 So welcome everybody. This is the session on COVID-19 and democracy. I'm really pleased to be here this afternoon. In this session we'll be looking, we'll be asking two questions. So how has COVID-19 affected democracy? And what do we expect to see in future? What are the prospects for the future? My name is Rachel Giselquist. I'm a senior research fellow here at UNU Wider in Helsinki. And I work on some closely related issues in some of my work on the state and state building and in some work on international democracy support. And so I'm really, really pleased that we've have three excellent speakers in the session today to help us to explore these issues. Our first speaker is Dr. Julia Lininger, who is the head of the Department of Transformation of Political Disorder at the German Development Institute. And our second speaker will be Dr. Joseph Asunka, who is the CEO of the Afrobarometer. He was previously program officer in the Global Development and Population Program at the Hewlett Foundation and is also a political scientist. And then our third speaker will be Nick Cheeseman, who is professor of democracy at the University of Birmingham and was formerly the director of the African Studies Center at Oxford University. In fact, Joe is going to be a few minutes late. So if he doesn't reach us in time, I might ask Nick to speak second if that's okay. Yeah. So we have an exciting set of speakers. I think Julia will be speaking to provide a broad overview to start about COVID, the pandemic as a risk for democracy and implications for international democracy support and international cooperation. And Joe will be speaking about Afrobarometer data on COVID. Afrobarometer, as many of you will know, is a leading source of high quality data on what people are thinking in Africa about democracy, about governance, broadly about issues of economy and society. So it's really nice to hear the latest data that they have. And then finally, Nick will be zooming in on COVID and elections. I would expect he'll tell us about a number of elections, but maybe some particular attention to Uganda and Malawi. And I've seen his recent, some recent work on Zambia. So looking forward to hearing from all of them. And I see a number of familiar people in the audience. I'm looking at the list of participants here on my screen. And so I think we have a nice set of people here for a good discussion. And I would encourage everyone to please raise questions throughout the presentation. You can enter them in the Q&A box on your screen and this hop in screen. And I would encourage our speakers to please feel free to raise questions of each other, challenge each other. And hopefully we get some nice debate and discussion going. So I've asked the speakers to speak for about eight to 10 minutes each. If they go much over that, I will very rudely interrupt simply because I want to make sure we have some time for discussion and we have 45 minutes today. So that's the opening. And I think without further ado, why don't we turn over to you, Nick. Hi, everyone. Well, sorry for that little interruption will be said by traffic issues and technical issues, but I'll try and get us off to a slightly smoother start now. So I was going to go at the end. We were going to start with a sort of big picture story from Julian and move down through public opinion and Joe to me with a more specific narrow focus. But we can go the other way. We can turn the hourglass around and start with the minutiae and go back to the bigger picture. So what I was going to talk about is trying to answer three key questions, particularly with evidence from recent African elections, some of which I've been president. So the first key question is, you know, what's actually been the impact of COVID-19 on electoral quality and electoral outcomes? We've heard a lot about COVID-19 and democracy. I've written a series of pieces about the negative impacts of COVID-19 and democracy in sub-Saharan Africa and in some other parts of the world. We've seen that in terms of both media freedoms in terms of lockdowns and abuses by state security forces and so on. So the big question then is, does that actually have an impact on elections? And if so, what? The second key question I want to look at is, you know, does that then mean there's more or less chance of political change? So does that, you know, follow on from that, that we're getting more or less opportunity for transfers of power, as many of you will know in most elections in the global south, and particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and particularly in less democratic states in sub-Saharan Africa, rates have turned over are pretty low. My 2010 paper on this basically found that in elections in which presidents stand, we see that they win 88% of those contests. So very high levels of attention for presidents when they stand. When they stand down and we get open seats elections, we see an increase in the rate of transfer only up to about 50%. So a big difference when presidents don't stand, but in both cases, we tend to see presidents winning elections. So has COVID shifted that? And then finally, I'll talk a little bit if I have any time, and Rachel might be slapping me down by this point and telling me to get off. But if I have any time left, I'll talk a little bit about the impact of COVID and elections on healthcare. And do we see spikes in COVID around elections that mean, you know, negative things for healthcare for the spread of the disease? So let's start with that question about how COVID has been manipulated around elections. To some extent, of course, the answer to this is obvious. It's followed existing patterns of democracy and authoritarianism. So, you