 Well, good morning everybody, a very warm welcome to those joining us for our ANU Crawford Leadership Forum discussion on revitalising democracy promotion. I'm Brydie Rice, Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Australian Council for International Development. And before we begin, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet. In my case, in Canberra, that's the Ngunnawal people and that's the same for those of you who are coming to us from ANU. I'd like to pay my respects to Elders past and present and certainly extend those respects to any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who may be watching today. This session will be recorded and it will be posted. So if you have to duck away for any reason, then you can come back and check it out at a later date. So on to our subject matter, let's dive in. President-elect Joe Biden made democracy one of the centrepieces of his foreign policy platform in the run-up to the US election, promising that under his watch, the United States would once again lead by the power of our example and that he would put strengthening democracy back on the global agenda. Biden's call comes at a time when democracy is under pressure worldwide, including in Australia's own neighbourhood. And in our discussion today, we'll have a quick look at Joe Biden's democracy agenda. We'll talk about the causes of democratic regression and illiberalism in Asia and we'll explore the possibility of a revitalised agenda for democracy promotion at a time of great global economic recession and sharpening major power competition. I'm absolutely delighted to be joined by the distinguished Carnegie Endowment for International Peace scholar Tom Carruthers and also by Australian National University's Southeast Asia expert Dr Marcus Meitzner. Tom is Senior Vice President for Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He also directs the Democracy, Conflict and Governance Program, great program if you haven't checked it out, please jump online and do so. He's a leading authority on international support for democracy, human rights, governance, the rule of law and civil society. He's the author of around about 10 books, a couple of which he edited, as well as numerous journal and newspaper articles. Great to have you here, Tom. And over to Marcus. Marcus Meitzner is Associate Professor at the Department of Political and Social Change, the Coral Wells School of Asia and the Pacific. And that's at the Anew College of Asia and the Pacific. Marcus, of course, is known to many of you as well. He's an expert in the government and politics of Asia and the Pacific. And he has a particular focus on Indonesia. Marcus has published extensively on Indonesian politics in journals such as democratization, excuse me. The Journal of Democracy, International Political Science Review, Governance and the Journal of Contemporary Asia as well. Marcus also spent seven years working for USAID in Jakarta. And we're hoping that he can share some of that experience with us today. So, Tom, Marcus, welcome. Great to have you here. And before we dive straight into our discussion, I just want to give a couple of instructions for the audience who may have questions. So if you do have a question for the panel, pop it in the Q&A box and raise your hand in the icon in the toolbar. If we select your question, I'll announce your name and you will be made live. Jump on, ask you a question of the panellists. Make sure you turn your camera on and your mute button off. And we will make you unlive. I think we need another word for that once you're done with your questions. If for any reason you're unable to put your camera and your microphone on, but you still want to ask a question, please type your question. Pop in the words not live in front of the question. And I'll be able to ask that for you. So, Tom, I'd like to start with you. And look today, I think we're really going to focus on Asia. But we're not long out of perhaps the most consequential US election of our time. What did the election and its aftermath tell us about the Australian the state of American democracy? Nothing very good. I could go on all day about this question, but we don't have all day. So let me give you a short but kind of enormous answer. The United States has two fundamental problems with our democracy. The first is that for well over 160 years, we've had waves of polarization starting around the Civil War during the 1920s and 30s with the New Deal and then starting again in the 1960s continuing to the present between two visions of America, rather progressive, inclusive, sort of rights oriented vision and a vision that's much more exclusive states rights oriented and not diverse in various ways. And these two visions have been fighting again and again over the soul of our country. In the last 50 years, this tension between two really distinct visions is coming to a head. It really got into serious gear 10 years ago with the formation of the Tea Party, rather extreme right wing movement, which essentially took over the Republican Party and has pushed an approach to politics that is denying the facts, denying the legitimacy of the opposition and denying the validity of basic norms and procedures embodied in the election of Donald Trump, who has ridden that philosophy as hard as he could. And that creates tremendous pressure in our political system. Second problem, the Constitution in the way our political system is structured in cases and in some cases in trenches, minority representation through our electoral college system in which minorities can sometimes win elections. The Republicans only won the popular vote once in the last 32 years of our country. Just think about that fact once in the last 32 years, if they've had power for a majority of that time, something odd about that system and a Senate where well under 50% of the population is overrepresented with well over 50% in the most important legislative chamber. So you have a system which entrenched minority representation and a very conflictive system between two sides, one of which is becoming a minority for various reasons and holds on to power through this representational system. So a deep division together with certain political structures encapsulated in this last election where we've experienced at the very moment that we're speaking right now, the electoral college is voting to resolve the selection many weeks after the place. So it's a sign of the conflict and a sign of the structural problem. So, Tom, you're painting a vision or two visions of democracy, one based on progressive and inclusiveness and the other on exclusivity. Is how much can a new president really fix in this context? When you've had a division that's gone on for over 160 years, you know, in November, Mississippi voted and actually voted for taking down the symbol of the confederate, the Confederacy from the state capitol. 