 Your Excellencies, distinguished guests, welcome to International Idea. To begin our program today, we'll have a word of welcome and an introduction to the global state of democracy from our Secretary General of International Idea, Dr. Kevin Casas-Somora. Dr. Casas-Somora. Thank you very much, Alex. And good afternoon and welcome also from my side to the Stockholm launch of International Idea's Global State of Democracy Report 2021. I am very happy that we can gather here today, both in person in our beautiful headquarters in Stockholm as much as online. I want to start thanking Sweden, our founding member and host country for your unwavering support and commitment to democracy and to the work of International Idea, making democracy a priority of your foreign policy and an integral part of all your policies is an example for others to follow, particularly in times like this. Think about this for a second. Exactly 100 years ago, when Sweden held its first elections with universal suffrage, democracy was very much an uncertain project here. But you have persisted at this. And today, Sweden, a small country, is one of the leading democratic voices in the world. That's an immense collective achievement that ought to be celebrated. For all those reasons, I'm delighted that Ms. Ann Linde, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Sweden, could be here with us today to deliver a keynote address. Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, almost exactly two years ago, I stood on the exact same spot when we launched our previous iteration of the Global State of Democracy Report. Little did we know then how much the world and democracy in the world would change only a few months later. Two years ago, our analysis was pointing out that while the number of democracies was increasing, the quality of democracy was decreasing. The message nonetheless still had a hint of optimism. The number of countries holding credible and competitive elections had continued to grow, and previously undemocratic regimes like Myanmar, Ethiopia, and Sudan, to name a few cases, were undergoing inspiring democratization processes. Then the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, threatening lives, livelihoods, but also democracies. And as with humans, the virus hit those with pre-existing conditions the hardest. The pandemic accelerated and amplified ongoing political trends while adding a whole new plethora of unprecedented challenges to democratic institutions and processes. Virtually overnight, all democratic systems found themselves dealing with enormous obstacles, from holding safe and credible elections in the midst of a pandemic to ensuring the functioning of legislative and judicial institutions during lockdowns and limiting circumstances. At the same time, governments all over the world felt compelled, but also tempted, to deploy wide-ranging emergency powers to confront the calamity that had befallen the world. As I'm sure you've guessed by now, the diagnosis is pretty dire. The two years since our last report have not been good for democracy. The monumental human victory achieved when democracy became the predominant form of governance now hangs in the balance like never before. It is not simply that the number of democracies has decreased, but that some of the worst reversals have happened precisely in places like Myanmar, a country that two years ago was still being hailed in our report for this democratic progress. Overwaringly still is that the quality of democracy continues to decline across the world, including in established large democracies where this would have been unimaginable until a few years ago. Democratic backsliding, namely the sustained and deliberate process of subversion of basic democratic tenets by political actors and governments, is threatening to become a different kind of pandemic. One for which we do not have a vaccine. Democratic backsliding now afflicts very large and influential democracies that together account for over a quarter of the world's population, almost two billion people. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, many democratic governments have adopted questionable restrictions to fund the mental freedoms that in many cases mimic the practices of authoritarian regimes. And all of this is happening while authoritarian regimes in turn intensify their repressive practices and engage in ever more brazen attempts to silence their critics and distort the workings of democracies. Just think about how Belarus rerouted a plane full of passengers so that it could arrest a democracy activist. We had never seen that before. It is clear that the effects of this global crisis will take many years, if not decades, to become clear. Yet over the past two years, we have researched and gathered enough data to evaluate some of the initial consequences, but also to identify many of the dangers and opportunities for democracy that come with them. This is the research that we are presenting here today, a health check of democracy in the age of COVID-19, an examination that aspires to be comprehensive, rigorous, nuanced, and constructive. Our comprehensive conceptual framework unpacks and dissects the many facets of the democratic construct, including the workings of the representative's institutions, the protection of fundamental rights, the robustness of checks and balances, and the vibrancy of popular participation. We have also tried very consciously to be nuanced in our analysis and go beyond the incessant negativity of the most recent headlines about democracy, always predicting a bear market for democracy is easy. It is also inaccurate and unhealthy. We want to give visibility to the positive developments and the resilience that we have witnessed in the past two years, because there are promising trends that also need to be displayed to keep hope alive. And we want to be constructive, because democracy needs help. It needs solutions and proposals. That's why our report makes a point of putting forward policy recommendations to not only guide but inspire those workings in the trenches of democracy. With this report, we hope to convey a sense of urgency about the global plight of democracy, but also of opportunity. We want to press upon our audiences the message that this is the best time for democratic actors to be bold. This is the time to revitalize the democratic project in order to prepare it for the even sterner challenges that lie ahead, including those posed by the climate crisis. This calls for a global endeavor. That's why efforts such as the EU Democracy Action Plan, the upcoming Summit for Democracy, or Sweden's long-standing efforts to support democratic institutions, rights, and actors through the drive for democracy matter more than ever. We need to let democratic defenders and reformers know that they are not alone. They should know that they have reliable allies that will stand by their side now and in the future. Because