DEM-DEC Research Update Editorial: The UK Elections and the Future of Democracy

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Latest Global Research Update Just Issued

The latest Global Research Update on the global platform Democratic Decay & Renewal (DEM-DEC), covering November and December 2019, is now available here.  In each Update I write an editorial on key themes to help users to navigate the Update, and to provide some limited commentary, especially on very recent research.

1    The UK has Voted: What does it Mean for Democracy?

On 12 December the UK voted in what has rightly been viewed as a pivotal election that will shape the UK for a generation. The result confirms that Brexit, in some form, will happen. It also sets the Scottish and Westminster governments on a collision course regarding the holding of a second Scottish independence referendum – how many more constitutional crises can the UK take? More broadly, the elections might be viewed as a case-study for a variety of ills affecting democracies worldwide, including the polarisation and fragmentation of the party system, the intensifying issue of ‘fake news’ in election campaigns, resurgent nationalism, and winner-takes-all politics. Regarding the latter, it is striking that despite the landslide in terms of seats won, as many eligible voters simply didn’t vote (just over 30%) as voted for the Conservatives (again, some 30%). That should, ideally, engender some humility in how the new government approaches its work, but that remains to be seen.

Lawyers will long mull over other aspects of the period before the UK elections and the contents of the parties’ manifestos. Considering the road that other states have travelled away from recognisable liberal democracy, concerns remain as to whether the new ‘Johnson era’ augurs an open season on institutions. Of course, the attempt at prorogation of Parliament before the election still looms large, but we also see in the Conservative manifesto the promise to establish, in the government’s first year, a Constitution, Democracy & Rights Commission to review everything from the prerogative to the courts, and just a few days after the election, Johnson’s renewed attacks on the BBC – suggesting, for some, the objective of diminishing scrutiny of the government. While in no way suggesting Johnson is a mirror image of Orbán in Hungary or Modi in India, this aspect of the elections raises a perennial of the discussion of democratic decay worldwide: the use of law to concentrate power in the executive, and the weakening of accountability institutions. A report by the Constitution Society a month before the elections (November 2019) discusses the issue of “constitutional abuses” since the Brexit referendum and makes remedial proposals including establishment of a Royal Commission and a Citizens’ Convention.

The results are also, understandably, being picked over worldwide for possible insights, especially given the common coupling of the Brexit vote and President Trump’s election in 2016 as crystallising a global crisis of democracy (see e.g. Pippa Norris and Ron Inglehart’s key book on ‘cultural backlash’, listed in the April Update). In the US, Democrats will no doubt seek to divine some lessons from Labour’s defeat, although the differing contexts of Brexit and impeachment render caution against superficial comparison: the latter is discussed below. More broadly, analysts will be poring over the UK as an object lesson and case-study in the dramatic changes to party politics in Western states. In this Update, Sam Roggeveen’s new book, Our Very Own Brexit (November 2019), examines how party politics is becoming ‘hollow’ in states where the landscape remains dominated by two parties that voters no longer care about. Looking to Brexit as an example, he contemplates whether one of Australia’s declining parties could take the desperate measure of exploiting and expanding a wedge issue that has become central to discussions of Australia’s security and relationship with its immediate neighbourhood: immigration. A useful companion piece is a special issue on populism in the Philosophy & Social Criticism journal.

(Video: On 17 December I sat down with Philomena Murray and Tim Lynch at University of Melbourne for an hour-long lively live-streamed discussion of the many implications of the result: watch it here). 

2    The EU’s Real Existential Crisis (Spoiler: it’s not Brexit)

For all the column inches garnered by the UK’s election result, Brexit remains something of a sideshow to the UK’s sharpening existential crisis spurred by the intensifying authoritarianism in Hungary and Poland. Anyone in any remaining doubt about these rule of law crises will find plenty of evidence in this Update – to add to the mounds of evidence already existing. On Hungary, no less than 4 key reports – from Amnesty International, the International Press Institute, Article 19, and Unhack Democracy – on the dismantling of media freedoms, judicial independence and electoral integrity lay bare why organisations such as Freedom House now consider it a ‘hybrid regime’ blending elements of democratic and authoritarian rule. Regarding Poland, a crucial report from the European Stability Initiative from mid-December addresses how the aftermath of the ruling PiS party’s win in the October general election has been marked by a switch to even more overt measures to to install a “Soviet-style justice system” in an EU member state. Beyond policy reports, articles by Dimitry Kochenov and Petra Bárd, Tímea Drinóczi and Agnieszka Bień-Kacała, Luke Spieker, and a chapter by Gábor Halmai further our understanding of the extent to which these democracies have been hollowed out.  Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes controversially argue in their new book, The Light that Failed, that the post-1989 era has not been the age of liberalism in central and eastern Europe but rather, the ‘Age of Imitation’ of liberal polities. The message is simple: the EU, as a rule of law polity, cannot continue to exist if the rule of law no longer exists in certain Member States.