know, in countries that are more democratic and more open, the manipulation of COVID has been less significant. It was less significant, for example, in Malawi and Cape Bird than it has been in countries such as Zambia and Uganda, where we already had more problems. And to that extent, I think we could say something that I was kind of hoping that my colleagues would already have said by the time I speak, which is that the impact of COVID on democracy is not something that's sort of independent and comes out of nowhere. It's basically something that is intensifying existing and ongoing trends. So if we look at the impact of COVID in most countries in Africa, it's exacerbating things that have already been there. And if we look more broadly at the impact of COVID on democracy around the world, it's exacerbating an ongoing trend. COVID didn't start the democratic recession. It's been going for about, what, now 12, 14 years, but it's exacerbating it in important ways. So what's the big significant way in which we've seen that in terms of elections? Well, in both Uganda and Zambia, we see significant attempts to manipulate COVID protocols around social distancing to create advantages for the ruling party. President Museveni is perhaps the past master in this, as he is in most forms of electoral manipulation. I once wrote that if electoral manipulation was an Olympic event, he would be the Olympic gold medal champion. Because what we see very quickly in Uganda is the electoral commission deciding that due to COVID, we need a scientific election and scientific means without campaigns. Without campaigns, therefore means shutdowns of the opposition's efforts to reach out to especially rural voters and extend the appeal of Bobby Wine, the famous musician turned politician, who was strong in urban areas, strong to some extent on social media, but really needed to reach out and broaden his networks during the campaign. And we've seen Museveni using COVID-19 restrictions as a way of stopping that. And then we also see an equal enforcement of COVID-19 regulations, the government being allowed to compete in a much more normal way, the opposition being shut down. And we see two different dimensions of this. One is that the police are much more likely to turn a blind eye to events organized by the ruling party, even if they go over the threshold for the number of people that's supposed to be there. But two, perhaps just importantly, government events on subject to the same regulations as party events. So party events such as road shows, rallies, et cetera, shut down, government meetings are not, and this is both true of Uganda and of Zambia. So the government can continue to hold events in a Zambian context, including, for example, the funeral for Kenneth Cowanda, attempting to kind of manipulate the process around that as a way of kind of demonstrating what the government's been doing. The government can go and hold meetings and hold large meetings at which it can talk about all of the things it's been doing and the projects it's been running and the opposition are shut down. So we see all of that manipulation. And that manipulation, as I say, tends to run in line with the extent of democracy already in country. So we see a number of elections. COVID-19 didn't have many significant effects in terms of disadvantage in the opposition, but Burundi, Uganda, Zambia, we see that they do. So then to what extent do we then see that that actually undermines the possibility for regime change or for chancellors of power? Now, of course, we might assume that it would. We're basically saying that in countries that are already more authoritarian, COVID-19 has created an opportunity to hamper opposition campaigning. But the story is not quite that simple. And it's not quite that simple because one of the things that COVID-19 has brought with it is an economic crisis in many countries. That economic crisis has created an opportunity for opposition parties to take advantage of the fact that governments are basically struggling to deliver very basic goods. So if you look at the Zambian election just past where opposition need to get to Hichelima one with 20% with a margin of victory of 20% on 59% of the vote, an overwhelming first round win, almost a landslide. One of the key factors that underpinned that was people's frustration with the poor state of the economy. And that's a long-lasting factor. It's not something that's just come up all of a sudden in Zambia. Zambia, of course, had a debt default not long ago and has had a period of economic decline under President Lungu and the former patriotic front government for quite some time. But whilst there had been that negative trend, things have accelerated over the past year partly due to the challenges that Zambia is facing, the end of things like tourism which would bring revenue into the country and so on, partly the escalation of economic decline under the government. To the extent that in the year before the election, the price of chicken went up by 75%, the price of cooking all went up by 50%. And so there was a significant deterioration in the quality of life. And this isn't just something we see in Zambia. We see this in many countries where there's an assumption that COVID has had a light touch because we haven't seen high numbers of deaths. But the economic context of COVID and the implications of that have been devastating. In Kenya, for example, the Kenyan National Human Rights Commission did a survey of vulnerable people and all of those vulnerable people found that really high percentages, I think around 40% of people had been evicted from their homes as a result of not being able to pay rent during the pandemic