 So ladies and gentlemen, let me welcome you to the United States Institute of Peace. I'm Bill Taylor. I'm the Executive Vice President here at the Institute of Peace. Many of you have been at USIP before, but probably very few of you have been in this building before, because we've only been in this building since really last fall. So it's still kind of new and we're still getting used to it and kind of breaking it in, you know how you do in a new house and all, you know, figuring out how things work. One of the questions that I asked the team here was whether or not you wanted to have shades up or down, and the consensus was down so that Alexander can do his things on this thing. However, at some point we'll put him up and you can see the view. That's one of the reasons that we'd like to have here. We are so pleased to be able to co-host this event. This is a great opportunity. It happens once a year. I think that's right, once a year. And people look forward to this, to kind of track the rule of law index. It's particularly timely this year in that the Institute of Peace at the request of Senator Lindsey Graham just finished up a study on fragility and fragile states and rule of law and extremism. And you will not be surprised, this group will not be surprised to hear that the conclusion from that was that in fragile states where the rule of law is not well established, there is violence and there is extremism. And so this kind of analysis that you do every year helps us think about where to allocate resources. And one of the big things that Senator Graham wanted us to take a look at in this study was how to decide where USAID, where DFID, where the US government and other governments spend resources. What priorities do they use? And one of the things should be, as we will hear today, the rule of law and places where it's going well, places where it's not going well. And where it's not going well, we're likely to see violent extremism, conflict, and that if like the Institute of Peace, where we are after preventing and resolving, mitigating conflict, this is an important concept. So all to say, we're very pleased to have you all here. I will recognize the group, the World Justice Project people here. By the way, you may have seen on the way in, there were people with badges of visitors guiding you here. Now this is not normally, normally the hosts will guide you here, but as an evidence of our good working relationship with the World Justice Project, many of your volunteers are helping guide people in. So it's a great working relationship that we are. You can follow us on social media if you want to at USIP. The hashtag for today is hashtag R-O-L-I-N-D-E-X, rule of law index, R-O-L index. And you can also check out our podcasts, this one, but also others that you will be interested in. I would like to recognize William Hubbard, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the World Justice Project, who will speak to you in a moment. I will turn this over to him. William Hubbard is the Executive Director of the World Justice Project, whom you will also hear shortly. And then there are several of my colleagues here at the Institute of Peace who are going to also be up here as well. Philippe Le Roux, Matin will be the moderator, Maria Stéphane will be up here, Hoyt Yee will be up here, and there will be others. So this is again an integrated effort that we are very pleased to co-host. Let me see if there's anything that's supposed to say that I haven't. No, I think I've hit everything I was supposed to. So the only thing left for me to do is to introduce William Hubbard as the Chairman of the Board. Thank you very much. Bill, thank you very much for your hospitality. As Bill said, my name is William Hubbard. I have the privilege of serving as chair of the Board of Directors of the World Justice Project. On behalf of our Board, our officers, and our incredible staff, I'd like to welcome and thank you all for being here today to learn about the latest findings from the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index, our effort to measure the rule of law worldwide. And Bill, thank you again to the United States Institute of Peace for your help in co-sponsoring and hosting this event. It's a real privilege for us to be here and to share this event with you. We appreciate it very much. We are great admirers of the Institute's efforts to promote peace around the world. And as I said, it's an honor to be here working with you on this occasion. For those of you who are new to the World Justice Project, we are an independent, multi-disciplinary organization working to advance the rule of law around the world. And we do this in several ways. First, by collecting and analyzing original independent rule of law data presented in the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index, which you'll hear a lot more about in just a few moments. Also by supporting research, scholarship, and teaching about the importance of the rule of law, its relationship to development, and effective strategies to strengthen it. And finally, building an engaged global network of policymakers and activists through strategic convenings, knowledge exchanges, coordinated campaigns, and locally led initiatives to advance the rule of law. One might ask, why should we care about the rule of law? Effective rule of law reduces corruption, combats poverty and disease, and protects people from injustices large and small. It is the foundation of communities of justice, opportunity, and peace, underpinning development, accountable government, and respect for fundamental rights. The rule of law matters in terms of economic, socio-political, and human development. With more rule of law comes higher GDP, greater democracy, and peace, and better education and health outcomes. So for more than a decade, we have worked to produce a universal declaration of the rule of law, with its technical indicators for measuring it. I encourage you to visit our website to read our universal principles in full. But in summary, in summary, the rule of law is a framework of laws and institutions that embodies these four principles. Everyone, everyone is accountable under the law. Two, the laws are clear, just, and evenly applied. Three, the process of enacting, administering, and enforcing laws is open. And four, justice is impartial and accessible to all. To measure how the rule of law is experienced and perceived by the general public worldwide, we created the WJP Rule of Law Index. It really is a massive undertaking, now relying on more than 120,000 households and 3,800 experts survey, expert surveys in 126 countries. The index is a diagnostic tool for identifying country strengths and weaknesses in areas such as fundamental rights, justice delivery, security, open government, and effective checks and balances. It is the most comprehensive data set of its kind, and is considered the world's leading source for original data on the rule of law. It is our hope and intention that these findings will serve as a powerful resource for advocates, policymakers, researchers, businesses, legal professionals, and others looking to improve the rule of law in their countries. A final note before turning to our presentation of the data, I'd like to invite all of you to the World Justice Forum 6 in The Hague to be convened in late April under the theme Realizing Justice for All. As a meeting place for governmental and non-governmental actors, private sector leaders, and the donor community, the forum will address the principal challenges to delivering justice and provide space for advancing concrete solutions. We intend for the outcomes of the forum to feed directly into the UN High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development Goal 16 in July, and the UN Summit on the SDGs in September. Before I introduce Alejandro Ponce, our Chief Research Officer, I'd like to invite all of you to join us to celebrate this index launch to our offices, the WJP's offices, for reception from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. later today at 1025 Vermont Avenue Northwest. We'd love to see all of you there as we celebrate this special occasion. Now I'd like to introduce Alejandro, who will be walking us through some of the key findings of the 2019 WJP Rule of Law Index. Again, thank you for letting us participate in your afternoon, and thank you for the opportunity to be here at the Institute. Thank you very much, William. It's a pleasure for me to present the results of the 2019 edition of the Rule of Law Index. The book that you have in your hands and that you're going to see the results today summarizes the views of 120,000 people in 126 countries. Views from more than 3,800 attorneys all around the world who talk to us about their experiences with the courts, with the police, their perceptions about the performance of their institutions in their countries, their perceptions of corruption, or the extent to which they are victims of violence or crime. 