Democracy Index 2021: EIU Latest Report

 The Economic Intelligence Unit recently released the Democracy Index Report, 2021. The report described the state of democracy in 165 countries.

About the Report

The report was prepared based on five parameters. They were functioning of the government, electoral process and pluralism, political participation, civil liberties and political culture.

Key findings of the report

Norway topped the index. The country scored 9.75. Following Norway, New Zealand was at the second position. Finland, Sweden and Iceland were at the third, fourth and fifth position respectively. Afghanistan scored the least with 0.32. Earlier North Korea was at the bottom most position.

Countries that showed improvement

Singapore, UAE, Uruguay, Guyana, Montenegro, Republic of Congo, India, Moldova, Qatar, Indonesia, Zambia.

Report about Democracy

One – third of the world population is living under authoritarian rule. 6.4% is having full democracy. The current global democracy score is 5.28 out of 10.

Report about India

India ranked 46 in the index. The overall score of India was 6.91. The individual scores of the country are as follows:

• Political Culture: 5
• Electoral process and Pluralism: 8.67
• Civil liberties: 6.18
• Political participation: 7.22
• Functioning of government: 7.5

Ranking of India’s neighbour

China was ranked at 148^th position. Myanmar: 166, Nepal: 1010, Pakistan: 104, Bhutan: 81, Bangladesh: 75, Sri Lanka: 67

Region – wise ranking

North America was ranked at first position. North America was followed by Western Europe and Latin America in second and third position respectively. Asia was ranked at fourth position.

Report about Latin America

Of all the regions in the world, the least performing was the Latin American region. There are 17 countries in Latin American region. The region has the largest diasporas of Japanese, Lebanese, Portuguese, Spaniards, Italians, black Africans. The Latin American countries are Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Venezuela, Guatemala, Chile, Bolivia, Haiti.

The 21st century challenge for democracy

 

Suhas Palshikar writes: A renewed public discourse around questions of its meaning, repertoire, purpose and limits will have to be enriched.

The New Year brings a challenge. Corrosion of democracy forms the backdrop to the 75th year of freedom, overshadowing the celebrations. The official website calls the moment “azadi ka amrit mahotsav”, though in the recent past, those talking of azadi were hounded as the tukde-tukde gang. Such is the fracture in our public psyche that azadi can be equated with an anti-national position on the one hand and on the other hand, a myopic view of azadi allows dismemberment of its core — democracy. The challenge, therefore, is to keep India’s democracy alive. Are we up to it?

The unexpected spread of democracy at the fag-end of the last century produced a global overuse of the term, denuding it of its meaning. Even as the industry of measuring and ranking democracies thrived, the practice of trading off democracy’s substance for its skeletal form became a booming business. Just as the “D” word became politically the most useful and used word, it also became so vague that its adversaries no longer needed to argue against it. Rather than anti-democratic arguments, we now witness the skillful taming of democracy.

In India, the taming of democracy is marked by three maladies. First, electoral majorities are understood to have elected a superhero with unbounded wisdom. The belief that the “king can do no wrong” would pale in the backdrop of faith in the leader’s motives and actions. The popular language of mandate becomes politically central to this phenomenon. Instead of electing (and changing) representatives responsible for governance, elections become the mythical ritual of coronation. While most parties are afflicted with this misconception and sundry representatives invoke it to justify their power and prestige, Narendra Modi has taken it to an unprecedented level. Not only has he assumed the role of being the representative of 125 crore people, he is also seen as the personification of popular will. This personification is then translated into legitimising a fundamental reworking not just of the physical structures of the polity, but its normative practices and ideological bases.

Two, electoral majorities are seen unabashedly as flowing from, and reflecting the majority of one community constructed from many sects and traditions. At an ideological level, attempts to conflate the nation with one community have gained ground. At a more practical level, the public sphere is seized with the issue of what we do with citizens not belonging to the majority faith. In governance terms, they are being pushed into the shadowy recesses of invisibility while in political terms, they are brought forward as enemies of the nation. This violent discourse produces a slippage of democratic rhetoric into nationalist rhetoric, sometimes juxtaposing the nation against democracy and sometimes conflating the national with the democratic.