democracy takes time, endurance, and dedication, it took Sweden a hundred years to get to where it is today. Democracy is not for the fickle or for the faint-hearted, and we all need to be in it for the long term. In the process of building and supporting democracies, we should never forget why this work matters. This is about more than safeguarding abstract principles or winning geopolitical battles. It is about protecting the dignity of real human beings which every democracy does better than any other political arrangement. Every democratic reversal is not a geopolitical battle lost. It is a constellation of lives that goes dark. As we are witnessing Afghanistan today, it is a group of human beings that lose their opportunity to fulfill their potential and dreams. And that is also our loss. This report is a small contribution to this global struggle. It is very small when compared to the deeds that are performed on a daily basis by the brave young pro-democracy activists in Myanmar. By the grandmothers and their grandchildren that walk together the streets of Belarus with red and white flags in their hands. By the women that refuse to be cowed by fanatics in Afghanistan. By the citizens that have not withdrawn their umbrellas in Hong Kong. By the jail opposition leaders in Nicaragua. By the dissidents that are daring to say out loud what the rest of society whispers in Cuba. That no amount of repression can hide that their absolute leaders are naked and lost. Each of this acts of defiance is a triumph of the human spirit. That deserves that we pay homage and recommit ourselves to the democratic project. In this report is our small tribute and our sincere pledge. That we will use the knowledge we gather and the experience we accrue to help reformers improve democracy where it exists. To support those who fight for democracy where it doesn't exist. And to inspire the million others that need to join this cause if democracy is to endure and prevail. Thank you. Thank you. And now I am very pleased to invite Ms. Ann Linde, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Sweden to deliver the keynote address of our lunch. Minister Linde. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary-General. Dear panelists, member state representatives, friends of democracy. The number of countries moving in an authoritarian direction in 2020 outnumbered those going in a democratic direction. The pandemic has prolonged this negative trend into a five-year stretch. The longest such period since the start of the third wave of democratization in the 1970s. Democratically elected governments, including established democracies, increasingly adopted authoritarian tactics. And non-democratic countries further closed their already reduced civic space during the pandemic. Even as flagship report, the global state of democracy 2021 provides a bleak outlook. These developments are unfortunately not new. Even before the pandemic, we saw how democratic principles were being threatened, how democratic institutions were being weakened, and how the democratic space for civil society was shrinking. For Sweden, we see it as a strategic priority to establish counter-narrative to this authoritarian trend and to defend democracies, institutions, and voice-bearers. In 2019, we launched our foreign policy initiative, Drive for Democracy, in all strands of our foreign policy. A broad range of activities have been conducted, including democracy talks conducted by our embassies all over the world, reaching over 10,000 people. Despite the bleak outlook, let me highlight some of the opportunities for democracy raised in this report. All over the world, people have taken to the streets in pro-democracy movements, fighting for respect for the human rights, democracy, and rule of law. Further, many democracies have proved resilient to the pandemic, demonstrated, for example, by innovative solutions established in order to hold elections in difficult conditions. To respond to the current challenges to democracy worldwide, it's more important than ever that we, friends of democracy, come together and join forces. We look forward to the U.S. Summit for Democracy, as we need more actors to take up this fight and join initiatives, be it on global, regional, or local level. Sweden will play our part and will continue to fight for democracy and its principles, to increase our support to defenders of democracy, including human rights defenders, support and protect free and independent media, fight for gender equality and women's political participation, and to stand up for everyone's human rights, both online and offline, in all available fora. We will also do this through our work in the EU and through the EU Team Europe Democracy Initiative. Together with the European Commission and its European Union partners, we will strengthen networks and joint programs of European democracy support, and increase the availability of expertise and data on democratic backsliding and effective democracy support activities in the coming years. Our upcoming EU presidency in the spring of 2023, directly following the follow-up summit for democracy in December 2022, will also be a useful platform. Mr. Secretary-General, friends and colleagues, I'm glad to join the Stockholm Lounge of International Ideas Flagship Report, the global state of democracy. It is great to see people here in person at the IDEA headquarters and to know how we have many more joining source virtually from different parts of the world. We are proud to be the host country of international IDEA, and I want to convey my sincere appreciation to you, Secretary-General, and to your excellent staff, with whom we have a close relationship. IDEA provides first-rate analysis on the global state of democracy, elections, political parties, gender, and much more, and we highly value your expertise. IDEA's important role as a convener and platform to discuss democracy is becoming increasingly clear. This is true not least in the light of the pandemic and the urgent need for data and analysis of the effect on democracy. We also value IDEA's important contribution ahead of the upcoming summit for democracy in December. Actors like International IDEA are crucial in our joint endeavor to protect and defend, but also to promote democracy as the one formal government that can ensure equality, inclusion, and sustainable development. I'd like to end my opening remarks by quoting the report directly. To counteract the current challenges and create the conditions for a more sustainable, inclusive, and accountable recovery, democracies must reassert their strengths and show the world how and why democratic government is the best option. This is the time for democratic actors and institutions to be bold and push the frontiers of democratic projects. Let's all be bold in this joint endeavor. Thank you very much. Thank you, Minister Linda, for your insightful and inspiring remarks on the importance of democracy