Finally, my review of Wojciech Sadurski’s landmark book, Poland’s Constitutional Breakdown, has appeared in the European Constitutional Law Review (December 2019). In it, I urge the global community of democracy defenders to read and engage with the book, which sets out in forensic detail the staggering scale and variety of measures PiS has used since late 2015 to hollow out the democratic system. Wojciech was put on trial in Warsaw in November for criticising the government, to which scholars and supporters worldwide have reacted with a campaign of solidarity: use the hashtag #WithWoj and post a picture of yourself holding the printed hashtag to show your support. As editorials in Verfassungsblog and the IACL-AIDC Blog emphasise, this is about academic freedom, and it matters to every one of us – not simply those of us who know Wojciech personally.

3    Dealing with Digital Distortions of Democracy

A key feature of the UK elections (and one which does not augur well for future elections in the US and elsewhere) has been the intensification of ‘dirty digital tricks’ in campaigning. On the Conservative side, the hallmark moment of the campaign was the party’s press office changing its Twitter handle to @factcheckUK during the leader’s debates, but that was just one example alongside doctored videos and even a fake Labour manifesto posted online. (Labour, too, established a fact-checking website, The Insider – although it at least made its partisan nature clear). Three reports in this Update are useful for considering the central importance of digital media and technologies, not only to today’s electoral campaigns, but to the way democracy and governance operates in general across the globe. Alongside a report by the Reuters Institute at Oxford University (November 2019) on digital media options for Europe and Freedom House’s annual Freedom on the Net report (November 2019), a World Bank report on emerging digital technologies and citizen participation’ sets out 11 predictions on the influence of emerging technologies, and 6 key measures to address them, including:

Prediction 1: The “fake news” arms race will grow further, shifting the focus of public debates

Prediction 4: More political parties will develop policy and choose candidates using digital platforms.

Prediction 6: Activists and tech companies will fight over who gets to speak to citizens.

Measure 3: Make use of citizens assemblies to set digital policies.

Measure 4: When regulating tech companies, don’t forget to consider citizen engagement.

Measure 6: Design civic technologies for inclusiveness.

4   Deliberating About Deliberation

As can be seen above, whether discussing constitutional abuses in the UK or digital distortion of the democratic sphere, there is an intensifying focus on deliberative mechanisms as a way forward for reinvigorating democracy and achieving, as James Fishkin puts it, a “thoughtful and representative” public voice. On the suggestion of a DEM-DEC user who quite rightly noted we had not yet featured Fishkin’s leading work on deliberation in our Updates, we have provided a list of his key works in the ‘Suggested Additions’ section (p.13). This literature is expanding at speed. In this Update alone, see Simone Chambers on ‘deliberative versus populist constitutionalism’, Carlos Forment on informal ‘neighborhood assemblies’ in Argentina, and, in David Landau and Hanna Lerner’s new collection on constitution-making, Carlos Bernal on ‘constitutional crowdsourcing’ and Melissa Crouch on public participation in constitution-making.

5    Impeachment: Pitfalls and Potential

Of course, beyond the UK elections – but with clear potential implications for the US-UK ‘special relationship’ now Boris Johnson is ensconced in Downing Street – is the ongoing impeachment of President Trump. From a comparative perspective, thanks to Ariel Alejandro Goldstein for sharing a recent article in which he discusses the impeachment of President Rousseff (‘Dilma’) in 2016, suggesting that impeachment can unleash dynamics that weaken both sides of the main parties and undermine the political system as a whole. Of course, the two contexts are not identical – and Tom Ginsburg, Aziz Huq and David Landau in the LA Times (15 December) argue that impeachment has ‘rebooted’ other democracies mired in gridlock and corruption. No matter what happens, as articles in this Update on ‘hybrid PACs’, passive voter suppression, and judicial independence emphasise, the challenges facing US democracy go far beyond the current president.

6   Time to Take a Break (if you Can)

It is customary to wish everyone a well-deserved end-of-year break, and for many, end-of-year activities mean dealing with family arguments about any number of political issues. In a new book, Overdoing Democracy, Robert Talisse lays out a broader argument that we need to forge “civic friendships” through social activities in which political and party loyalties are not simply suppressed, but rendered irrelevant. But from a global perspective, and in the current climate, taking a break is a luxury: as I write, I think for instance of the many Indian constitutional lawyers I know (including my colleague, Tarun Khaitan) protesting right now at the Modi government’s citizenship law and its ongoing attacks on the secular liberal democratic system. Some useful background reading here is found in the latest edition of the Indian Law Review (December 2019), with articles on the unconstitutionality of mass surveillance programmes and the government’s revocation of Jammu & Kashmir’s special status. Whatever you find yourself doing as 2019 draws to a close and 2020 begins, a sincere thanks from us here at DEM-DEC for your support throughout the year, and for those who cannot take a break, we salute your crucial work. A sincere thanks to all of my team, too: Funding & Communications Coordinator Connie Yaneva, and Research Editors Kuan-Wei Chen, Ibrahim Genc, and Anant Sangal. Finally, thanks to all of DEM-DEC’s partners, not least Verfassungsblog, ICONnect, and the IACL-AIDC Blog for continuing to help publicise DEM-DEC’s activities.

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