The virus and democracy

The Covid-19 pandemic has obviously taught medical sciences several lessons, but it has also had a profound unsettling impact on a range of social sciences. For example, the spread of this disease and the way different societies have dealt with it has left political theory deeply puzzled. More pertinently, why have Eastern democracies, such as South Korea or Taiwan, done a much better job in containing this pandemic than Western democracies, such as France or the US?

The old distinction between dictatorship and democracy is now unworkable because China, with its huge economic success, has emerged as a major theoretical disruptor. The more recent dichotomy separating liberal and illiberal democracies doesn’t take us far either. South Korea, Taiwan or Japan are hardly illiberal, yet they have a much better report card when it comes to handling Covid-19 than democracies in West Europe and the US.

But why? How can one thread this needle?

In the East, the Covid-19 surge was met more effectively because people abided by state regulations on physical distancing and mask wearing more readily than, say, in France or the

UK. West Europe, including the

US, instead, saw significant resistance to such restrictions and hence the pandemic kept growing there. Even today, there are instances of protestors, in very large numbers, who believe these restrictions are undemocratic invasions of their right to privacy.

Further, in South Korea, Singapore, Japan or Taiwan, for example, the population also willingly submitted to mass testing and contact tracing. Japan does not have legal rights to enforce lockdowns or contact tracing; even so, the state effectively implemented both. Obviously, this would entail a heightened degree of state surveillance, but that did not seem to matter much in these democracies.

In Western democracies, from Spain to the US, the situation has been quite different. Obviously, societies that have not taken kindly to relatively non-invasive advisories, such as social distancing and mask wearing, will find contact tracing very difficult. No surprise then that in the West both mass testing and contact tracing have fared badly. They were popularly captioned, in several quarters, as edicts of a ‘big brother’ state.

The European Union Trade Commissioner for Internal Market voiced this fear when he said that fighting Covid-19 is fine but “we will not compromise on our values and privacy requirements”. On the other hand, democracies of the East, from Japan to Singapore, have done very well. Many had learnt from the earlier Sars breakout, but neither then nor now have they faced popular opposition to the restrictions the state imposed to fight the pandemics. It would also be risky to take the distinction between liberal and illiberal democracies as mutually exclusive categories. At the weed level, there is so much of one in the other. It really boils down to the extent of illiberalism and not the complete lack of liberalism. For instance, the US president enjoys vast powers under the National Emergencies Act; in France too, Article 16 of their constitution gives the president ‘exceptional powers’ in times of crisis.

Eastern democracies are different from such liberal democracies, but they are not illiberal. They can best be characterised by the term ‘deontic’. ‘Deontic’ is appropriate because it stands for obligation and binding commitment. In ‘deontic’ democracies, it is not the liberty of the individual but duties of the state that occupies the pride of place. In a deontic democracy, the state bears the responsibility for a society’s wellbeing.

The slide rule should also apply when we analyse why some Eastern democracies have done better than Western democracies in effecting mass mask wearing and contact tracing. This observation becomes theoretically tantalising as we find instances of acquiescence and defiance, combining in different amounts, in all democracies. East or West, none of these democracies under consideration is, however, a sham front of totalitarian rule.

The principal reason why such democracies are more deontic than liberal is because they emerged after long subjugation under colonial rule. This made the fight for independence the major thrust of their long-drawn mobilisations. We can see this aspect reflected in the constitutions of a number of deontic democracies from India, to South Korea, to Singapore. The first order of business here was to unite as a people and throw out the foreign oppressor.

Unlike a liberal democracy, in this case, the newly emergent state required muscle and sinew which only positive laws can build. This state has obligations to its ‘people’, the authentic sons of the soil. For example, the constitution of South Korea says it is the state’s duty to make sure that people realise their full development and ‘elevate’ their quality of life. How different this is from Jefferson’s vision of a liberal state which is all bare bones with no meat on them.

In none of these Eastern, deontic democracies, has there been any significant show of protest against the Covid-19 induced measures. As the state, first and foremost, is supposed to look out for what is best for its people, what is a little privacy invasion between friends? The state is also expected to know more than individual citizens. It is the repository of greater knowledge garnered from experts and with those who have experience in the field.

At the end of the day, what hurts Western sensitivities most is that Eastern deontic democracies handled the pandemic way better than they did. Europe and America are so accustomed to being judged as superior that the systematic setbacks they encountered in pandemic control was a rather bitter pill for them to swallow.