 The Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Ben Nar, and I'm just delighted to see such a lovely turnout on such a drippy day. A drippy day like this, tell us where it is coming, so it's all right. So it's just absolutely my pleasure to welcome you to this final panel of the Dean's Symposium. And I hope that you've been able to attend some of the other sessions because they've been marvelous. Before I get into introductions, I will note that we have one missing member of the panel whose plane has just landed because, again, back to the weather stuff, it was delayed a bit. So, Steve C. will be joining us as soon as he can, and in a second I'll tell you a little bit more about Steve. And this will be his chair. So today we are talking, for the whole afternoon, because I hope that many of you are staying for this later this afternoon when we have come to Stacey Abrams. But today we're talking about democracy, or the state of democracy around the world. And, you know, this is an exciting year. The most significant elections embracing 70 countries, eight of the 10 most populous countries, 20 that will take place on the African continent. Two billion people will vote in 2024, representing more than 60% of the global gross domestic product, which is a funny way of talking about people. There must have been something wrong with my mic, so here we are. So, and we won't see this same confluence in the opportunity for democratic participation again until 2048. So this should be a moment of celebration. And yet, we're worried. It's a moment of worry. Worry about the health and strength of democracy and our commitment to it. And so just a couple of things. The Atlantic Council had a recent meeting that summed up some of the most salient points. The Financial Times calls this year the most intense and cacophonous 12 months of democracy since the idea was minted more than 2,500 years ago. Foreign policy says this coming year you will see a global battle between democracy and autocracy, literally at the polls. And so we have a sense that democracy is on the defensive. But according to Freedom House, democracies need to counteract a recession in undemocratic rights and freedoms that's been underway globally since 2006. So to help us think about these issues, we have an outstanding panel. And let me just tell you a little bit about them, including our so far empty chair. In fact, the empty chair is where I'll start. Steve Biggan, he's a deep friend of the Ford School and of the University of Michigan. He has served as a Towsley policymaker in residence here at the Ford School. He's currently a board member of the National Endowment for Democracy. He has more than three decades of international affairs experience in government and the private sector, including in the Department of State, the White House and the United States Congress. In 2021, he concluded his most recent government service as the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State. Importantly, he's also a graduate of the University of Michigan, where he was awarded a bachelor's degree in political science and the Russian language. So we will welcome him as soon as he can get here from the airport. So Dave Carroll comes to us from the Carter Center, where he leads the Center's initiative on developing standards and best practices in international election observation. He's managed or participated in more than 70 Carter Center projects to strengthen democracy and electoral processes around the globe in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. And then my colleague, my dear colleague, Ambassador Susan Page, is a Ford School professor of practice. Although she was due to moderate the discussion, because this is how we roll at Ford, we're ready for anything. She's actually way over qualified to join as a panelist. So let me tell you a little bit about her qualifications for the few of you don't know her yet. She served also in the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the United Nations, and the Navan governmental organizations in senior roles for decades across East, Central, and Southern Africa, and in Haiti and Nepal. She was the first U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of South Sudan and served as Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations in Haiti. So I want to, before we launch, and I'm going to be asking the questions, I would like to thank our co-sponsors, the Wiser Diplomacy Center and the International Policy Center, as well as our media partner, Detroit Public Television. And once the panel has spoken for a little while, we're going to open it up to audience questions. If you're watching online, please click on the web page. If you're here in the room, please use those QR codes. I think they're on those little, that's a pretty deep maze color, but the maze colored pieces of paper that are roaming around on the tables. And then my colleagues Naib, Ali, and Basma and Mom will moderate those questions. Okay. And if you're posting to social media, please use at Ford School, Ford School, one word, and hashtag Dean's Symposium. And that is with two S's. As you type it out, you'll see what I mean. All right. Thank you very much. And let me just sit for a second and grab the questions and we'll get started. Okay. So at this moment, I think I'll just turn to you. If you want to just maybe share some of your thoughts about the state of democracy worldwide. Happy to do that. And assuming that the microphone's working. No. Okay. Is that better? No. Oh, yes. No. Hard to say. Let's see. I'll keep talking and tell me if it's getting any better. It sounds amplified. I'm amplified. How about now? Can you hear me pretty good? Yeah. That sounds good. Okay. I see a lot of heads. So your question was about the state of democracy. Yeah. So clearly it's a very important challenging moment as it's been laid out in the introduction. And where I sit having been doing this work for more than 30 years, it's actually something that's been going on for a good 10 or 15 years. But I think it is kind of reaching more important breaking points or serious crossroads. And it's a sense that more and more countries in the world are affected. If you look at the indices that track democracy in the state of the democracy of around the world, the varieties of democracy and scoring and freedom of scoring, you'll see that for 15 or 20 years there's been kind of a leveling off of what had been progress for 30 years or so from the 70s. It's leveled and it's starting to decline in the last 10 or 15 years. Kind of the slow gradual decline. Not a significant decline but something that you can see. So progress toward democracy that had been happening for a very, very long time is in trouble. There's no doubt about that. And if I was to kind of anticipate some of the things we'll be talking about and I try to say, you want to know why and what can be done about it, I'll at least try to say a few things about what I think is why. And the first is global political change. So just when I was a graduate student in the early 80s, I remember reading about global declines and shifts in power balances and in my life I'd never seen those. I thought, what are they talking about? What does that