Today in geopolitical competition is a contest over what type of governance model best meets the needs and enables the potential of citizens. Leaders in the United States and other Western capitals have expressed concern about a global democratic recession occurring alongside a resurgence of global authoritarianism. To counter these trends, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has pushed to establish a new “D-10” group comprising the G-7 plus Australia, India, and South Korea. The recently published NATO 2030 white paper calls for a new allied focus on democratic resilience. And in the United States, President Joe Biden has promised that defense of democratic values will be at the heart of his foreign policy agenda. He convened a “Summit for Democracy” in his first year that would focus on spurring progress in fighting corruption, defending against authoritarianism, and advancing human rights. The reinforcing resilience of global democracies is not a “Western” project, however. In fact, the center of gravity in this burgeoning systems competition between democracy and authoritarianism may be the Indo-Pacific region.
The region is home to the world’s largest and most economically dynamic democracies. Perhaps in part as a result of its relatively young population, the region is changing rapidly. More than 50% of the world’s millennial population lives in Asia. Widespread democratization throughout the 1980s and 1990s shifted the complexion of the region away from its illiberal past, ushering in rising hopes of a democratic wave. In recent years, however, democratic backsliding has shifted the political tides in the opposite direction, leading to a resurgence of illiberalism, and in some cases, rising authoritarianism.
The Brookings Institution embarked on a one-year project to explore the health of democratic governance in Asia. The aim of the project was to provide a more granular understanding of both positive and negative governance trends in key Asian democracies and to identify practical steps to strengthen democratic resilience in the region. countries diverge in the importance they attach to specific democratic ideals, suggesting there are significant differences in how citizens across Asia evaluate what matters most in a democratic system. In Japan, for example, only 18% of respondents to Pew listed freedom of religion as a “very important” principle, in contrast to nearly 80% of respondents in India and Indonesia. Likewise, less than 50% of respondents across the region rated media freedom, freedom for civil society, and freedom for opposition parties as very important. populist leaders face few political disincentives to creating stricter curbs on individual and civil liberties.
A study about Indonesian democracy, in recent polling indicates that for most Indonesians, economic development continues to trump democratic progress. This finding suggests that “under certain conditions of hardship, almost all Indonesians might be willing to forgo democratic rights in return for the promise of economic prosperity.” Multiple studies have pointed to a global democratic “recession” in recent years. While the uninspiring governance performance of leading Western democracies, most notably the United States, has contributed to this so-called recession, in democracy. As Asian countries have increased in wealth, inequality has become an increasingly profound problem.
Research by the Asian Development Bank suggests regional inequality has increased by 42% over the past two decades, growing at a rate that exceeds other developing regions such as Africa and Latin America. Relatedly, elite corruption remains a serious concern in multiple countries, leading to government turnovers and the high-profile arrests of political leaders in countries including Malaysia and South Korea. The enduring popularity of political leaders such as former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who despite his arrest on corruption charges has been able to restore his public image, has paralyzed the country’s political agenda and made it difficult to implement meaningful reforms. Jung H. Pak a Korean scholar echoes similar concerns in her paper on South Korea, where she notes that a “toxic partnership between the state and conglomerates” has limited the willingness of consecutive administrations to respond to public demands for reform. these trends have heightened mistrust of government elites and decreased the perceived legitimacy of democratic institutions. In multiple cases, this frustration with entrenched political hierarchies has also enabled the rise of new populist leaders, such as former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, who have further weakened domestic institutions as part of efforts to consolidate power.
Many Asian democracies like India are facing increased political polarization across religious, ethnic, and political lines. the “majoritarian character” of its political system creates structural tendencies toward political polarization, a development that has hampered government effectiveness, produced erratic swings on important policy issues, A worrisome trend across the Indo-Pacific region in the past few years has been the uptick in new legislation limiting individual and civil liberties, placing restrictions on freedom of assembly, civil society organizations, religious institutions, and the freedom of the press. Reporters Without Borders details a deteriorating media environment within the region, pointing to increased censorship laws, banning of independent media organizations, and police violence against reporters. An analysis of civil society sustainability across nine Asian democracies shows similar trends, pointing to new NGO registration laws, arrests of local activists, and tighter controls on free speech. these developments are less of a new trend than a reversion to the mean, with governments turning to familiar illiberal tools and practices in a bid to stifle unrest and prop up their own positions in a more volatile domestic political environment.
