 Hello, everybody, and welcome to our panel, Democracy, Human Rights and the Pandemic, Impacts and Opportunities. I'm Valerie Hopkins. I'm the Southeast Europe correspondent for the Financial Times, and a warm welcome to my living room here in Budapest. I'm very thrilled to have with us on the panel, Katharzyna Gaddaqadze, excuse me, and Dr. Kevin Casa-Samora, who is the Secretary General of International Idea, and Katharzyna, of course, who is the first Deputy Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, also known as ODIR, since 2016. And you will see also on the screen Oliver and Christopher, who are providing international sign interpretation. And I will ask them after the panel if there is a special sign for ODIR already. Katharzyna Gaddaqadze, I've practiced so much, I'm sorry, Katharzyna, has been the first Deputy Director of the OSCE Office of ODIR since 2016. Before that, she served as the head of ODIR's Human Rights Department, and she spent 25 years in public service at least, including international nonprofits and multilateral organizations in Europe, North America, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia. And before joining the OSCE, she was the Director of Save the Children, based in Tbilisi. Dr. Kevin Casa-Samora is the Secretary General of International Idea. He also has more than 25 years of experience in Democratic governance as a researcher, analyst, educator, consultant, a whole host of other things, including the Vice President of Costa Rica, which he assured me, was in a previous incarnation. I'm really thrilled to discuss some of the global challenges that we're now facing in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic with both of them. And I would like to get to it. So maybe I will ask Katharzyna first to tell us a little bit about ODIR's recently published reports examining state's obligations in a time of emergency and the impacts that the pandemic has had on Democratic institutions and human rights. I should say that this is also meant as a launching pad for two reports that both organizations have recently published, and we'll get to the idea report as well. Before I hand over the floor to Katharzyna, I want to remind people that this is one hour, but audience questions are very, very welcome. I hope that we will have about 20 minutes. So please, if during the debate, or if you already have a burning question that you want to ask, you can go to slido.sli.do and enter a code, the 9800. This should also, there should be a link through whatever streaming platform you are watching. Anyways, sorry about that. Technical details without further ado, I want to ask Katharzyna. The OSCE defines democracy in its documents as the necessary combination of strong Democratic institutions on one side and Democratic values and fundamental freedoms on the other. How in your view has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted these two key components of our Democratic societies? Thanks a lot, Valerie, and thank you very much for having me for this webinar. I would say perhaps to begin that in a sense this report has been for us a source of hope as well as a source of despair in a sense. And on the latter, this is because we have seen everything that we have been seeing even before the pandemic. And we actually have seen that our democracies in a sense were not prepared for as severity of the stress test that the COVID pandemic has put them under. And it's just exposing and widening what we have seen before and the conditions which affected democracies in recent years, which we all have been worried about. And they start with very low level of trust in Democratic processes and the institutions of democracy. Then of course we have seen and the pandemic has highlighted this weakening balance of power in favor of stronger executives. But also the political polarization that was at times very problematic even before the pandemic I would say has grown really toxic during these times. And I will maybe just say a couple of things about the democratic institutions and the processes of democracy as we see them. And one of them has to do with the balance of power. In normally functioning democracy we would have very strong national parliaments and they would play a crucial role in shaping our democratic response, participatory response, inclusive response to both today's crisis and tomorrow's solutions. And these would be representative responses. They would listen to all voices in society. They would be transparent and legislative measures adopted this way would also be participatory and transparent. And there would be a solid oversight of governments. And during the pandemic we have seen parliaments that were able to quickly adapt and respond effectively to the pandemic. But as always this is not even across the OEC space and not all parliaments could act with flexibility in reshaping their work. Not all amended regulations and embraced new technologies. The technology gap I think is one of the things that runs across the response to the pandemic by democratic institutions. Some parliaments did assert oversight through special committees or parliamentary inquiries but in other places parliaments were effectively sidelined. Parliaments we saw were really transparent and inclusive in their decision making. And we could all learn from them how parliaments can perform a key role in addressing a crisis like this and in upholding democratic principles. But there were others who made arbitrary decisions about prioritization of certain things over others or simply limited their functioning because for example physical presence was not possible or because of other things. Another part of a democratic functioning, democratic architecture of course is the judiciary. And the judiciary in a situation of a pandemic is very important not only to carry out normal functions, normal court functions for example but also they would have to and in this pandemic they did have to think about