and something like 55% had lost a job during the pandemic due to shutdowns, lockdowns and other related phenomena. So we're generating as a result of the COVID economic hardships a groundswell of opposition which is frustrated with the government, frustrated with the economic situation. While some people may put that down to COVID-19 and a temporary effect, others are connecting that to other government failures around corruption, around poor economic management and therefore it's crystallizing support for the opposition. So both in Malawi in 2020 and in Zambia 2021, I think one of the reasons why we see such strong support for the opposition as such big margins of victory is widespread popular discontent with the state of the economy. So what we're there for saying is we've actually got a quite paradoxical situation. On the one hand, COVID-19 is leading to greater levels of electoral manipulation. That's having a negative effect on the context around elections in terms of the quality of democracy but that's not necessarily always preventing opposition parties from winning. Actually there's a groundswell of support emerging around opposition parties because of the economic hardships and I think one of the things that's therefore important to think about moving forwards and I see my good friend Stephen Brown is there so we might get to talk about Kenya later is that ahead of the Kenyan election in 2022 this similar economic process is going to be present and I would suspect that it would do a similar thing in Kenya which is it will create more opportunities for candidates who can claim that they are opposition and of course one of the big leaders at the middle in Kenya who's making a lot of movement ahead of that election is William Ruto and he's doing that around a narrative of pushing a kind of divisive narrative of hustlers versus dynasties and I think one reason why his argument that he's a hustler Kenyans are hustlers Kenyans should support him to overthrow the dynasties and generate a more fair economic system. One reason why that kind of populist trope is being so effective right now is because of the economic hardship that people are suffering and that will create a facilitating have a facilitating effect on his attempt to become a presidential candidate. I'm being told to be quiet I can't see what that says okay I could assume it says 10 minutes but I'll assume it says 30 seconds. So a couple of quick things to then to then reflect on the first is that this is not going to be a short-term effect much as we talk about the health consequences of short and long COVID. I think we need to talk about the democratic consequences of short and long COVID and long COVID here includes things like the potential for donors to shift money away from democracy support towards health care initiatives in the next few years which might be very well you know meaning and necessary given the crisis but could also potentially undermine civil society in other forms of pro-democracy spending the fact that we may also see government struggling to provide public services because of the long-term economic impact which of course on the global south will be greater because of the lack of vaccinations the inequalities we're now seeing the fact that people might be locked out of international travel due to healthcare COVID passports all of that you know the terrible inequalities that we're now seeing emerging around then I think that's something that will prolong Africa's another global south country's economic misery with significant implications for political stability and I think that you know one of the problems that that will then generate is we'll see some areas where that might inspire fresh uprisings fresh protests think about countries like Belarus and Lebanon over the last couple of years but we'll also see countries where the response to that by the government will be further repression and so we'll see a combination of some inspiring transformations merged with some very you know horrifying human rights abuses in terms very quickly of the healthcare impact of COVID it hasn't actually been as negative around elections as we might have thought the elections in Malawi didn't really see a significant increase in COVID-19 neither did the elections in Uganda although of course they did enforce some social distancing mechanisms but there have been some cases where it has so in the Cape Bird elections there seems to have been a significant spike in COVID around campaigning because precisely because there was a particularly lax attitude taken to enforcing mechanisms around social distancing using masks and sanitizing so the key message there is the impact of COVID isn't set in stone either on democracy or on healthcare it depends how actors mobilise around it okay I'll stop there because I know I see that Joe has just joined us in the audience as well so we've got all of our speakers and I want to leave time for them but hopefully we can pick up some of the other points in Q&A take care of everyone wonderful Nick thank you so much and Joe welcome it wouldn't be an online conference without these IT problems so I'm glad I'm glad you're able to get in I think over to you now and you have about eight eight minutes or so and then we'll hopefully have some time for questions as well and Julia will speak after you great all right thank you all and my apologies for running late thanks Nick for opening this up this has been a useful you know session for me particularly because this is some of the data that we're beginning to pull out to figure out how COVID is beginning to impact some of the outcomes that we all care about and especially when it comes to democracy and democratic