Democracy, authoritarianism and crises

[Celerity]

The coronavirus crisis may be a natural disaster but, Sheri Berman writes, how governments are responding is a product of their politics.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/democracy-authoritarianism-and-crises

An old adage has it that crises don’t make a person, but rather reveal what s/he is made of. The same applies to political systems: during times of crisis, their underlying strengths and weaknesses are laid bare. When the coronavirus crisis began, there was much discussion of how it revealed the underlying weaknesses of Chinese authoritarianism. Faulty bottom-up and top-down information flows in China hindered an early understanding of the nature and depth of the crisis. Local officials in Wuhan prioritised maintaining favour with party elites over protecting the health and wellbeing of their citizens, contributing to cover-ups which sent the catastrophe ‘careening outward’. The Beijing regime’s bureaucratic nature and reliance on ‘performance legitimacy’—in return for giving up their freedom, citizens are promised effective government—created incentives for it to suppress, rather than deal openly with, bad news and difficult challenges.

That such flawed government decision-making and elite infighting helped turn Iran into the next epicentre of the pandemic reinforced a narrative of authoritarian weakness in the face of crisis. But as the pandemic spread, more than the frailties of authoritarian regimes were unveiled. In theory, inherent features of democracy—a free press and information flows, politicians, parties and governments responsive to citizens and trusted by them, officials and bureaucrats appointed on the basis of merit rather than connections—should provide advantages in dealing with crises. But the coronavirus has made clear how divorced the theory and practice of democracy have, in some cases, become.

Divergent paths

Over the past years, democratic countries have followed widely divergent paths. In some, democracy has remained resilient. Such countries have been able to exploit democracy’s inherent strengths in responding to the crisis. In others, democratic norms and institutions have degraded to the point where democracy’s theoretical strengths are nowhere in evidence. In the former category, for example, are the Nordic countries. Experts consistently rate these countries’ democracies as strong, while their citizens’ satisfaction with democracy and levels of social trust remain very high. The responses of the region’s governments and societies to the crisis clearly reflect these features.

In Denmark, the minority social-democrat government rapidly negotiated a crisis package with trade unions, employer organisations and other political parties, which paired a ‘domestic lockdown’ to limit the spread of the virus with radical measures to protect citizens and businesses from the worst effects of the downturn inevitably accompanying it. Among these measures are promises to cover at least 75 per cent of the salaries of company employees who would otherwise be fired and loans, tax delays and other help for businesses that keep workers on the rolls.

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