protecting the right to life and health of judges and judicial stuff and of other court users. But because of, especially in states of emergency or similar measures because of curfews and lockdowns, courts faced considerable challenges. They were partially or fully closed and most court procedures except for urgent cases were suspended and of course a consequence of this is that people face difficulties in access to justice in all kinds of civil criminal and administrative procedures. And also there was no clarity we have seen on processing pending cases and inconsistencies within even one jurisdiction and even within one court and this resulted in considerable legal uncertainty. I will also say that we have seen of course as we have seen even before a tremendously important role that civil society organizations and human rights defenders play. They not only raise public awareness about human rights related to public health but they also have exposed gaps in state responses to the pandemic. They challenge reprisals and retaliation that targeted activists and whistleblowers. But in many places exactly because of expressing critical views or reporting on irregularities in state responses, they face judicial harassment or even detention. And the emergency measures to address COVID-19 have also significantly impacted the ability of NHRIs to carry out their mandate and also to preserve their independence because perhaps one of the things that we have also seen is that I will talk about this a bit later is that there have been different responses to the pandemic but one that I think has most impacted on our democratic institutions is when it was purely politicized and driven by political short term gains rather than based on facts, data, science and taking democratic values and human rights into account. We did have seen good practices in state and civil society cooperation especially when it comes to providing up-to-date information about COVID and measures taken by government or in general access to information especially for people from minority groups or people who spoke different languages. And such examples were plenty but I will stress again I do not think it is acceptable to use the COVID pandemic as an excuse to further curb the space for civil society and human rights defenders. And then one last thing I want to mention is the technological means introduced to monitor and track the spread of the virus. Some articles refer to the current status quo as surveillance and digital dystopia. I don't think we are there yet fully but we certainly see very warring signs. Because these tracking tools they might be efficient but the sufficiency does not come without a risk and the risk of course primarily is to the right to privacy and it is especially true when these technological means are not temporary, transparent, voluntary at each step, reliable, free of commercial interest and proportional to their purpose. We were actually discussing this quite recently in the context of an encouragement to install an application that was tracking movements and COVID infections. And I was thinking if I were to install an application of that sort I would need to know where is this data going, who is going to have access to it, how it is going to be used, for what purpose and for how long and I need to have a right to request to be forgotten and I have none of these guarantees and in most cases there is no guarantees of that nature. So the complex data management and data storage requirements, sale and use of data for commercial purposes, extensive security measures and non anonymity of data and possibility for unwarranted surveillance, these are all the things that are out there. And I think they have to be really reconsidered in the context of the protection of the right to privacy and other human rights and I think they are especially important when it comes to people in vulnerable situations and people from marginalized groups because for them these surveillance measures can be imposed disproportionately and discriminatory and we have heard of various obligatory response measures used as a pretext also to prosecute human rights defenders, journalists, whistleblowers and citizens who simply express critical views towards authorities and how they handled the pandemic and I will perhaps stop here hoping that we can then discuss a more kind of way going forward. Can you hear me? Okay, sorry. I updated my Zoom last night and maybe it's not so happy with me. Sorry for that. I just, the whole thing restarted. I only missed the last maybe 20 seconds of your comments Katarina and I'm sorry for that but I know we'll have more time to discuss and I do think that we are truly at an inflection point especially when it comes to surveillance and when it comes to the desire, the type of governance that we are experiencing now in terms of the, I've seen at least in Central Europe where I'm based a lot of debate about what style of government is best for coping with a pandemic but maybe that is a great way to turn it over to Kevin. Your organization IDEA has recently published a global monitor on COVID-19's impact on democracy and human rights which sort of facilitates data analysis, policy guidance and tracks really a lot of the trends around the world and so I'm wondering based on all that data, what are you seeing as the key concerns and opportunities for democracy resulting from the pandemic? Well, thank you so much Valerie and let me start by saying that I'm mightily pleased to be doing this with OSCE Odeir. I've been a long-term admirer of the work that they do and I think one of the things that this time calls for is for more collaboration between organizations like ours so that we share more information and we share more ideas as to how to protect democracy and how to reinvent democracy going forward. So I'm very happy to be here with Katarzyna. Indeed an international IDEA has been doing a lot of work on the impact of COVID-19 on democracy and