The COVID-19 outbreak has accelerated illiberal trends in many Indo-Pacific countries. Widespread lockdowns, restrictions on freedom of speech and movement, and expanding policing authorities have been employed by countries across the region as elements of their efforts to curb the spread of the pandemic. Nicole Curato a political scholar has coined the term “securitization of social issues” to describe this trend. In its bid to normalize its governance model and cast doubts on the efficacy of democratic governance to deliver solutions, China is once again making illiberalism a more acceptable alternative in the Indo-Pacific region. In recent years, however, deepening U.S.-India strategic coordination has occurred alongside illiberal developments in both countries. vocal American criticism of India’s domestic governance record could cool Indian enthusiasm for strengthening coordination with the United States.
The better-governed, faster-growing southern states of India have mostly shunned Modi’s strongman cult, but they’re bit players. It’s the poor, over-populous northern states that matter disproportionately in Indian politics, and it is there that Modi has managed to shift the Overton window, supplanting material prosperity — which no party has delivered since the ’90s — with chest-thumping nationalism and an atavistic yearning for a pre-Islamic past. Unfortunately, in the absence of a strong push from the civil society, Indian democratic institutions by themselves have no intrinsic incentive to reform. With the result that in India’s gravest hour, people had no effective mechanism to hold a sitting government accountable that oversaw a state failure of gigantic proportions. There was palpable helplessness in the judiciary, when judges found it difficult to get answers from the government. Even the Parliament was unable to perform its oversight duty. Civil society organisations too, on their part, need to broaden their agenda of work to include cross cutting issues that strengthen India’s institutions while collaborating with each other to present a strong unified voice that demands more transparency and accountability in all areas and levels of policymaking. This involves taking more fights to the courts on transgressions by the government, building public opinion about expectations from a well-functioning democracy and creating tools and fora that help citizens engage with policymaking more readily.
India the world’s largest democracy is changing in fundamental ways, raising questions about whether it should even be called a democracy at all. India’s democratic malaise is by now well documented. The V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg, which tracks data on the health of democracies, recently reclassified the country as an “electoral autocracy”. liberal critics describe a staunchly Hindu nationalist regime that has unsettled India’s minorities, not least its 200m Muslims. Secularism, enshrined in its constitution after independence in 1947, looks a spent force. The ruling Bharatiya Janata party has never hidden its aims of building a Hindu rashtra — a government and nation dominated by Hindus. Modi pushed this aim relatively gently in his first term in office, but has since moved forward more forcefully after his second victory in 2019. India “transitioning from a de facto Hindu Rashtra to an authoritarian Hindu Raj.”
How Democracies Die, the 2018 book by Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, which says democracies tend to decline in dribs and drabs, rather than suddenly collapsing in a heap. India’s place in this wider story clearly carries huge significance. Were New Delhi to shift permanently in a more autocratic direction, taking more than 1.3bn people with it, global democracy itself would shift back to become a fringe political pursuit. the India’s freedom struggle was the greatest civil society movement of its time, and led by the world’s pre-eminent civil society activist, Mahatma Gandhi. The struggle’s purpose was not only to win independence but to create a just and equal society where the human rights of everyone including the historically disadvantaged would be respected. the spiritual descendants of India’s freedom fighters working in thousands of civil society organisations (CSOs) across the country are facing a slew of well documented obstacles. Routine online trolling, unjustified vilification based on rumour and various forms of arbitrary administrative harassment as some of the everyday challenges faced by those engaged in the defence of constitutional values. Notably, the World Economic Forum has identified fraying rule of law and declining civic freedoms in India as a major global risk in recent times Attacks on the independent media and civil society have already damaged the country’s reputation as a stable investment destination. Attacks on the independent media and civil society have already damaged the country’s reputation as a stable investment destination. Though India is a member of the governing council of the Community of Democracies, an intergovernmental body that supports civil society and democratic values around the world. India’s leaders need to be cognisant of the fact that by attacking civil society they are undermining a key source of the country’s influence in international circles.
Selective use of international funding restrictions to hobble thousands of diverse and vibrant civil society organisations (CSOs) – through the emergency-era-inspired Foreign Contributions Regulation Act – is tantamount to an own goal by the government which is keen to project a positive image to foreign investors. Robust debate and space for democratic dissent should be welcomed in the larger public interest. They make a country stronger not weaker in the long run. India played a key moral role in international affairs during the anti-colonial struggles and as a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement during the cold war. Today, as a rising economic power and as a member of BRICS alliance, the country needs to draw on its history in being a promoter of democratic values at home and abroad. Active citizens and civil society can help the nation in reclaiming that legacy. When India was going through its Universal Periodic Review on human rights at the UN the country’s Attorney General spoke about Indian traditions of openness and diversity, coexistence and cooperation, and about tolerance and mutual understanding being ingrained in the country’s polity. Having heard this near-Utopian description, a well-respected civil society activist quipped, ‘I now want to live in that country he was describing.’