160 years after the Civil War ended, we're still negotiating the end to that civil war and people's minds and hearts. And so one president can certainly do some good thing that cannot solve this division. What are some of the things President Biden will be able to do? He'll be able to change the tone of presidential politics to return to something like normal. He'll be able to pursue some middle ground measures, maybe simple things like broadband access for all rural areas of the United States that are consensual and maybe not so divisive. He'll be able to have appointees and a team around him that respects the rule of law and abides by institutional procedures and practices. But he's not able to cure this just deep, deep divisiveness and the anger on the right and the refusal to accept the legitimacy of anybody who's not part of their side. President Obama has a very revealing moment in his recent memoir, which I recommend to you, in which in the first few months of his presidency, he went to Florida at the time when he was very popular and he was doing good things on the economic curve. He went to Florida, met with the governor, shook hands with the Republican governor. Because a photo of him shaking hands with the governor was released, that governor was ridden out of the party and had to leave the party for appearing in a photograph shaking hands with the new president of the United States. So we're talking about a problem of political legitimacy and they've now painted a new picture of the president. Biden's illegitimate could be election. So President Biden can only overcome this rift by reasonableness, moderation and just sticking with a certain kind of principal program, which I think he'll be able to do. It's not going to cure the rift. It's only simply going to manage it. So President Biden alleged to renew a US global democracy promotion. But can that be credible given these serious shortcomings in US democracy? It's going to be difficult. You know, if I go abroad to somebody and say, hey, I'm here to help you with your elections or your political parties, you know, I'll probably have to pick them all up off the floor because they'll have fell over backward laughing or crying. You know, you're from the United States and you have something to offer me. But it is possible for countries that have flaws in their democracy to help others. Actually, no democracy is perfect. You know, France engages in democracy support, French democracy is not perfect, UK does, Australia does and others. So it isn't about perfection, meeting the need. It's about being aware of limitations, being honest about them, approaching it with a certain degree of humility and saying, we've learned some difficult things and we've struggled to overcome other problems, which we haven't. But we would like to engage in a kind of mutual learning process. You know, we've struggled with these things, you're struggling with them. Let's work together in some way. And it is possible to change the tone of democracies. Where is a promotion and rah, rah, rah on? It's certainly not regime change. It's, hey, this is important for all of us. How could we make this a mutual learning exercise that we all take part in that we can learn from you, you can learn from us, we can all learn from each other. So the tone has to be radically different. But I think there's an awareness of that, but it's going to be difficult because when people hear the term democracy promotion, they immediately say, like, wait a minute, you're imposing something on me and why you, of all people, there's a lot to overcome. Tom, I'd love to come back to that and what it might look like in the future. But before we do, Marcus, what do you think about this same question and Tom's response? Can the US credibly champion democracy in Asia, given the record of past years at home? Yeah, I agree with everything that Tom said. I would just like to recall as well that the US credibility problem with democracy promotion didn't start with Trump. This had a long history. Before that, the United States supported autocratic regimes throughout Asia during the Cold War. And let's also recall that George W. Bush who was really very vocal about democracy promotion, he had to explain to the world how he can square that democracy promotion with an invasion of Iraq without the approval of the UN and killing quite a number of civilians in the process. So this is a longstanding problem of how US foreign policy, democracy promotion tries to gain credibility when so many of its actions outside of that particular portfolio stand against that. The question is of course also how the United States government under Biden will align with other Asian states in getting democracy promotion forward. And there's not much enthusiasm anymore in much of Asia. Even the established democracies, Japan has never really been very interested in democracy promotion. Jaika, its development arm is largely promoting infrastructure building and governance improvement and so forth. So to find allies that actually will build up a credible network of democracy promotion in the region will be very hard. Marcus, can you give us a little bit of a flavor about how Asian countries view the state of US democracy and society at the moment? What's the feeling? I don't think that most Asian states are very concerned with the state of democracy in the United States. What they're concerned about is the declining power of the United States and how that shapes the strategic, the geopolitical architecture of the regions. If you look at most of the big countries in Asia at the moment, whether it's India, whether it's Indonesia, I mentioned Japan earlier, there's a declining interest in the democracy topic, right? And in some cases, like in China, they watched the Trump theater with quite some amusement because they believed, and