120,000 people talking, just we analyze, collect that information. The team that you see over here worked diligently to summarize that information into a few scores that can give us a perspective of the rule of law around the world. The information that we collected is organized in nine factors that we call, so constraints on government power, absence of corruption, open government, fundamental rights, ordinance security, regulatory enforcement, civil justice, criminal justice, and informal justice. All of these outcomes essentially are manifestations of the principles that William mentioned and essentially mean just that the laws impose its limits on the exercise of authority, but at the same time that the state has to enforce those laws just to authorities but also to members of society so that people can live without violence or that they can have access to mechanisms to solve the problems and address the grievances. Each one of these indicators is summarized into 40 indicators, 48 indicators that you can look at in your book, but essentially just summarize outcomes just within each one of these roller categories. So we summarize all that information into these indicators. So as I mentioned before, so it's 120,000 people, more than 3,800 experts in 126 countries, which are 13 more countries than the previous edition of the index, all of them in Africa, 94% of the world's population and more than 500 questions summarized into this course. Now let's go to the global results. So first of all, so you can look at the information in your book, but it's also available online. You can look at some of the results globally. You can also look at comparative tables where you can see the rankings of countries, the position in which each one of the countries is. You can also look at the information organized by regions or by level of income, or you can look at the specific scores by factor. If you're interested in a particular factor, you can see how countries perform in each one of these dimensions. Compare countries against each other online. You can check that on your phone. And obviously the most important, if you're interested in a particular country, looking specifically how the country is performing in each one of the eight factors where you can see the global score, the global ranking, the score for each one of the different factors, the ranking for each one of the different factors, as well as the regional and the income group comparisons, and then looking at each one of the elements that we measure, or each one of the indicators that we measure to calculate the score at the bottom of the country profiles. Now, what do we learn from this massive data collection exercise? So this year you have another booklet in your hands where we put some of the main insights from the data, global insights that we can learn from looking at trends and looking at the data. The first one is the most basic thing, which essentially tells us about the top performance and the bottom performance of the world. The top three performers are Nordic countries, Denmark, Norway, and Finland. These countries have had this position for the last three years. And the bottom performers, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cambodia, and Venezuela at the bottom. Then the top performers by region, Denmark, Europe, Georgia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Nepal in South Asia, UAE in the Minna region, New Zealand in East Asia and the Pacific, Namibia in Sub-Saharan Africa, and Uruguay in Latin America. Then we can look at the performance, the changing performance from the previous year in this graph. You're looking at the countries that move by more than 1% either up or down in the rule of law score. The important thing to look at here is not only the individual countries, but that more countries actually decline in their score than improved. Only 23 countries improved more than 1% in their score, and 31 countries declined more than 1% in their score. Among the countries that improved the most are Zimbabwe, Guatemala, Ethiopia, and Malaysia, and the countries that declined the most were Nicaragua, Iran, Jordan, and Venezuela. An important aspect, of course, is not only looking at the changes, but the position that the country is just in the index. In this graph, we essentially combine just the results that we have from the changes from the previous year and the position. So essentially, you can look at the countries above the median or below the median, and whether countries improve. You can see that at the right, in green, or whether the countries decline. Where we see most countries in this graph are in the quadrant where we are below the median and decreasing, so which is the left upper quadrant. And the countries where we see actually the fewer countries are below the median and improving in rule of law. Only 13% of the countries are in that quadrant. 35% of the countries are in the previous one. Then, looking at each one of the specific components of the rule of law. In this graph, what we see is the percentage of countries that improved or declined in each one of the factors of the index. In the dark colors are the changes from the previous year, and in the line colors it's the changes from the last four years. So we have currently several years of data that allow us actually to look at comparisons and look at trends of how countries are moving over time. What we see is the following. So what you will see is that at the top, just 64% of the countries declined in limits of government power. So these are essentially the governmental and non-governmental checks, such as a free press that can contain just the authority of the executive. 64% of countries declined, 36% of countries improved this year, and this is a trend that we have seen over the years. 60% of countries, when we look at the last four years, 40% of the countries, when we look just again improved, when we look at the last four years. Another factor that it's important to highlight is the one in Fundamental Rights, factor four. Just particularly when we look at the last four years, 70% of the countries have seen declined, and 30% have seen improvements. In the last year, 55%, when we look at the last four years, have seen declines. Now, in this graph, you can look at how countries have moved in rule of law over time or over the last four years. So what you see is that in general countries just sometimes improved, but sometimes declined. They are moving up and down, just there are very few countries that actually have consistent trends over time, and the goal is to change rule of law in countries. Only 14 countries show during the last four years consistent improvements, and 18 countries show consistent declines. So supporting this idea that I mentioned that countries in general show positive trends, then probably just backslide and go down. Now, this year something that we introduced this year is 13 countries in Africa, so which expanded the coverage of the continent. Importantly, just the first two positions in Africa are two of the new countries included this year, which are Namibia and Mauritius, and these countries perform even relatively well just as compared to other countries in the world, and compare in some cases at the top just in the individual factors of the index. Now, let's move on to another region, Europe. So when we look at the change in Europe over the last four years, what we see is that most countries have improved in rule of law, but you see two red arrows. These two red arrows are probably familiar to all of you, just Poland and Hungary. These countries have had experienced severe declines, and then you can see as well Hungary, for example, constraints of government power over the last four years have declined 17%. The regulatory enforcement, civil justice, criminal justice, 14%, fundamental rights, 11%, with small improvements in corruption. Poland, same thing, just constraints on government powers have declined in the last four years, 25%, fundamental rights, 14%. Obviously, this calls our attention to what's happening globally in the world. In this graph, what we see is when we actually look at factor one, just constraints on government power over the last four years and compare all the countries, how countries are moving in this particular factor, what we see is that 60% of the countries in the last four years have been declining in this particular factor, which may just call for a rise in authoritarianism in the world. So, as you can see, these are the questions that we have been asking, and I think they are available. I invite you to look for the report online. Thank you to all of you. Thank you to the staff that actually was the one who did all these work that was actually