The state of democracy, before and during COVID-19

“We’re facing what has been called this global democratic recession,” says Associate Professor Tom Daly, Deputy Director of the Melbourne School of Government at the University of Melbourne and Associate Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law at the University of Edinburgh.

“What we had for decades was – especially from the mid-1970s, was an overwhelming trend – it wasn’t the universal trend, but an overwhelming trend towards democracy becoming more widespread, globally,” he says.

“But if you look at every major democracy assessment organisation, they all started to register declines from about 2005 onwards. We’re not dealing with the old fashioned sort of issues like military coup d’état, we’re looking at a deterioration of democracy that happens step by step, some people call it death by a thousand cuts.”

Associate Professor Daly explains that the trend in recent years is a narrative that democracies are inefficient, that they’re incapable of producing public goods like prosperity, stability and security.

But he says that’s simply not true. “It’s not borne out by the evidence. In fact, when you look at the COVID response, for example, some democracies have done well, others have not done well. Some authoritarian regimes have done well, others have not done well.”

“I think one of the most positive signs for me, in Australia, has been it’s shown that we can innovate,” Associate Professor Daly says.

“The National Cabinet is an absolute case in point. No other federation came up with this idea of such an effective mechanism to cut across what is a very hyperpolarised political system to bring together executives of different party colours and achieve consensus and robust and swift decision-making.”

“I think the lesson from the pandemic is, if we can do it with the National Cabinet, we can do it in other areas too. Really reinvigorating citizen participation in governance, not just at the federal level, but possibly at the state level, at the local level too.”

Episode recorded: July 22, 2020.

Interviewer: Steve Grimwade.

Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis.

Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath.

Banner: Getty Images

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