quite rightly, I think that Trump would run the American government into the ground and therefore lead to a significant decline of American influence in the region. So that's what countries are concerned about. Not so much how democratic is America now, but to what extent will that have repercussions for the architecture of power? So China, of course, would benefit from this decline while Japan, Australia, India, and others would actually like to see the US remain a significant power in the region. Marcus, what is your assessment of the state of democracy then in Southeast Asia? Do you agree with the analysis that there are drivers of democratic regression and illiberalism? Yeah, I think there's no doubt that Southeast Asia is part of a global democratic recession that global democratic recession started in 2006. So in that sense, Southeast Asia is not exceptional in any way in its declining democracy trend. Clearly the three big countries of Southeast Asia, the big democracies in the past of the 1990s and early 2000s. So Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand, we have seen very significant regression of democracy in those three countries, mild regression, excuse me, mild regression in Indonesia and the Philippines, and in fact, democratic reversal in Thailand through COOS in 2006 and 2014. We see the endurance of autocratic regimes in the region, Vietnam, Laos, Brunei, and Singapore are just as authoritarian as they were many decades before. And in the two only countries where we've seen some progress over the last few years, and that's Myanmar and Malaysia, that progress has largely been reversed in the last few years. The only country, quite ironically, where you can see some consistent progress is East Timor. But that is so small in terms of its population that it hardly makes a dent in the overall performance of democracy in Southeast Asia. So yes, absolutely, I would agree that we see the same democratic regression trends in Southeast Asia as in much of the rest of the world. Thank you, Marcus. Tom, back to you. Hearing Marcus speak and describe the outlook of Southeast Asia, what comes to mind for you? Well, the problems of Southeast Asia are of course particular to each country, but they're very similar to problems in many other regions. There are certain common patterns that we see. One of them is leaders being elected and then turning on the norms and principles that kind of undergirded the election that brought them there and trying to undermine them like in the Philippines. We see identity clashes that become apocalyptic kind of and illiberal in their aims, like in India, South Asia rather than Southeast Asia. We see polarization around that in a number of countries that reaches a level of severity that's very damaging. Thailand, for example, a country is tremendously polarized but polarization is Sri Lanka, Malaysia, I'd say a growing degree in Indonesia and elsewhere. So all of these trends are kind of familiar from other parts of the world which either gives us some comfort that isn't something unique, uniquely terrible to Southeast Asia, but is also a bit forbidding because it makes us realize we're in deep waters here globally in which there are trends everywhere that are really dragging democracy causing a lot of problems. And Tom, you've looked a lot at political polarization in both South Asia and Indonesia. How does it do in South Asia? What are the similarities and differences? You know, when I look at, for example, polarization in South Asia and Southeast Asia, from a distance polarization looks kind of similar. If you stand back from a country and say it's polarized, you know, it's kind of looks the same. People are shouting at each other, they're not listening, they're denying religion, they see their opposition and so forth. But when you zoom in and look closer, huge differences, even within a region, like in South Asia, for example, if you compare polarization in India with Bangladesh, it's two very different things. In India, the rise of Hindu nationalism creating tremendous friction against a more progressive inclusive vision of India, driving a kind of political narrative very exclusive and very liberal in many ways. Bangladesh completely different. You had two sides fighting back and forth in the 90s and the first decade of the century that weren't really that sharply defined in identity terms, that were just fighting over the pie back and forth and more and more conflicted. They began to take on some identity differences, but it was really political elites battling it out for the sake of power. So even, you know, neighboring countries can have you say they're both polarized. When you look closely, who different? Or then Thailand, there isn't about really ethnicity or that much about religion. It's about sort of a royal nationalist conception of power in Thailand and power structures versus more populist one oriented towards social class change and what toxin represented. So every country when you zoom in on polarization looks remarkably different in sort of what are the drivers of it? Who are the political entrepreneurs who are taking advantage of it and using it for their own purposes and so forth. So the South Asia, Southeast Asia comparison may not be as, you know, indicative of just actually comparison country by country. I think any two of the countries in those two regions hold them next to each other. You'll see startling differences in why they're being polarized, why a liberalism can be growing and so forth. It's a nuanced view. So, Mark, we're hitting on some pretty big trends here. We're talking about democratic regression, illiberalism, polarization. I have to ask, has the pandemic had any significant effect on these trends? What have they been? Tom, I'll stick with you and then we'll go. I'm just about to publish an article on Tuesday or Wednesday in a journal called Just Security called Confrontational Politics and the Pandemic. What I say in the article is that when the pandemic started, you know, there are kind of three manifestations of confrontational politics, protests, massive anti-government protests, polarization, two sides conflicting in illiberal populism smashing against the system. When the pandemic hit, we kind of thought some early observers hoped that the pandemic might tamp down all these things. Protests, hard to protest if you're