polarization within the union. Nationalists these days are often illiberal or downright anti-democratic, whereas liberal democrats are often rather negatively disposed towards the nation-state, even though it has been the main frame for democratic rule in modern and contemporary Europe, not to mention the construction of welfare states. If the Big Bang enlargement has made the EU less balanced and fostered negative trends of convergence, this recent and ongoing parting of ways between nationalists and liberal democrats for which post-communist Eastern Europe may be qualified as a ground zero has greatly exacerbated the crisis of democracy across Europe.

How to survive

The Ukrainian peoples valiant self-defence against Russias brutal war of aggression can provide an instructive example in this regard and perhaps also a source of inspiration for all of Europe. After all, Ukrainians are currently fighting a war of national independence against their imperial neighbour and are thereby also defending their significant, if incomplete liberal and democratic achievements against an autocratic aggressor. It is impossible to disentangle the liberal democratic and national elements of Ukraines struggle for survival.

The recombination of these two elements is precisely what the European Union and its member states may need the most these days and can most hopefully still achieve without cataclysms. We urgently need nationalists to accept the liberal democratic framework, while liberal democrats ought to simultaneously recognize the democratic potential of the nation-state without giving up on more ambitious plans of a more united, democratic Europe.

What I have argued above is that the EU has been moderately failing forward in the two decades since 2004. However, it is concerning how Easternization has gone hand in hand with negative forms of convergence. We ought to realize how much the poly-crisis has contradicted the blocs cherished self-image, and consider how far nationalists and liberal democrats have parted ways.

Having arrived at this critical juncture two decades after the Big Bang enlargement, even moderate attempts to fail forward are likely to sharpen antagonisms in the near future. More positively put: the European project will need to foster positive forms of convergence (and not only between East and West within the EU), develop a more apt and convincing discourse of self-legitimation, and create a new, stable balance between national and liberal democratic commitments.

Only if the EU succeeds at those urgent tasks can European democracy have a reasonable chance in our lifetime.

Ferenc Lacz is an assistant professor with tenure in European history at Maastricht University. He currently acts as the Istvn Dek Visiting Assistant Professor at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. He is the author or co-editor of thirteen books, including Magyarorszg globlis trtnete (A Global History of Hungary) in two volumes.

East-West divide, EU enlargement, EU integration, European Union

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