“Democracy is under threat” – The pandemic and the state of democracy

Governments around the globe are increasingly leaning towards autocratic modes of governance and rhetoric. In an open letter, signed by more than 500 former world leaders and Nobel price winners, along with a number of organizations and institutions, the authors at IDEA, an intergovernmental organization for the promotion of democracy, claim that non-democratic countries are using the pandemic to “silence critics and tighten their political grip.” Even more worrisome may be the use of emergency powers of some democratically elected governments to sidestep constitutional constraints at a time where “the economic lockdowns ravage the very fabric of societies everywhere.”

Notable signatories are U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla); actor Richard Gere; Nobel Prize in literature winner Wole Soyinka; and former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil.

Examples of non-democratic power grasps include Hungary’s Prime Minister Victor Orban’s new emergency powers. Despite the end to the state of emergency in Hungary, critics have called the suspension of the law an “optical illusion”. A study published by the London School of Economics warned that “there are good reasons to believe that the existing trend towards authoritarian government will continue in the post-virus world.”