POST PANDEMIC AND WORLD POLITICAL RECESSIONS

COVID-19 came up with chaos and horror worldwide. Before the pandemic, everything was in routine from the economy to world politics, and countries were dealing smoothly with partners and neighbors.

It was probably December 2019, the pandemic outbreak in Wuhan that expanded further into different regions of China. After a few months, the virus covered almost parts of the world with panic and destruction. Overall, 2020 will forever be the year of coronavirus, a cataclysmic event in slow motion that has disrupted people’s lives and disseminated a sense of uncertainty and vulnerability comparable only to times of war. During the pandemic, the secret political maneuvering remained on top between the countries. Different blocks came into being for the future cold war and severe exploitation regarding the economy and politics is expected by critics. For instance, the new developments after the pandemic are the growing tension between China and the US and the border tensions between India and China. 

Pressed by the fast pace of infections while fearing massively disruptive economic impact, political leaders around the world faced the challenge of acting quickly in a fog of scientific uncertainty, leading them to impose (or not impose) lockdown measures limiting personal freedom and democratic participation. The democratic model has long been under stress, with the rise of homegrown populist and nationalist movements, and external geopolitical threats from resilient authoritarian actors. But COVID-19 created a new kind of stress test, bringing into question globalization, democratic decisionmaking, the reliability of science and information, and ultimately the ability of the democratic model to cope with devastating events.

Unlike COVID, democracy dysfunction has been building for some time. In a depressingly large number of countries, both identity politics and ideological competition have become more polarized even as the strength of democratic institutions has declined.

Echoing—unconsciously for the most part—criticisms both fascist and communist intellectuals made of classical liberalism in the 1930s and 1940s, many voices on the left and the right blame the democratic recession on the consequences of what they call the “neoliberal” policies widely adopted after the end of the Cold War.

It is not quite that simple. In the 1990s, a global consensus formed around what British Prime Minister Tony Blair called the “Third Way.” Leftists and rightists might bicker over the details, but the general path forward was clear. Intelligently regulated national economies, integrated into the global system, could generate enough wealth to raise living standards for all. And in a world where geopolitics had faded into U.S. pre-eminence, great-power rivals would no longer resist American policies aimed at furthering the integration of emerging market economies into the post-Cold War order.

This optimistic view led to a “great moderation” in politics. In many countries, the left and the right had long regarded each other as mortal threats. But as the left was willing to accept the rules of the international market system, in many countries the right was willing to accept constitutional politics with regular transfers of power. In Latin America and elsewhere, even far-right forces once linked to military regimes were ready to allow center-left governments with moderate reform programs to take control by democratic means.

In this regard, this short writing argues that there are five main challenges for democracies after coronavirus: protecting the safety and integrity of elections, finding the right place for expertise, coping with resurgent populism and nationalism, countering homegrown and foreign disinformation, and defending the democratic model. After delineating these challenges, it offers policy recommendations for democratic resilience in the 2020s.