today, and thank you especially for making some time in your busy schedule to be with us here in person and to attend this launch. And we thank you also for the support of the Government of Sweden to International IDEA, and it was an honor to have you with us here today. We will now hear from activists on the front lines of democracy in Nigeria and Cambodia. They have recorded some messages for us. Democracy? It's everything. Democracy to me means freedom, means justice, means right, means power. It means so much to me. I was 19 when I had the opportunity to vote for the first time, and I had lived half of those 19 years under military era. And I was angry at the helplessness of not being in a position to choose who will become my leader. And when democracy came to my country, I grabbed it. I was so, so empowered, and I knew that, yes, it made everything. And I went out and I voted for the first time in 1993. The votes were cancelled, that election was cancelled, and I was devastated. It took me a long time for me to recover. So democracy is something that I do not toy with, especially democracy in my country, where people had to die. People had to lose everything. Some people pay the ultimate price for me to have the democracy that I have today, to have the opportunity to have a say and choose who becomes the leader of my country. Democracy is something that we cannot joke with, and we must hold there and remember the people who died for us to have the democracy that we have today. Democracy today is under attack, and we all must be voices for democracy. We must stand for democracy, and fight for democracy, and ensure that the rights of everyone to vote is given, is ensured. We must ensure that we have a situation where there's rule of law, there's suppression of power, there's good governance, there's development. Right now, when we don't have those things, the problem is never democracy itself, it's the people that are the players, the people we put in place to be the leaders, and we that are supposed to hold them accountable. And so therefore, everyone of us must participate in democracy. We vote in the people who are going to rule over us, at the same time also, we hold them accountable, and that's how we will get indeed the true dividends of democracy. Thank you. I am a member of parliament elected by the people of Cambodia, but I am now living in exile. Democracy is about the people having the right, the freedom, the liberty, the security to choose their own representatives at all levels without the fear of being prosecuted, and for that elected representative to serve the people without being prosecuted. Democracy is about separation of powers. Democracy is about a vibrant civil society and an independent media that can bring the truth to the people. Democracy is so fundamental for social justice, for sustainable development, and for real peace. It's inspiring to hear from those who have suffered so much and dedicated their lives in so many ways to democracy. We now turn to the global state of democracy report itself. And Dr. Seema Shah, head of the democracy assessment unit here at International Idea and the lead author of the report, will give us a presentation on the key findings and policy recommendations from the report. Dr. Shah, the floor is yours. Good afternoon. Thank you for the chance to share the most recent findings from International Idea's Global State of Democracy report, which presents trends in democratization for 165 countries around the world, beginning in 1975 and going through the end of 2020. The findings I am about to present to you focus on global trends and patterns, but we encourage you to read our regional reports and our thematic papers for more in-depth coverage. At International Idea, we understand democracy as a broad concept and one that can have very many different manifestations depending on a particular society's history, culture, and set of priorities. Although there are, of course, core tenets to democracy, the way these are operationalized can vary widely. There is no such thing as a perfect democracy. Overall at International Idea, we measure democracy along five key attributes which we consider integral to democratic growth. These are representative government, fundamental rights, checks on government, impartial administration, and participatory engagement. As you can see, each of these attributes has several sub-attributes and then there are a number of individual indicators belonging to each sub-attribute. And now to the findings. First, the world is becoming increasingly authoritarian. We see this in a few different ways. First, the number of democracies has been declining, as you can see on this graph. During the pandemic, we have lost at least four more democracies through either flawed elections or military coups. These include Mali, Serbia, Cote d'Ivoire, and Myanmar in 2021. It is worth noting right now, as Kevin already mentioned, that right now, as I'm standing here, we're telling you that the number of democracies is declining. But when we stood here two years ago at the launch of our last report, we were in a position where reflection on the previous years actually showed that the numbers were climbing. Second, for the fifth consecutive year, the number of countries moving in an authoritarian direction exceeds the number of countries moving in a democratic direction. This graph shows the number of countries moving towards democracy in green and towards authoritarianism in red, beginning in 1975. As you can see, outside of 2020, the other notable peak in the move towards authoritarianism occurred in 2009, just after the global financial crisis. Since 2016, the number of countries moving in the direction of authoritarianism exceeds those moving towards democracy by a factor of three. Third, the pandemic has provided additional tools and justification for repressive tactics in authoritarian regimes. These regimes are buoyed by a lack of sufficient geopolitical pressure and support from like-minded regimes. Some of them thrive on the narrative that authoritarian governance is more effective for economic prosperity and pandemic management. In 2021, we saw the rerouting of an international flight to arrest an opposition journalist, and we have also seen authoritarian regimes expand their toolbox with the increasing use of transnational disinformation campaigns. Overall, then, most of the world is struggling. This graph shows you the trends in regime types over the years. We are currently in a situation where hybrid regimes, shown here in blue, and authoritarian regimes, shown here in orange, outnumber high-performing democracies. In fact, only 9% of the world currently lives in a high-performing democracy. Perhaps more worrying than the numbers, however, is the decline in the quality of governance in existing democracies. More democracies than ever are suffering from democratic erosion, which we define as a loss in democratic quality, along