even look like? Now I know what it looks like. There's global political change. We're moving from what had been a very stable bipolar world of two superpowers to a context where there's at least a third superpower and many other middle powers, nuclear weapons, proliferation. We're entering a period of significant political instability that's happening. Second, I would say economic inequality and economic development. However you want to put those together, your economics professors can say a lot more about them. But clearly in societies across the world we're not addressing inequality sufficiently. Economic development has been challenging. The third thing that I would point to is the cluster of media, traditional media, the decline of traditional media and the rise of social media and the information environment. The effects those have on the information environment and the information that people receive and hear and believe and the complications that's introducing to how we as societies deal with all of that. So I would say those are the things that concern me and it's in countries all around the world and I should say I work at the Carter Center. I've been working on elections for more than 30 years and it's only been in the last four years or so that the Carter Center has said we should be thinking about working inside the U.S. and it was a difficult decision for the Carter Center to work on political issues in our home country. When we work internationally we are automatically seen as a non-biased, non-partisan entity and President Carter is highly respected around the world. We were all concerned of having a former Democratic president working on political issues in the U.S. and how that would be perceived and we've been pleasantly surprised that, you know, so far people think it's important for us to work on these issues but it was a difficult decision for the Carter Center to say we are going to work on these issues in the U.S. and it's a reflection of our assessment and conclusion that we're entering a very, very difficult space in this country in this time. Susan, before I get into these questions, what's on your mind when you think about democracy globally? Well, since I was supposed to be asking the questions, I have to shift my hat a little bit but I think one of the biggest issues is something that came up at the last panel and David has really just laid it out which is the global inequality but within every society and we often like to think of countries, even in the U.S., or groups of people as a monolith and that's unfortunately very misguided and so when I think about the countries that I've worked the most on throughout my career, mostly in Africa, but some elsewhere like Haiti, we're not talking about solutions for those countries in quite the same way or dedicating as much attention to them and we're questioning, well, why are these countries having coups? And a large part of it is because they're not seeing democracy working for them. They are the providers of all of this wealth that is going out but receiving very little in return. That's not to say that there isn't also bad management, mismanagement, interference by foreign powers including the United States but I think the problem really is why would they overthrow this government that's been supposedly democratically elected but as we all know elections are not the only indicator of democracy. Susan just brought up where I was, we're definitely going in the upcoming few questions about the public and the public's commitment to democracy and so David, I just thought we've been hearing this word backsliding, democratic backsliding a lot and I'm wondering whether that is consistent with what you're seeing. It sounds like it was from your opening remarks but if you maybe want to tie it to the public's commitment to democracy in the way that Susan has just invited us to think about it. There's some debate in the academic literature about exactly how to measure and different schemes to attract this but I don't think there's much doubt that we are experiencing some backsliding and certainly different countries are moving in different ways so there are countries that are making progress some of them are ones that had been declining and they've turned it around so that's a little bit of a mixed bag but there are pretty clearly more countries declining on democracy scores than rising so I don't think there's too much significant debate about whether or not backsliding is occurring it's more about how much and how to measure it and how to understand it and you said link it to... Well to the public support and by the way can you all hear me without the mic? I might be double amplified to public support that is that the source of backsliding? It's just in the sense that Susan was describing that people are saying democracy isn't working for me and so it's the lack of public commitment to it that's causing democracy to decline I think there's multiple things but I think that's definitely a big part of it I mean people are not seeing democracies satisfy their needs so democracies are not doing a good enough job but there is these other factors generally economic success the information environment is I think a very big important one and just the political relations between countries stress to it Yeah So when we look at some different countries like Brazil, France, India, Italy, Tunisia, Uganda not to mention of course the United States and many other nations it seems like leaders are using certain topics like immigration, religion, crime identity to vilify the other to divide us particular groups of people as a means to appealing to voters to voters' fears or to justify the usurpation of people's rights and freedoms as long as they are in this category of the other So I'd like to invite each of you to think a little bit about this and in particular should we be thinking about this in the form of populism or nativism Would you? Would you like me to? Yeah, are you sure? Yeah I mean I think there's definitely elements of populism and nativism and there's an overlap between those a little bit more of who's being targeted in those two concepts but nativism being more the people outside your country or the immigrants, those who are different from you who are the ones who are somehow to be blamed and populism it's more of an economic focus but there's an overlap and both of those I think are elements and symptomatic of how people are reacting to these pressures you're needing someone to blame you're needing someone to be moving ahead of and it's a reflection of the economic and the political distress that our societies are facing I think fundamentally at the end of the day how I look at it Yeah, I would just add I mean I think that's right the additional factor is that people are honing in on people's fears and also what works in order to get them elected and people universally are afraid of change all of us, you know, we don't like change we don't know what that is going to portend and so the blame being able to see someone as worse off than you are is an important kind of psychological way that we think of ourselves but also this inequality is really causing a lot of stress and when people think about these new