a lot. You have seen them, and I invite you to talk to them if you have questions. So, we have a lot of questions about the security here at USIP. Let's jump right into it. I want to introduce the members of the panel who are joining us today. So, we have the pleasure of having Maria Stefan, who is USIP's director for nonviolent action programs, joining us today. We also have Hoyt Yee, who is a senior fellow here at USIP on loan from the State of the United States. And then also Betsy Anderson, who was introduced earlier, who is the executive director at WJP. So, let's jump right into it. I want to thank Alex for giving everyone the presentation of the data for this year. My first question goes to Betsy, and it's a follow-up to the presentation that Alex just gave. So, Betsy, I wanted to start with you. What are the global trends of significance when we look at the data? And what are the implications of such global trends? Okay. Well, thank you very much, Philippe, and thanks to everyone here at USIP for welcoming us. It's a pleasure to be here. Well, Alex, I think, summarized the global trends very well, and they're reflected in the insights booklet that you all have. Certainly what jumps out is this global decline in rule of law overall, and particularly in a number of factors that seem to align with what many have observed as rising authoritarianism around the world. I want to maybe make a brief note of caution, however, about those kind of generalities when looking at this kind of data. Of course, anyone who works in rule of law appreciates that it varies dramatically country to country, and even if you dig into the data, you'll see a lot of variance within each country across the variables. And one of the things that we think is very powerful about this index methodology is it enables that kind of specific analysis of individual country circumstances. But that aside, we do see these trends, and now with several years data, they do jump out at us. And what I want to say about that is, in addition to Alex's observations, one of the things that I find most concerning about these signs of rising authoritarianism is that they seem to be being affected in a number of countries through manipulation of laws and legal institutions. So we have this challenge of states using rule of law terminology, rule of law rhetoric to justify actions that are actually degrading the rule of law. And that becomes as a political, as a rhetorical matter, very difficult to counter. And we see that unfolding in a number of different ways that can get into the details of the conversation unfolds, the different tools that authoritarian leaders are using to manipulate the law to undermine rule of law. But I think that's a thread that runs through here that's really important to pay attention to. And as for the implications, well I think one thing to note is that the factors of WJP's eight factors, the factors that are declining, that are pulling us down in so many countries about constraints on government authority, fundamental freedoms, open government, criminal justice, these factors are the ones that are over time contribute most to instability. And for some of the things that you here at USIP are most preoccupied with. And so I think this is a particular alarm bell for folks working on fragility on conflict prevention. This data suggests that those factors that cause the kinds of problems that preoccupy you are trending in the wrong direction. Thanks Bex. I mean one of the other insights that I picked up on was when Alex was presenting the slide about Europe and the fact that many countries in Europe and Eastern Europe and South Eastern Europe seem to be showing particularly significant declines in government constraints on government power. So I wanted to turn to Hoyt, given your background and your extensive experience in the region, Hoyt. The question I think I had in relation to this is are we witnessing some sort of a balancing loop effect that seems to be pushing the governance structures in these countries back to an earlier point of the equilibrium? Thank you, Philippe. That's almost a philosophical question about whether there is a kind of natural balance point or equilibrium for states with respect to the rule of law. And I would tend to say and I would answer a question by saying that no, I don't believe there is for any of these countries a natural set point what I would say instead is that this is more about the political context the political framework in which governments are pursuing their policies their approach to rule of law and to take a couple of the countries that Alex pointed out is the red arrows on page 18 of the summary Poland and Hungary. I think most of the people in the room will remember or some of you in the room will remember back in the 90s when Poland and Hungary were actually held up as models for democratic reforms and rule of law reforms because they were emerging from a darker period but also because there were factors such as the European Union and NATO that were holding accountable there's that word that several have already mentioned today for countries that wanted to join NATO and the European Union to meet certain standards and the citizens of the countries of course were very much motivated to have their governments meet those standards and so the governments then did everything possible sometimes superhumanly possible to pass laws and to adopt policies and to make sacrifices in order to maintain a level of the Europeans and the North Americans believed were adequate for integration into the transatlantic institutions now we fast forward to two or three decades later these countries are already in those institutions they're already very prosperous and they're in a very different place and I would argue and we can maybe get into this later that the constraints, the external constraints that were present and the facts and balances if you will from outside the country that were in place in the 90s have large challenge in the European Union Hungary challenging the European Union in ways that were unthinkable to a lot of people who in the 90s were trying very hard to help Hungary and Poland to meet the standards that doesn't mean that there aren't ways to adjust but I think Hungary and Poland have found ways as Betsy pointed out in the polls Hungary found a way since 2010 when Viktor Orban was elected he's now had I think since then three successive elections resulting in a super majority he's changed the laws he's been able to stack his judiciary and he's been able to legally change media freedom and judicial freedom to continue his model which is consistent with Hungarian law so he's not really violating the rule of law in the strict sense it's just a quick word on Serbia and Bosnia and Sagovina also red arrows I think on the screen that Alex pointed out they're very different these are countries that are aspiring to join these institutions but I would say the same kind of effect is in place and while when the international community including the United States and Europe and Canada have paid a lot of attention to Bosnia and Sagovina there has been a better performance I would say in the reform area including rule of law in the mid 90s for example there was a great deal of attention including with the Dayton Accords in trying to help Bosnia and Sagovina would allow it to exist as a state a lot of people would say that now 20 years later that level of attention from Europe, United States has diminished to the point where there's not the kind of positive or in some cases perhaps negative reinforcement needed to help countries like Bosnia and Sagovina stay the course and just lastly a word on Serbia I think a country that is further along the European Union process for European Union integration there is still a clash of strategic directions on one hand the country wants to move towards the EU on the other hand there's a lot of interest in maintaining ties with Russia that probably gets to another question but the end result is that there is not a clear message to the Serbian government about what it needs to do in order to become a full contributing and happy member of the family democracies in Europe whether it's the European Union or simply integrating with markets so when there is not sufficient encouragement when there is mixed messages perhaps one could say there is a tendency for governments perhaps to lose sight of rule of law as we would define in Russian and I think that's a perfect segue to the other question I wanted to ask you very quickly to what extent does this decline in government accountability and constraints on government powers and a rise in authoritarianism to what extent does that create opportunities for authoritarian states like Russia and to a certain extent China based on your experience and what you've observed I think there are real