Navigating crisis - A choice of two paths?

Sarah Clarke, Unlock Democracy

 

What are the challenges that times of crisis present for democracies? What does our government’s response to coronavirus say about the state of our democracy? And where do we go from here?

This blog series, Democracy in Times of Crisis, will explore these questions.

This is Part 2 of that series. Read Part 1 here.

 
 

Democracy in times of crisis

Part 2: Navigating crisis - a choice between two paths?

To live in a democratic society is to constantly find ourselves navigating a changing and evolving relationship between the public and the government. As time moves on and attitudes change, we question whether the balance of power between citizen and state is right, what the respective duties of citizen and state are, whether our rights are being upheld, and whether our institutions are fit for purpose.

Who is empowered to choose our path?

We are seeing in real time how crisis expedites change - for better, and for worse. The UK government’s response to the pandemic has illuminated how change happens - as well as who influence the direction of chance, as well as who benefits and who loses out.

The UK government’s response has been defined by choices that have prioritised businesses before people, and draconian power over democratic control. The Coronavirus Act has brought about an expanded reach of the government into many areas of our lives: the rights of free assembly and protest have been suspended; while police, immigration officials, and healthcare workers have been given sweeping powers to detain anyone they think is “potentially infectious”. When the pandemic is over, it will be the government that gets to decide which of these powers they keep for themselves. 

The UK government has hesitated in rolling out a robust safety net package for those who need it the most. For example, their original commitment to pay 80% of the wages of many in the workforce excluded the self-employed - many of whom are in low paid work, and working in the gig economy. Only after begging and pleading, as well a threat of legal action by the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain[1] - did the government u-turn.

Authoritarianism vs democracy?

In experiencing a crisis, our current way of doing things - our social, political, and economic system - is unsettled. As a result, times of crisis move the boundaries of the possible. Writing for the Financial Times, Yuval Noah Harari offered two choices we can make in this particular moment of crisis:

“The first is between totalitarian surveillance and citizen empowerment. The second is between nationalist isolation and global solidarity.”[2]

Transformative change will emerge from this period of crisis, but the shape that transformation takes can lead us down very different roads. 

The disruption and suffering the pandemic has caused is but a taste of what we will continue to experience in a world going through an ecological breakdown. Extreme weather events are already affecting us all, but the death and despair felt around the world and in the UK affects most those who have been marginalised by the way our society and economy is currently configured. 

Bringing change that will transform our society for the better demands reflection, introspection, and collective action that is grounded in justice. We are at a crossroads. How can we take the transformatory path of justice, solidarity, and empowerment, instead of isolation, authoritarianism, and tyranny?

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Tom Brake3 Comments