development in Africa so I'll speak briefly to some of the data we have on you know COVID and its impact first of all look and just generally at how Africans view their governments when it comes to their performance vis-a-vis the COVID situation and then after that I'll just share a few top lines findings that we have in terms of how it has impacted people's attitudes towards democratic norms so I mean overall I think to just state that there's a general approval of the performance of governments on the continent in terms of how they've responded to the COVID-19 situation and I say this because some we ask respondents across the continent how they they perform their governments have performed in terms of keeping people informed about the COVID-19 situation and also just general information about COVID I think that's a high level of approval for governments in terms of their performance in that so across all the counties that we've surveyed in between 2019 and to date we this is the if around of our surveys we realize that more than 70 percent of Africans think that governments did well in terms of handling the COVID situation it is when it comes to issues about whether or not they can trust their government in terms of the statistics they were presenting to them government statistics on deaths and infection rates the least trial I mean they are not trusted at all across the continent so people don't trust their government statistics and lots of people also think that all some of the COVID funds were stolen as a result of corruption and so I will look at the picture it does seem like even though they give them thumbs up in terms of their performance overall there's a suspicion that there was corruption there is corruption in the use of COVID funds and that they can't trust their government data and statistics on COVID-19 so that's just a general you know point to make about COVID I know that Rachel has said something about the Afrobarometer so but I'm happy to respond to any question that people may have in terms of what the Afrobarometer is but now let me just zoom into the issue about COVID and democratic norms so one overarching finding we have is that restrictions of freedoms as a result of a health emergency like the COVID COVID-19 this is one of the things that most Africans would agree that it is necessary for governments to use security and police forces to enforce public health mandates and so when we asked question our respondents about this almost more than 70 percent actually said event comes to health mandates they think that governments should be able to use security forces to enforce some of those restrictions and mandates but we also asked them about some of the democratic practices and norms and when we talk about those ones we talk about elections and whether or not people are okay if government would limit postpone elections as a result of the COVID situation or whether they are okay for government to censor the media during a pandemic and here we find that even though we have a large majority willing to accept the restrictions on movement because of health reasons it is only a slim majority that thinks that postponing elections is a good thing and then of course censoring the media still a slim majority about 51 percent would agree that government should censor the media during an election and we do see that I mean even though there's some appetite for governments restricting some level of movement when it comes to now democratic norms like elections and the media there isn't that overwhelming support and it's not surprising to me when you get into the countries themselves and ask especially when it comes to postponing elections lots of countries are totally not against and I see especially for Zambia I know that Nick just mentioned talked about Zambia when it comes to Zambia only 24 percent of postponing the election makes sense the large majority of Zambia answer like don't postpone elections and this is probably of course it means that the right can also be on the wall that people didn't want in attempt to postpone these elections so more than 80 percent actually said no postponing elections because of COVID it's not it's not the way to go so that's one thing so as as Nick mentioned I do think that even though COVID people are more open to accepting some restrictions on their freedoms they are really not willing to sacrifice some of the key democratic norms just because of the COVID situation all right and then as I speak briefly on how Africans thought about you know whether or not politicians will use the COVID situation to increase their power and this particular question this is where there's a lot of concern if you look across all the countries we surveyed in round eight a majority are either somewhat or really very worried that politicians might use the COVID situation to increase their power and so for the overall takeaway for me is that even though Africans are more open to accepting some restrictions because of health reasons when it comes to sacrificing democratic norms they're generally not in favor we are for just some majorities but the biggest concern for most Africans is that politicians might use the COVID as a way to increase their own power and that runs across even the country the least support which is Morocco on my data set is about 40 plus percent and so the concern that politicians might use the COVID situation as a way to increase their own power is it's a troubling one which needs some attention I do have some data on vaccines and vaccine hesitancy but I'm going to take a pause here and I'm ready to answer any question that people may have so thank you all thanks Rachel wonderful thank you so much I