people coming in it doesn't take much to then go that extra step and vilify them and say, well, they're the reason that I'm losing out it's someone else's fault it's nothing to do with me but some of that is particularly unique to the United States and the way that it's partly capitalism but it's always this mechanism of pull yourself up from your own bootstraps well, you know, if you don't have any shoes you don't have any bootstraps to pull up and so I think that that is not necessarily the way that people see things in other parts of the world that have a much stronger commitment to working together and there's a Swahili word Harambe, you know, it's that togetherness that is really important and capitalism doesn't like that you know, it's very much individualism and that's kind of coming home to Ruth where we don't have a lot of those jobs that provided good wage and so a lot of people are struggling and the people who have long been at the top don't particularly want to share that with anyone else but they're using that rhetoric as a way to upset the output curve. That's really interesting and David, I hope you don't mind if I just follow up with Susan's just raised that maybe she's laid out a hypothesis for us, right, that it's even worse than the United States because of our culture of individuality or self-reliance and does this ring true to you and is this part of, you know, at the Carter Center as you're thinking about, as you are moving into the United States is that part of the way that you're thinking about it at the Carter Center? I mean, I agree with the analysis we're not in the way that we're structuring our programming that's not a very specific focus of what we're dealing with but I certainly think it's clearly part of the underlying explanation of some of the forces at work I have no doubt about that. That's amplifying the problem so all this threatening democracy globally there's a cultural factor that's making it maybe even worse. Except that it's not necessarily true but that is the language that we have always used it's individualism as if there are no programs that the government has provided that there are no social safety nets as if everything has actually been accomplished by individuals all along, which of course is not the case. But the ideology persists in our national self-story. And that's not necessarily the self-story elsewhere. And if it's our narrative it's something that our politicians can play off of. Yes. That was interesting. So, I mean, actually the next thing that we had planned to talk about kind of is a continuation some of the underlying conditions that are causing these changes and what's appealing to citizens. So, I don't want to take you outside of the United States because it's so much on our minds but maybe put it in contrast with what you're seeing elsewhere as kind of driving this uncertainty about democracy. Yeah, I mean, again, I think that people are starting to rise up and part of it is media, social media. We saw how it was used in a number of countries during the Arab Spring in 2011, 2012. That was something that was used to get people together to set meeting places but of course governments have gotten smart now and they've turned that around and are controlling media access. So, oftentimes in more recent decade they're shutting down the media and people's access to the internet because they want their own narrative to be the one that prevails or they're surveilling what people are actually saying and shutting down that ability to have a voice. I think one of the problems is that all foreign policy is inconsistent. It just is real politic but I think we're seeing that more and more from countries around the world but in particular from the United States in how it is demonstrating its foreign policy in different countries. So, we need to take a step back and have policies that work for the United States and not necessarily sort of contracting out our policies to other countries like France for West Africa or the Middle East for dealing with some of North Africa and somewhat Central Africa. Sudan, we have lead countries that are implicated in many of these wars. And so, how do you have a country that is basically gaining something even if the war stops? They're still in control of some of the mining, some of the gold, some of other precious metals, etc. But the people on the ground are getting little to nothing. Can I add a comment? Oh, please. So, I agree with all of that. And I think one of the things that this reminds me of and listening to this is there is this unsolvable dilemma that all countries face really but great powers like the United States how can we be committed to advancing our national interest and committing to advancing democracy? Too often, they are not easily compatible with those two goals. And if you, like, I'm a firm believer in global democracy and human rights and that should be one of the leading consistent goals of a country and its national leaders. In my mind, that's going to lead to some trade-off sometimes and things that are in your economic development interests. But it's hard for political leaders to make those decisions. They will quite often compromise. We'll be allies with undemocratic states routinely because it's in our national political interest. There's a sensitive zone that we need to make sure that our economic interests have access to those markets or we want this country to be an ally politically because of a global or regional struggle. Government leaders will quite often let democracy suffer as a goal. We see it all the time. And we're not alone. We're probably better than most. But it's hard to be a country that's a consistent leader on democracy when you're also trying to do what you think is necessary for your political and economic interests. And so that's a central, central dilemma. I wish we were more on the side of democracy more consistently. I wish that, you know, the Carter Center, I mean the Carter Center, the United States and others could do more to make that happen. But I'm also trying to be a realist and understand that politically it's just difficult. I think part of the problem with democratic regimes and in quotes is that these days, especially some people aren't so interested in governing, but they're interested in power. And so we're all, you know, talking about these issues that mean a lot to us, rights, democracy, rules-based order that we violate a lot. But then all of a sudden, but it's not okay for you to violate that rules-based order. Or for the competition over whose rules. And then lastly I would say where you have systems that, I mean, when I first started in the State Department, in the office of the legal advisor, for the first 10 years of my career, change of government, change of leaders, change of parties, really the political situation didn't change. Our policies didn't move that significantly. You always would have a big issue that might come along, the opening of China, as I said before. But, you know, or changing our approach on Vietnam or Cuba. But by and large, not a whole lot changed at the policy level. So it almost didn't matter who was at the top. They had different approaches perhaps and different philosophies, but that