How authoritarian regimes threaten democracies

War in Ukraine, glob­al warm­ing, the Cov­id-19 pan­dem­ic… Recent events are mak­ing demo­crat­ic regimes more fra­gile. As such, they are cur­rently in a “per­il­ous situ­ation”, accord­ing to Domi­n­ique Reyn­ié, Dir­ect­or Gen­er­al of the Found­a­tion for Polit­ic­al Innov­a­tion, which con­duc­ted a sur­vey on demo­cracy in 55 coun­tries. Des­pite a clear attach­ment of cit­izens to this mod­el, “demo­crat­ic states must with­stand intern­al crises and del­ic­ate change that can destabil­ise their found­a­tions”, explains the polit­ic­al scientist.

You have stud­ied demo­cracy in 55 coun­tries. How would you define this regime? 

Demo­cracy is a sys­tem based on a prin­ciple and a mech­an­ism. The prin­ciple is pop­u­lar sov­er­eignty, and the mech­an­ism is the appoint­ment of gov­ernors by the gov­erned. In the his­tory of demo­cracy there are two main lines of thought. The first leads to the view that the only full demo­cracy is assembly demo­cracy, where the people meet, delib­er­ate, and decide without a rep­res­ent­at­ive. The second is rep­res­ent­at­ive gov­ern­ment, elec­ted through com­pet­it­ive elec­tions, which is what we exper­i­ence today in lib­er­al democracies. 

There are strong polit­ic­al issues at stake in the way demo­cracy is defined and the way the term is appro­pri­ated. China describes itself as a “social­ist demo­cracy”, for what purpose? 

Like almost all notions used in polit­ics, defin­i­tions are riddled with con­flicts of inter­pret­a­tion. China speaks of a social­ist or Chinese way of demo­cracy, which is an altern­at­ive concept, because there is a glob­al battle to see which power can lead the world and from which mod­el. Like the “social­ist demo­cra­cies” in the past, it is a way of say­ing that there is anoth­er form than West­ern – and more par­tic­u­larly, Amer­ic­an – demo­cracy and there­fore a way of chal­len­ging the world order. 

Has the notion of demo­cracy evolved over the course of his­tory? Are we now wit­ness­ing new attempts to redefine democracy? 

Demo­cracy has nev­er stopped evolving, even as a rep­res­ent­at­ive gov­ern­ment, wheth­er it be through the exten­sion of the right to vote, the mul­ti­plic­a­tion of elec­tions… Today, we can see sev­er­al pos­sible ele­ments of evol­u­tion. Firstly, the shift from our lib­er­al plur­al­ist regimes to “illiber­al” regimes, such as that of Vikt­or Orbán in Hun­gary. Illiber­al­ism is a demo­cracy with elec­tions, but without respect for the rule of law (ques­tion­ing the inde­pend­ence of judges and the media, vot­ing sys­tem favour­ing the re-elec­tion of incum­bents, etc.). 

Nowadays, there is also the dis­course of a “bey­ond demo­cracy” based on the imper­at­ive to pre­serve the envir­on­ment. Since cit­izens are sus­pec­ted of vot­ing as con­sumers, it is ima­gined that elect­or­al demo­cracy will be aban­doned and replaced, for example, by a sys­tem of draw­ing lots. 

A third ele­ment of evol­u­tion may be a tech­no­phile approach. At the begin­ning of the twenty-first cen­tury, digit­al­isa­tion rekindled the hope of a pos­sible return to dir­ect demo­cracy, and the birth of the web ignited the dream of inter­net vot­ing. It is less pre­val­ent today because oth­er issues are now at stake: hack­ing, espi­on­age, inequal­it­ies, vote buy­ing, pres­sure on voters’ homes…

In your study, you men­tion the cur­rent “per­il­ous” situ­ation of demo­cra­cies. What is the state of the regime in the world today? Is the mod­el really being called into ques­tion in an unpre­ced­en­ted way, even with­in demo­crat­ic countries? 

Demo­cracy is a fra­gile regime by its very nature. Cohe­sion requires the sup­port or con­sent of the gov­erned. We are wit­ness­ing his­tor­ic phases of social trans­form­a­tion. Since Chin­a’s entry into the WTO, glob­al­isa­tion has provided emer­ging powers with con­sid­er­able resources. We must there­fore deal with coun­tries that are not demo­cra­cies, which is not new but that are pros­per­ous, which is unpre­ced­en­ted. Whilst the USSR was not pros­per­ous, China is a total­it­ari­an coun­try cap­able of rap­id enrich­ment, and of a cre­at­ive intel­li­gence that no longer needs to be demon­strated. We are there­fore in a dif­fer­ent his­tor­ic­al phase, where demo­cra­cies must com­pete with non-demo­crat­ic sys­tems that are just as good or even bet­ter – depend­ing on the comparison. 

We must deal with coun­tries that are not demo­cra­cies, which is not new, but that are pros­per­ous, which is unheard of.

