Michael O’Sullivan – Senior Contributor – Forbes – January 2024
Happy new year to all readers, where the start to 2024 has been marked by numerous articles in policy journals and the press about the importance of 2024 from the point of view of politics and democracy, never mind that some of these newspapers have in recent years done their best to promote the vandalization of democracy and the rule of law.
Regular readers will know that the ‘democratic recession’ is a major preoccupation of mine. In this respect, I intend to leap, feet first, into the debate on democracy. In a week’s time L’Accord du Peuple (Calmann Levy) which I have co-authored with the great Pierre-Charles Pradier, will be released in France.
While the book should, I hope, resonate across Europe, our target is France and our aim is to find practical ways of bringing democracy closer to French people. One pragmatic idea is to deploy citizens assemblies at the regional or departmental level, where they have more relevance and where they are perhaps less of a threat to national politicians, who it seems have deplorably little trust in the opinions of French citizens.
Then on January 20th I have the privilege of a TEDx Talk on the topic of ‘restoring the credibility of democracy’. The Talk takes place in Stormont (Belfast), a symbolic location in so many respects for democracy, and where the ‘lights of democracy’ are currently ‘turned off’.
While it is remarkable that nearly half of the world’s population will vote in elections this year (Bangladesh today 7th January, Taiwan next week, and then in order of importance the US, UK (September now likely), India, South Africa, the EU parliament, Mexico, Indonesia and Russia (but we already know the result there)), there are two new elements that are not discussed enough.
One is the fact electoral outcomes in different countries are correlated – for example, what happens in Taiwan next week can impact the US presidential campaign and might even alter the ways in which elections in India and Indonesia are held.
In addition, there are now common global issues (inflation, climate damage) as well as two polarising wars that are colouring political debates in individual countries. The other factor that is common across many of the aforementioned countries is the tug of war between the sanctity of democracy and the belief in ‘strongmanism’. India, South Africa and Russia are in the latter camp. Yet, Indonesia is exceptional here in that Joko Widodo will leave the political stage (he was first elected in October 2014) with exceptionally high approval ratings and broad respect (though his son is involved in the race to succeed him).
There other factor worth emphasizing is the industrial-level interference in elections across the world. In this context, Richard Daley’s ‘vote-stuffing’ in favour of John Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign or even the Tammany Hall tactic of plying voters with alcohol and then leading them to the voting booth, appear quaint. It will be a busy year ahead for the team at ‘Fancy Bear’ the Russian hacking group alleged to have interfered in elections in the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, US and France amongst other countries.
There are signs that democracies are responding to this interference. For example, yet more evidence has been uncovered of Russia’s support for Marine Le Pen. In addition, the EU has deployed its Digital Services Act for the first time to launch
There other factor worth emphasizing is the industrial-level interference in elections across the world. In this context, Richard Daley’s ‘vote-stuffing’ in favour of John Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign or even the Tammany Hall tactic of plying voters with alcohol and then leading them to the voting booth, appear quaint. It will be a busy year ahead for the team at ‘Fancy Bear’ the Russian hacking group alleged to have interfered in elections in the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, US and France amongst other countries.
There are signs that democracies are responding to this interference. For example, yet more evidence has been uncovered of Russia’s support for Marine Le Pen. In addition, the EU has deployed its Digital Services Act for the first time to launch multiple investigations into X (Twitter) specifically that X has been spreading misinformation and diffusing hate content. Indeed, under Musk’s stewardship X has tried hard not to live up to the requirements of the Act – in May it disengaged from the EU Code of Practice on Disinformation and has scaled back resources for monitoring of content.
In the year ahead, I suspect that EU policymakers and national governments will take a tougher line on social media and will be more demanding on the social media giants’ willingness to police content.
However, there is a need for democratic governments to be even more muscular. In Europe two thorns in the democratic side are Hungary and Serbia. An EU leaders’ summit at the start of February, whose goal is to sign off aid to Ukraine, may be the final straw in terms of their patience with Hungary, a country that enables attacks on European democracy and the rule of law. There is now talk of suspending Hungary’s voting rights.
Another bad ‘democratic’ actor is Serbia, a potential EU member state. Serbia recently held general and local elections, the latter were marred by apparently very obvious vote rigging. This has triggered large protests in Belgrade against Alek Vucic’s government. Recently there occurred a brutal, sinister assault on the leader of the opposition leader Nikola Sandulovic. In my view, in the light of the ambivalence of Serbia’s relationship with Russia, the EU should suspend its passage towards EU membership.
In short, until the leaders of the democratic world adopt a more aggressive approach to those who attack democracy, they will continue to be mugged by autocrats. There is plenty they can do if they use cyber, social media and economic warfare to push back on attacks on democracy. One initiative that helped to bring down the Iron Curtain was the mass purchase and distribution of photocopiers into Eastern Europe by George Soros. This provided the mechanism by which ideas and information could travel around countries like Poland, Hungary and Romania. It is time for the West to think like this again.
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