tended to affect much more the domestic level. But when you are running in elections every four years, your policy really, as David said, it comes down to, well, we've got to make these compromises, but it's not necessarily because they're in our best interests or rail politic, it's domestic rail politic. And if we do something like this, how is that going to be viewed? Not necessarily for elections, but we're in a financial cycle with appropriations and a money cycle that leads us to short-term planning and short-term thinking. And democracy, governance, the rule of law, human rights, these are long, long-term objectives and goals that are not solvable in four years. So I want to continue this thread and think about it in a thinking matter in terms of great powers and realignment, right? And so maybe one way of thinking about given, Susan, the way you've been talking about your history at state and what had been going on for a while before that is for a long time with under Cold War competition, it was the U.S. and its Democratic allies right? And so we kind of managed global democracies in that sense that we could support democracies because they were our friends and push against undemocratic regimes because they were not our friends. But now, since we're kind of in this new phase of great power, we're going to be kind of in this new phase of great power competition, in particular with China entering the scene so strongly and with Russia. So first, are there other countries vying for influence that we should be paying attention to? I'm wondering particularly about the future with Africa and with the Indian subcontinent. And then other countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE, or Turkey, how do they fit in here? Is this a new era? Is there realignment and how is that affecting democracy? I should do that to my State Department with respect to farmers. So, yeah, I mean I don't know that I would say necessarily realignment and I bristle at the great power competition language to be being used today. I don't think that's exactly right. But I think we also don't give other countries enough credit for when we make it all about China, other countries are just operating without being seen. They're under the radar to us, not necessarily to anyone else. But Turkey is a huge, huge competitor. And they are making their mark in lots of places but it's going sort of unseen, unheard. And that I think is quite dangerous. And then the other bit is when we think about some of the deals that have been made recently that the U.S. was taken by surprise, well countries aren't sitting around waiting for the United States to make a move and Africa's never been top of the list. It's only rises up when there's an issue but right now what's going on in Sudan for instance I mean this has really serious global implications because Sudan is so large and the countries that it borders. And the war's been going on April 15th will be the one year mark. And the country is devastated they're moving in the direction of famine it's not being talked about but we have basically I don't want to say allowed because it's not allowing but sort of sent out our policy to the UAE can handle this Saudi Arabia can handle these negotiations but there are links between what Saudi Arabia is doing or what UAE is doing or what Qatar is doing in different places not just in Sudan what's happening in Syria what's happening in the Central African Republic what are they doing in Libya what are they doing in the Middle East in Israel Palestine who has connections so I think even the way that we divide countries or regions at least within the State Department Africa is divided into Sub-Saharan Africa North Africa the Asian subcontinent versus it's a continent and so I think we do ourselves a disservice when we pretend that there are no other spheres of influence and that it's only within their little sub-region of whichever continent that might be I thought everybody probably wanted to comment I agree Could you say a little bit more and maybe David also thinking about the Carter Center maybe talking about Sudan in particular but what are these externalities in terms of the health of democracy if one country is struggling how is that affecting other countries within the region Well I would say Sudan is a particularly interesting case and I know the Carter Center has been in Sudan for a long time and Southern Sudan before Southern Sudan succeeded to become South Sudan it's interesting because it straddles really Africa and the Middle East and the people themselves of Sudan are grappling with their identities as are they Arab, are they Africans they're Africans, they're Arabs but we like to reduce things to simplistic either good guy, bad guy Muslim Christian it's not that simple and it doesn't operate that way and so we often get it wrong because we don't understand and we don't as the last panel said we're not even teaching American history to Americans how would we possibly learn about the history of other countries but the people of the country know, they know their history again we don't necessarily know our own history but they know their history and they know what other countries have done to them or how they are perceived we need to be much more in tune about what people on the ground are actually thinking and a militaristic approach which is what we have taken towards diplomacy in the last 10, 20 years it's not new is helping us to get where we are but the world is much more interconnected than it ever was social media is one way but that works in both you know in both directions so separating us out into it's important to recognize the individuality and the uniqueness of each country but they also have connections to like the African Union they're part of that but they're also part of the Arab League and there are dynamics within those bodies as well as between states so these David I'm turning to you but I'm going to kind of Susan was just talking about the political complexity economic complexity but a little bit earlier in remark she was talking about social complexity and that these people have these very rich and complex identities and those identities may spill across political borders and it's part of that spillover I imagine that can really cause maybe a decay of democracy in one country have very real spillovers and so I'm wondering to what extent you know we used to think about I know when I was an undergraduate here and I also forgot to give Ambassador Page the shout out of most importantly being a wolverine go blue that you know we talked about the domino theory and you've got a you can't let because if one goes then the rest go but when we're building this kind of complexity of these societies that spill across political boundaries we can also think about we know we need to really shore up democracy here because it will help bolster democracy elsewhere or if it fails it can cause this cascade of failure does the Carter Center think of those terms yes I mean we certainly we try to understand what's causing the decline in democracy what are the challenges to good elections what are the social and political forces that are you know that can be cited as things that are driving stuff but we actually