at least one of our indicators. As this graph shows, in 2020, 43% of democracies had suffered declines in the previous five years. Some democracies have declined slightly in one area in particular. Others have declined deeply and across many areas. For example, in Brazil, we have seen declines across eight sub-attributes. This graph shows the democracies that have declined the most over the past decade. All countries on this list started out as democracies a decade ago. Those that are green at the arrowhead side on the left of your screen remain democracies today. Those that are blue at the arrowhead are now hybrid, while those that are red are now authoritarian. Turkey, Serbia, and Benin moved from being democracies to hybrid regimes, while Nicaragua moved from democratic to authoritarian in this period. One of the most serious forms of decline is what we call democratic backsliding. Backsliding refers to the gradual dismantling of the building blocks of democracy from within a democratic system. The striped countries on this map represent countries that are backsliding. As you can see, since many current backsliders are large countries, we are now in a situation where more than two-thirds of the world live in countries that are either backsliding or authoritarian. Research has shown that the most important indicators of democratic backsliding include executive action against checks on government and civil liberties. We therefore identify a backsliding period when declines in the average of our measure of checks on government and civil liberties over a five-year period across a certain threshold. The episode then continues until we see an improvement in those indicators. The number of democratically backsliding countries has never been as high as in the past decade. Our latest round of data shows seven backsliding countries, the United States, Brazil, Hungary, Poland, India, the Philippines, and Slovenia. As you can see, three of these are in the EU. The pandemic has only deepened the trend of democratic deterioration, putting a halt to democratization processes that had seemed promising, and adding a new layer of challenges for existing democracies. Democracies that have experienced the most concerning developments are those that we're already weak to begin with. And this is crucial to note. The pandemic has hit countries the same way it's hit individuals. Those with pre-existing conditions suffered the most. Examples of fragile new democracies with worrying reversals include Mali, which has experienced two coups since 2020, Myanmar, where a military coup upended that new democratization process, Tunisia, and most recently Sudan, where an evolving situation leaves that process at risk. But the pandemic has also impacted even the strongest democracies. In fact, all countries in the world have imposed some kind of restriction on basic freedom and rights during the pandemic. Worryingly though, it's only in less than half of those countries where we have seen those restrictions to be temporary and imposed in a constitutionally defined state of emergency. And according to our global monitor of the impact of COVID-19 on democracy and human rights, as of the end of October, almost half, 45% of democracies, had experienced at least one concerning development, which we define as something that is either disproportionate, unnecessary, illegal, or indefinite. Still, there is reason to be hopeful. Many democracies have proved resilient to the pandemic, introducing or expanding democratic innovation and adapting their practices in record time. Countries around the world have learned to hold elections in exceedingly difficult conditions and have rapidly activated special voting arrangements, including things like early voting, postal voting, proxy voting, and mobile voting. What you see here is a pretty remarkable story of learning. As time went on, you can see that the number of postponed elections, shown here in blue, decreases quite dramatically. Authorities learned how to hold credible elections in challenging circumstances. An example to point out here is that of South Korea, where the 2020 election stood out as a milestone. There, authorities used early voting and expanded home voting provisions for COVID-19 patients in hospitals and those in self-isolation and instituted a first round of safety and hygiene measures in polling stations. Worth highlighting is also the use of augmented reality technology, the enhancement of real-world objects through electronic devices for virtual campaigning. So we saw candidates running eye-catching campaigns with 3D leaflets, all taking place in virtual spaces. These measures guaranteed the safety of voters and resulted in an overall turnout of 66%, the highest rate in a parliamentary election in South Korea since 1992. The way these special voting arrangements have been deployed have also taught us very important practical lessons about how to gain consensus between multiple stakeholders in a short amount of time, how to communicate with the public to retain public confidence, and how to work with new partners like health authorities in the context of elections. One of the most important points to keep in mind and take forward now is how to build on the significant success of these special voting arrangements, which have helped electoral management bodies reach parts of the population that have long been marginalized. Protest and civic action are also alive and well. Pro-democracy movements have braved repression in places like Belarus, Myanmar, Cuba, Eswatini, just to name a few, and global social movements for tackling climate change and fighting inequality have emerged. More than three quarters of all countries in the world have experienced protests during the pandemic despite government restrictions. And we know that protests matter, especially in the longterm, because they cast doubt on the legitimacy of a regime without which those regimes will fall. Protest direct attention toward an injustice. They focus attention on that injustice, force a conversation and change the people that participate sometimes into lifelong activists, which has a long-term impact on society as a whole. One expert calls protests a gateway drug between casual participation and lifelong activism. It is clear to us that we need a new plan, one that builds on and responds to the public energy we have witnessed spilling out all around the world. We therefore propose a three-point agenda for democratic renewal. First, deliver. Governments with civil society and other partners must deliver a new social contract that closes the gap between what people want and what governments currently deliver by designing responsive, inclusive, transparent, and accountable institutions all oriented towards sustainable development. These contracts must make specific commitments to constituents with regard to all forms of inequality, corruption, and environmental sustainability. In sum, they must