afraid of going out and getting infected, new restrictions, polarization. Maybe countries will come back together to fight the pandemic and populism. Maybe populists won't do well in the pandemic because they won't take it seriously. They'll engage in fact denial and so forth. But at the end of this year, when we look at the record, unfortunately the pandemic has ratcheted up all three of these protests are back. Their moral protests in December, significant anti-government protests than in January before the pandemic. Polarization, every country that was significantly polarized going into the pandemic is as much or more so now starting with the United States. And populism, populists have not done badly in the pandemic. Donald Trump got more votes in November after mismanaging the pandemic for nine months than he did four years ago. Modi's done fine in the pandemic. Bolsonaro was more popular in Brazil today than he was nine months ago. And so protests, polarization, and populism have all gone up this year. The pandemic has not been a healer, a unifier, and a calming influence on the politics of countries. Marcus, how has the pandemic affected these trends in your well? The first thing to say in the countries where democracy and democratic quality declined during the pandemic, we already had severely damaged democratic structures before that, or Prasong has referred to that as pre-existing conditions in many of these democracies. So there wasn't a well-functioning democracy that suddenly was thrown into deep democratic decline by the pandemic. Having said that, and it's interesting what Tom was saying about protests. So we have cases in Indonesia where indeed the government used the restrictions on public protest to push through highly unpopular legislation. So we just recently had a key neoliberal reform package passed where the unions had said we actually want to protest against that, but the government used public health restrictions to limit those demonstrations and pushed through legislation that in other cases would have probably led to huge union-led demonstrations in the country. The other thing that we've seen and is also playing out in Indonesia and it's connecting back to what Tom was saying, this issue of polarization and how incumbent governments actually have used the pandemic to consolidate their position. So the leader of the Islamist populist movement in Indonesia, Habib Rizik, he recently returned from three years in exile to Indonesia and to the surprise of the government, he was picked up at the airport by about 50,000 people indicating how popular he still was. So that led the government to think about how can we manage this guy? And they came up with a case where Habib Rizik's daughter got married and there were a lot of people coming to that event. And so the government said, you have violated public health regulations and now they've arrested him and he's in prison. So it's clearly a use and instrumentalization of the pandemic as well by some governments to be used against public opponents. So to cut a long answer short, in those democracies or deficient democracies that have problems before, we see these problems accelerating and intensifying and given where democratic decline has been before the pandemic affecting a lot of countries, it continue, now the pandemic is making a bad problem worse. So Marcus, coming to then technology, would you say that technology is deepening democratic recession and liberalism in Asia? What's the interaction? Well, I mean, there's a big literature on that. It's been going back for the last 15 years or so. It looks at sort of the payoff between, you know, how pro-democracy forces are using communication tools like Twitter and Facebook and so forth for their purposes. And there's a case to be made that, you know, technology, communication technology, social media has given NGOs, pro-democracy forces a new tool. There's an equally strong literature, of course, now that says the authoritarian governments have discovered too how to use this technology and the trend at the moment is, if I look at Indonesia, is that actually conservative forces, autocratic governments, elite actors are more shrewd in using this technology. I've seen a survey the other day that says, you know, two-thirds of the communication that's going on on Twitter in Indonesia is dominated by religious conservatives, political conservatives to push their agenda. So actually the legal discourse, which is also taking place, but is a minority discourse is pushed into the background. So overall, I think we're now at the risk that technology, which at the beginning of communication technology in particular, which at the beginning held promise for pro-democracy movements. You know, we call the Arab Spring 2011 and so forth. That now seems to shift in favor of the conservatives. Thanks, Marcus. I'd like us to switch gears now and start talking a little bit about the promotion of democracy in practice. But before I do, just a reminder for all attendees, please pop your questions in the Q&A box. We will be coming to them in around about five or 10 minutes. So it'd be great to have your questions in there and for us to foster a bit of debate from your end as well. But Thomas, I'd like to come back to you with your colleague, Francis Brown. You have written that both established democracies and developing democracies now confront many of the same challenges, like inequality and polarization, which you've spoken about today. And you're talking a lot about democracy building as a mutual learning exercise rather than an export exercise. What does this look like in practice? Well, let me give you a good example, a very concrete example. Back in the early 2010s, a number of countries started something called the Open Government Partnership. It was announced by President Obama and the Brazilian president side by side standing next to each other developing democracy and a more established democracy. And the principle of the Open Government Partnership was a whole bunch of countries step forward and say, open government's very important to us, but we could do better in our own country. We're going to take responsibility to come up with an action plan for our own country, which we're going to articulate of things we can do. And then all of us are going to come together, put our action plans forward, agree to support