we don't dwell on that we don't study it in depth we don't research it there's plenty of people who are doing that we tend to be focusing very specifically on okay now there's a question of will we observe elections in Sudan well are we going to be invited and then we'll do quickly an analysis of the issues there but it's connected to that moment in time sometimes it's years that we're working on that particular country so but we're not you know doing the broader deep reflection and analysis that places like University of Michigan are I'm going to pause for a moment so we can all welcome fresh from the airport hello Steve you go ahead and take this seat and I've already introduced you and we're just in this we're talking about democracy trying to maybe find some bright points but there's a lot of worry and so you missed it but there I didn't miss it I actually listened to the whole program on the way there really oh wow don't think we thank the people in the back who are doing the technology but I did have a chance to listen to both you so thanks oh fabulous alright so then you heard that a few minutes ago Susan was talking about worries about the media and that the media has been controlled the messaging has been controlled which is antithetical to a pluralistic society where people don't have access to a variety of information in a variety of ideas and we can see that as maybe one symptom of many of moving away from a commitment to democratic norms so this free press the free and transparent elections that the Carter Center is so dedicated to and so are you seeing this as a trend what if so what kinds of democratic norms worry you that they are decaying so the information space in general is certainly one of the largest vulnerabilities of democratic societies now and one of the places where the challenges to existing democracies is playing out most acutely it's more than one issue the singular control of media outlets is part of it possibly but that's complemented in societies where there's a monopoly on the spread of information as well so you don't have competing voices or competing sources but even in societies where completely unconstrained media or at least the unconstrained flow of information and I would certainly argue that's the case in our country there are still huge vulnerabilities built into the system I'm old enough to remember when we thought that the internet would be a democratizing factor that in the late 1990s and Susan will remember this we had the hubris to get rid of a department of the United States government state's information agency because we judged it was no longer necessary because everyone around the world would be able at their fingertips to get the information that they needed to make what we considered to be the right decisions and boy were we wrong were we wrong and now we see disinformation misinformation and even selective advocacy around specific information that's used to polarize and divide to misinform and undermine democracies and this is a real challenge in our societies and we don't have an answer the Europeans just passed a large regulatory action in the digital space that probably will be the inspiration of at least a debate here in the United States I'm not sure if this will culminate in action but we clearly have a challenge here and we don't have an answer I would maybe just add to that and welcome and Steve Began is also a Wolverine we gave him that shout out before we're playing with him but I would add to the on the information misinformation side one of the issues that the lack of our congress even when they have hearings with the media giants the facebook the all of these sources our congress is made up of such an elderly set of people and it's no disrespect they've earned the right to be where they are and their age but they don't necessarily understand this new technology or what my parents would have called that new math and that's problematic as well because then understanding how this information spreads and what that technology is all about is even more difficult for the people who are supposed to make the laws that will regulate it is much more difficult and there's a lot of money and a lot of campaign contributions somewhere in that picture so alright let's I want to think we brought up the United States I want to get us back to the United States in President Biden's first speech at the State Department after he took office he declared democracy is back multilateralism is back is the U.S. setting that's the end of the quote now it's the question is the U.S. actually setting a good example for struggling democracies around the world Steve well as a struggling democracy we should be inspiration to the struggling democracies because we're certainly struggling I think we in all seriousness we are and will be an excellent model for other countries around the world we are wrestling with our own issues right now and you think about the eras in our society when we grappled with issues of such huge magnitude Vietnam War, the civil rights movement things that were both showed the worst of the United States of America and the best of the United States of America I am highly confident that the resilience of our democracy at the end of the day will prove to be an excellent example for countries around the world but democracy is not easy it's messy, it's hard to preserve and as you all know we're in a period of democratic retreat around the world right now but I do think we are a good example are every one of our policies and every one of our decisions of course not across the 200 50 years of our country's history there are many moments like that but in the arc of history I am absolutely of the belief of the United States in its model democracy will continue to inspire countries around the world Thank you for saying that David I don't disagree completely but I do have a maybe I tended to be an optimist and I would say that's my optimistic take but there's part of me that is not so confident I hope you are right and I really want you to be right but I am worried about the many countries in the world and the United States I wish I was as confident as you but that actually helps me feel better because you've worked in government I've never worked in government and I've never worked in government and so that actually does make me feel a little bit better that you are that confident I've worked on the other side though too I'm on the board of freedom house in Moscow in the 1990s I was a field worker working with Russian partners who were trying to build a democracy unbelievably in Russia in the passions inside the Russian people for what they thought was democracy admittedly they were coming off a very low base but it was inspirational that's still there that's still part of us I agree with that I think that is part of us I'm just a little less confident than you are but I am inspired by your confidence honestly glad to be consistent I would add importantly the comment that you just made which was back in the 1990s working with local people on the ground and that's something we don't do very well is we often often times have this top down approach including at our embassies which obviously I've served in we deal with the same