demonstrate that democracy can deliver the things people need to live their lives with dignity and pursue the opportunities important to them. A compelling example of this can be found in Chile, where the people and the government are currently renegotiating the social contract in an institutional way. After decades of growing unhappiness and anger over things like narrowing economic opportunity and segregated health and education systems, Chile was rocked by mass protests in 2019. Now, the constituent assembly, which is responsible for drafting a new constitution, is showing us what the process of coming up with a new social contract can look like. The assembly is mandated to contain equal numbers of men and women, along with certain seats for indigenous groups. All decisions are to be approved by a two-thirds majority, and the vote for members of this assembly resulted in a major victory for non-mainstream blocks. More than half of the assembly is made up of the hard-left, leftist independence, and indigenous groups. The president is an indigenous woman. It remains to be seen, of course, what the new constitution will look like, but this is a very good example of how these kinds of processes can be done. Second, rebuild. We must bring existing institutions into the 21st century by updating practices in established democracies, building capacity in new democracies, and protecting elections, fundamental rights, and the checks and balances essential to thriving democratic systems. Political institutions, elections, respect for rights, checks on power, and pathways for participation must be redesigned so that they are citizen and people-oriented rather than elite-centered. This is the time to be bold and to disrupt the status quo, as well as those who have vested interests in retaining it so that more people and more kinds of people can have access to the lovers of power. An example of this is the increased use of citizens' assemblies, which we have seen around the world. Evidence suggests that this kind of deliberative democracy works for a number of reasons. It leads to more informed preferences, it results in public confidence in the decisions of those bodies, and it breaks deadlock. We have seen examples in Ireland where these assemblies have been used to decide on the constitutional status of abortion, on gender equality, and on addressing climate change, and they have been used in places like France, Germany, and the UK to tackle climate change. Third and finally, prevent. Prevent rising authoritarianism and democratic backsliding by investing in education at all levels of schooling by supporting independent civil society and media, and by addressing the behaviors that contribute to the spread of disinformation around the world. This has to be done through an increased focus on accountability. One example of this is the Economic Community of West African States, or ICOAS, which in May 2021 suspended Mali after the country's second coup. At that time, neighboring countries closed their borders and also suspended financial transactions with the government. Days after a coup in Guinea, ICOAS also suspended that country, demanded an immediate return to the constitutional order and the release of the detained president. Although ICOAS has been criticized for not doing enough by the people in these countries, this kind of regional advocacy is a good first step towards increasing accountability. We must work together to make democratic values into cultural values adapted to all the different contexts in which they exist around the world. Thank you very much. We will now take questions. Kevin and I are both available to answer. So we'll take questions from the audience we have here. We also have a virtual audience, so we will also take questions from online. So we have some microphones circulating if anyone has a question. Yes. Just out of curiosity, what was the search in democracy in 2009? Was it because that was before the Arab Spring? The 2009 was a drop in democracy because of the global financial crisis. We saw a drop. I see. Yes. Hi, my name is Lee Weisper from the Living History Forum. Just want to thank you for how very interesting it's been hearing all of this. Thank you. I'm also a little interested in hearing if you could mention something about your methods because it's quite extensive data that you have gotten in if you just could briefly tell us how you get all this in. Of course, of course. Yeah, just a secret from We Effect, also very nice and happy to be here. And if when looking at the conceptual framework, it seems like 20% is fundamental rights in your measurement. Is that the way to read it or? No. So I'll answer the first question, which is the GSOD report is based on two primary sets of data. One is our quantitative indices, which is annually updated numerical scores on 116 indicators of democracy. And that comes from 12 different data sets that we aggregate and estimate every year. The other primary source is the global monitor on the impact of COVID-19 on democracy and human rights. That is a qualitative tool which provides updates on how governments have responded to the pandemic along our attributes and sub-attributes updated every two weeks. And so we combined the qualitative data and our quantitative data to come up with this report supplemented of course by interviews by other forms of desk research, et cetera. In terms of the five attributes, the estimation is not equal for each attribute. It's a mathematical formula that we use, but I can't answer how much percentage is allocated to each attribute, but it's not as if it's 20% equally laid out. It reflects our sort of broad conception of democracy here at IDEA. Right, exactly. There's no score for an entire country. The scores are per measure. Thank you very much. My name is Ruiad Ben-Slimar, the ambassador of Tunisia and Stockholm. Just a very brief intervention after hearing your expose on the state of democracy, and I would like at the same time to thank IDEA for the launch of their very comprehensive volume of giving us really a very good example of where democracy is in the world. Just one clarification about my country, Tunisia, it has been mentioned in the report. What happened in Tunisia is not a backslide of democracy. What happened is that we are extremely busy since the 25th of July, we are adjusting the course of democracy. So the international community will see very soon democracy back on track in Tunisia. We are just preserving and consolidating our democratic institutions. