Pandemic’s threat to democracy
The coronavirus has the US, Latin America, India and Europe firmly in its grip. The number of cases in the US has surpassed 9 million, and over 235,000 people have died. How to confront the pandemic has exposed a faultline that is especially stark in Western liberal democracies.
The issue underlying the controversy over COVID-19 measures is about weighing up the relative status of two public goods: Personal freedom and public well-being.
Western democracies rely on civil liberties, none more so than the US, where the right to the pursuit of happiness is enshrined in its Declaration of Independence. Many measures to combat the virus infringe on those civil liberties. This is where the quest for freedom may conflict with a government’s duty to protect public safety and public health. COVID-19 and the measures to fight it have also come at great expense to the global economy, from $11 trillion to $28 trillion depending on the source. Unemployment has soared, with the economically weakest hit the hardest. Low paid, high contact service sector jobs had to go first. Bloomberg estimates that the pandemic has so far cost more than 174 million jobs in the travel and tourism sector worldwide. New lockdowns will raise these numbers. Other frontline staff in supermarkets and health care may not lose their jobs, but they are at heightened risk of infection. This raises the question of how government will take care of the socially weak.
True, there have been generous support packages, but the question remains how long they can continue. Here, too, there is a political divide; the right argues for fiscal prudence and the left for social cohesion, whatever the cost. Nowhere is that more evident than in the tough negotiations about a further rescue package in the US. How government measures are accepted by the public essentially boils down to the issue of trust in whether agovernment has the interests of all at heart. In Europe, people were broadly understanding during the first lockdown. They are more weary now, which is made worse by the fact that opposition parties now refuse to stand shoulder to shoulder with governments, as they did in March.
The broader perspective is that COVID-19 poses a challenge to liberal democracies the world over. A 2020 Freedom House report on democracy under lockdown argues that COVID-19 precipitated a crisis resulting in the conditions for democracy and human rights worsening in 80 countries. COVID-19 poses a challenge to the civil liberties that are the cornerstone of any democracy. To make matters worse, the economically weak and marginalized groups suffer more than the affluent, which exacerbates the social divide. It is a home truth that democracies work best when the difference between rich and poor is small and the middle class is strong. If anything, COVID-19 should serve as a rallying cry to take care of the weak, and of democracy, because we are all in this together.
Cornelia Meyer is a Ph.D.-level economist with 30 years of experience in investment banking and industry. She is chairperson and CEO of business consultancy Meyer Resources.