group of that top flight educated people who speak our language and they are the ones who are trained over and over and over again but I'd like to see that commitment to localization that we talk about actually used more and more in reality and in practice and just remembering that democracy is fragile and I'm sure all of us have written I mean I've written op-eds about the fragility of democracy and you know presidents have talked about the fact that the rights may be defined but they are not self enforcing we have to constantly renew our efforts and admitting that our country isn't perfect and that's where I think diplomats on the ground are so important by admitting yes we have made a number of mistakes we continue to make mistakes but we're constantly trying to become that better nation I think that's important and so we do have some questions if you have a question go ahead and submit it but before we turn to the audience questions I want to just ask you one last time you've already started to talk about whether you're optimistic or pessimistic in particular about the US but Susan just got us to thinking about what in particular through the State Department what we can do in terms of the US foreign policy to bolster democracy's health and where and does that make you optimistic or pessimistic about democracy's future that is I'm asking you to peer into your crystal ball and give us a sense of by the years end such an important year for democracy will we feel like we're more worried or like we're bouncing back I will feel more worried I believe because I don't think that our policies are moving away from militarization I think we are militarizing even more our foreign policy than less I will say that before the 2020 election my view was if we got through that election in a decent place that I was going to feel a lot more optimistic about the future and what I felt was we got through that election but I don't think we're out of the woods and I think my suspicion now my strong sense is that we won't be out of the woods after the next elections no matter what that doesn't mean that I'm pessimistic but it means that I'm worried so I'll say a word about the US but let me start globally the one of the metrics that I look to to understand trends in global democracies is and there are a few out there but one is produced by an organization called Freedom House Human Rights Organization based in Washington DC in New York it annually releases a report called Freedom in the World and they go globally across all countries and rate them on an index of democratic freedoms, liberties respect for pluralism in their societies and they reflect what I think many social scientists will tell you which is that there's a little bit debate about when but we're approximately in the 18th year of a steady decline in the number of democracies around the world so we peaked around 2007-2008 and there's been a steady decline in what is objectively measured as democratic governments democratic nations and so I suppose that the good news is this isn't a problem that just started, the bad news is it's been going for 18 years we are talking about it today but there are many of us who work on these issues have been concerned about this for some time we have seen democracies backside but we've also seen them come back and so one very important observation is democracy is resilient we just saw an election in Turkey a country in which many people were worried about the democratic direction in Turkey but the opposition just won a landslide election in Turkey and that doesn't undermine the concerns that one might have had about a country like Turkey in recent years but it also validates having a general confidence in faith in democracy as long as constitutional order can be preserved and that's very important because when an authoritarian or dictator completely abolishes the constitutional order like we see for example in Russia there's no chance for a competitive election just I won't enumerate all the ways that someone like Vladimir Putin can deprive his people of democracy while still having a vote incidentally as I think we started to call an election like activity but not an election but democracy is resilient in many places in the world, Brazil's another example that's been cited recently and you know it doesn't mean that there was a horrible government and it's been succeeded by a perfect government but the trend lines can be better and so I do think we will see this around the world, it'll be nothing like what many of us who are in our middle age or older remember from the 1980s and the 1990s we saw the end of civil wars in Central America and the birth of new democracies where we saw the collapse of communism and the war saw pack countries and then the collapse of the Soviet Union where we saw the fall of the apartheid system in South Africa and Nelson Mandela elected to be the president, we saw Chinese students protesting in the main square of their capital demanding democratic freedoms and so on and so on and so on it's not going to be like that we're going to find more of a fight and one that we Americans who are devoted to democracy have to work in partnership with people in those countries not telling them how to run their countries, not preaching the virtues of democracy but rolling up our sleeves and working with them to build the fundamentals of a pluralistic society of strong civil societies of good political organization and ultimately of free and fair elections of states we all feel it I'm not going to make David feel any more optimistic we know that there's a pretty negative vibe out there in our system right now I do, I won't restate my devotion of faith to the things working out in the end but what I'll say this is it's up to us to them is going to fix this one we're not going to have others come in here and tell us how it gets better we all have to play our role as citizens as political activists we have to we have to invest in the system and if we check out then we are going to get the worst outcome I'd like to turn things over now to take your questions but asked by my two colleagues here can you hear me thank you so much can you all hear me thank you so much Ambassador Page Dr. Carol, Mr. Began and Dr. Bednar for this excellent discussion like Dr. Bednar introduced I'm Nayab Ali I'm the assistant program manager for viso diplomacy center and with me here today is Sharif El-Makhi who is one of our MPP graduating students this year we will be moderating the audience questions so if you have anything please use the QR code placed on your desks and we'll take it from there our first question today is how responsible is the U.S. foreign policy for the democratic backsliding that has been seen in the recent years as an example the U.S. foreign policy during the Arab spring saw nascent democracies go unsupported and eventually succumb to counter revolutions additionally U.S. policies in the hand in the European refugee crisis which fueled the rise of far right parties across the EU I defer to okay I'll start I think that I don't know if I would say responsible but yes we certainly play a role we often will say at an official level that we support democratic change or these students or