Three, 21st century manipulations of democracy have almost successfully robbed people’s agency from democracy. An oversized image of the leader, claims of wisdom by the elected autocracy and consistent delegitimisation of any difference as anti-national have meant that the category of people exists as the symbolic legitimiser of power. People also exist as manufactured expressions of public unreason to be unleashed against opponents of the regime. But people as a democratic force do not exist or at least do not count for much.

All three afflictions have global parallels. They run deep in our polity and are shaping our political culture. Above all, they have democratic pretensions, which makes it tough to identify them, critique them and isolate them.

Democracies are adept at countering open attacks. They will have to invent new strategies for facing what scholars have been calling “democratic” ways of subverting democracy. In India, the list of expectations and failures is long. The bureaucracy has pathetically caved in, investigating agencies have practically transformed into a legal mafia, judiciary has become a sermonising priest at best and ideological partner of executive at worst. The media prides itself on being the trumpeting brigade of pseudo-nationalism besides working as PR agencies of the regime.

In this bleak backdrop, three pathways are worth considering. The first is the most attractive and one in which democrats invest a lot — protests, agitations and movements. From students to farmers to minorities, this regime has antagonised many sections of society. Poor governance and callous management of the economy pushes many more to the brink. Ideological varnish may stall or postpone organised protests, but not for long. While these protests have not substantially altered the course of democracy’s erosion, they do have the potential of rejuvenating people’s agency.

But the pathway most readers will be intrigued by is normal politics. Politics centred on a leader has blinded us for far too long. It is time India moves back to “politics as usual” — power politics, intra-party factionalism, competition over leadership, the cocktail of ideas, machinations and routine bargains. Not revolutions but ordinary politics can keep the spirit of democracy alive — that no party, no leader, no idea, no dream is final or invincible. America may not have substantively set aside Trumpism, but a non-dramatic Biden victory set aside the aura of Trump. That is the virtue of normal politics.

Such normal politics, of course, is only a small step in keeping democracy alive. An ideological engagement at the intellectual level is unavoidable. That engagement is not about the classical ideas of left and right, not about nation nor even about religion. All these battles are important, but the critical engagement urgently necessary will be about what we mean by democracy and what we do with it.

The 20th century was seen as the century of democracy’s expansion. If we do not want the present century to be that of democracy’s decay, then renewed public discourse around questions of its meaning, repertoire, purpose and limits will have to be enriched. The idea of democracy will have to be taken to the people once again with an emphasis on inclusion, institutions, procedures and deliberation, but chiefly as the question of power-sharing.

This is a global challenge. From Russia to Brazil, Turkey to Thailand, and Hungary to China, governments have turned into regimes. These regimes are busy controlling people’s destinies and are nearly successful in controlling our minds. The challenge is to rupture the regime-ness of entrenched networks of power and push the powerful for what they are — just power-holders, deservingly scrutinised for their use of power.

This will not necessarily happen through grand theory. Intellectual interventions of a daily nature and untiring responses to the routine distortions of democracy will be required. Democracy can remain alive at the intersection of politics and political criticism.

Written by Suhas Palshikar

Source: Indian Express, 4/01/21

Why India’s ancient republics need to be recognised for their place in world history

 

Abhishek Banerjee, Sumedha Verma Ojha write: An India that sees its own democracy as a pale imitation of an Anglo-American system is neither good for itself nor the world.

On September 25, while addressing the UN General Assembly in New York, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an important historical point: India is not just the world’s largest democracy, but also the “mother of democracy”. This assertion would unsettle several long-held Western notions about our world, and it should. The existence of proto forms of democracy and republicanism in ancient India is part of humanity’s common heritage and deserves an important place in our shared view of the past.

There are two pillars of the modern world. The first is science-based rational thinking, and the second is democracy. It is also telling that both are often believed to be Western inventions, reflecting Western ascendancy over our world.

In recent years, there has been a move to recognise advances in science made in the past by non-Western societies. The Pythagorean theorem, for instance, was well known in ancient India. It would be more historically accurate to refer to the Fibonacci numbers perhaps as Pingala’s numbers or Hemachandra’s numbers. But old beliefs and the assumptions that go with them are still strong. As Joe Biden noted last year, they don’t tell you how a black man contributed to the making of the electric bulb. In a similar vein, it is time to fix the historical record on the origins of democracy.

