DEMOCRACY, CRISIS AND DESTABILIZATION

Year 2022, Volume: 6 Issue: 11, 393 - 412, 31.12.2022

Reına Shehı

https://doi.org/10.53791/imgelem.1173801

Abstract

In the last decades, democracies have been in decline. They have suffered for a long time from the rise of populism and nationalism and are lately struggling with the consequences of the global pandemic, COVID-19. The pandemic has highlighted the importance of defending and preserving democracies under the threat of both external and internal destabilizing factors that can lead to regime changes. It has had a significant impact on democratic freedoms and rights. Moreover, it has also raised concerns in terms of countries’ abilities to face the challenges that come as a result of the pandemic and which threaten the existence of liberal democracies. In this paper, we argue that when individual liberties are threatened and negatively impacted by a crisis, consolidated democracies which embody such liberties, may experience a shift back to semi-consolidated, autocratic regimes and so on. In addition to that, the presence of a crisis in the equation between individual liberties and collective good, will result in the latter outweighing the former, with the potential to trigger regime change.

Keywords

Democracy, COVID-19, Crisis, Individual Freedom, Regime Change

References

• Adler, G., & Webster, E. (1995). Challenging transition theory: The labor movement, radical reform, and transition to democracy in South Africa. Politics & Society, 23(1), 75-106.
• Aljazeera (2020) Start Here. [Online] Available at: https://www.aljazeera.com/program/start-here/2020/5/10/has-surveillance-during-the-pandemic-gone-too-far-start-here/.
• Everson, S. (1988). Aristotle on the Foundations of the State. Political studies, 36(1), 89-101.
• Beniuszys, P.(2020, October 9) Authoritarian Change, Public Broadcasters, and “Fake News” in Poland. Review#13. 4Liberty.eu. (Access 13.12.2020)
• Bollen, K. A. (1986). Political rights and political liberties in nations: An evaluation of human rights measures, 1950 to 1984. Hum. Rts. Q., 8, 567.
• Carothers, T., & O'Donohue, A. (Eds.). (2019). Democracies divided: The global challenge of political polarization. Brookings Institution Press.
• Centre for Civil and Political Rights (2020). COVID- 19 State of Emergency Data. [Online] Available at: https://datastudio.google.com/u/0/reporting/1sHT8quopdfavCvSDk7t-zvqKIS0Ljiu0/page/dHMKB (Accessed 9.10.2020).
• Collier, D., & Levitsky, S. (1997). Democracy with adjectives: Conceptual innovation in comparative research. World politics, 49(3), 430-451.
• Cornfield, M. (2020). The states we're in: can ‘laboratories of democracy’ conquer Covid-19?. [Online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/11/us-states-laboratories-of-democracy-covid-19 (Accessed 10.10.2020).
• Dahl, R. A. (1986). Democracy, liberty, and equality. Oxford University Press, USA.
• Dawood, Y. (2013). Democracy and the freedom of speech: Rethinking the conflict between liberty and equality. Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence, 26(2), 293-311.
• European Economic and Social Committee (2020). Civil Society Against COVID-19. (Online) Available at: https://www.eesc.europa.eu/en/initiatives/civil-society-against-covid-19.
• Freedom House (2020). Freedom in the World 2020. (Online) Available at: https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2020/leaderless-struggle-democracy (Accessed 10.09. 2020).
• Freedom House (2020). Nations in Transit. (Online) Available at: https://freedomhouse.org/report/nations-transit (Accessed 10 September 2020).
• Gasiorowski, M. J. (1995). Economic crisis and political regime change: An event history analysis. American political science review, 89(4), 882-897.
• Honig, B., 2009. Emergency politics: paradox, law, democracy. Princeton University Press.
• Jankwicz, N., 2020. The Growing Threat of Domestic Disinformation in Poland. [Online] Available at: https://www.cnas.org/publications/commentary/the-growing-threat-of-domestic-disinformation-in-poland [Accessed 2 October 2020].
• Iglhaut, C., 2020. Facts for Democracy. [Online] Available at: https://www.deutschland.de/en/topic/culture/combatting-fake-news-about-coronavirus-how-germany-is-tackling-the-problem [Accessed 10 October 2020].
• International Foundation for Electoral Systems, 2020. IFES COVID-19 Briefing Series: Preventing Government Corruption in Crises. [Online] Available at: https://www.ifes.org/publications/ifes-covid-19-briefing-series-preventing-government-corruption-crises [Accessed 2 October 2020].
• Kuehnelt-Leddihn, E., 2007. Liberty or Equality: The Challenge of Our Times. Ludwig von Mises Institute.
• Lazar, N.C., 2009. States of emergency in liberal democracies. Cambridge University Press.
• Lindner, R. and Aichholzer, G., 2020. E-democracy: conceptual foundations and recent trends. In European E-Democracy in Practice (pp. 11-45). Springer, Cham.
• Merkel, W., 2018. Democracy and Crisis Challenges in Turbulent Times. Springer.
• Montesquieu. 1989. The Spirit of the Laws. New York, NY, Cambridge University Press
• Morlino, L., 2004. What is a ‘good’democracy?. Democratization, 11(5), pp.10-32.
• Mouffe, C., 1992. Democratic citizenship and the political community. Dimensions of radical democracy: Pluralism, citizenship, community, pp.225-239.
• O'Toole Jr, L.J., 1987. Doctrines and developments: Separation of powers, the politics-administration dichotomy, and the rise of the administrative state. Public Administration Review, pp.17-25.
• Peters, Y., 2016. Zero-sum democracy? The effects of direct democracy on representative participation. Political Studies, 64(3), pp.593-613.
• Rapeli, L. and Saikkonen, I., 2020. How Will the COVID-19 Pandemic Affect Democracy?. Democratic Theory, 7(2), pp.25-32.
• Read, H., 2015. The politics of the unpolitical. Routledge.
• Rustow, D.A., 1970. Transitions to democracy: Toward a dynamic model. Comparative politics, 2(3), pp.337-363.
• Sartori, G., 2016. the Theory of Democracy Revisited. Democracy: A Reader, p.192
• Spasovska, B., 2020. Civil Society Role in Participatory Democracy in Times of COVID-19 in The Balkans 0. [Online] Available at: http://www.balkancsd.net/civil-society-role-in-participatory-democracy-in-times-of-covid-19-in-the-balkans/ [Accessed 20 November 20202].
• Transparancy International , 2020. Civil Society in the Post Pandemic World. [Online] Available at: https://www.transparency.org/en/blog/civil-society-in-the-post-pandemic-world-1# [Accessed 05 September 2020].
• Thomson, S. and Ip, E.C., 2020. COVID-19 emergency measures and the impending pandemic. Journal of Law and the Biosciences.
• Verba, Sidney. "Democratic participation." The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 373, no. 1 (1967): 53-78.
• Zhu, X., Yang, S., & Allen, S. (2022, January). A Comparison of False-Information Policies in Five Countries before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic. In Proceedings of the 55th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.
• Wike, M.D.a.R., 2020. America is exceptional in the nature of its political divide. [Online] Available at: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/13/america-is-exceptional-in-the-nature-of-its-political-divide/ [Accessed 20 November 2020].