vulnerabilities in Europe to exploitation by countries, Russia China, perhaps others to exploit the system to exploit vulnerable countries in ways that are detrimental to the interests of the United States and its allies and other European countries an example is that when states have weak institutions whether it's judicial or law enforcement or judicial and there is a lot of corruption as a result of that governments become vulnerable to bribery to economic pressure that might for example lead them away from the European Union or NATO or might lead them to support policies and initiatives from Russia or China that are not consistent with what we in the West want to see happen I think there is also a danger that the countries themselves will be held back we see in Bosnia and Sogovina which is very divided partly because Russia does not want to see Bosnia and Sogovina move closer to either the European Union or NATO particularly NATO and therefore the country through the Republic of Srpska receives a certain level of attention from Russia that makes it much more difficult to go ahead as a united united country in Serbia the same thing and perhaps on a positive side of that question is if by strengthening rule of law if by strengthening internal institutions in the Balkans for example can countries become more inoculated more resilient against this kind of interference from outside and I think the answer is yes an example I would use would be Macedonia as of a couple weeks ago this is a country that was very much in jeopardy whose fate was very much unclear only over a year, two years ago but by I think concerted effort by its friends, its allies in Europe North America and others it was able to make some improvements it was able to have credible elections it was able to forge a government a multi-ethnic government which has made some improvements has a long ways to go but has made improvements in rule of law and it is now I would say in a much better position to resist the advances the mischief from outside regimes I wanted to ask then a quick question to Maria and I know that we're colleagues and we talk about these things very often but one of the questions that I had pertains to some of the countries that we see in those reports a lot of those countries have witnessed or have been the theatre of non-violent demonstrations or citizens based movements that have forced or dismantle authoritarian structures of governance and we can think of Poland for example that brought Poland out of their communist space Serbia to a certain extent as well where Slobodan Milosevic was forced to resign so to what extent Maria are we witnessing or are we witnessing the dictators or the authoritarian learning curve can we say that authoritarian regimes have become better have learned and they are now better at stifling or addressing the types of challenges that non-violent action or non-violent movements can pose to them Thanks Philippe that's a great question and congrats by the way thank you for the release of the rule of law index congratulations in terms of the dictators learning curve I think you're absolutely right to note that two especially hungry Poland countries that underwent massive people power campaigns in the late 80s early 90s mass participation to challenge communist tyranny at the time were successful in the sense that they overturned the communist regimes and they were thought to be consolidated democracies and they have since back slid if you will we know empirically that these types of non-violent movements people power campaigns civil resistance movements involving tactics like boycott strikes civil disobedience protest demonstrations and the like have been very strongly correlated with democratization so about eight different independent studies freedom house researcher Jonathan Pinckney others have done studies that have found that the skills involved in organizing mass non-violent movements the negotiations involved the coalition building the organizing involved tends to be conducive to democratic consolidation and so Poland and Hungary were kind of thought to be on that successful trajectory I think what we have seen is that governments have begun to realize that organized citizenries and you know populations that are capable of engaging in organized campaigns and movements are the greatest threat to their grip on power in a grip on abusive power so I think we have been seeing some authoritarian adaptation over the years one data note is that my colleague Erica Chenoweth and I have been collecting data on major non-violent and violent campaigns over the decades and we have found recently that starting in the 2010s period the overall effectiveness of non-violent campaigns has dipped to a level that we have not seen since the 1950s so even though the non-violent campaigns are still successful we're seeing a decline and we think that that has to do a lot with the fact that regimes are learning they're adapting they're developing kind of new methods techniques and you know the dictator's handbook which has been translated into multiple languages by now and adapted to the local context has a few commonalities I mean there are some classic techniques that dictatorships will use they will declare all forms of domestic dissent hooligans, terrorists, traders and the like they will blame dissent on foreigners outside powers they will fundamentally attack their media now I would say kind of a new development even though disinformation has always been part of the dictator's arsenal but the regime's investment disinformation, cyber surveillance cyber repression I think is you know increased significantly and I think it's kind of strengthened their pushback and you know it's not only repression regimes are not only attacking activists going after institutions, constitutions they also use incentives they use forms of co-optation paying off the inner entourage having cosmetic elections I think Chris Walker referred to them as zombie elections something like this giving the facade of engaging in democratic reforms and improvements but at the end of the day it's about managing and controlling domestic dissent and I think one maybe difference from previous eras is that these regimes literally are getting together in swapping notes so there are four that exist where technology is being discussed Betsy may have mentioned how for example NGO laws are being pasted from one country to the next so there's a lot of learning that's going on between and amongst these regimes and I think it's a very troubling trend overall the authoritarian resurgence especially for the work that we do here at USIP on peace building because decline in the rule of law is just fundamentally associated with drivers of violence and violent extremism so I think it's a really grave threat which and then maybe this is very interesting maybe we can then move on to Betsy and ask Betsy because in the authoritarian toolkit or the dictator's toolkit I heard several mentions of the law or legal means so the law seems to be at the very heart of this toolkit and so Betsy from your perspective how is the law being used to undermine the rule of law which you alluded to earlier on right so lots of different ways and it varies country to country but there are some common patterns that we see usually first if possible there will be a constitutional reform a rewriting of the constitution in ways that erode the checks on government authority that erode judicial independence perhaps that manipulate the electoral process in ways that will guarantee a majority in the legislature for the ruling party that's kind of step one then we see attacks on civil society and the media through the law so regulation of the media licensing of the media is a common move that has this patina of legality but is undermining the rule of law certainly regulation of NGOs is a common feature and then we see manipulation of criminal law so prosecutions selective prosecutions under the guise of anti-corruption or anti-terrorism is a very common move and has the both it's a legal move and it's also a political move and it demonizes oppositions in ways that can be convincing to the public so those are the patterns that we see and I think an important response is to be very clear about what the rule of law is and Hoyt even fell prey to this in talking about Hungary and describing yes Hungary has pursued some of the concentration of power there through laws and is formally abiding by laws but this is not abiding by the rule of law and there's a distinction between by law and rule of law and what we see in Hungary increasingly is rule by law but this is not rule of law and so that's one of the things that we at WJP are really preoccupied with is clarifying the definition of the rule of law what it means and through this index hopefully shedding some light on where it is so Maria