Philippines improves democracy ranks amid rise of populists

By Luis Leoncio

The country’s “state of democracy” im­proved last year, based on the annu­al Democracy Index of think tank Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) as it placed 50th out of 167 countries from 54th last year, which placed it at par with the United States in the group of so-called flawed de­mocracy.

The Philippines’s grade also improved 6.94 out of a perfect 10, from 6.84 last year.

This year’s ranking, which has a title “Revenge of the de­plorables”, provided a snap­shot of the state of democracy worldwide for 165 indepen­dent states and two territories, according to EIU.

The ranking covers al­most the entire population of the world and the vast majori­ty of the world’s states (micro­states are excluded).

EIU said the index is based on five categories: elec­toral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of government; political par­ticipation; and political cul­ture.

Based on their scores on a range of indicators within these categories, each country is then itself classified as one of four types of regime: “full democracy”; “flawed democ­racy”; “hybrid regime”; and “authoritarian regime”.

On the Philippines, the EIU said transformative elec­tions were held in 2016 “that brought a strongman back into government.”

“Widespread public dis­content with the failure of tra­ditional elites to rein in rising economic inequality and vot­ers’ concerns over domestic security helped Rodrigo Dute­rte, an erstwhile mayor to se­cure the presidency.

“Having been in office for a little more than six months, Mr. Duterte has already be­come embroiled in numerous international and domestic controversies. For instance, the harsh crackdown on the drugs trade and Mr. Duterte’s heavy-handed style of gover­nance have raised troubling questions about the rule of law and the integrity of the coun­try’s fragile political institu­tions,” the EIU noted.

But it added that it does “not anticipate that Mr. Dute­rte’s electoral win will encour­age the rise of other strongmen in Southeast Asia.”

The still-rapid pace of economic growth in that re­gion will help to keep popu­list demands for more radical change at bay, the EIU said. “Moreover, compared with the West, governments in the region (Asia) generally have greater control over the polit­ical discourse.”

The EIU said the title of this year’s report refers to the popular revolt in 2016 against political elites who were perceived by many to be out of touch and failing to represent the interests of ordinary people.

The EIU defined “political elites” as referring “primarily to governments, legislatures, state institutions and political par­ties, though it also encompass­es the media, expert bodies and international organizations.”

“It was a revolt that was foretold in recent editions of the Democracy Index, which have focused on the growing disconnect between politi­cal elites and the people that is particularly evident in the world’s most mature democra­cies,” it said.

It added that the UK’s vote in June 2016. to leave the EU (Brexit) and the election of Donald Trump as US presi­dent in November 2016, sent shock waves around the globe.

“Both were an expression of deep popular dissatisfaction with the status quo and of a hankering for change,” it said.

“The Brexit vote and the election of Mr. Trump were for many liberals nothing more than outbursts of pri­mal emotions and visceral ex­pressions of narrow-minded nationalism.

Overall, the EIU said Asia’s upward momentum in the index stalled this year.

“Since we began produc­ing the Democracy Index in 2006, Asia has made more headway in advancing democ­racy than any other region, increasing its regional average score from 5.44 in 2006 to 5.74 in 2016,” it noted.

“However, despite mak­ing impressive progress over the past decade, the region is still some way from catching up with Latin America with an average score of 6.33, West­ern Europe (8.40) and North America (8.56) and cannot afford to stagnate, as it did in 2016,” the EIU added.

The EIU report indi­cated that in recent decades, political elites have become unused to having their worl­dview challenged and have largely assumed that the val­ues represented by the liber­al democratic consensus are shared by the vast majority of the electorate.

It noted that the events of last year have proved that the electorate does not share such beliefs in the UK or the US, and the populist advance else­where suggests that it is prob­ably not true for many other democracies in Europe.

Shock at the results and fear of the changes that they denote may help to explain the reluctance of some opponents of Brexit and Trump to exam­ine fully why they lost the po­litical argument, it added.

Instead of seeking to un­derstand the causes of the popular backlash against the political establishment, some have instead sought to dele­gitimize the Brexit and Trump outcomes by disparaging the values of those who supported them, the EIU added.

The EIU said even when they acknowledge that Brexit and Trump supporters had le­gitimate reasons to be unhap­py with the status quo, some commentators suggested that their views or choices were il­legitimate.

“This negative interpre­tation of the seminal politi­cal events of 2016 fails to see anything encouraging in the increased political engagement and participation of ordinary people,” it added.

The EIU said the two votes captured the contradic­tions besetting contempo­rary democracy. “They were symptomatic of the problems of 21st-century representative democracy and, at the same time, of the positive potential for overcoming them by in­creasing popular political par­ticipation,” it said.

It added that insofar as they engaged and mobilized, normally quiescent or absen­tee voters, and the UK referen­dum campaign was especially successful in this regard, the votes were a vindication of de­mocracy.

“In their different ways, both events expressed a desire, often inchoate, for more de­mocracy, or at least something better than what has been on offer in recent decades. The same can be said to a great de­gree of the increasing support in Europe for populist or in­surgent political parties which are challenging the main­stream parties that have ruled since 1945,” the EIU said.

Of course, one referen­dum campaign or one pop­ulist victory at the polls does not change anything in and of itself.

“Popular engagement and participation need to be sus­tained to make a substantive difference to the quality of de­mocracy. Populist victories

may raise expectations of change that end up being dashed (the recent experience of Greece is a case in point), demoralizing those who voted for it and encouraging more popular cynicism with the functioning of democracy,” the EIU added.

It added that the predom­inant response among political elites to the events of 2016 has been to rue the popular back­lash against the democratic order and to interpret it as a threat to the future of liberal democracy.

“Some have even ques­tioned whether ordinary people should be trusted to make decisions about import­ant matters such as the UK’s membership of the EU. Yet the popular backlash against the established order can also be seen as a consequence, not a cause, of the failings of con­temporary democracy,” it said.

The EIU said trust in polit­ical institutions is an essential component of well-function­ing democracies, yet surveys by Pew, Gallup and other polling agencies have confirmed that public confidence in govern­ment has slumped to historic lows in the US.

“This has had a corrosive effect on the quality of democ­racy in the US, as reflected in the decline in the US score in the Democracy Index. The US president, Donald Trump, is not to blame for this decline in trust, which predated his elec­tion, but he was the beneficiary of it. Popular confidence in po­litical institutions and parties continues to decline in many other developed countries, too,” the EIU said.

The EIU noted a 21st-century record turnout of 72.2 percent in the June 2016 Brexit referendum, compared with average turnouts of 63 percent in the four general elections since 2001, revealed a rise in popular engagement and participation that boosted the UK’s score in 2016 to 8.36 from 8.31 in 2015.

“The UK is in 16th place in the global ranking. The long-term trend of declin­ing political participation and growing cynicism about poli­tics in the UK seemed to have been reversed. There has also been a significant increase in membership of political parties over the past year,” it said.

The EIU said the popu­lists are channeling disaffec­tion from sections of society that have lost faith in the main­stream parties.

“They are filling a vacuum and mobilizing people on the basis of a populist, anti-elite message and are also appeal­ing to people’s hankering to be heard, to be represented, to have their views taken seri­ously. Populist parties and pol­iticians are often not especial­ly coherent and often do not have convincing answers to the problems they purport to address, but they nevertheless pose a challenge to the political mainstream because they are connecting with people who believe the established parties no longer speak for them,” it added.