The evidence for republics in ancient India has always been available in plain sight. In the Mahabharata’s Shanti Parva, republics (ganas) are mentioned along with the essential features of administering them. The Vedas describe at least two forms of republican governance. The first would consist of elected kings. This has always been seen as an early form of democracy, later practised in Europe, especially in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 16th-18th centuries.

The second form described in the Vedas is that of rule without a monarch, with power vested in a council or sabha. The membership of such sabhas was not always determined by birth, but they often comprised people who had distinguished themselves by their actions. There is even a hint of the modern bicameral system of legislatures, with the sabha often sharing power with the samiti, which was made up of common people. The “vidhaata”, or the assembly of people for debating policy, military matters and important issues impacting all, has been mentioned more than a hundred times in the Rig Veda. Both women and men took part in these deliberations, a far cry from the Greeks who did not admit women (or slaves) as full citizens of their “democracies”.

Other sources appear in the Ashtadhyayi of Panini, the Arthashastra of Kautilya, as well as a variety of ancient Buddhist and Jain writings. Buddhist and Jain texts list 16 powerful states or mahajanapadas of the time. After Alexander’s invasion in 327 BCE, Greek historians also record Indian states that did not have kings. The Lichchavi state of Vaishali, in particular, deserves special mention. Buddhist writings describe in detail Vaishali’s rivalry with neighbouring Magadha, which was a monarchy. The long battle of attrition between Magadha and Vaishali, which the former won, was a fight also between two systems of governance, ganatantra and rajatantra. Had the Lichchavis won, the trajectory of governance may well have been non-monarchical in the Subcontinent.

Was the rajatantra an “off with his head” kind of system with concentration of powers in one person? No. Instead, any state is thought of as composed of seven elements. The first three, according to Kautilya, are swami or the king, amatya or the ministers (administration) and janapada or the people. The king must function on the advice of the amatyas for the good of the people. The ministers are appointed from amongst the people (the Arthashastra also mentions entrance tests). As per the Arthashastra, in the happiness and benefit of his people lies the happiness and benefit of the King. Isn’t this the lodestone of democracy?

It would be unreasonable to expect republics in ancient India, as with the Greek city of Athens, to have developed full-fledged democratic institutions as we understand them today. As late as the 1780s, when America was founded, voting rights were restricted to (white) males who owned property or paid taxes, which amounted to a mere six percent of the population. The idiosyncrasies of that old system are still visible today. As with scientific advancement, democracy remains and will always be a work in progress.

Another criticism of the idea of India as the “mother of democracy” would be that there is no surviving direct line between the ancient ganas and the modern republic of India. However, the same applies to ancient Greek city-states. If the line survives, it is as a way of thinking. The stability of India’s democratic institutions is more or less an exception among post-colonial states since 1945. This is best explained by an ancient system of thought that contains expressions of democracy.

Why is it so important in the 21st century for us to recognise the origins of democracy in ancient India? There are at least two reasons. First, as a growing power on the world stage, India has to offer its own narrative on world history, as well as provide the world with a vision. We as a nation are not aspiring upstarts. We are the nation that inspired great journeys, from those of Alexander to the voyage of Columbus.

The other reason relates to the general loss of confidence in the US. The power struggles of the near future are becoming clear. It is also a struggle to define history and take it forward. At this time, an India that sees its own democracy as a pale imitation of an Anglo-American system is neither good for itself nor the world.

This column first appeared in the print edition on October 5, 2021 under the title ‘Roots of democracy’. Banerjee is a scientist, columnist and author. Verma Ojha is a historian, author of historical fiction series, ‘Urnabhih’

Source: Indian Express, 5/10/21

The third wave of autocratisation and why it was waiting to happen

 Last month, V-Dem Project (Varieties of Democracy), a Sweden-based independent research institute, released its annual democracy report making a key observation that India, the world’s largest democracy, has turned into an ‘electoral autocracy’. As per the report, 87 countries are now electoral autocracies and home to 68 per cent of the global population.

Apart from this, the report also pointed to an accelerated autocratisation in several countries including G-20 nation-states United States, Brazil and Turkey that has hastened the decline of democracy globally. Liberal democracies, the report says, have diminished and now constitute only 14 per cent of people.