what does this mean for nonviolent strategy what does nonviolent 2.0 looks like if the dictators and the authoritarians could learn do we see some learning on the part of the nonviolent action movements and what should it look like as we look ahead yeah that's a great question I mean these are when it comes to the relationship between these types of regimes or even backsliding democracies and their citizenries it's a bit of a cat and mouse game in terms of one will innovate advance the other will learn adapt their strategies and tactics and it's really a question of who innovates adapt strategizes most effectively in terms of who prevails but I think we tend to see people power come in waves whether it was anti-colonial movements in the 60s anti-communist movements in the 80s and in the 90s color revolutions in the 2000s most recently Arab Spring so there's often like a learning and a spillover effect that happens with these movements so I think there's always the potential that folks would learn from what happened in our media for example the velvet revolution you never know what is going to happen so I think we are seeing groups that are tactically innovating they're using different technologies and the like but one thing that I think really make the difference is you know the investment by activists by movements in organizing and one of the reasons I think in addition to authoritarian learning that we may be seeing a decline in the overall effectiveness of nonviolent campaigns is that there's been really a big focus on social media big mobilization protest so fast movement fast action and there's a huge power and value to that but what you're missing is kind of the fundamentals of organizing kind of the one on one and developing capacity, resilience and the like to be able to deal with all of these tools that are in the authoritarian's toolkit that are going after these movements so I think really kind of the investment in these types of strategies and tactics is important and the thing about nonviolent resistance always that that I remind myself is that you know people are never kind of captive to their fates people have agency and nonviolent movements have historically emerged and succeeded in places where no one would have thought that was possible and so I do think notwithstanding the authoritarian resurgence and all of these kind of decline and factors that it is possible for the citizenaries and kind of the grassroots actors the movements to learn adapt learn from each other and respond effectively I wanted then to move on maybe to Hoyt and because I picked up on what you were saying Hoyt beforehand the issue of leverage and that for a certain period of time in certain areas there was leverage on the part of the you know various external actors be people in Brussels people in Washington be it a peace process or an integration process to NATO or to the European Union now that most of this at least if we look at some of the countries that were highlighted in the Eastern Europe now that most of this not entirely gone but mostly behind us is there leverage is there still are there still things that external actors people who are focusing on strategies and resources and how to diplomatically or programmatically handle the trends that have been highlighted what are the levers what can be done in that sense for external actors so first I stand corrected on terminology and would just say that the rule of law or rule by law is largely possible or protected as a function of how the international community is willing to support it I fully agree with Maria's point about people power and I think it is at least as important that the people stand up and are heard and insist on rule of law and democratic governance in some cases it is more possible than others in Central Europe since we are talking about Europe there is I think a good example in Romania which is higher up in the ranking it still has its issues but one of the things that has been very pronounced in Romania over the last 10 years has been on occasion when the government has tried to do something shady 2015 or 2017 people have come out I think it was in 2015 when hundreds of thousands of Romanians were protesting against perceived corruption and the government fell in 2017 the government of Romania tried to pass some legislation that would essentially decriminalize various forms of corruption and the government was faced with hundreds of thousands of Romanians all over the country protesting and the government had it back down now that it wasn't a permanent solution because governments in strong positions such as in Hungary or Poland had an answer to not only their own citizens but to external factors so to come back to your question of leverage is there leverage and there is I think the fortunate answer is that there are forms of leverage over countries that belong to alliances or international organizations in which that country those countries want to remain members so we mentioned the EU and NATO as motivating factors in getting countries to meet certain standards these countries have mechanisms formal or informal in the case of the EU there is something called Article 7 which is in the EU treaty which allows discipline of countries that are not meeting standards and the EU has invoked Article 7 or the European Parliament has invoked Article 7 against Hungary and Poland in 2018 and 2017 and this is potentially a way for leverage we brought against authoritarian regimes or authoritarian tendencies now it hasn't been successful partly successful in the case of Poland in which Poland did have to the government had to back off some forced resignations by judges justices on the Supreme Court who were forced to resign before they wanted to resign those judges have been reinstated largely because of EU pressure we should remember that Poland since 2015, October 2015 when the law and justice party came to power was able to centralize power and to largely weaken the constitutional court in Poland by passing legislation which was arguably against the constitution of Poland as decided by the constitutional tribunal so there has to be some external factor and the EU I think has made a difference to reign in some of its members, Hungary and Poland but it needs to continue and the fact that there can be vetoes Poland can veto action taken by the EU or attempted by the EU against Hungary and vice versa for Hungary and Poland but this is a tool that exists and needs to be used if European EU members are going to be held to account and that's a key word countries like Serbia and Bosnia to Govina which are not in the EU they're not in NATO but they want to be there I would argue that the international community beginning with the European Union North America can if not distracted if not focused elsewhere can bring the necessary encouragement to these countries to help them make the reforms that are not only in these countries interests but ours so it's not so much that leverage doesn't exist I would say the leverage is not being used and it's never popular I think certainly not in the countries themselves for an outside force to come in and say this is what you need to do and you're going to do it otherwise you're not going to be able to join the club but if it is important and for the reasons you referred to earlier Philippe about the possibility of such Russia or China countries coming in to exploit the defects in the state of rule of law or democracy then it should be in all of our interests that kind of interest needs to be matched by action to maintain or reestablish the rule of law Excellent I wanted to end the panel discussions with a question to Betsy so this has been a particularly gloomy landscape that we've been talking about let's try to focus on some of the bright spots so from your standpoint Betsy, what are the bright spots as we're looking forward and so we'd like to have at least an example of a bright spot before we move into the question and answers session Thank you I'm a glass half full kind of gal with this question so overall of course the trends are negative but there are some positive things to cling to in this report the one factor that is improving on average globally is the factor that measures the absence of corruption so I think that's pretty interesting and encouraging it could be that the factor is picking up some of the misuse of anti-corruption that I described earlier when an autocrat uses anti-corruption laws to punish his or her opponents but I think there's no doubt that some of it is in fact progress on corruption and why is that I think it's several different factors there contributing one is we have an increasingly strong global norm against corruption it's now firmly codified in the UN Convention Against Corruption and Regional Corruption Conventions and National Laws so that norm is strong it is