Democracy faces many dangers
Politicians and institutions should strike a new deal, writes Shashi Tharoor
As the second decade of the 21st century comes to an end after a volatile year, the question inevitably arises as to what the next year (and the decade) may bring with it for the world. If 2019 was anything to go by, the coming decade may very well mark an inflection point in the global order and the forces that drive it. With the global community becoming increasingly fractured and insular, we may indeed be looking at a very different world in the next decade.
At an ideological level, in the last few years, we have seen the rise of far-right, populist and often times illiberal political forces across the global order, all the way from the US (once seen as the core anchor of the liberal order), extending itself to Central and South America, and then across the pond to Europe, where a cluster of conservative right-wing nationalist parties have found recent success. These include several that have risen to the status of principal opposition party in their countries, including in France and Austria, as well as the rise of the neo-Nazi Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, which many had viewed as the stronghold of the European liberal order.
At the same time, geopolitically, we are also dealing with a vacuum caused in the wake of the US’ abdication of its prominent role in world leadership under President Donald Trump and its preoccupations with its tussles with China, with the ramifications felt as far away as in Afghanistan, where the Taleban lies in wait, with the lethality and violence of its operations growing by the day, or in the torpedoing of US relations with Iran, which are now beyond acrimonious. Russia has reasserted itself in Syria, where it has helped preserve the once-collapsing government of Bashar Al Assad, while China is keeping its powder dry in Hong Kong but could strike at any time.
And at a humanitarian level, such events have, in turn, served as an untimely distraction from—and come at the cost of concerted and coordinated action against—ongoing global calamities like climate change. Whether it is in the US, which pulled out of the Paris Climate Accords, or in Germany, where the AfD has openly embraced climate change denial, or in Brazil where under President Jair Bolsanaro the Amazon is being wiped out at a rate like never before, or even in Australia, the European Parliament, and recently in the UK, the issue of climate change appears to have, in many quarters, been reduced to a contentious question.
These events have cast a spell of uncertainty over what the next decade will bring with it. We are after all living in a world marked by the paradox of both convergence and disruption. First are the forces of globalisation, irresistibly transforming the world, and the information technology revolution that brings to our breakfast tables and our living rooms, and increasingly our computers and our mobile phones, snippets of information and glimpses of events from every corner of the globe. These are the forces of convergence that have made the world one village, one market, one audience.
And then there are the forces of disruption that challenge this phenomenon—the Western backlash against globalisation and cosmopolitanism, the flourishing of fundamentalist terrorist groups, and the rise of populist ethno-nationalists in various countries, including ours. Democracies, once seen as the engine of globalisation, are now internally facing a crisis of confidence on the one hand and a growing preference for authoritarian alternatives, on the other. As the crisis manifests itself, it goes deeper, breaking up communities along the lines of traditionalist and elite. The British philosopher David Goodheart has written of the growing cleavage between ‘somewheres’ and ‘anywheres’—those localists rooted in a specific place, community, religion, identity and way of life, versus those cosmopolitans who are literally at home anywhere in the world, flitting comfortably across borders. Today, the ‘somewheres’ seem to have the upper hand.
The growing backlash against globalisation that has grown in the last decade has taken two forms. First is an economic backlash, driven by the inability of our systems to distribute the fruits of globalisation and in turn a deepening disparity between winners and losers—the poor and the unemployed in Western countries, who have seen ‘their’ jobs exported to Shanghai and Shenzhen, began to feel that they had no stake in the globalised system. They condemned the political establishment for pursuing policies that outsource their jobs and their futures to faraway lands like China and India. And they demanded a return to the old economic order, and thus to the fading promise of the hallowed ‘American Dream’, that each new generation would earn more and live better than the last.
In turn, this also inspired an attack against cultural globalisation—encompassing cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism and secularism—driven by those who seek the comforts of traditional ethnic, religious, or national identity. In his recent book
former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper borrows Goodheart’s distinction to typify the present problem as a clash between the two groups, where the ‘anywheres’ have failed to understand the genuine concerns of the ‘somewheres’, which has led to the larger faultlines within political ideologies, the loss of confidence in democracies and the larger backlash against globalisation.
When I contemplate the new world disorder and think of ways to restore global calm, my metaphor is that of the World Wide Web. The old binaries of East and West, and even of North and South, have given way to a networked world very much like the Internet, one in which we are all connected, with some links overlapping and others not. The new networked world should welcome every nation, every worldview and every voice, and still manage to find a way to look beyond our differences. Relationships are contingent and overlap with others; friends and allies in one cause might be irrelevant to another (or even on opposite sides). The networked world is a more fluid place than the old world order was. Countries use such networks to promote common interests, to manage common issues rather than impose outcomes, and provide a common response to the challenges and opportunities they face.
If we manage to build such a blueprint, if our political forces and institutions can work to offer a new leadership within our communities and offer an unwavering commitment to a set of values that seek to bridge our divisions, the next decade may yet heal the world, and even finally bring a solution to the painful divisions in our fractured polity. But if our ruling establishment continues its heedless rush into belligerent bigotry and enforces it with the strong arm of the law, then all bets are off. In India, and in the world of Trump and Johnson, the worst may be yet to come.
If our political forces and institutions can work to offer a new leadership within our communities and offer an unwavering commitment to a set of values that seek to bridge our divisions, the next decade may yet heal the world.