think now we turn over to Julia are you there hello good uh I don't hear you unfortunately there I could hear you just find Julia can you try again I'm afraid I can't hear okay Julia can you click on the gear icon at the bottom of the screen and it should just give you the audio video settings for hopping can you check to see if you have another microphone under the drop-down box for your microphone sorry Julia this is disappointing it's nice to see you but why don't if you if you look at those settings for a little bit why don't we take some questions in the meantime and then hopefully we get the audio working and there's also a coffee I think what is it tomorrow Tim can probably tell us the time that we can hopefully have a chance to meet you again but please see if it if you can adjust the settings in the meantime let's go to some questions there's one question here there were some questions in the chat um there's a question here from Salam al-Rabadi do you think there's any direct or indirect relationship between the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic and the military coup that took place today in Guinea if either of the speakers might like to speak to that please do but um Nick are you volunteering or shall we take a few more questions um well let's while other people are sending them in maybe I'll venture a couple of comments on that I should state that I'm not in any respect to Guinea expert um but we had of course had a couple of coups and this came up recently in terms of Tunisia as well um and also with respect to Mali I think you know what I would say is that I think it is true that COVID-19 economic difficulties have exacerbated discontent and that has generated a more facilitative environment for coups but I think in those in those three cases that I just mentioned in Guinea just now in Mali and in Tunisia we have very long running trends towards some form of intervention right I think people have been worried about what would happen in Guinea since the president extended his time in office and from term limits the same in Mali we saw mass demonstrations and we saw significant concerns and frustration with the presidents sort of undermining a democracy well before COVID-19 and you know similarly in Tunisia we've been seeing you know tensions between key factions for a long time so I think again these are three areas that you know we might have been particularly concerned about the risk of a coup and their internal palace dynamics in each of those countries that explain the timings of that coup uh and COVID-19 yes has kind of created a bedrock that's facilitated that perhaps uh because we know that coup leaders are more likely to move when they know that the public will approve of their decision and so if the public is clearly getting increasingly frustrated that is something that can encourage and incentivize coup leaders to use that opportunity but I don't think we would say that COVID-19 economic challenge has triggered any of those coups always the root cause of any of those coups. Thanks Nick. Yeah and just to add to that I think it just comes down to you know when leaders try to undermine democratic norms and that is where people would you know be less enthused and be more supportive of coups like this uh and in our data set is very clear lots of majority of Canadians were not in support of the third term of this president and so I can see why this would have been a predictable event in the sense that the militia certainly concerned that the public is would be in favor of this and that's that is why they would make this move and so it comes down to leadership and how leaders you know respect democratic norms where they don't respect those norms then some of these trends would continue I mean unfortunately don't worry but somehow it comes down to that it combines that with economic decline and the situation that the COVID has created it just exacerbates the chance that the military might step in. I wanted to pick up I mean both of you've mentioned trends right and we've seen for a decade or more that there's this sort of global decline in global democracy scores and international democracy scores so the latest VDEM report shows that the majority people live in autocracies and I wonder to what extent you think that the relationship that we see between COVID and democracy now is sort of just an extension of that or is there a shift? Is it you know opportunistic leaders using this crisis as a chance to further autocratize? What do you think is happening in terms of the relationship between COVID and the ongoing trends? Hi Yulia, please whoever wants to respond and audience please send in questions too. Can Julia speak or is she is she still so sad? It's just so sad we can see you and you look ready to talk and I see the test worked and I know you have a lot to say on these topics you're doing great. I really wanted to hear her presentation just on the trends before handing over to Joe. I think yes I think we see a lot of opportunism that's one so I think one key strand of this is opportunistic leaders who have always been looking to extend their powers and this is the latest opportunity for doing so absolutely. I think there's a couple of other things we should perhaps be you know a little bit aware of though on a global scale one of which is that you know one of the things we tend to see around big emergencies whether they're sort of anti-terror or war or massive health issues is that we tend to see a kind of process of giving up power and influence and to some extent an ability to surveil us to governments. You know if you think about the immediate consequences of 9-11 and the security cameras that we see all over