The report says that with the backsliding of democracy in Asia-Pacific region, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, the level of democracy enjoyed by the average global citizen in 2020 is down to levels last found around 1990.

This decline in democracy, the report says, is part of the “third wave of autocratisation” – 25 countries, home to 34% of the world’s population (2.6 billion people), are in democratic decline by 2020. At the same time, the number of democratising countries have dropped by almost half down to 16 that are home to a mere 4 per cent of the global population.

What are the waves of democratisation?

The concept ‘Democracy Wave’ was first introduced by the American political scientist Samuel P Huntington in his book ‘The Third Wave’ in 1991. In the book, he writes that since the early nineteenth century, there have been three major surges of democracy as a political system and two brief periods of decline. He calls these surges as ‘waves of democracy’ and the ebbs as the ‘reverse waves.’

As per Huntington, the first ‘long’ wave of democratisation began in the 1820s, with the widening of the suffrage to a large proportion of the male population in the United States, and continued for almost a century until 1926, bringing into being some 29 democracies including France, Britain, Canada, Australia, Italy and Argentina.

He argues that this ‘long and slow wave’ was followed by a ‘reverse wave’ leading to the weakening of the democratisation process. Between Mussolini’s rise to power in 1922 and 1942, the number of democratic states in the world was brought down to a mere 12.

The triumph of the Allied Forces in World War II initiated a second wave of democratisation taking the number of democratic countries to 36 by 1962. This, says Huntington in the book, was followed by a second reverse wave (1960-1975) that brought the number of democracies back down to 30.

The third wave of democratisation, Huntington proposes, began with the Carnation revolution in Portugal in 1974 and continued with a number of democratic transitions in Latin America in the 1980s, Asia Pacific countries and, saliently, in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He points out that this democratic wave was so strong in Latin America that out of 20 countries in the continent, only two countries (Cuba and Haiti) remained authoritarian by 1995.

In 1991, when he published the book, he observed that signs of the commencement of a third reverse wave were already there, with nascent democracies like Haiti, Sudan returning to authoritarianism.

What are waves of Autocratisation?

Following Huntington’s lead, a number of political scientists have used these concepts to explain the ebbs and flows in the march of democracy.

For example, in March 2019, Anna Lührmann and Staffan I. Lindberg published a research article, ‘A third wave of autocratisation is here: what is new about it?’ in which they mapped the strengthening and weakening of democracies across the globe in over a century and ‘identified’ a distinct third wave of autocratisation that commenced in 1994.

They used V-Dem’s data on 182 countries from 1900 to the end of 2017 (or 18,031 country-years ) to demonstrate a third wave of autocratisation. They did this by identifying a total of 217 ‘autocritisation episodes’ in 109 countries from 1900 to 2017.

 The three waves of autocratisation as mapped by Anna Lührmann and Staffan I. Lindberg. (Source: research paper by Anna Lührmann and Staffan I. Lindberg)

The dates for the first two reverse waves presented by them are very similar to Huntington’s despite the conceptual and measurement differences. As per them, during the first reverse wave 1922–1942 a total of 32 autocratisation episodes took place; they identified 62 episodes in the second reverse wave between 1960–1975; during the ongoing ‘third wave’ of autocratisation they located 75 episodes starting from 1942 (until 2019).

“By 2017, the third wave of autocratisation dominated with the reversals outnumbering the countries making progress. This had not occurred since 1940,” they say in the paper.

“In sum, an important characteristic of the third wave of autocratisation is unprecedented: It mainly affects democracies – and not electoral autocracies as the earlier period – and this occurs while the global level of democracy is close to an all-time high. Hence, for now at least, the trend is manifest, but less dramatic than some claim,” they say.

Auotocratisation has become less dramatic

Political scientists like Micheal Coppedge note that a key contemporary pattern of autocratisation is the gradual concentration of power in the executive, apart from the more “classical” path of intensified repression.

Larry Diamond, another American political scientist sees the decade 2006 to 2016 as that of an incipient decline in democracy bringing in instability and stagnation among democracies. As per him, the decade brought an incremental decline of ‘grey-zone democracy’ (which defy easy classification as to whether or not they are democracies), deepened authoritarianism in the non-democracies, and caused decline in functioning and self-confidence of the established, rich democracies.