increasingly enforced by national governments by international bodies, the world banks the barment and sanctions effort and the like that enforcement is reinforced by a pretty powerful civil society people power movement on corruption that is getting traction we also see I think benefits from technology in this area which are is increasingly eliminating opportunities for corruption and making it easier to detect corruption so there are several different threads there but generally helping us in the right direction and maybe there are some lessons to be gleaned from that for other areas of rule of law so that's a positive a second positive in the report is a regional one and that is looking at Africa so in last year's report the 2018 rule of law index we reported that Africa was the region where there was the most progress across the countries where we were measuring that progress has slowed this year in the 2019 report basically we see a more or less a steady state most of the countries that we measured both in 2018 and 2019 stayed the same two improved one declined but some progress and particularly when you juxtapose that against global trends of degradation in rule of law Africa is doing relatively well trend wise the rule of law is still very poor in Africa so there's a lot of room to progress but I think there is hope there that we should cling to and finally I just point that the big movers the big positive movers in the report tend to be countries I think almost all of them our countries that have experienced recently a transition in government so we see this in Zimbabwe, Malaysia Ethiopia Pakistan these are countries that are trending positively in this year's report and they've all experienced a transition now a peaceful transition in government is itself a very positive sign for rule of law it also often comes with promises of reform and various moves that raise expectations in society and that's what we're picking up in our surveys and what's showing up in the index and I think what's important is opportunity because it is often a very short window of opportunity following one of those transitions and so as we focus on some of the very negative trends in this report I'd also point to those countries of real opportunity and that we seize those opportunities thank you great so I think it's now time to move to questions from the audience I will ask Alex to come and join us to address the specific data questions that might arise from the audience a few quick rules for questions if you could identify yourself before the question there will be microphones circulating and then ask a quick question and make sure that it ends with a question mark now so whoever wants the microphone you can raise your hand and then the microphone will get to you so I have someone here in the second row or we'll start here in the back and then we'll move up front me? Yes. Thank you my name is Marcelo de Jesús, I'm Argentine I'm living in the US I was a little bit surprised when Miss Anderson said that corruption was improving I would like to know if the measurement for this improvement is because laws and conventions are being ratified or because there's another objective index that tells you that we are improving that respect the change in the index is mainly due to changes in perception and experiences so we include questions about victimization and questions about experiences in reality it's very difficult actually to measure corruption well sometimes what we see is changes in perceptions just on how people perceive that things are happening and particularly for grant corruption it's extremely challenging to measure grant corruption sometimes people learn about this from the scandals that they listen just in the media but that's how we measure it it's not about the conventions that they have been ratified or so I mean they may have an impact of course on just the perceptions of the public or not I mean it's sometimes they may not necessarily have an impact thank you then here's second row thank you I'm Jim Michael and with CSIS and also an independent consultant first of all I want to say congratulations again this is just a tremendous service I think that you provide to the whole community the question I have and I think it's for Alejandro is how do you deal with mid term changes that occur in the year that you're measuring there are events I notice one of the countries for example where you show improvement is Guatemala and you know what has happened in Guatemala recently and so I wonder how do you have to take a snapshot but then sometimes things change within the year and I wonder how do you deal with those late changes in the data it is a challenge as you point out because the way that we deal with this is as follows so there are certain things that we cannot avoid so we have to collect the data at a certain period of time and we have to be very transparent about the time period for which the data is referring to we usually and the staff actually takes a lot of stress because we try to make it as close as possible to the time that we're publishing the report just as a result we have very little time to actually analyze the data but the issue is mainly just to be transparent about the time so we always have issues like the one that you're mentioning this year for Guatemala in which one or two countries there are situations that suddenly change so that it's not necessarily accurate so we'll just publish just exactly the time in which we collected the data and we hope that those changes are actually just reflected in next year I mean just that's part of the reason also just to collect the data over time, right? Just a two finger on that I've been quite preoccupied with the Guatemala case in the study and I think it actually it makes the point I was making there at the end about the short window of time there is following a transition in government to seize the opportunity for rule of law change I think that's what we're seeing in Guatemala the data is picking up optimism that people had following a transition in government there and lots of promises that were made and that we are not seeing that realized we'll probably show up next year then I saw a question here to the right and then we have another question third row there to the left afterwards and then also a second row hi it's loud Ben Juvalier with the American Society of International Law my question is about causation essentially to what extent do your surveys pick up on why people think the rule of law is improving and in what way can activists, non-profits government officials in countries that need to improve use this information to advocate for rule of law improvement I think I mean it's the service do not necessarily capture causation so they are a snapshot of how people perceive different manifestations of the rule of law we don't ask necessarily about the rule of law but different manifestations of the rule of law so as per said they don't necessarily show the root causes that's something that obviously more analysis is needed to figure out that on how this is used I think the advantage of an exercise like this is that it provides a reference point first a comparative reference point with other countries sometimes we know that in a particular country there may be issues of corruption or impunity but when we actually see it compared to other countries sometimes we are able to see that the situation is much worse than we knew so the comparative aspect is important and more importantly it's a thermometer it's the tracks obviously it changes over time to see what happens and by doing it in a standardized way across a large number of countries we are able to see these trends that we have been talking about so it's something that we see in the news for example that we perhaps feel that there may be a rise in authoritarianism around the world but is it really the case can we just identify which countries are experiencing it and by which reasons and this data set actually allows us to go deeper into these trends obviously for particular countries we will need to do a much more in-depth analysis just taking into account context and so on I mean this is simply a snapshot just a 10,000 feet picture of the situation but the main strength is again the comparative perspective and the trend over time Betsy do you want to add to this? I was actually going to ask Maria if she had perspective and experience of seeing citizen movements use data I mean I would say in general corruption tends to be a sanitizer so citizens latch on to and it's not only scandals although scandals can just raise awareness very quickly and bring people out but I'm thinking about Burkina Faso I'm thinking about Senegal I'm thinking about the Gambia I'm thinking about Armenia most recently that people feel angry when it's framed as this is adversely affecting your daily lives this