each other in this endeavor. We're all in the same playing field. We're all, you know, this is a horizontal exercise, but we're going to work together to try to reinforce each other, reinforce the norm and create a positive cycle of reinforcing the norm internationally and bringing it home domestically and then vice versa. That was an example of something that's an issue of common concern. It's a different kind of approach to the issue. We're saying, you decide what you want to do in your country. You articulate your goals and then we'll see if we can support you and we'd like your help supporting us. It also was different because it put civil society groups, governments, somewhat on a level playing field and there are a number of civil society groups built into the partnership were part of the Syrian committee, part of the action-oriented follow-up and said, we need your help in figuring out how to do this and monitoring and so forth. So it's not revolutionary and it has transformed open governance around the world, but it's an example of where it's not explored oriented. It's sort of import oriented. Everybody's trying to figure out how to make this work. We can do much more on anti-corruption, for example, which is an area that people really care about around the world. Anti-corruption has become anger over anti-corruption. It's become one of the biggest drivers of disruptive political change in the world. Did a study a couple of years ago that showed that 10% of regimes in the world have fallen in the last five years because of public anger over corruption. That's significant. And so anti-corruption is an issue that connects countries all around the world. And again, it's mutual. In the United States, we need to do better. Government and ethnic act we need. We need a lot of improvement and beneficial ownership of corporations and things, but others need to do better too. We can all rise together on this issue or we can all fall together. So we need to define issues that are common sense create shared mechanisms for people to come together and agree on it, take them seriously and then push them forward across a whole set of domains, whether it's open government, anti-corruption, free press, civil society space and on and on. So I think there is a vision that's already been tested. We need to take it further and take it seriously and spread it out to other countries as well, other issues and places as well. And do you see democracies like the US and Australia still concerned by these issues or are we too busy worrying about the basics of health and education as a result of the pandemic right now? You know, there's room, there's room in the scope when at least in the US when a new administration comes in, there are many people who've been ashamed of what the United States has been presenting on the world stage, ashamed to have a leader who calls dictators and poses up to them on the phone and tells the Chinese leadership, it's fine, they're doing what they do with the week because it's shameful. There are people who'd like the United States to stand for something better and are ready to do that. And actually a majority of the US population went asked in the right way, not, do you want to take responsibility for all of the world's problems? Guess what people say now, that you say, would you like the United States to stand for principle and values that are dear to it? Absolutely yes. So it is possible. And Australia, you know, made a rather decisive turn at least in the framing of its foreign policy in recent years with something more of a values agenda. Now it needs to figure out what that really means which really just about concern over Chinese influence in Australia and Chinese influence in the region. Or does it have a deeper meaning in terms of how Australia positions itself in a region which as Marcus describes it, is pretty daunting. Australia is, you know, a little bit lonely out there in terms of thriving democracies in the neighborhood where it lives together with New Zealand and a couple of others. And so, you know, Australia needs to feel that there's a way for it to stand for democracy but still be a good regional partner to a number of governments that are important to it. And so it's a big challenge for Australia as well. Thanks, Tom. We've taken a turn actually into an area particularly around the values type arguments that one of our attendees has sent a question in on. And Amrita Mali from Save the Children, also an analyst from the ANU is asking both of you specifically with nationalism and Asian values and democratic values type arguments now back on the rise, what are the best ways for governments and civil society organizations in Australia in the region to demonstrate principled support for democracy without being seen as bearers of exclusively Western type values? Tom, I might start with you and then over to you Marcus. Sure, it's a very good question. I'm glad you raised it. Nationalism is enjoying a very significant resurgence. It's never really one away, but I think some of us may have overestimated to the extent at which it may have, but it's significant in a number of countries. Something about globalization or some understandable things about globalization and produced very strong nationalist reactions in places as well as other things have such as the movement to people and other things. So how do you get around that? Well, I think again, it's finding issues of common concern, saying, but everybody cares about corruption. This is something that's really animating people around the world. People care about exclusion. They're angry about marginalization and they're angry about injustice. This isn't Australia's issue that it's trying to ram down the throat of people. Look at the protesters in Thailand. They're not driven by Australia or the United States. They're driven by anger and frustration. So you have to say both to governments and to civil society. If you want your own survival to be longer lasting, look at the regimes that are the most stable in the world. For the most part, they're countries that are more inclusive, more accountable, answer to their own people in real ways. And you may think about that too and we've had some experiences. You'd like to make some changes, let's talk. As opposed to saying, we've got the answer. You should do this. It's like, would you like to have