{"id":98396,"date":"2017-09-11T12:00:27","date_gmt":"2017-09-11T11:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=98396"},"modified":"2017-09-09T16:30:20","modified_gmt":"2017-09-09T15:30:20","slug":"democracy-insurance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/09\/democracy-insurance\/","title":{"rendered":"Democracy Insurance"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Demonstration in Poland by the Committee for the Defence of Democracy, May 27, 2016.
Source: Anonymous photographer from\/working for Platforma Obywatelska. Released under CC BY-SA 2.0 license<\/p><\/div>\n

7 Sep 2017 – <\/em>Here\u2019s a basic rule of public policy: If a society wants a capability, it has to pay for it.<\/p>\n

If we want a fire department, we have to direct our time, energy, people, and funds to build and support it. If we want a Center for Disease Control, or a Federal Emergency Management Agency, we likewise have to pay for them. We hope we don\u2019t have to use them, but we live better knowing that they are there if needed. And although we can\u2019t predict exactly when, the probability is that we will<\/em> need them, often when we don\u2019t expect it. They serve as a kind of insurance policy.<\/p>\n

In the same vein, what if there was a kind of \u201cdemocracy insurance\u201d, consisting of capabilities that we can support to deter and defend against democratic weakening and authoritarian encroachment? There certainly is a need. We know that according to the organization Freedom House, aggregate freedom scores have fallen in the world for 11 years in a row. <\/a>\u00a0Democracies in many countries are backsliding, such as in Hungary, Poland, the Philippines, South Africa and the United States.\u00a0 And some former democracies such as Russia, Turkey, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe are now authoritarian states\u2014overthrown through functional coups d\u2019\u00e9tat by once-democratically elected leaders, who subsequently cemented authoritarian rule by rigging the laws and cracking down on civil society and opposition.<\/p>\n

What might such an insurance policy against democratic backsliding and usurpation look like?\u00a0 It would contain a number of components, and one of them would be strong investment in the grassroots nonviolent civil resistance capacity of a society.\u00a0 We know that a unified and mobilized population\u2014capable of imposing costs on unaccountable power holders through nonviolent tactics such as strikes, boycotts, and civil disobedience\u2014is often essential to protecting and expanding civic space.\u00a0 There is an art and a science to how ordinary people have done this and nonviolent civil resistance has proven remarkably adaptable at addressing a variety of situations relevant to democratic backsliding, including:<\/p>\n