whoever is trying to get their governments to move forward but the U.S. is like any government we don't like change and we like what we think of as stability even when that stability is not necessarily terribly democratic so yes I think it's also very hard for governments to support groups that are kind of amorphous our own political system is basically a two-party presidential system other governments around the world are multi-parties in their parliaments a parliamentary system which operates differently and so they are more accustomed to having to negotiate and discuss compromises I don't think that we are as accustomed to doing that so we like to back who we think is going to be a winner and that is again I think the way that our society has sort of grown up but it's problematic when you look at different case studies why did we support this one but not that one and we don't always take a similar stance I just add I agree with what Susan said what Ambassador Page said that this is a struggle for us in U.S. foreign policy and it's partially informed by what David spoke to earlier when I was in the car trying to balance our interests and values but also in different readings of our own history in the role we should play so the underlying premise of the question isn't exactly right because the United States did intervene in several places during the Arab Spring the United States and NATO forces toppled Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and the U.S. pulling support out from Hosni Mubarak was absolutely the critical blow when him ultimately falling out of the country to democratic elections in the case of Syria the United States provided military assistance and even has troops to this day in Syria in support of what started as a truly spectacular uprising of democratic voices in Syria but now has devolved into an ugly inter-Nisian war that has both extremist overtones as well as the dictatorial tendencies of Syria itself and so it's not even indifferent to these or even standoffish the challenge we've had is though more formidable is follow-through so when you topple a leader like Muammar Gaddafi in a country that's a complex mix of tribal loyalties and regional interests and then by the way you throw in there for good measure huge reserves of gas and fuel to walk away from that after you topple a dictator like Gaddafi is an invitation for the kind of ugly civil war that we saw and probably our reticence to be more involved in Syria allowed that to devolve into the brutal conflict it became but that reservation was guided by a president who had seen the United States go into Iraq and topple a government in Iraq and the terrible lessons that we learned from that experience were applied to Syria and led to some reservation to go any further so I would say that you know there's a lot of different factors here but I think follow-through is actually the one that the United States probably has failed most could I add just a little tiny bit I don't completely agree with the Libya example because that was exceeding what NATO was actually supposed to do and I think that that drove a lot of the issues that are apparent right now which includes massive refugees and then the EU also basically giving a green light to Turkey will sign this deal keep those people within your border so they don't come to Europe and those are some of the ramifications and the UN Security Council resolutions had nothing to say it was to protect the population not to topple Gaddafi so I think that one is a little bit more complicated for my way of thinking and the negative consequence of involvement because that then stopped a Security Council resolution to help the Syrian people because of what we did that exceeded what we were supposed to do not just the U.S. but what we were supposed to do in Libya. So we've talked a little bit about doing the work and about the follow-through and kind of what comes after some of these changes and so this question is about how specifically can the U.S. better its public diplomacy engagement in building civil society throughout the world and what role can U.S. agencies like U.S. aid peace courts that are a play in that goal moving forward is this supposed to be a more forward facing visionary like what needs to change? Well we already do a lot Sharif and it's it is a significant pillar of our foreign policy is to to help those in society seeking to build or sustain their democracies and so we do probably where we fall shorter is addressing all the other social ills that make it so hard for people to make the democratic choice that I think left to their left to themselves they would make when they're struggling to survive and so where it's kind of probably passing bypassing the question but I wish we were doing much much more to help societies struggling with demographic and economic and humanitarian issues I think we would have a lot more success with our democracy programs So I agree with everything Stephen has said I think where I would maybe shift emphasis a little bit is it kind of goes back to that original tension between our interests and our values and you know how I think it's almost a reconcilable dilemma you can't consistently always pursue both your values and your interests and I think there's some countries where it's just going to be very hard for us in instances around the world to really think we're going to be able to have a sustainable long term interest that we're going to impact through our engagement I think we can try where we can but there's so much that we can't really control there's so many other forces that are affecting what's happening in other countries just another in my view a very difficult tension because there's so many places that would benefit from US engagement that we could try to push in the right direction but there's so many factors in every single country that are also going to be at play that you quite often find oh we can't really control what's happening in this country there's all these other factors that are contributing and if we want to stay engaged and continue to shape events we've got to do a whole lot more and you know what we don't have the public support to do all this so we quite often get into those situations where it's very very difficult and I'm not recommending anything in particular just trying to be acknowledging how difficult it is to have a long term sustained serious policy engagement support to countries that is also going to be kind of consistent with our values it's just hard it's just hard yeah I would only add that I think that well two things one the US government doesn't put a lot of money behind these programs and that's just reality so yes we care about them we care about democracy support good governance human rights but the monetary value to those programs is a complete drop in the bucket and so that's one the second thing though is the organizations that do really good work working at the local level and I'm a disclaimer I am on the board of trustees of the Carter Center but getting down to the grassroots working with people who are as Steve said doing the work they're on the ground forming organizations that are doing local domestic election monitoring they're working with