Democracy After the Pandemic
With authoritarian powers rising around the world, how could democracy and global leadership shift after COVID? On a special Election Day edition of the Reimagine podcast, I spoke to Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd discuss the future of democratic governance, the influence of China’s growing power, and the forces that could shape the world order for decades to come.
America is the greatest example of self-government in the history of the world. This greatness isn’t defined by military might, stock market surges, or Olympic gold medals. Rather, it is rooted in a tradition of debate, persuasion, and a system of government for the people, by the people. In other words: representative democracy.
The spread of representative democracies across many parts of the world has been one of the great triumphs of the last hundred years. But, as we approach a historic election in the U.S., we are at a dangerous point for both American and global democracy. Across the world, we’re listening less and building a politics of fear and anger rather than of compromise and collaboration. Technology is siloing our discourse and amplifying our divisions. And authoritarian powers, particularly China, are rising and presenting what seems to many like a functioning alternative to the messiness of democracy. It isn’t. The challenge for democratic governments for the next several decades, beyond renewing themselves, will be evaluating when to compete with authoritarian governments for dominances — such as in developing artificial intelligence — and when to cooperate with them for everyone’s benefit — such as in fighting climate change. Democracies are uniquely suited for this diplomatic balancing act. Without healthy representative democracies, the world will be far less equipped to meet the challenges of the 21st century. On this week’s episode of Reimagine, I spoke with two of the world’s foremost experts who understand these challenges both from study and from personal experience: former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
Secretary Albright, who was born in Prague on the cusp of World War II and saw fascism up close, gave a strong rebuke of anti-democratic governance, saying “I can’t, given my own background, see any kind of authoritarian system as one that allows for the evolution of society in a way where people feel that they can…make decisions about their own lives.” Great leaders are motivated by a set of values that inform their actions. The values Secretary Albright described — empowering everyone in a society to take part in shaping their own and the collective well-being — are the kernel of democracy that should shape all of our political decisions. Democracy will erode if we don’t empower citizens to engage in society and collectively reject anti-democratic trends within our democratic institutions. I’m convinced that democracies with strong values and a lot of voter participation will maximize human potential for innovation, cooperation, and growth.
But, we also live in a world in which China is an undeniable global power, and both America and China are dramatically interdependent on one another. That relationship is not as zero sum as some may believe. Prime Minister Rudd stressed that people often “go into an automatic equation, which says America down, therefore, China up. Well, not so.” Both countries depend on a global economy that in turn depends on a smoothly-functioning, global, rules-based order.
If America hopes to continue to be a global leader in the 21st century, one of the best things American leaders could do is show the world what a principled yet productive relationship with China looks like. For instance, as I’ve written elsewhere about American innovation, “while we are competing with the Chinese, we should also work with them. There are many areas where cooperation can help everyone — for example in A.I.-based approaches to climate challenges, space exploration, disaster relief and pandemics.” In the long term, I believe democracy will triumph over autocracy, but in the short term, there are too many urgent challenges to ignore the benefits cooperation can bring.
We are living through an uncertain inflection point in history. Reimagining democracy in the 21st century will be complicated, messy work. The details of how we enable rigorous yet respectful conversation, debate, compromise, and engagement in our society and in democracies across the world are essential. But I’m hopeful. Throughout the 20th century, we fought anti-democratic forces at tremendous cost and built a system that brought unprecedented freedom and prosperity to billions of people. We’ve faced immense challenges before. Now, we need to do it again.