is theft this is stealing from the people going to education, health all these kind of things and I know activists have kind of the data itself can be helpful but I think the contextualization of the data so that it reflects kind of lived experiences is really really important because corruption can sound like an abstract thing kind of like human rights but until you bring it to the level of what people are experiencing in their daily lives paying bribes, not being able to access medicine, healthcare and I think that the successful movements are able to frame in that way in order to kind of attract participation maybe connecting to Hoyt's point about external pressure as well increasingly we're seeing this data used by international organizations and international investors to inform their decision making and so highlighting that can be quite motivating the OECD for example is going to use the index data to inform decisions about states being allowed to join that organization and that can get attention in ways that can be quite impactful. Great, then I have a question here in third row and then we'll move on to the second row after. Hi, Emily Ashby with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Role of Law Coalition I think the private sector is sometimes a relatively untapped partner in this fight and I want to see what the opportunities you see for the private sector concretely contributing towards this struggle, this conversation. Well, I'll start and then I'm interested in the thoughts of others so several different ways in which we work with the private sector. One is actually in the data collection so private sector lawyers are among the experts who respond to our expert survey that informs the data collection really important. We've also had some interesting conversations with private sector actors about the questions that they would like to see us ask in the survey that would inform their decision making. Questions for example about data security in countries is something that companies are increasingly interested in and we might through the data collection be able to inform that analysis. I also think that to the extent that companies can explicitly or maybe through bodies like the Chamber of Commerce highlight this kind of information is relevant to their decision making it will significantly increase the leverage that activists and others have in trying to raise awareness of these issues so welcome that partnership. Moit Maria would you like to point out the role of the private sector as well? Are there any comments? Moit? Sure I think a great question and I think there is a role for businesses it largely depends on the businesses willingness and their own code how they see the importance of rule of law in the countries in which they may be already investing or operating governments often listen to businesses much more seriously attentively than they do to governments especially if it involves a question of whether the business is willing to invest or to continue operating in a country if there is a high degree of corruption or whether business is willing to accept bribes there are a lot of anecdotal stories about how some of these businesses are willing to take bribes some are not in a lot of countries if as you know from the American Chamber if you are a corporate officer and you accept a bribe or you allow your people to accept a bribe you may go to jail to the extent more businesses around the world American and otherwise are willing to apply that same standard on their operations in countries in which rule of law may be or not a question we can be more effective it's amplifying the voice of those who are trying to strengthen rule of law I would just say I think the private sector is a huge source of leverage I think a resource for you a colleague of ours at USIP has written a book called people power for justice and accountability and a number of the cases and studies and I recall at least three or four of them involve how movements themselves engage the private sector especially small medium enterprises to kind of put pressure on the governments specifically focused on corruption and you know you think to some of the classic people power campaigns Philippines and the like against Marcos when the business sector got involved in really applying pressure on the governments that was a game changer so I think it's a key group then another question I have the second row the lady here in the second row I'm sorry I made you wait my name is Jin Jin Zhang I'm a China trained lawyer I'm an environmental litigator in China and now I'm leading an environmental law clinic at the University of Maryland law school I'm working on to ensure Chinese companies complying with laws when they are operating investing in Latin America and Africa if it's possible to evaluate the major authoritarian regimes their influence on the rural floor regionally or globally for example, Russia in Europe and China in Africa it's certainly possible to analyze that that's not something that we're looking at in this index it may be something that colleagues at USIP analyze other think tanks are looking at those international forces that are either strengthening or undermining the rule of law so we clearly have an increased focus at USIP on the role of great power dynamics and the impact of great power dynamics on the potential for violent conflict we have now an increased focus on the role of China not only as an emerging power that can contribute to conflict but that can also help in managing and addressing certain conflict potential and then we are also considering doing the same with Russia as well so we do at USIP now consider great power dynamics to be a core ingredient of our thinking on violent conflict and the dynamics around the world yeah other questions I see people here on the left I want to make sure that I'm equitable between different sides here so why don't we move to the right fourth row and then I promise we'll go back to the left side of the room thank you so much, Joanne Richardson with the National Center for State Courts and I just wanted to say that I appreciate all of the Balkans I worked in the Balkans in early 2000 and then in 2007 I was in Bosnia in Kosovo so the conflict worked on the conflict post-State and so on my question is specifically related to Haiti which I don't believe it's included and I was just wondering if you have any comments this is a question to any member of the panel if you have any thoughts on Haiti are there other countries like Haiti that seem to have these moments of crisis every couple of years are there countries that you're looking at if they're considered separately, if you're looking at different types of measurements for them and how do you handle countries like this eh so I can tell you about the reasons, we unfortunately haven't included Haiti in the surveys it is one that we actually would like to include when we actually thought about including them it was actually very difficult to conduct surveys over there so that is one of the main reasons why we didn't include it but obviously the intention is there so when you mention about can you elaborate a little bit about when referring to the situation in Haiti and whether there are other countries that you can elaborate a little bit you're not looking if there are countries that you're not evaluating at all obviously and I'm asking because I think the service that you provided to the donor community is so important and I'm just wondering if there are opportunities for you to take us whether you look at them under a different type of index or a different type of evaluation for all of us who are looking to Haiti for hoping for some kind of improvement and an evaluation and analysis to find out what's really going on there yes okay so I mean in the ideally we would like to cover all the countries in the world so that's the goal obviously it is challenging probably just the main challenge that we before the challenges the way that we select countries just on where to expand and this was traditionally how we have been doing it is just simply going first by the largest countries just simply to spread them out across the different regions different levels of socio-economic development and so on and then just once we had a global coverage just trying to expand to the countries that we have included just having said that probably the main challenge that we face is funding for just reaching out to all the countries once we cover a country just as I mentioned we do a poll so and we try to do polls regularly to update the scores and that actually just involves costs in some cases the constraints are not necessarily only because of the cost but more about methodological constraints of conducting service in the country just such I mean it's impossible for example to conduct surveys in North Korea today or