human rights as you rightly said we have put out with the support to the European Union a global monitor that covers 162 countries looking into the impact that different measures, mostly emergency measures that different countries have adopted to deal with the pandemic are having on different aspects of democracy and human rights. And we update this information, it's a lot of information, we update it every two weeks and it's just a very, I think a very useful policy making tool which I encourage all of you to look into because it collects a lot of, I mean we generate some of the information but for the most part we collect a lot of information that was dispersed and we put it into a sort of one-stop shop that I think gives you a very clear idea as to what is happening in all over the world when it comes to this. In terms of implications I would like to mention three or four things. Some of them concerning, some of them more promising. Among the concerning trends that we're seeing, there's one first group of implications that is connected to the widespread invocation of emergency powers all over the place. I mean nearly a hundred countries around the world having vote emergency powers of different kinds. And let me be clear, I mean this is entirely legitimate for democratic governments. It is a legitimate tool in the arsenal when you're faced with extraordinary circumstances. As long as you do it in a certain way, as long as those emergency powers are temporary, as long as they are subject to very strict oversight from parliaments and judiciaries, as long as those emergency powers are strictly proportional and connected to the nature of the emergency. And in most places I would say that has been the case so far, but we're also seeing a lot of cases where those emergency powers are being invoked in ways that are problematic for democracy and in ways that belie really the intention of dealing with the pandemic. And here one of the most concerning trends is what we are seeing in terms of the will and the willingness of many governments to crack down on the ability of the independent press to operate and just generally to crack down on freedom of expression. I mean this is, the data is showing that over 70 countries have enacted over the past few months different kinds of restrictions dealing with freedom of expression. Most of those countries are authoritarian or hybrid regimes, but there are also many democracies. I mean there are over 20 democracies that have adopted rules that restrict freedom of expression. In most cases using the argument that it's fighting against misinformation and disinformation is necessary for the sake of dealing with the pandemic. So this is something that we have to be very aware and watchful about. And perhaps one last thing about emergency powers, I mean perhaps my main concern here and Katarsina alluded in some ways in the course of her remarks, she alluded to this. I mean my main concern is that those emergency powers and those enlarged prerogatives of executives around the world become the new normal for democracies. And not simply, by the way, not simply because authoritarian leaders demand those powers but also because of fearful citizens tolerated. So we just become used to having, you know, seeing parliaments be in sideline from decision-making processes. We just get used to the state encroaching in the sphere of our privacy. We just get used to the state encroaching in the exercise of our fundamental freedoms in a way that was not as clear before the report of the pandemic. So that's one group of implications. The second group of implications is connected to electoral calendars, which have been dislocated by the pandemic. I mean we've seen about 70 countries and subnational jurisdictions postponing elections over the past few months. And roughly the same number that have decided to go ahead with the elections under pandemic conditions. Well, this is a difficult decision. One thing that we're seeing is that we're not in the same situation now that we were back in April. Countries are learning to deal with this and they're getting better at holding elections under pandemic conditions. There are many, by now, there are many good examples as to how to do that. And I always use, I always go back to what I think is a luminous example, which is the case of South Korea that back in April held parliamentary elections and they were clearly a success and they pointed the way towards what a competently held elections under pandemic conditions should look like. But there are many examples by now, but all the same the dislocation of electoral calendars is something that we have to be concerned about. And third, and this is perhaps what concerns me the most in terms of political implications. And this is barely starting to play out. The political implications that might stem from the mammoth economic crisis that we have. And this, I'm afraid, will take time to unfold. I mean, we all remember what happened after the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009. The political hangover didn't become evident until seven or eight years later. And this might yet happen again. I think the political implications of the economic crisis will be severe in many places in terms of political instability, in terms of public order problems. So this is something that we have to follow very closely over the next months and years. Are there opportunities in all this? Of course there are. And I will only mention one and we can expand on this in the course of the discussion. I think the sheer magnitude of the crisis is already forcing many countries to go back to the drawing board and renegotiate basic aspects of the social contract. And I'll just give you one example. I mean, this crisis has been an unforgiving teacher and is showing very clearly the dire prize that countries have when they choose to underinvest in public pursuits, particularly public health care over many years. So I would hope that as