Fur­ther­more, demo­cra­cies face mul­tiple intern­al crises. These regimes are exposed to nat­ur­al but com­plic­ated migrat­ory move­ments, involving cul­tur­al upheavals that can destabil­ise them. These states remain pros­per­ous, but they are facing com­plex changes. Pop­u­la­tions have aged, social sys­tems are becom­ing more expens­ive. The para­met­ers of some sys­tems, such as pen­sions, are being changed at the risk of pro­vok­ing major protests.

Des­pite these issues that are com­mon to lib­er­al demo­cra­cies, the coun­tries of north­ern Europe seem to stand out because of the pos­it­ive per­cep­tion of their sys­tems and insti­tu­tions. Can you explain this?

North­ern demo­cra­cies are more con­sen­su­al: they spend less and hold their elites more account­able. They also have less prom­ising and there­fore few­er dis­ap­point­ing sys­tems, based on par­lia­ment­ary coali­tions, and not around a lead­er elec­ted by dir­ect uni­ver­sal suf­frage, which is sup­posed to solve many of our prob­lems. These are some of the ele­ments of under­stand­ing the dif­fer­ences. One could also men­tion oth­er eco­nom­ic or cul­tur­al aspects, i.e. explan­a­tions that involve Prot­est­ant­ism or the place of trade, for example.

Author­it­ari­an coun­tries are act­ively try­ing to over­throw demo­crat­ic regimes. This is not new, but tech­no­logy plays an import­ant role today. In what way and with what tools? 

These non-demo­crat­ic coun­tries, enriched by glob­al­isa­tion, are much more power­ful, and more con­fid­ent. They clearly aim to redis­trib­ute power on a glob­al scale to the bene­fit of emer­ging coun­tries, which are gen­er­ally author­it­ari­an. The action is car­ried out through industry and trade, but also by influ­en­cing the soci­et­ies them­selves. Moreover, rela­tions are asym­met­ric­al, since the Rus­si­an and Chinese sys­tems are closed. Con­versely, we are open soci­et­ies, and there­fore easi­er to pen­et­rate: the Rus­si­ans, for example, are try­ing to influ­ence vari­ous elec­tions around the world. As for the mobile applic­a­tion Tik­Tok, it is clearly a Chinese tool for pen­et­rat­ing the West­ern pub­lic space. Tech­no­logy can thus inject divi­sion, chaos, and vari­ous move­ments, as well as bring up data, and extract large masses of inform­a­tion from it.

Will the war in Ukraine change the per­cep­tion of demo­cracy much? 

In the face of Rus­si­an aggres­sion, we could have had a col­lapse of demo­cra­cies refus­ing to lose gas and oil. Yet, this was not the case. Demo­cra­cies proved more resi­li­ent than we thought: they were able to coordin­ate, to face up to the situ­ation and to turn around. NATO is expand­ing. Indeed, there is now a clear demo­crat­isa­tion pro­cess in Belarus and Ukraine. Rus­sia is also show­ing this evol­u­tion, with young Rus­si­ans who are gradu­ates and who aspire to more plur­al­ism, a freer press, hon­est elec­tions… This is what, I think, has caused Putin to be alarmed, to the point of want­ing to break up this eman­cip­ated neigh­bour, com­mit­ted to the West­ern path of lib­er­al demo­cracy and NATO.

How do you see demo­cracy evolving? What are the issues that could cause demo­crat­ic sys­tems to fal­ter in the future? 

My thes­is is that demo­crat­ic regimes would not with­stand a sus­tained exper­i­ence of mater­i­al­ist regres­sion. Demo­cracy has been estab­lished in peri­ods of pro­gress. If the pro­cess is par­tially reversed, with more expens­ive edu­ca­tion and health care, later retire­ment, etc., I don’t know how demo­cracy will fare. Does this mean that we have mourned the passing of an era of plenty? It is not certain. 

Demo­crat­ic regimes would not with­stand a last­ing exper­i­ment in mater­i­al­ist regression.

Anoth­er issue is the cli­mate ques­tion. Giv­en what is at stake, the pub­lic policies announced are not there for five years but de facto forever. I don’t see how demo­cra­cies will man­age to get people to accept a form of etern­al degrowth. How can we ask cit­izens to elect­or­ally rat­i­fy the aban­don­ment of cer­tain sub­stan­tial bene­fits, without ever being able to veri­fy the res­ults of their efforts or sac­ri­fices? Demo­cracy needs short or medi­um-term per­form­ance. At present, attempts are being made to explain that these can no longer be guar­an­teed: this is the appear­ance of a major sys­tem­ic prob­lem that threatens the sur­viv­al of the demo­crat­ic sys­tem, which is based on the con­sent of the governed.

Interview by Sirine Azouaoui

Pour aller plus loin :

« Liber­tés : L’épreuve du siècle – Une enquête planétaire sur la démo­cratie dans 55 pays », Parue en jan­vi­er 2022, dispon­ible sur le site https://​www​.fond​a​pol​.org/​e​t​u​d​e​/​l​i​b​e​r​t​e​s​-​l​e​p​r​e​u​v​e​-​d​u​-​s​i​ecle/