the country in say the UK today and if we think about previous you know health emergencies one of the things that has sometimes happened is a gradual transfer of some of our liberties to governments and that may be necessary during the crisis but it's something that rarely ratchets down after it's been ratcheted up. So I think one thing we should also keep in mind is the kind of gradual ratchet effect of state surveillance and state capacity to have oversight of us in response to crises and then the third thing I think is worth lagging up you know I've been doing a bit of research on this over the last few months and you know if you look at the history of pandemics one of the things that pandemics tends to do is to create challenges for managing diversity not always insurmountable challenges but if we go back to say Spanish flu or the Black Death you know there was significant association between those diseases and attacks on minorities partly because minorities will often scapegoated as being the reason why the disease was spreading and some researchers have even suggested that the impact of Spanish flu on trust between different communities in the United States lasted for something like 40 years and impacted the provision of public goods. So in context in which we worry potentially about ethnic tension and conflict around elections or the potential ramifications of poorly managing intergroup relations either religion or ethnicity I think you know there's a significant question mark there we just don't know has COVID significantly exacerbated the tensions between communities as it plays into those stereotypes as it exacerbates economic difficulties with the grass roots and you know is that partly one of the things that's happening in Nigeria right now is that a significant risk in Kenya ahead of the next Kenyan elections again not that there's anything inevitable about this but the study of history suggests that this is something that happens in the wake of big pandemics and perhaps this could be something that could be happening now and of course it's too early to tell so I think there's those two other strands as well as the one that you identified that we should be watching and I think at the minute it's a bit too early to tell without our pass over to Joe. Yeah I mean no wonder could some data that show that people are increasingly very worried that politicians might use this as an opportunity to increase their own power and that's probably the sign that people are seeing and that's what we picked up in our surveys and so in some ways it does seem like you know people are generally wanting to protect their own health and own security and thinking of ways that government can step in with security forces to enforce some lockdowns to ensure that you know the spread of diseases is limited and so they are more willing to acquiesce to that like restrictions is fine we can deal with that because we want to deal with the health situation but then the question is is that a slippery slope is that taken as somewhere that governments will continue to restrict freedoms and restrict the freedom of expression and other freedoms in the name of the pandemic and given that this pandemic is probably going to be with us for a long time how does that then square with these you know restrictions that are not uniformly applied but for every country there are different you know ways of restricting freedoms and the government can decide the way that they think makes sense for their own context and the question is if governments do take make those decisions and move forward and start to restrict other forms of freedoms at what point do we stop it like when does it stop and so I think there's not a risk between people wanting to accept being restricted because of health reasons but then once it slips beyond that it may get a point where no one like the large majority of the respondents we've spoken to are concerned that this might lead to more autocratization over time and I think this is probably a kind of trend over time for us because when we increasingly ask people whether they support democracy and whether you reject all other forms of authoritarian rule in some countries we did see that even though they support democracy the acceptance of authoritarian rule somehow started to creep in and so that could also provide it a momentum that you know if restrictions or freedoms are legalized because of covid and then politicians or elected leaders begin to emphasize that going forward it might just lead us now that that that's slippery slope we are looking into the next one of the surveys we'll gather data and see how the trend looks like going forward thanks both we have a two couple more questions in the q&a and maybe I'll ask them together and and pick and choose the question you'd like to answer so there's a question here about debates on decolonizing the post-colonial state in Africa and how has covid-19 affected those debates we also have another question directed especially to nick what's your opinion on the covid-19 pandemic socioeconomic effects and the fate of the building bridges initiative in kenya is there any link and then a further question here from from my colleague daniel chachu are there any positives at all associated with the health pandemic as far as building democratic institutions is concerned in other words what opportunities does does covid-19 present so please uh joe and nick please uh go ahead joe why don't you go first because i went first last time right so can you take this first question again i have the other two questions yeah the first one was about decolonizing the post-colonial state in africa and how is covid-19 affecting those debates