a result of this crisis, many countries will activate a broad-based, wide-ranging processes of social and political dialogue, which will hopefully lead in some cases to new constitutions, in some cases to different kinds of social and political covenants that embody a new political equilibrium, a new and better political equilibrium, more fair economic structures and more inclusive societies. So there's a big opportunity and we have to seize it with both hands. Thank you so much, Kevin, and especially for injecting a bit of positivity into a discussion that's been dominated for the past eight months with kind of bully conclusions and scary dystopian futures looming. And I'm also very grateful that one of your first remarks was about freedom of press and the media. And I'm hoping later in the conversation we can also discuss what you've seen in terms of how these restrictions on free media have actually affected country responses and policymaking. I've seen in some of the countries that I cover, for instance, that journalists have had a very hard time getting access to medical professionals. And now we have a massive incursorge in cases here. So anyways, but first I actually wanted to go back to Katrina and ask her a question about something that we haven't touched on yet, which is how the pandemic has affected inclusive democracy and especially gender rights and relations and gender equality. And before I hand over the floor to you to answer, I want to remind people that I would do not intend to monopolize this for the entire hour. Please send your questions on slido.sli.do, you find it in a YouTube or Facebook streaming platform. And if not, you can put in the code 9800 back to Katrina and the question of how this has affected gender equality. Thanks, Valerie. But before I talk about gender equality, I want to reflect a little bit on what Kevin said, because I think I do believe that we have a massive opportunity to learn a lesson how to live in a democratic and cohesive society is respectful of human rights. For all the question is whether we are actually learning this lesson. And what we, when you were speaking, it reminded me of a, there is an amazing book by late Professor Rosling called Factfulness. And in that book, he talks about the perception of the reality that is being biased towards the negative. And I wonder if in our sphere of work where we are constantly on a lookout for deficiencies and violations, we actually do not involuntarily also adopt a little bit of a biased perception of reality, not grabbing the opportunities enough to build the world that could be. Because I do believe also looking at the kind of underlying current of social movements and people's activism that we are at a point where really democracy, the foundations of democracy could re-emerge stronger. But I also want to say that that's another thing I want to say about this learning. There was a study at the beginning of the pandemic. It didn't talk about governments. It talked about organizations, about how many organizations had were prepared for this. And obviously this is a new situation. It's a new virus. Nobody actually knew from the beginning how it works. To this point, we don't quite know how it works. But in general, how many organizations had a well thought through representative, tested and updated emergency preparedness plans. And the conclusion of the study, the studies from April was that 80% didn't have any, not even transparent, inclusive, tested and updated, but they just didn't have emergency preparedness plans at all. And I am thinking that judging by our report, which I also strongly encourage our viewers to read because it's a good snapshot of what has happened in our OSE countries by the summer this year, that the governments, that the same proportion of not having emergency preparedness plan is probably true for governments as well. And I think it is actually something to strongly consider because it's not like we didn't know that a pandemic is possible. We didn't know for quite some time. It's not like we don't know that the global climate emergency will have drastic consequences for all our populations. Are we prepared as governments? Do we have preparedness plans? Do we think them through? Do we take into account all the principles of democracy and values and protection of human rights that need to be a part of such emergency preparedness plan? And now is a fantastic opportunity to actually think about it in a longer term. How do we approach emergencies as states? And I also want to refer to something that Kevin mentioned. We are eight months in the pandemic. And yes, there have been a lot of good practices. But but we know that when democratic institutions lack transparency and accountability, we know that when they restrict political pluralism, when they resist diversity and inclusion of various marginalized groups, then at the end, they end up undermining trust in democracy. And we have recent studies that show that less than 45 percent of people are satisfied with how democracy is working in their country. And when people live in what I would call poor imitations of democracy, they are more likely to give up on the idea of representative democracy and say that alternatives such as, I don't know, the autocratic model or a military role are a good way to govern their country. And I think this goes back then to an idea that we at some point considered mission accomplished, which is educating people on the civic democratic values and human rights. And I think we see also this when it comes to women. We see we saw not in the OSE region. I have one kind of person that I followed very closely. And of course, this is the leader of New Zealand, not surprisingly, not only because of how she governs, but also how she approached the pandemic and she did approach the pandemic in an inclusive, empathetic and caring way, taking into account the needs of the country's population and its various groups and being there for