Although various observers including V-Dem, Freedom House, point to substantial autocratisation over the last decade in countries as diverse as the United States, India, Russia, Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, the democratic breakdowns have become less conspicuous. This, political scientists say, is because the contemporary autocrats have “mastered the art of subverting electoral standards without breaking their democratic façade completely.”

“Democratic breakdowns used to be rather sudden events – for instance, military coups – and relatively easy to identify empirically. Now, multi-party regimes slowly become less meaningful in practice making it increasingly difficult to pinpoint the end of democracy,” pinpoint Luhrmann and Lindberg in the article mentioned earlier.

“A gradual transition into electoral authoritarianism is more difficult to pinpoint than a clear violation of democratic standards, and provides fewer opportunities for domestic and international opposition. Electoral autocrats secure their competitive advantage through subtler tactics such as censoring and harassing the media, restricting civil society and political parties and undermining the autonomy of election management bodies. Aspiring autocrats learn from each other and are seemingly borrowing tactics perceived to be less risky than abolishing multi-party elections altogether,” they argue.

As per Luhrmann and Lindberg, the ‘erosion model’ has emerged as the prominent tactic in the third wave of autocratisation. The first and second waves, on the other hand, were dominated by blatant methods such as military coups, foreign invasions or abolishment of the key democratic institutions by a legally elected officer.

“Democratic erosion became the modal tactic during the third wave of autocratisation. Here, incumbents legally access power and then gradually, but substantially, undermine democratic norms without abolishing key democratic institutions. Such processes account for 70 per cent in the third reversal wave with prominent cases of such gradual deterioration in Hungary and Poland. Aspiring autocrats have clearly found a new set of tools to stay in power, and that news has spread,” write Luhrmann and Lindberg.

The ‘Third Wave’ accelerates

As per the latest V-DEM report, in 2020, the third wave of autocratisation has accelerated considerably. “…It now engulfs 25 countries and 34 per cent of the world population (2.6 billion). Over the last ten years the number of democratizing countries dropped by almost half to 16, hosting a mere 4 per cent of the global population,” says the report.

The Third Wave by Samuel P Huntington

A third wave of autocratization is here: what is new about it? by Anna Lührmann & Staffan I. Lindberg

Eroding Regimes: What, Where, and When? by Micheal Coppedge

Facing up to the democratic recession by Larry Diamond

Written by Atikh Rashid 

Source: Indian Express, 20/04/21

The importance of listening well

Conversations between governments and citizens and among citizens themselves are crucial in a democracy

A very instructive passage on the difference in norms of debate among ancient Indian scholars, on the one hand, and kings and their subjects, on the other is found in the ancient text, Milinda-pañha. It records an exchange between the Indo-Greek king Milinda (Menander) and the Buddhist monk Nāgasena.

When the king fails to understand a point made by Nāgasena, he asks, “Will you discuss with me again?”

Nāgasena says: “If your Majesty will discuss as a scholar (paṇḍita), yes; but if you discuss as a king, no.”

“How do scholars discuss?”

“When scholars talk a matter over with each other, there is a winding up, an unravelling; distinctions are made and counter-distinctions; one or other is convinced of error, and then acknowledges his mistake; and yet thereby they are not angered. Thus, do scholars, O king, discuss.”

“And how do kings discuss?”

“When a king, your Majesty, discusses a matter, and he advances a point, if anyone differs from him on that point, he is apt to fine him saying: ‘Inflict such and such a punishment upon that fellow!’ Thus, Your Majesty, do kings discuss.”

Debates in ancient India, the text seems to say, were tranquil, stress-free events in which participants did not hesitate to change their opinions where necessary, a far cry from royal (political) discussions in which disagreement with political rulers was frequently fraught with danger and winning a debate was almost, and sometimes literally, a matter of life and death.