a healthier, happier society? Well, your people are asking for it. So what are you going to do about it? Thanks, Tom. Over to you. How do we demonstrate principled support for democracy without being seen as bearers of exclusively Western values? I think in many countries in the region, there are many opportunities to actually align with principles enshrined in the various countries' constitutions that those countries have come up with very independently. In the case of Indonesia, it has a constitution that was drafted in 1945, which was drafted without any pressure from the Dutch or from the Americans, from the Soviet Union at the time or whoever, and in fact, was an anti-colonial project. But in that constitution, the principle of religious pluralism was very, very strong and that contains, is still contained in the current constitution. So if you are designing programs, for instance, which would be very helpful in Indonesia now to promote religious pluralism, to counter the rise of religious conservatism and the decline of minority rights, it is actually perfectly possible to do that with a reference to the existing constitution. So this is not an import, as Tom was mentioning before. This is not an import. This is highlighting the strength, the values, the principles of the Indonesian constitution since 1945. So I think these are these opportunities where you're not coming in and say, you should be defending religious minorities because that's a principle we uphold in the West. No, it's a principle that is upheld very, very strongly in your own constitution. Ready, could I just comment? One more comment on this to you, Mike. You know, I often have the experience when I, before the pandemic, when one used to travel and I would travel to places and give talks. I were in a country outside the sort of OECD democracies, I would give a talk and there would be democracy in the title and here's this white American male talking to this audience. It's a situation loaded for resentment and conflict, which I completely get. So usually the first question is, we don't want your democracy. Stop telling us what to do. I'd say, great, I'm not here to do that. Tell me what you would like. Describe your democracy, describe Indonesian democracy, describe Egyptian democracy, describe Indian democracy. Tell me about it. What are some of its characteristics? We want human dignity. We want justice. We want equality. I say, that sounds good to me. It's not, those aren't my principles. They sound like they're your principles. So let's talk. And you know, we've had some trouble with those too because systemic racism in the United States. Let me tell you why it's so hard for us. Is that similar to what you have? Is that different? Here's some of the things we've done. Should we talk more? Should we get together? Should we learn? But there's this, you have to get over this, you know, because America has tried to jam it down the throat of people in the past, it was a mistake and it's done worse things than that. So you have to be honest about that and say, I get that and I take that history as red and lived, but we need to look at the future. And we're not here and Australia is not there in the region to tell us people, you have to do this and that. Just to say, Australia has some experiences, we have some values, you have some. Let's find some common ground here because there's actually quite a bit. Tom, let's stick with this idea of, I get more locally defined democracy and finding common ground between countries. And Marcus, I was hearing Tom speak earlier about the open government initiative and he was saying that civil society and government being put on an equal footing is a good principle. What's your experience of democracy and human rights demands being driven within Southeast Asian countries, be it by NGOs, media, courts, parliaments, for example? Well, I mean, it is a reality now that many of the institutions you just mentioned, courts, parliaments and increasingly also the media are now captured by the elite, whether that's in Thailand, whether the Philippines or Indonesia. So they have become actually problems in terms of democratic reform rather than drivers of that reform. The NGOs, which in the past were sort of the last line of defense of democracy are also more and more dragged into politics and political battles for the reasons that Tom mentioned, it's polarization, right? So in Indonesia again to some of these NGOs that were previously pluralist, religiously pluralist and pro-democracy, they now prioritize the fight for religious pluralism against the Islamists over the fight for democratic principles. So they would welcome now, for instance, the arrest of Habib Rizik in Indonesia on trumped up charges because they believe that Rizik is a danger to pluralism, religious pluralism and with whatever means, even if they're undemocratic, he needs to be removed from the stage. So this is difficult at the moment to find these entry points. I would still say the NGOs remain sort of the core NGOs that have refused to join the partisan and polarized battle. They remain the best hope also as partners for foreign democracy promoting organizations. The state institutions, I'm afraid to say, are more and more partisan, they're elite captured and are part of the problem and to some extent, that's my experience over the last 20 years in Indonesia, to some extent also resistant to reform. Thanks Marcus, and sticking with the NGO aspect, we've got Sandra Krishow, who is soon to be at the Asia Foundation and she's sent in a question that she'd like me to read and she says, one of the indicators of democracy has been a national identity or a myth that acts as a point of connection. And she'd like to hear more from both of you about the links between national identity and inclusion and the future of democracy in the US and the Asia Pacific. Marcus, we'll start with you. Well, I mean, as Tom mentioned earlier, the problem with identity is now that it's less and less focused on a joint national identity. It's focused on particularistic identities in various communities. So whether that identity is Islamist or pluralist or regionally defined or in the case of Thailand pro-royalist versus anti-royalist, these are now identities, micro identities that's a paper over the joint feeling of national identity. And as Tom mentioned, the same is true