the people. Because I think she understands that that being a leader of a country is, first of all, a function to serve its people. But that's not necessarily an example that is replicated in many OSE places. In a report, we see that there has been a surprisingly low number of women in decision making bodies related to COVID-19 in most OSE participating states. And the crisis response and recovery planning, if present, was very seldom backed by a solid gender analysis. And that goes into many directions. One, of course, is the economic vulnerabilities and the employment discrimination because women in informal sector jobs and in hardest hit sectors classified as non-essential services were most affected. And, of course, there is the other aspect of this, which is that in discriminatory lockdown measures, of course, affect women's safety in the situation of domestic violence. And our report has not been the first one to point out that both the surge of domestic violence and the limitation of women's abilities to seek professional assistance because places were closed down, for example, and because they couldn't move freely. All of this had impacted women disproportionately. But I do think that this is also a consideration that we as international organizations and also governments need to take seriously going forward because women are at the forefront of this pandemic, both at the domestic front and at the professional front. They are also absolutely indispensable to make good representative, considerate decisions about addressing the pandemic going forward. So they have to be at the table and their voice have to be equally heard. Thank you so much, Georgina. I appreciate that and I really agree. I wanted to test Kevin a little to expand a little bit more about best practices for elections during the pandemic, but we got an audience question from Sonya. And I think I want to defer to her actually and her question, which is how has the COVID-19 had an impact on the distribution of powers and their responsibilities between different tiers of governance? Is there a trend of centralization or is it the opposite? And do you think it could be lasting? Well, thank you for the question. Generally speaking, this kind of crisis tends to generate, tends to engender centralization. Of course, that depends on a whole array of variables. It depends on whether you're talking about a federal country or a unitary country. I mean, there are all sorts of variables that intervene in this. We've seen very interesting examples in which the government, it tries to cobble together a strategy to deal with the pandemic in lockstep with the sub-national governments. The case of Australia, for instance, is a very telling example. And you also have the cases where the federal government and the sub-national entities have been a loggerheads. I mean, the most obvious case that I can think of is the US, but not only the US. I mean, you take the example of Brazil, well, one of the stories throughout the past few months have been the constant friction between President Bolsonaro and governance in different parts of Brazil. So I don't think there's an obvious trend when it comes to this. My take, and I would have to check on the evidence, but ultimately it's an empirical question. I mean, operating from general principles is that whenever you have a big crisis and this is as big as they come, you're likely to have more centralization of power and enlargement in the prerogatives of the national executive. That's the nature of this kind of crisis. And that's precisely why it's so important to be aware of this, so that this doesn't become the new normal, because it has implications, not simply for sub-national governments, it has implications, as we said before, for parliaments. At some point, some of the prerogatives that executives have acquired over the past few months have to be rolled back, one would hope, so that a more balanced structure of checks and balances reemerge once at least the initial phase of the pandemic is over. And I use the word initial in a very deliberate way because this is a general point that I want to make. I mean, we're having this discussion about the political implications of the pandemic. Well, it's early days. I mean, I'm very much afraid that this is not one crisis, it's a cascade of crisis that will play itself out in the course of several years, actually. So we don't know who will end up, five years from now, we don't know what the lessons will be, and we don't know who will sit, looking pretty in five years. It's early days. Indeed, indeed. And you've tempered the optimism of your first intervention now a bit. I'm just good. I see that you want to respond to that. Please go ahead. I wanted to say that we are looking at Odeer at different scenarios because the future is no longer linear and one has to be prepared for different futures. And one of them is what we kind of as a working title named State versus People. And that exactly is looking at the centralization of power in the executive. And I agree that it is, in a sense, normal under the situation of the pandemic or any emergency or any crisis situation. And that different crisis situations are going to stay with us for a long time. But that's why it is critically important how it is done in the first place. Because you don't have to just strip everybody of their participation, contribution and oversight functions in order to make decisions. And in a sense, we have seen this in our report. It is in a sense better when you have formally introduced state of emergency. Obviously, it has to come with conditions that Kevin listed than when you take decisions as a strong executive without rooting this in a solid legislative framework, which we have also seen in some OSE participating states. Thank you so much, Kevin. Did I see that you wanted to respond or not, okay, I misinterpreted the fingers. We had a question also, another audience question. We have a very, how to