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Any other questions? Helena. Thank you so much. I'm Helena Bjormann from the Democracy Unit at SIDA. Of course, I haven't read the report yet. It sounds to be very promising, and I look forward to reading it. I'm just wondering whether you at all cover the challenge of sort of the reach of democratic politics becoming sort of shorter and shorter. I'm thinking about such a global phenomenon as tax evasion, export free zones, et cetera, where democratic politics just can't really do much. So is that a challenge that you cover at all? We do touch on that in our policy recommendations actually, but it's not an area that we've investigated deeply in the global report. Although you can find mention of tax evasion, for instance, in some of the regional reports in the case studies. We have a question from YouTube. Anna from Mexico asks, with 2 billion people under backsliding regimes and leaders like Bolsonaro, Duterte, and Lopez Obrador, is it too late to save democracy? No, absolutely not. It's not too late at all. And I think one of the messages we are trying to push out through this report is that it's not only is it not too late, it's very clear that people are not willing to sit back and take forms of government that they're not happy with, and they're actually very enthusiastic and happy to go out and demand change. And I think in our recommendations, also what you will see is that we have made a point to say one of the sort of actions that we think needs to be prioritized is making democratic institutions people-centered again. So the institutions are working in a way that's in service of the people rather than in service of elites so that we can bring it back to the public. I don't think it's too late at all. No, I mean, look, I mean, I share SEMA's assessment. Having said all that, one has to acknowledge that this is not gonna happen automatically. I mean, reversing the trends that we are seeing in the global state of democracy will take deliberate action and sustained action because the trends have been there for quite a long time and I don't see any evidence that they will change immediately. So that's exactly why this kind of report is a call to action and specifically is a call to collective action, on the part of governments but also collective action on the part of civil society, journalists, academia. Democracy needs help because the trends are not good. Can it be saved? I'm sure it can but it will take a lot of effort. Anything else, Alex, from online? No, okay, okay, thank you very much. So thank you all for a very engaging discussion and to Dr. Shaw for the presentation. There will be time for more questions later in the program here in the room and also online but right now we're going to turn to a panel discussion on the global state of democracy considering the issues from several angles and I'd invite our panelists to now take their chairs here at the table and we'll have short presentations from Benedict Berender from Eric Halkier and from Birgit Olsen on a panel chaired by Dr. Miguel Angel Lara-Otala, Senior Democracy Assessment Specialist here at International Idea. Please discuss to what I found, Matt. Hello, everyone. Hello again. Good afternoon and welcome again to International Idea. As the presentation mentioned, these are challenging times for democracy but as you can see from the videos, from the report and from the people sitting here, the fight for democracy is very much alive and this is because democracy understood as a demand for equality and liberty, it's a basic human aspiration. Moreover, as the report points out, this is also a time for opportunity and what better way to illustrate this opportunity that by having here with us three key actors that embody the institutions and values that support democracy worldwide. So please, allow me to introduce to you our brilliant speakers. I will start from left to right. Benedict Berner to my left is a political scientist. She has lectured at Harvard University and they instituted Polytech in Paris on media and democracy from 2007 to 2020. She previously worked with the European Institute for the Media in Dusseldorf in issues related to freedom of expression leading media monitoring missions for the European Commission during the post-war elections in the Balkans and in traditional countries of the Soviet Union. In 1997, she helped the Dizide Foundation and the Renault Norwegian Foundation, Frit Ord, to establish the Gerd Bucharest Award for Professional Journalism in Eastern and Central Europe and was member of the jury until 2002. Ms. Berner is currently chair of Civil Rights Defenders, the major Swedish NGO for human rights. She is also associate to the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. The second person, Eric Halkear, is the president of Reporters Without Borders Sweden, editor-in-chief of the magazine Spherigus Natur and until recently the editor-in-chief of the Independent Magazine of the Swedish Development Cooperation Agency, SIDA. Mr. Halkear has extensive experience working as a journalist covering foreign policy, development aid, human rights, and sustainable development. Over the years, Mr. Halkear has worked for various written Swedish media, such as the newspapers Dagens Nyheter, Gotthe Borgsposten, Svenskand Dagbladet, and SIDSvenskan, the weekly papers Focus and Arbital. Last but not least, of course, Brigitte Olsson, Brigitte Scherfs as the National Democratic Institute's Director of Political Parties. Between 2010 and 2014, she was the Swedish minister for European Affairs and Democracy, serving as a strong international voice on gender equality, democracy, and LGBTQI rights. Ms. Olsson was also president of the Women's Wing of the Liberal Party between 2007 and 2010 and founded an independent feminist network, Felida, in 2003. Ms. Olsson also served as a member of the Swedish parliament between 2002 and 2018 and on the board of the Swedish International Development Agency, SIDA, from 2002 to 2010. Between 2001 and 2010, Ms. Olsson also served on the board of the Swedish International Liberal Center, a foundation that works to build democracy in totalitarian states by strengthening political parties and activists. Now, as the Secretary General mentioned in the introduction, this is a time for democratic actors to be bold and also a time to keep the hope alive. So on that note, I turn to you, the ear speakers, and to our first presentation by Benedict Berner. Benedict, you have the floor. Thank you. Thank you. Maybe I should have the presentation with myself. So thank you very much, Miguel, and good afternoon. And I've been asked to talk about the rise of populist extremism. So let me first define the framework of my talk. I'm not going to talk about populist movement that still respect the democratic game, nor I'm going to talk about authoritarian regimes like the one of Erdogan or Putin. But I want to focus, actually, on populist extreme parties or movements which may drift towards authoritarianism. So first, what are the roots of this rise of populist extremism? I want to say that populist extremism is not something new, but it is a phenomenon that has accelerated in the past 10, 15 years, as you can see here in the map of Europe. I mean, in Europe in 2000, populist parties accounted for only about 7% of the votes. Today, one out of four Europeans vote