right yeah so i think i mean when you know we started talking about decolonizing the development state and in particular i remember the guinean president have said gana and africa beyond eight and that seemed to have been a rallying point of for lots of people it was an exciting statement that you know we can go beyond eight you know what covid has just succeeded in doing is timing that back somewhat because now increasingly there's this sense of you know vaccine and equity and now africa has to depend on the rest of the world to for his vaccines in which is an unfortunate 10 of events and this probably has stopped the clock of wanting to say we want to move forward with decolonizing the afric the developmental state in some ways from our data we what we have realized is that increasingly lots of africans are in support of autonomy that we would rather develop from our own resources than rely on international aid and i think the momentum on the continent in favor of developing the the continent from domestic sources this has grown over time and that seemed like that seemed to be the direction in which people would want to go for for sovereignty reasons for our pride reasons but also for the fact that we can develop from our own internal sources the question then comes down to now leadership political leadership to be able to execute that and i think in by and large for me i do think that from ordinary people's perspective moving down the direction in which we can do africans can develop from their own resources is huge and that would complement the debates about decolonizing the developmental state in africa because we increasingly know that people don't want to rely on handouts so for development which is which is super critical so that's one point i'll make there um in terms of and let me see so the second question second i'm just watching it down here maybe can i repeat that sure this second one well the second one was more for nick about kenya okay okay the third one is about are there any is there any upside to this are there any positive things for implications for democratic institutions that you might point to yeah so i mean a couple of points on that in terms of the positive impacts what increasingly we have seen from our data is that people know that governments have the right to do certain things so to restrict their movement because of how to restrict movement for of course uh other reasons but then that has also triggered the concern that people are worried that these institutions might be rolled over time if they don't really you know rise up and then speak against governments in terms of their the creeping tendency to want to you know control or you know increase their own power and then become more and more autocratic and so the signal that some of the restrictions have sent to the public is that if you are not careful the government can creep in your way and undermine your freedoms and i think it has triggered a careful thinking among citizens that we need to do something to counter some of these you know creeping tendencies of governments to undermine or control our movement i was particularly excited about to see the data from nigeria where nigerians are the ones who are really not even interested in government doing anything to restrict their movement so it is only in that country that when we ask where the government should restrict movement because of health reasons just a small minority said yes in all the other countries the majority view but nigerians are not taking it at all and so it does send a signal that people are aware that governments can increase their power through this COVID and just that awareness alone can't lead to immobilization against the counter mobilization against any tendency to to slip to slip backwards that's one thing the second piece being thinking more about what is it that makes you know ordinary people want to respect setting you know policies or regulations of government and what we will see that we have recorded is that when people trust their government then the likelihood that they would acquiesce in some of these restrictions is much higher and so institutional trust is a key thing when we come to talking about the building democratic norms and so just realizing that institutional trust is a key variable is super critical and so we are hoping that we're i mean giving this particular situation politicians and elected leaders thank you knowing that institutional trust is a critical part of building democratic norms so it would probably be one way to go and i'll hand it over to Nick thanks Joe thank you so a few quick reflections on the BBI process which the uninitiated is the building which is an initiative in Kenya which proposed constitutional reforms that would have done among other things create new positions such as prime minister i'm not sure BBI was much affected by COVID i think we saw there you know a good legal case being brought against the BBI process on the basis that it was unconstitutional because it was initiated by the president rather than by popular initiative and other problems and we saw that first of all nullified or ruled against by the high court and then that judgment was reinforced by the court of appeal so to me that was a kind of legal process and the judges decisions in that followed you know the law and the constitution and probably wasn't impacted that much by COVID what was though i think was perhaps public perceptions around that and some of the survey data that i've seen suggests that Kenyans were fairly fed up with BBI there wasn't a lot of public support for it and especially the idea of creating a lot more political positions through the BBI process was quite