say, nevermind. We have an audience that is coming with great questions who Amelia has asked, can we find models from the COVID-19 crisis that are historically reoccurring and on the basis of which we could make assumptions about the future? Katarzyna, you just spoke about the fact that the future is actually not linear anymore. Yeah, so go for it, Kevin. No, this is a great question. This is a great question because this is something I've thought a little bit about. And I guess it goes back to the final part of my initial remarks about the opportunity that we have to renegotiate the social contract. Well, you know, it's been seen before that a new political equilibria emerged from really big catastrophes, right? You know, a new political and social and economic equilibrium emerged in Western Europe from the ashes of the Second World War. You see this kind of thing happening, you know, a new social covenant being cobbled together in all sorts of post-conflict and transitional contexts. So this is the kind of thing that can happen in many places. It is by no means assured. I mean, there are countries that have a real shot at this. And I'm thinking here of the example of Chile, for instance. You know, Chile had this huge demonstrations last year that ended up in a kind of political settlement that were by all political and social actors agreed that a new constitution was necessary. And they're having a plebiscite in a few days which will initiate the road towards a new constitution. Well, I mean, you have an obvious opportunity to crystallize that discussion hopefully leading to a new and better political, social, economic equilibrium. Well, there's the case. That may happen in many places. It won't happen everywhere because here we go to the other example and there are plenty of historical presidents for this one too. Which is that in many, you know, in many, if those processes of social and political dialogue are not activated, what you will have is violence. What you would have is a descent into political instability and eventually authoritarianism. And that happened in a lot of places during and immediately after the Great Depression. So both historical outcomes are possible. Are we gonna see both? So that's why it's so crucial. And this is a very practical implication for both our organizations, quite frankly, as well as for others. I mean, we've been part of national dialogue processes in many places in the past. Well, we have to do our part to notch countries in different ways by sharing best practices, by simply speaking out, trying to notch countries towards dialogue processes because the alternative is too awful to contemplate. Katarzyna, I see that you wanna respond, but I just wanna add an extra question. Well, because we are already, we have less than 15 minutes left, but it's connected, which is that, what do you think is also another audience question? What do you think about people's mobility on the street to protest, you know, to advocate for these new social covenants during the pandemic in terms of the safety, the risk to spread the disease and balancing their right to express themselves? So I don't wanna take you too far from what you wanted to respond to, Kevin, but I think this is also a really important topic to touch on. I wanted to agree with everything that Kevin said and just perhaps say one thing that I think is an important, maybe differentiating factor for today's reality and only some of it is within our mandate, but the effects are very strongly within our mandate. And this is that the pandemic is global, the subsequent economic crisis will be global and the climate emergency is global and will have global effects. And yes, it will affect some people more than others, but the response therefore cannot be singular because it will not bring the effect. So one other thing that I think our organizations need to do is to speak for and act towards greater cooperation, greater exchanges and greater kind of really trying to find the common denominator even if this is very difficult. And then to your question about the mobility and I don't think we are there yet with the social movements being united enough and strong enough and determined enough to actually push the governments to change the social contract. And I think that's another thing that I have been, I actually had this discussion quite some time ago with colleagues from the Erste Foundation, they asked me if I could just focus on one thing in the next two or three years, what would that be? And I said, this would be building a bridge between the street movements of people and the kind of civic activism that's on the streets and the democratic political processes because these two are growing further and further apart. And as long as there is no connection we might actually be heading towards anarchy and revolution rather than towards a peaceful change of a social contract. But I think the dynamic is there and how we support civil society, how we support activism and how we really stand strong for promoting dialogue and building those bridges is going to make a difference. And I think this, we will see this dynamic more and more when we fully realize the economic effects of the current pandemic because then it will hit more people than the pandemic has done. Indeed, indeed, thank you. And I think this comment about bridging civil society and political activity is really interesting. And it's something that we saw before the pandemic that sometimes it's really, really so complicated, at least in my countries, to translate the social movements into politics which is seen by so many participants in those social movements as a dirty word and a dirty profession. But so now we have less than 10 minutes. I wanna ask one more question from Elisio which I think follows on very nicely in this discussion which is that the pandemic has been used to consolidate some kind of authoritarianism, a restoration of authoritarianism. And he wants, Elisio wants to