populist. And there are nearly about 30 nationalist populist extreme parties that now influence the political life in Europe. So what do we have in Europe? We have countries which had democracies to a certain extent, but now who are part of the EU, but where you clearly see democratic regression and this drift towards authoritarianism, which is driven by populist extremism. And in the Bertelsmann Transformation Index of 2020, Hungary is ranked number one in terms of authoritarian regression. But is now this just a European phenomenon? Clearly not. We see it across the Atlantic. We see it in the US. We see it in Brazil. We see it in Asia, India, Philippines. We see it in Africa. So what are the roots? And here I would like to mention two issues. First, the hyper-globalization. It took off in the 90s. It accelerated. And it has definitely generated increasing social and economic inequalities. You have middle class incomes, which stagnated. You had many of the working class in the Western countries were driven out of work, either by jobs going elsewhere, either by a rush for cheap imported goods coming from China. And this created actually a very strong sense of fear, of powerlessness, of insecurity, which has been instrumentalized by these populist movements. And to add to this, you had the immigration phenomenon. It did undercut the price of labor. And if you take the example of Europe, you had this big immigration wave of 2015. And also the attempt of the EU to impose quotas of refugees per country. And all these actors as a detonator. And it was exploited by these movements. So what is important to understand here is that you have these two issues, hyper-globalization and immigration. And they have allowed actually national populists around the world to explode the right, left divide and to capture the votes of all the angry, not necessarily the fascist. So you have these right and left parties who have not been able to answer these challenges. And the electorate has turned to these nationalist anti-system parties and strong leaders who claim to stand up for the West or make America great again. So once in power, the populists install what Orban in Hungary has called the illiberal democracy. And here I see three main democratic challenges. The first one, a social and cultural one. And here I can mention two aspects. First, the rhetoric based on a very strong ethnonationalist notion of citizenship. I mean, the other becomes the focus of hatred and fear. And we've seen with COVID, for instance, the Indian government has had discriminatory policies towards minorities, particularly Muslims, in terms of access to health care. And this is leading to regression of minority rights. Then we see in terms of social and cultural issues, conservatism. And here we can take three examples. We can see that there is a lot of homophobic rhetoric among these parties. In Hungary, for instance, Orban has banished all references to LGBTIQ in secondary school programs in ads and films. We see the same rhetoric in Poland with municipalities declaring free LGBTIQ zones. We see it also in their anti-feminism. We've seen these anti-abortion campaign led in several states in the United States. We see them also in Poland. And we see them in their disregard for science. The anti-vax movement is a good example of that. So what we have, we have two system of values confronting each other. So populists are playing on their own values. And this allows, for instance, Orban to give the term illiberal democracy an opposite connotation by claiming, and here I quote him, a democracy is not necessarily liberal. Why can we not criticize societal liberalism in the name of Christian and conservative values? Now the second democratic challenge is a political one. And here let me quote one of the leader of this populist extremist movement in France, Eric Zemmour. Now Eric Zemmour is likely to be a presidential candidate in France. And he has now in the polls approximately 15% of the voters behind him. And now I quote him. And he says, no power to the counterpowers. And this, of course, has been made easier by the state of emergencies declared through the pandemic. So if we look at the process leading to illiberal democracy, it is now pretty well-established. And it can be summarized as follows if I take a sports metaphor. So first, you attack the referee. That means that you attack the independent authority, namely the constitutional court, the Supreme Court, the independence of the judiciary. And we've seen that judges in the constitutional courts, hundreds of courts presidents in Hungary and Poland are now handpicked by the ruling parties. And once they have the national judiciary under control, they claim the supremacy of the national courts over the European courts. And this feeds very well into the Euroscepticism and the Sovereignist vision of their electorate. Then you change the rule of the games. You change the voting system. You change the Constitution. And we've seen that during the state of emergency, governments have used their general power to issue decrees, having the force of law without any limited duration. Then you attack the opposition. So you marginalize, you criminalize the opposition. And this is, of course, exactly the opposite of democracy, where you want to see plurality of opinion. You want to see an open debate. You want to see competition. But what is interesting is who has labeled the opposition. Now it's this establishment, the elite, because according to these properties, they are not governing in the common good, but they conspire against the people. So Trump is not surprising actually that Trump used the Iraq war as a demonstration that the establishment could not be trusted with American security. Then you attack intermediary bodies, such as civil society, association, trade unions. You threaten in that way the right of association and of peaceful assembly. And COVID here again has given them an hampering hand. Then you attract the mainstream media. You say they like to the people. And Trump and Bolsonaro have many examples of that. Then you reject established facts. You replace them with fake news and conspiracies. Because you need to inflame the extremes to win a majority. Then you reduce the space of freedom of expression. You have economic means. You have legal means. If you take a legal mean, a common measure is to change the nomination system in councils of public broadcasters. Economic control, let me take the example of what Babis did as a prime minister in the Czech Republic until he was, I mean, he was recently defeated. But in 2013, he bought the largest media group, and during the pandemic, the state propped up Mafra Group with state-owned companies, such as the Czech Railways, and de facto subsidizing actually Mafra through paid advertising. And they have used different platforms to spread their rhetoric. Stay TV because they control it, but also private television channels. And Yerigze