in the United States. I mean, you see Joe Biden, for instance, appealing to the American joint identity saying, we're all Americans, let's not be divided in political terms, Democrats versus Republicans, let's focus on national identity. But these calls are increasingly ignored, both in the United States and in the region. Seems to be a characteristic of politics in our age. I don't know, Marcus, why you think this is happening? I puzzle over it, but it's everywhere. Something about in this century, it's this new quest for exclusive identities or particularistic identity. It's as though the 20th century was this age of universalistic ideologies like communism or Indonesians across all different stripes would join a communist movement and fight together for the goal that they had versus the anti-communist or fascism, which was a universalistic kind of ideology in the places where it gave root. We've, and democratic capitalism was kind of universalistic in places that practiced in this century where it's as though societies have moved to a different phase of where, okay, we've been living together a while now, let's play for keeps in terms of whose country this really is. So we've been living together for a while now here in Indonesia. Now we have conflicting visions of what Indonesia, we want this kind of Indonesia, you want that kind, we're these people, you're that people. And you can see technology accelerating it by allowing us to break into our groups and information bubbles and all of that and amping up the anger. But I don't think that's the driver, I think it's an accelerator. And I don't quite know. And you could just say, it's inequality, it's not actually just inequality, it's not, it's happening in countries that have done fairly well economically. Turkey, for example, has had a tremendous run in the last 20 years economically, never had a good period, the same period in which a more exclusive form of Islamic identity has divided the country. And so it isn't about economic suffering always, some cases, economic success empowers people to feel like, no, we're feeling our own. So let's get the whole country in our hands. But I think we have to be careful about any simple diagnosis of this or this or this. But on the other hand, everywhere I look, I see people striving towards these more particularistic identities. It's very hard in the democracy to make a democracy work well when people have conflicts that are primordial, as opposed to just, I want this tax policy, once I tax policy, you're different from me. I don't like you because you're different. In fact, I hate you because you're different. And my people are not gonna work with your people, et cetera. So it's a deep, a deep trend that's occurring and one we really have to think carefully about. Marcus, if you go for the question. No, I think that's better than you're right. I think just that in terms of historically explaining it, at least in some of the Southeast Asian countries, we shouldn't forget that, of course, the whole notion of a joint national identity was used, misused by many autocrats for about half a century. Whether it's Karno or Soharto, who were telling Indonesians, you can't have differences. You must fit into that. That's right. I'm telling you what this national identity looks like. So once the Soharto regime fell in 1998, of course, we see this explosion, this reaction instead saying, but I have given up my identity for the last half century now, I'm driving to the extreme. So this is, I mean, again, as you say, it's different in each country, but sort of this misuse of national identity, I think is important. Yeah, no, the first phase of decolonization was an enormous period of enforced nation-building that suppressed a lot of things that are now coming to bruce. It's a bit more puzzling why the UK falls apart over its identity or are we part of the European Union if they weren't suppressed for 50 or 100 years? Yeah, here it is. We have to have a moment of four years of the most tedious debate possible in the UK over should we be part of the European Union? Amazing. It really is amazing, actually. All righty. I have a question in here from Michael Maylee for you, Tom. And he's asking, is there any in-caps I might add? Is there any aspect of the US political system which could be recommended for adoption by a new democracy? Interesting question. Wow, I have a long list here. I could infer a lot of things I wouldn't recommend they adopt. Well, yeah, certainly there are some things that are strong. There's, this isn't really institutionalized, but there is a strong tradition of governments being open to people. Our government is quite transparent in many ways and it's quite interactive. My wife is non-American, she's a European and comes from a country that has a stronger central state. She's kind of amazed by the many ways in which like the local council person comes over to the neighborhood and wants to know what everybody thinks and starts to ask people and has meetings in the neighborhood. And then neighbors are unhappy about something they get together and sue somebody. She's always amazed how activated everybody is all the time the country she's from, they don't do that kind of thing. So there's a kind of interconnection between citizens and the government at all levels that's healthy, that it's a good thing. It's helped democracy survive in the last four years of an overbearing president who's basically a liberal. And then the other thing is the rule of law is strong in the United States. People have a powerful respect for courts they're politicized, the judicial process, election process, but there's a genuine reverence for the idea that law is stronger than politics and the politicians have to obey the law. Now we've had a law breaker as president for four years and he has his supporters, but law has held and legal institutions have withstood a significant assault on them. So that I'd also recommend. Thanks, Tom. And we're looking to wrap up in the next five minutes or so, but before we do I'm interested in both of your perspectives and I guess your recommendations for researchers, practitioners, governments who might be in the business of democracy promotion. What practical steps do you see governments or the people on the line doing to help democracy promotion? Tom, we'll stick with you and we'll finish with Marcus. I think