know what are the conditions we have to sustain the legacy of democracy in these emergent democracies featured by low level of state and constitutional institutionalization. And maybe I can, well, I'm glad you have your hand up because this is a question for you. And maybe I can just also ask you to fold in some of your beliefs about what lessons we can draw already and how we can make, make sure democracies are better prepared and more able to overcome future crises. Thanks. Great. I mean, this is, I think, yeah, it allows me to give a final reflection on lessons. This is a great question. And I think it's a very telling question because my impression is that there are a lot of people out there that are buying into this narrative that this is the kind of crisis for which authoritarian systems are better equipped. Well, I dispute that. It really depends. To me, one of the things that has become clear in the course of the past few months is that it is not so much the type of government that you have that matters in terms of your response to the crisis. It is how much government you have. That's the key variable. And what that means in practice is that, I mean, one of the lessons that is emerging, I think, from this crisis is that we have to focus a lot of our discussions on the questions of the capacity of the state. Because the fact of the matter is that if you look around, you see authoritarian systems with high levels of state capacity, the likes of China or Singapore, just as you see authoritarian systems with pitifully low levels of state capacity. I mean, think of Venezuela, right? And you also see democracies that have extraordinarily stellar levels of state capacity, the likes of New Zealand, of South Korea, Germany, just as you see democracy in my part of the world is particularly glaring when it comes to that. I mean, most Latin American democracies have, quite frankly, low levels of state capacity with a possible exception of Uruguay. So that's not the cleavage that, the cleavage that matters is not democracy versus authoritarianism, is high levels of state capacity versus low levels of capacity. And that should force us to pay attention to issues of institutional design. How democratic systems are designed to adopt and implement decisions in an efficacious way. It should force us to pay attention to issues connected to the quality of public administration. It should force us to pay attention to the issues of fiscal robustness. I mean, look at the case of Germany. I came across a fact the other day that really made my jaw drop. If you add up all the different programs that Germany has made available to its population and its businesses to cope with the pandemic, it's almost one third of GDP. Well, that's the kind of, those are the degrees of freedom that you get from building a physical discipline, from observing physical discipline in the course of many, many decades. So questions of fiscal robustness. And last but not least, when you talk about state capacity, the question of trust. If you want your state to be efficacious in dealing with the pandemic, your institutions need to be in doubt with trust, which in turn, and this I'm gonna mention here because we don't have time for more, if you really care about the issue of trust, you have to talk about corruption, which is one of the diseases that is eating away at the legitimacy and the credibility of institutions pretty much everywhere. So one of the big lessons that I think emerges from this crisis is the importance of state capacity. So in practical terms, that means now that we're confronted with this huge crisis, the answer is not running for the authoritarian door because we're gonna be safe if we go there. No, the answer is to have this discussion as to how we better equip democracies to be able to deliver. That's the discussion that really matters. And it's a discussion within democratic parameters, not outside of that. Thank you very much, Kevin. And I see courtesy that you have here. I was definitely gonna come to you next, but I see that you already want to respond. We have one more question from the audience as well, which was also directed to you about the tracking tools and applications. Do you think that these apps come with more risks than normal apps and social media does at so-called usual times? And this person asking the question says, we have very little control over our data also when there is no pandemic. So I wonder if you can contextualize that as well in a future where more and more people will be protesting or trying to reset the social contract whereas we've discussed. Maybe I will start from this because I don't think it is different. And it's really, I think it's a very valid question. And that's one of the, I think, fundamental questions that we will have to ask ourselves and really work on going forward. I am often reminded of a saying, the generals of today are preparing, of tomorrow are preparing for the worst of the past. And I think when it comes to the ability of states to update legislation, to keep up with technological developments, this is a good today's version of that old saying. But I also think that the difference here is that in social media, for example, we give our data away freely in Google, in Facebook, in YouTube, in Twitter and how they are used. Yes, there is a lot of non-transparent use of the data. You cannot ask to be forgotten really. There is millions of questions about your right to privacy. But you do this yourself and you give this data effectively to a commercial entity. Here, if you have a COVID tracking application that is, for example, mandatory for all quarantined people and their family members, and the data is stored by the state and you don't know where in the state and by home and how is it protected and who is going to use it, I think that's a little bit of a different story because then your choice to have or not to have this data tracked somewhere and to be or not to be under surveillance