Listening to citizens

In fact, democracy is the only form of government where rules of scholarly and political debate are supposed to coincide, both among citizens and between governments and citizens. Debates are meant to be conducted fearlessly and in the ensuing discussion, mistakes are acknowledged and opinions changed. There is no anger or sense of humiliation if and when one is shown to be in error. Public arguments are meant to compel citizens to openly acknowledge when proven wrong and force governments to admit their mistakes and change policies. But is any of this possible without proper listening? It is said that it is the privilege of powerful people to speak and the lot of the powerless to listen. The beauty of democracy is that it obliges the powerful to listen.

Of course, even democratic governments do not always listen to their electors. But as soon as their legitimacy dips below a certain threshold, as soon as their habit of turning a deaf ear to their people threatens their survival, they seem instinctively to know that it is absolutely crucial to start listening.

Something akin to this appears to have recently taken place in India. A month ago, the current government appeared not to be listening to anyone. And although it is arguable that only a few top corporates were eventually heard, it is equally true that after months of silence on the pleadings of the ‘people’ to do something about the economic slowdown, the government finally listened to someone. Can we not now take this as an opportunity to demand an extension of this courtesy to others? To the farmers, or the poor more generally? To, say, teachers, scholars, dancers, musicians, painters, town-planners on education and cultural policy? To Kashmiris, Dalits and the minorities? Should not the government listen to those who dissent from their policies?

It is pretty obvious to me that the answer to these questions must be in the affirmative. Good governments make a habit of listening to citizens. Indeed, in democracies, those temporarily in power need to develop the quality of being good listeners, sushrutas. What do I mean by this and how will this help?

Good listening

Allowing someone to speak is, of course, the first precondition of listening. Remaining quiet while she is speaking is another. But silence can still mean not listening. One may even pretend to listen, but remain disengaged or distracted. We all know that there exists what might be called ‘vacant-look listening’, when the interlocutor is physically present but mentally absent. Even sincere silence may just convey paternalistic assurance or be viewed as a strategy to allow the speaker to let off steam. It can betray biased judgment, moralising, or a readiness for instant advice. These are conversation-stoppers, roadblocks to listening. Good listening is attentive, uninterrupted, and genuinely responsive.

There is more to good listening. The Indian spiritual thinker, Jiddu Krishnamurti, put this point across well. He said: “There are two ways of listening: there is the mere listening to words, as you listen when you are not really interested, when you are not trying to fathom the depths of a problem; and there is the listening which catches the real significance of what is being said.” In short, good listening is empathetic and self-reflexive. It involves the capacity to step out of one’s own perspective, consider things from the other’s point of view — “climb into his skin and walk around in it”, as Harper Lee put it. Good listening enables an accurate understanding of what another person is thinking, feeling, experiencing, and meaning. None of this is possible if one remains self-centered, or believes that truth and goodness is on one side alone. Good listening further presupposes that others have much to teach us, especially those who, in important aspects, are different from us.

Such good listening is especially needed in times of deep disagreement when we forget that there are as many views as there are people and delude ourselves into believing that the world is divided in two: us and them. We believe that only two views exist, and the one held by us is correct. This particularly crude form of binary thinking exacerbates conflicts, and deepens polarisation. A polarised world contains prefect conditions for people to stop listening to each other. It is precisely at such times that we need encouragement to start listening, so that we can broaden the horizon of our experience, to break the horrible habit of dismissing differences. Listening helps reveal hidden commonalities that bolster cooperation. It dispels mistaken assumptions. It brings greater acceptance. In such deeply divided times, should it not be the duty of democratic governments to encourage people to de-escalate bitterness and discord and begin listening to one another?

Listening to many

The government has made a good beginning by listening to a few. Since good democratic governments strive to be inclusive, to win the trust of all, they must listen to the many, become bahushruta. Deliberative democrats often emphasise the importance of good arguments and wish the best argument to determine its decisions. But can we ever know ‘the best argument’ if we haven’t listened to all of them? Unless we ensure that, as far as possible, all points of view have indeed been taken into account? This inclusion is impossible without listening to voices that may have been repressed before, voices of the powerless and the vulnerable.

A continuing conversation between governments and citizens and among citizens themselves is crucial in a democracy. But good conversations presuppose good habits of listening. Governments must take seriously their duty to be not only sushruta, but bahushruta. Citizens too must take more responsibility for cultivating these public virtues.

Rajeev Bhargava is Professor, CSDS, Delhi

Source: The Hindu, 24/09/2019