unpopular and people were not very keen on the idea of holding a referendum and i said which would have been one of the end products if BBI had gone through there would have been a referendum on it to bring it into law and i suspect that COVID 19 and the economic impact of COVID 19 has shaped Kenyans beliefs and attitudes around whether they want to spend even more money on their government by creating more positions and whether they want to spend money and time going through a referendum so COVID 19 might have played into that but so far as it were the public attitude hasn't mattered so much because the public haven't been the ones making the decisions in terms of the very good question about decolonization and narratives around decolonization i think it sharpened it because i mean i'm a i should say i'm the trustee of oxfam and oxfam have been campaigning on the people's vaccine and against the hypocrisy and the inequality of the way in which western nations have dealt with the situation regarding vaccines and i think that you know the western states that promote democracy and associated with democracy have really missed a trick you know we've seen a failure to appear to be you know equal and participatory and respectful around COVID 19 whereas countries like China and Russia have moved to try and use vaccine diplomacy as a way of strengthening their hold and so the kind of soft power of the west i think is declined through the COVID 19 situation and the soft power of China has perhaps improved you wouldn't have expected that at the beginning when of course there were all of these stories about racism in China around the treatment of Africans during the first wave of COVID 19 but that seems to be where we are now and so i think that there will be further sort of calls for decolonization further accusations of western hypocrisy and quite rightly so as a result of the way that COVID 19 and the vaccine issue has been handled and i think that's something that you know western governments have been really slow to recognize the ways in which their decisions are being critiqued and interpreted and the ways in which that has shifted partly due to the kind of roads must fall and decolonization movements so i expect that the demands from those movements will get sharper and i don't think that western governments get it just yet and i think they'll continue to make mistakes that will have significant implications for democracy and i do think that one of the things that we risk um those of us who care about democracy in Africa and in the global south over the next 10 20 years is losing the argument that democracy makes sense for development and for other goals um i think you know we've seen a drift away from people believing in that over the last five 10 years joe can tell talk us through the numbers you know the afro brometer shows us that support for democracy remains robust but people's dissatisfaction work with the way that democracy is performing frustration with poor quality elections and so on is growing and that is seeing an erosion in some of the survey numbers in terms of attitudes towards certain aspects of democracy so this is a moment where we really need to be demonstrating that democracy can work and i think the problem is that western governments have failed to do that over the last decade um finally i think it was a quick question there about has there been anything good i think two two sort of i suppose more positive dimensions i think we have seen civil society groups adapting and innovating and to some extent that has encouraged greater use of digital platforms i think we've seen some interesting hashtag activism and i'm skeptical about the extent to which hashtag activism can change things on the ground but i think the development of that and the sort of greater tech capacity of that has been something that's been quite positive and perhaps means that civil society organizations will have another string to their bow when we come out of covid on the other side so i think that's something that has been perhaps quite good and as i say the fact that we actually are seeing stronger and more resilient protests against ruling parties that are authoritarian in a number of countries is itself positive it's possible that by the end of covid you know we'll have seen two or three authoritarian regimes fall partly because of the hardships generated by covid and that will create opportunities for democratic renewal so i think those are those are positives but they are fairly slim positives at the minute and i think they are obviously far outweighed by the negatives thank you thank you uh nick and joe and julia um thanks for for participating in the session i mean it's um i think i i'm glad we we closed on some some slightly positive notes you know there are some some positive positives i think in terms of as as joe and nick have suggested possibly in terms of greater public vigilance in some places attention to trust in institutions as important attention to and new momentum for decolonizing the state decolonization efforts but of course a lot of areas for great concern um julia i would invite you to send your slides and at the very least we can share them through the through the conference site i i understand the the presentations and the sessions will be posted so we can those of you who haven't for your colleagues who haven't been able to join us they can listen in and julia we can post your slides certainly um but thank you for the three of you and for those of you who've joined us in the audience it's been a really interesting discussion uh and um goodbye and for now from Helsinki and hope to see you in some of the other sessions thank you thank you