is much limited. And then, of course, there is a whole question of misusing the pandemic surveillance for, I don't know, for limiting the space for the opposition, for activism, for journalism, for free voices that are out there and question the actions of the state. So I think there is a difference and I think this is why it is critically important that this discussion is continued and that this discussion actually leads to new solutions when it comes to the right of privacy, the right to privacy vis-a-vis new technologies and their use in the context of pandemic or in any other context by the state. But I also wanted to say one thing that Kevin said, I think a part of a capacity of the state is also a capacity to ask for help when you are lacking capacity. And I was thinking when you were talking about this, I was thinking if my car breaks down, I don't try to force it to start working but I call it car mechanic. So if you have a pandemic instead of imposing all encompassing politically driven emergency restrictive measures on the entire population, perhaps it would give you better results quicker if you reached out to experts and listened to the science as Greta Thunberg would say and build your case based on data and professional knowledge, even if you yourself as a state don't have a capacity to do so. Thank you so much, Katarzyna. We are already a little bit over time but this is so interesting and I mean, I'm sure we could speak for hours about but I wanna give you both just an opportunity to make some final concluding remarks. Something that you, anything that you wanted to say but didn't get asked or some final messages on the pandemic, maybe, Kevin, I go to you first. Thank you, Valerie, this has been a joy. I would like to say just a, just one comment which is in a way connected to my previous remark, which is we really have to think hard going forward about what makes societies resilient in the face of great crisis such as this one. And I have to think that one of the things that lure people into the authoritarian embrace is fear of uncertainty. I mean, whenever uncertainty, levels of social uncertainty go up, people are more willing to go for the paternal embrace of authoritarian leaders. And it's always paternal because it's always men, right? So, and this is, I mean, there's a lot of history behind this. The practical implication of this is that for democracies to succeed, the odds of democracy to succeed are much better when you have an institutional setup that is able to bring down levels of social uncertainty. And that's why welfare states rule of law institutions and fiscal discipline are so crucial because they all help to bring down levels of social uncertainty and therefore improve the odds of democracy to succeed. So to me, that's a discussion worth having going forward. What is it that makes our societies more resilient? Because this kind of thing in different shapes and varieties will keep on happening. So we might as well be prepared. Thank you, it's been a joy. Thank you very much. I like that it's a joy. It's been a joy for me as well to learn so much and have a different perspective on these issues that I'm covering. Kadushina, I will turn this over to you and maybe if you focus a bit on facing all the challenges that we discussed today, which are numerous opportunities I might add, what would you identify as the main aspect that you've invested in as inter-governmental organization to make democracy more resilient as Kevin mentioned? Again, I seem to be agreeing with Kevin all throughout this meeting, which is a pleasure. It's good to find like-minded people and have them. You see, I don't have that effect on my wife. I have a question, so why? You see, but I will say what I said before, I think the issue of trust is, as Kevin said, is fundamentally important and the issue of trust is, again, as we discussed, comes from two ends. So one is the effectiveness of democratic institutions and processes to deliver in a way that people understand and in a way that responds to what people need. And the other one is for people to be willing to be engaged and also having space to be listened to. And I think only when those two come together, we can have a resilient society remembering what we have been taught in our office recently in a different context that resilience is an ability to bounce back. It's not as an inherent strength that is there and has to be built up, is an ability to jump back up from a hole in which you are. And I think this does require a stronger than ever focus on civil society. And civil society activism and civil society voices and civic education and human rights education and everything that allows people to come together around an idea and demand a change in a meaningful and democratic way by peaceful means because I think this is really critical. This is also critical to avoid radicalization of voices that is inevitable in crisis situation. Thank you so much, Katarajina. Thank you to all of you who've been watching, who've been translating both into Russian and international sign. I was hoping to pick up sign for pandemic and this is my last chance. But I also just want to remind everyone that if you liked this discussion, you should really read both the report from Odeer on the trends and follow on with the idea monitor which is being updated as Kevin said every two weeks. I hope that after the next sort of passage of time we'll be able to convene again and sort of look at some of the more short and long-term consequences of the pandemic and sort of check in, maybe we should make this a regular discussion to sort of check in and see how democracies are evolving and changing and how the way they've chosen to cope with the crisis has been affecting them the long term. This is something that I'm personally very interested in and I think all of you who tuned in today are interested. So thank you again very much for joining and check out the reports and have a nice day.