their own political party systems trying to make it better or local human rights groups information is so important those are things that groups like organizations like the Carter Center the Downland for Democracy I mean what the NED is doing is incredible they don't have offices on the ground they're working directly to support local entities making a difference on the ground that's a model that we should be replicating at you know 100 fold because that is exactly what people want is the ability to change their own future and it doesn't have to even be with a lot of money but those are the kinds of things that the NED is doing and there are many more those are just a couple of examples thank you more than 50 countries are expected to hold elections national elections in 2024 voters across the world are expressing fears about immigration in common India specifically is the largest democracy in the world but under the Modi administration there are increasing crackdowns on Muslims and Islamic culture even down to a zoo receiving a court order to rename or separate two lines sharing an enclosure together if this trend continues do you think in the rising tide of religious intolerance there is the beginning of a harmful snowballing of anti-democratic culture was that just about India the way the question was framed India is an example you want to start? I think my problem in this context is I'm going to give a lot of general vague unclear answers because I think that's the best reflection of in my assessment of where we are and what was the very end of that question again if this trend continues do you think in the rising tide of religious intolerance there is the beginning of a harmful snowballing of anti-democratic sentiment that could lead to a further consolidation of executive power I mean yes I think that could be a factor but again I think there's so many other factors that I wouldn't put my finger on any single one and then but I would add one that we haven't talked about explicitly in this context but I know that it's been discussed in the previous sessions and days climate change is making everything harder the population pressures and people needing to move to another country and running into borders and running into challenges on their lives all the problems that we've talked about yet today so far are going to be that much harder not all of them that much harder but it's going to be an additional complicating factor and I would say to you that on the climate change front there are only very specific reasons that people are allowed to claim refugee status and climate change moving because you are being forced to move because of the climate is not one of them and while there's absolutely zero there should be zero tolerance for some of the harsh racist or populist rhetoric that we hear in politics today around the world this massive migration flow is yet another thing that's straining the systems of democracy Susan talked a little bit about this before it challenges people's notions of their own economics and economy it challenges people's identities not that we shouldn't be able to overcome those kind of concerns or resentments that arise in people when the system is overloaded we have such a surge of people moving in the world right now that it's exacerbating a lot of social ills in terms of humanitarian support, social support from governments that are creating public policy challenges in frankly in both democratic and undemocratic societies there's no unified theory to the case here there's absolutely right there's a complex set of issues I feel like we're responding to the symptoms when we're talking about controlling immigration or immigration reform or whatever when you look at a region like Latin America it's just begging for help in governance and in developing its democracy in a law based the development of law based it's until we figure out how to get our arms around that and commit the resources to do so we're just trying to plug the leak by trying to stop these massive refugee flows in Syria the failure to deal with that conflict early on led to a massive migration flow that created tensions in Europe that we still are seeing the ramifications of today in European elections and in Venezuela another situation another place where we've had a global policy failure I won't lay this entirely at the feet of the United States 5 million refugees from Venezuela there were more refugees from Venezuela than there were from Syria during that period and not surprisingly a lot of them are showing up at the United States in search of livelihood for themselves and their families so I feel like we have to stop dealing with the symptoms and we have to really start getting at the root causes time for one last question sounds good I think we have a pretty good one to send everyone off with your expert advice so we had a very robust discussion about some of the lack of public support for democracies we have a wide variety of aspirational policy professionals and interested audience members here what would you suggest concretely that we do beyond basic civic engagement to foster and support our democracies in a productive way and keep in mind we also have people from many nationalities here so what can be translatable very quickly I think understanding the context and getting involved yeah I hate to just say I agree and say the same thing but I'm going to agree with both Susan and Steven and say that this is you know getting involved doing something is really the most important thing and trying to do it in as formed way as possible is really the only thing that we can do and it's going to be critical to success and it can be the good thing is it can take a whole wide variety of forms and so you can find from your own perspective in life what you know what you're comfortable with what you want to contribute where you have an interest or a connection there's something you can do and so you know don't feel like well you know I can't do this one thing that people have highlighted even small things and just to really go back to what said earlier it's going to require everybody to do something and you can do more than you think so I think that's the challenge I would leave with you is do something for me there's the systems of democracy elections well there's the underpinnings pluralism in a free media and a free society there's the systems elections being central among them there are the institutions that defend our democracy our unique set is a separate court congress and executive but I have a growing fear that none of it works without a democratic culture and that's where we all can also very specifically contribute is in civility and informed discourse and that doesn't mean no passion and that doesn't mean surrendering your principles it means working with others in a democratic manner and I think that's the part of our system that I most worry has frayed and I actually wonder if the institutions or the processes function or matter if we lose the democratic culture that makes it all come together for sure thank you all so much and just join me in banking the spectacular panel so sorry I was late and thank you Jenna for moderating with pleasure alright thanks everyone thank you