Democracy is in trouble all over the world, not least in its homeland of western Europe and the United States. The annual tally of Freedom House, the American research foundation, for the last 15 years has recorded a decline in democracies worldwide. There is, furthermore, democratic backsliding — a pullback from the core principles of democracy.
This is usually identified in developing countries with fragile political institutions and endemic corruption. However, the most dramatic example was the storming of the Capitol in Washington, DC, in January 2021, challenging a Presidential election result with violence.
While Donald Trump is rightly regarded as a big threat to American democracy, he is in fact only the most visible sign of a disturbing trend — the rise of extreme conservatism in the Republican Party. Political analysts have identified the growing influence in the party of the populist wing against the traditional intellectual elite.
Support for the suffering and the vulnerable was provided not only by professional health workers but person to person
The most glaring issue is the white supremacist element in the Trump’ heartland, expressed in anti-immigrant rhetoric. Other issues in question are gun control and climate change denial.
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With democracy under violent assault in the Russian invasion of Ukraine and at risk of erosion in its American homeland, has it a future?
Modern democracy had its beginnings in the bloody upheaval of the French Revolution, with the rallying cry of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Subsequent struggles all over Europe did indeed deliver liberty and political equality to all, with women in the rearguard.
Fraternity, however, as in care for the common good can scarcely be claimed for societies where a significant cohort of the population do not enjoy basic human rights — work, housing, healthcare.
A revival of the sense of the common good is what Pope Francis addressed in his social encyclical Fratelli tutti, written during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. He suggests tangible ways by which those who aspire to a more just world can advance their ideals — in their ordinary relationships; in social life; and in politics.
Concern for the common good is love in action, the Pope believes.
A powerful testimony to this insight was given by Yoriko Yasukawa, one-time UN regional director for Asia and the Pacific. In the statement he made on his retirement he said: “After my 35 years of work with the United Nations ... I have often said that the work of the United Nations at its heart is about love.”
During the UN Millennium Goal programme, greater advances in living standards were achieved than ever before in history.
In Ireland and elsewhere the pandemic brought out a compassionate response which gave witness to democracy in action. Support for the suffering and the vulnerable was provided not only by professional health workers but person to person. At public policy level, the two-tier health system was suspended, and classic economic policy adapted to provide support for workers and employers.
The concept of ‘the greatness of Russia’ has a disturbing echo of ‘make America great again’. Only democracy animated by kindness can silence that echo
This swerve in public policy took place against a background of increasing understanding in western culture of compassion, in development aid, in social policy and in business management.
The difficulties faced during the pandemic are now succeeded by disruption of the economy caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Gas and oil shortages pose a challenge for Governments to develop policies in the spirit of equality of true democracy.
In Russia itself Ukraine invasion signals the demise of the fragile democracy of the post-Soviet era. It did not survive the autocratic assault of Vladimir Putin. In such a regime there is still nevertheless room for the concept of love in the context of peacemaking and reconciliation.
What stands in the way is a deep sense of Russian patriotism. The political scientist Anatol Lieven, writing of the siloviki, the small group of Putin’s immediate advisers, explains: “greedy and cynical they may be-but they are not cynical about the idea of Russian greatness”. Such atavistic instincts outweigh any considerations of consequences, or of loss and gain.
Mikhail Shishkin, the Swiss/Russian winner of the Russian Booker Prize, suggests that, just as the German people had to reinvent themselves after Nazi-ism, so too the Russian people will have to face up to the noxious ideologies of Stalin and Putin.
In the case of Germany, conversion only happened after crushing military defeat. The same might be necessary to restore fraternal relations between Russia and Ukraine. It is a chilling analysis.
The concept of “the greatness of Russia” has a disturbing echo of “make America great again”. Only democracy animated by kindness can silence that echo.
There is a paradox in considering the role of a constitutional monarch with an ethic of service, as exemplified by the late Queen Elizabeth II. The queen is dead, long live the king filters into the national psyche a sense of communal belonging absent from the political hustings.
Carmel Heaney is a former diplomat and a freelance writer