in Cuba because the countries are closed or in conflict zones such as Syria for example there are constraints there are countries that are not as close as those but it still imposes constraints in terms of conducting these type of exercises because people may be afraid about answering particular topics and so on there are techniques that we try to use to accommodate for that but there were all the broader question the broader answer is that obviously we would like to include I mean just in the plans is to include actually Haiti we have included most of the Caribbean only country that is not included moving to the left side of the room we have time probably for one or two questions left so I think at the back yes I think so and I apologize for neglecting the back as well then we'll move then there's still further back so you need to get to them Lynn Hammergren I just have a question about leverage you talked about leverage and about the efficacy of outside pressure but having worked also in the Balkans and seeing the frustration of the EU which has let some people into the club maybe they didn't think they should the question is for something like corruption or rule of law once you know there's a problem what can outsiders do what can they recommend I think we now know that we don't want to do any good a national anti-corruption program isn't going to do any good and I find that donors and also the European Commission are frustrated just in terms of what do we recommend we recommend something we don't get the results do you want to have a thing and maybe in many people I'm sure are interested in that question yeah so first I'd say there are multi-layers of this there are standards that exist there are rules that exist already so I think the answer in many of the countries we've talked about so far with the possible exception of Haiti a possible exception of Haiti there's an existing code so we're not having to reinvent the wheel what we need is the accountability and the enforcement as it were both from inside I think accountability to the voters first of all but what the external factors can do is hold these governments accountable for their commitments to the institutions whether it's a NATO alliance or it's a European Union it is a responsibility of the institutions to hold their members accountable and when they fail to do that not only do bad things tend to happen but the governments whether it's authoritarian or otherwise are able to get away with their either populist or other anti-rule of law agenda so that's one layer and it's things like Article 7 or it's simply the NATO North Atlantic Council sitting around the table saying you know we're worried about a growing Russian influence within our ranks but one layer down I think there's also a need for the kind of reporting the kind of analysis done by the World Justice Project or Transparency International it's bringing to light the violations the shortcomings in rule of law of democratic standards because especially in countries in which the media, independent media have been repressed or silenced or bought by the populist authoritarian regime people don't know what's going on and that means people outside as well probably don't know what's going on so bringing to light and third I think helping institute, Maria should speak to this really but I think there's a lot of room for helping civil society whether it's NGOs we put a pitch in for prosecutors because one of the bright spots we want to talk about bright spots in the last several years and certainly in the Balkans we see that there are empowered and courageous prosecutors I'd say it's certainly in Macedonia in Romania until recently when she was fired up until the point she was fired a prosecutor named Kovesti was very effective at prosecuting senior government officials to help prosecutors, help judiciary and media do their job so they can help fight back I would just add to that that I think there tends to be a lot of external donor focus on the institution building as there rightly should be so a lot on the supply side but the demand side also is what really matters when you generate pressure that involves citizens organizing engaging in advocacy, movement building and the like and so I think that investment and focus is as important because if you're just pouring money into institutions that are comprised of individuals who have no incentive whatsoever to change their behavior or the like it's kind of throwing money away in many cases so I think there's the focus on the institutions the anti-corruption mechanisms but also the realization that it's the citizenry and the bottom-up pressure that's going to help bring about real and sustained change and we've seen Maria examples recently I think in Central America nonviolent action movements coming to the defense of certain institutions who were responsible to tackle corruption so these things can speak to one another one last question I owe one last question to the person in the fourth row who might deny the earlier on so one last question hi my name is Rose Lindgren and I'm at the State Department and the Bureau of International Arcotics and Law Enforcement I think this might go to Maria and to Alejandro I would like to know a little bit more in Mexico there's a recent state by state index and I just think the citizen movements tend to come from very the concrete real life action that people understand in their daily lives so it's tends to be municipal or state level and I just wondered what opportunities there are to continue to delve a little bit deeper into countries to assist them to realize where are the good areas that they can start to aspire to address and across within the country sure thank you Rose yes as you pointed out we recently produced an index in Mexico in which we compare Mexican states and you raise a very important point which is sometimes international comparisons are useful and in several contexts are quite useful just for countries to either address and I mean just draw attention to a particular issue signal particular developments but more importantly a lot of the changes happen at the local level and it's important to look at the success stories within countries that just where when we develop the index in Mexico that is precisely what people are more interested in is in which are the states that are doing well that are developing policies how did they develop these policies and overcame challenges so that other states could emulate as you pointed out just the states are probably more similar than the institutions in the states are more similar than the institutions for the country so it's something that they demand actually that we have heard from both the federal actors as well as the state actors pointing at who should we pay attention to who is doing interesting things who has done innovations and in many cases it happens at the local level just by a particular person in the government who has the initiative to actually do something and so then it works and then it creates opportunity for other states actually to start doing things so it's actually something important obviously there are challenges to implement exercises of this magnitude in countries but definitely it's something to pay attention when developing policies for individual countries last word Maria yeah no I would say from a state department perspective just supporting the enabling environment around which the movements are happening and this is an action is taking place so using leverage vis-a-vis security officials, police and the like to at least not engage in repression which also tends to be a problem in Mexico when it comes to protesting so using that type of leverage in countries as well in cable writing and beyond of what is happening at the grassroots level in meeting with those individuals sometimes it gets very focused on the very formalized NGOs in countries and you don't always hear where the innovative citizen action is taking place so I think kind of emphasizing those type of engagements reporting on it supporting the enabling environment and as appropriate providing support and learning like innovative techniques that may be happening in different places that may be relevant or applicable so I think providing that type of convening space, peer learning opportunities can also be a helpful way to help the activists in those places so I knew there were more bright spots than we thought originally so they are opportunities there are many bright spots so I want to thank all of you for coming here today special thanks to Betsy and William from WJP who came together to make this event happen this is what if there is such thing as institutional friendship this is what it looks like everyone collaborated and I want to thank everyone I want to thank members of the audience and participants for coming in thank you very much