At the end of the Cold War in 1991, it looked as though democracy had conquered the world. The 1990’s brought a wave of new nations throwing off regimes and authoritarianism and moving toward having free elections. Particularly across Africa and Latin America, genuinely free elections also led to a wave of pro-globalization, free-enterprise leaders from Chile to Liberia. But the 2000’s not only brought the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attack; it also bought great wealth disparity, areas within countries that missed out on the benefits of globalization, new ease of travel and migration, and the birth of social media. While many factors have led to the striking decline in democracy and the chaos we are seeing from Hong Kong to Ukraine to Washington D.C; there are four major issues that keep cropping up around the world as factors that fuel this phase of anti-democratic and anti-globalization movements.
1) The Country-City Divide
It was surprising when peaceful, and booming Thailand suddenly had a coup and a revolution. The 1990’s and 2000’s had been very good to Thailand. Tourism was booming, Thailand provided the bulk of China’s rice, and the nation’s infrastructure was growing at an astounding rate. Thailand had quickly joined the globalization train and Bangkok and the South of the nation was economically booming. Prime Minister Thaskin Shinawatra had ushered in a series of economic reforms that had brought large economic gains to Thailand’s poor Northeast, but which was also a time when much of the rest of the nation saw far greater growth. A coup occurred in September of 2006. Thaskin’s younger sister Yingluck was deposed as Prime Minister in May of 2014. While there were many issues that led to the instability of these years, the rural-urban divide was very clear in the conflict. Today the rural-urban divide is growing in the United States, France, Britain, China, Austria, Hungary and many other nations.
Globalization rewards cities and the few rural areas that have strong global connectivity, solid infrastructure, a well-educated populace, and experience dealing with immigrants and multiple-ethnic groups. Many rural areas throughout the world do not fit that bill. Modernization and wealth passes them by. Quite often they see their small-towns dry up as the younger generations feel to the cities where there are greater opportunities for jobs and a high salary. Rural communities are often more isolated and homogeneous which means they tend to have more traditional values. Those values often get over-turned by the influence of global media, international migration, new religions and secularism, and new expectations of openness and inclusivity.
The result is rural areas rejecting globalization, turning toward nationalist movements, and looking for political figures and parties that promise quick solutions to a problem that cannot be solved quickly. Lack of education, experience encountering multiple ethnicities and economic hardship encourage a radical inward turn that political parties can exploit.
2) Wealth Inequality
The second major factor driving democracy’s retreat is wealth inequality. The massive influx of wealth that globalization has unleashed has corrupted many governments and created a corporate class that dominates their respective countries–usually by-passing the established legal systems. Periods of globalization always lift overall living standards but create great wealth-disparities. These eventually reach a tipping point, as they did in the United States during the Roaring 20’s and the Great Depression. A failure to re-balance the economies tends to lead toward fascism or the complete overthrow of the upper-ruling class.
We now live in a world where the wealthy in Lagos, Manila, and Rio De Janeiro have more in common with each other than the do their own countrymen. A class of people has arisen that can move their assets around, buy properties in multiple countries, get the best education for their children, and buy immense political influence in order to live above the law in their respective countries. The number of billionaires in places like India, Russia and Nigeria is sky-rocketing. Housing costs in places as traditionally poor as Angola can be as bad as in major American or Japanese cities. What this has done is erode the middle class in many nations around the world. Democracy is particularly vulnerable to collapsing when there is no middle-class. Housing, educational, and medical costs are increasingly out of the reach of the average person in even a wealthy nation. The Scandinavian countries and Switzerland are exceptions; but those countries have more pro-actively set policies in place to protect the Middle Class and prevent great wealth-disparity. We should expect to see more reactionary Nationalistic movements in some places (where they will ultimately fail in bringing any economic transformation), or an increase in government spending to balance out the extreme disparity. As occurred in the United States after World War II, the road back to a Middle Class will most likely involve great investments in infrastructure, education, and property management.
3) Immigration
Many nations now have political parties that are anti-immigrant. On a recent visit to Peru, the frustration with Venezuelans escaping into their country was palpable. Nations like Germany, Lebanon, Italy, and the UK have been inundated with refugees, migrants, and foreigners looking for jobs. In some cases, like in the United States and Canada, there is no real cause for concern. These countries actually need a large number of foreigners settling within their borders. Other countries like the U.K., have probably let far too many immigrants in, in relation to their size. The dislocation that their population feels–particularly in the rural areas is justifiable. But the most interesting and discouraging fact is that countries and regions that have the least immigrants are often the hot-beds of racism, prejudice, and xenophobic movements. Many homogeneous parts of the United States, Poland, and Hungary are examples of places where hatred of foreigners is very strong even though barely any foreigners live in those communities. The more homogeneous the territory, the more they tend to panic about being “overtaken” by immigrants. Nevertheless, that makes these people vulnerable to politicians and movements that prioritize turning globalization and open-border policies. The tragedy is that within those countries, the more likely a region is to embrace multi-ethnic community, the more likely it will have a dynamic economy.
4) Social Media
Finally, the advent of social media has made governing more difficult. Today the actions of a politician can be recorded and distributed immediately all over the world. There is little time for reflecting or nuance. Twitter and Facebook have not only shortened people’s attention spans, but made discussion on important global issues reduced to angry soundbites.
Social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter, have become great instruments for demonizing people, and promoting conspiracy theories to mobilize rage against others. “Fake News” is not only a phenomenon in the United States, it is now a global problem. India has seen a wave of very dangerous messages distributed to its voting population through Facebook. The Rohyinga people in Myanmar are victims of terrible rumors that lead to them being hunted down like animals by the Buddhist majority. And Russia plants local-looking Facebook news stories throughout Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and the United States. They look like they are written by citizens of those countries, but are in fact written from troll farms in Russia that know how to use the vernacular and hot-button issues to so division.
Every country, like Thailand, has its complexities and particular problems that have led to this unstable moment. Democracies are always flawed, and are always on a spectrum with some being quite transparent (Sweden), while others are controlled in a very centralized way (Japan), while others are dominated by corporate interests (The United States), and still others are barely hanging on (Liberia). Some are really crime syndicates masquerading as democracies Russia). The spectrum always exists, but these 4 factors are in danger of crippling Democracy unless the people themselves demand nuanced correctives that bring both peace and prosperity. Democracy can never be taken for granted; as Churchill paraphrased when he said, “it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms.” We may be learning this lesson the hard-way.