the first thing to do is to put aside two old outdated ways of approaching the topic and start from today. The two outdated ways are first to assume that there's something called a spectrum or a path that countries go on from not being democratic, being democratic and it's sort of a defined path and the goal is to move them along this path. Countries have gone so far off that path that Thailand has gone so far sideways. I don't know where Thailand is going this holiday. I don't know where Myanmar is going. I don't know where Sri Lanka is going, you know. And so throw that idea out and then secondly throw out the idea that democracy promotion is about successful democracy is helping less successful democracy, so it's over. That's a vestige of another time. Now it's a question of how can countries work together on common challenges? And so you really have to go into the topic in a very different way and arrive in a country and if you want to help, take seriously the fact that the country is on its own path defining its own terms and you have to get inside the bloodstream of that to understand where change might occur, what citizens really want, how they're organized, et cetera. And then you as an outsider, what are you really bringing to this? Yes, you come from a country that's somewhat more successful maybe, here from Australia at least, democratically than that country. But what does that really mean in terms of what you're offering? Why are you there? How are you gonna be viewed? What might you sort of put forward as resources either intellectual or financial? So it's put aside the past, start from today, but assume that it's possible. First, as possible, countries can help each other, people can work together across borders. So you've gotta throw aside the past, engage in the present and be ready for so much deeper and actually more interesting talent. Thanks, Tom. They said a lot of international development and a nice common sense approach to finding common ground. Marcus, over to you. Yeah, I agree with everything that Tom was saying and it's also worth recalling we are now in a much more difficult landscape of democracy promotion than we were about 20 years ago in the last phases of the third wave of democratization. USAID had a really, really big program in Indonesia and the government was willing to accommodate a lot of the assistance that was offered. That has now completely changed and countries are even those who are now in a process of democratic transition much more reluctant to take on these offers of democracy promotion. I mean, Egypt was a catastrophic example where USAID came in with the old model and basically collapsed within a few years in that country. So even prior to the military taking back power. So governments are much more self-confident are putting significantly more constraints on donors to do the programs that they actually would like to do. And they're essentially telling donors if you're not synchronizing and that's the bus word now synchronizing your work with ours we don't want any of it. And the risk then is that essentially a lot of donors are switching into the side sort of aspect of technical assistance which would be no longer democracy promotion work, will it? It's then technical assistance to ministry or even the anti-corruption commission and so forth. And it's leaving because of the attitude of the host governments, this initial arena of democracy promotion. So I find it very hard and I'm still engaged. I'm still a consultant on some programs in Indonesia but it's extremely hard to push a pro-democracy agenda that is not just purely technical in nature. I mean, so I was for instance, I'm a consultant on an anti-corruption program that USAID was funding for the last five years and it worked pretty well. And there was technical assistance to the anti-corruption commission. But then the government decided that they wanted to essentially dismantle the commission and take its powers away. So all of that technical work was for nothing, right? So because there was also a mismatch between this micro technical analysis and assistance that was given to a government institution and what the government up here was willing to do. And so now the anti-corruption commission in Indonesia is largely disempowered not because of any failed programming but because of elite decisions that are made outside of anything that's happening in democracy promotion. So that's an extremely difficult environment. Anyone who is now working in democracy promotion has to step into. Thank you, Marcus. And that's a good note to finish on because I think that governments in both the US and Australia share a rich history of understanding in spaces like the rule of law and governance and what I would call the people power and politics of democracy promotion not just the technical promotion as well. So look with that in mind. I'd like to first of all thank our panelists, Marcus and Tom. It's been an absolute pleasure to listen to you both today to hear you interact and to share your views. I think as an audience we're gonna come away with a few messages that certainly resonated with me. And the first is that sure democracy promotion is a tough game. It's not a linear process and we need to be in it for the long haul but we also need to let go of some old ideas and specifically the idea that you go from being undemocratic to democratic along in a linear spectrum is something that doesn't sound as though it's gonna be helpful for either of our countries and our engagement certainly in Asia and other parts of the world going forward. Finally, the other message that I heard loud and clear today from both of you and particularly given both of your experience working with donors and governments as well is that democracy is not about government alone. It is not a process of export and if we are going to engage in democracy promotion then it needs to be on local terms with common understanding and common ground. So thank you very much Tom Gruthers and Marcus Mitzer for joining us here today at the Crawford Leadership Forum. It's been an absolute pleasure to host you both and to the attendees we had around about 30 online the whole way through. Thank you for joining. Thank you for your questions and we hope to see you back here at a number of other panels next year. So thank you very much to everybody. Have a great day.