Moore, for instance, has had seen news in France as a perfect platform for his rhetoric. We see Fox News also for Trump's rhetoric. Then they've had local digital newspapers, and I want to mention here the United States as an interesting example. They've had many local newspapers in the US which have closed down in the past 10 years. They have been replaced by digital local newspapers. These newspapers have no local news, but they make references to Trump all the time. Then you have social media. It's a perfect media for them. You connect directly with the people. It has this impulsivity, simplicity, sometimes incivility, and you name for your follower the exact emotion you want them to have. And let me hear, I'm not going to talk about Trump, but let me here mention two examples which are interesting, Salvini. When Salvini wanted to conquer power, he hired actually consultant Maurici. And Maurici had a very polarizing strategy, and he said, no moderation, you need here to be radical. Salvini went from 18,000 followers on Facebook to five million followers in just a couple of months. In Brasilia, Bolsonaro has put up what he calls the hate, what is being called by the opposition, the hate cabinet. It's his three sons and left and right wing influences who got together. They spread millions of fake news conspiracies. And they also infiltrated opposition WhatsApp groups. And then you have these digital websites, such as Bright Park, QAnon, 4chan, and here QAnon played a very important role in the Capitol Hill events in January because they accelerated actually the spreading of Trump's tweets, like you have to be strong to take back a country. We go to the Capitol and we fight. And what is important to note also is that the ideology of these sites does infiltrate civil society through schools, through universities. They use parents associations. They use radical evangelist associations. They use Facebook group. And they have a weapon. They have this weapon of data on voters. We know that there are companies who sell illegally voters' data to politicians. So we have now actually companies earning money, they do that through the Bitcoin market and they earn money by weakening democracy. And this brings me to my third democratic challenge, an economic one, and that's corruption. When you don't have any more separation of powers, you don't have any counterpowers, well, you have no more barriers for corruption. And it's not surprising that in transparency, corruption, perception index, you have all these hybrid and authoritarian regimes ranking very high in terms of corruption. So what you see here, you see powerful executive cooperating in a non-transparent manner with business circles, that it has itself created. So these circles rely heavily on government subsidies, regulations, and they will never go against the government because that would mean going against their own interests. And Hungary here is a perfect example. But of course the major question here remains, is a liberal democracy a degraded version of democracy, or is it not rather an attenuated version of authoritarian rule? And we've talked a lot about the de-democratization and the rise of these populist extreme movements in Central and Eastern Europe. But still I think it's important to establish what separates them from authoritarian regimes like Erdogan and Putin. While the public system broadcasting is under control in Poland and Hungary, you still have lots of independent media. You don't have political prisoners in Hungary in Poland. The Navalny case would be unthinkable. You still have competition. It's difficult, but you still have competition. The mayorship of Budapest, Prague, Warsaw, Bratislava, they are all held by pro-European liberals of the opposition. We also have to remember that the presidential elections of Poland was lost last year just by 1%, and Barbis, the populist leader of the Czech Republic, was defeated by a right-center coalition just very recently. In Europe also I think we have to notice that these extremist populist parties find their limits in the citizens' attachment to European integration because they are very much aware of the economic and security dividends that EU brings. And then I think it's also very important to underline the difference between countries with a long democratic history, such as Italy, the US, Finland, where actually the populists were defeated. Even in Brazil, Bolsonaro cannot prevent Lula from being a candidate. So we have to differentiate them from countries with very little democratic tradition, like Hungary and Poland, where the lines between this liberal democracy and authoritarian rule are becoming blurred. And still, what I want to say really, and I'm finishing, I'm coming to an end now, they are changing, these parties are changing, not only the national political debate, but they are changing also the international one. We've seen that with two issues, climate and the COVID-19, because they denial of scientific evidence and the spread of fake news certainly do endanger the world health and world economics. And I think it's a very worrying phenomenon that we see now. We see now demonstrating together in different countries in Europe, groups that never used to demonstrate together. We see, for instance, in Germany, extreme right groups like the AFD demonstrating with regular anti-vaccination groups. So this is a very toxic and worrying mixture. And the fact that the debate on a liberal democracy reflects today, I would say more generally, the vulnerability of the Western democratic model. And you have two Harvard professors, Levitsky and Zeblat, they've just published a book called How Democracies Die. And in this book, they stress that the rise of authoritarian populist leader from Trump to Bolsonaro to Modi is like an internal gangrene that threatens democracy today. And in this perspective, we can see that the liberal democracies of Audubon and Kanchinsky maybe are just central Eastern European variants of a much broader phenomenon of the decomposition of democracy. Thank you. Thank you very much, dear Benedict. Now we turn to Eric, who will talk us about the importance of freedom of speech and an independent media for the support of democracy. Thank you, Eric. Thank you. Now I'm going to steal this event to launch our new press freedom index. No, I'm kidding. This is the latest index from report about borders. Of course, it's as big a flagship report for us as the global state of democracy is for idea. And as you might remember in the presentation of the report, there are a few balls of everything that includes democracy and media integrity because just one part of this. So of course, press freedom and independent journalism is a very, very important part of democracy. And there are many, many similarities in the presentation that Benedict did and that you have done previous speakers here, also the minister. What we could see in the latest index that was launched in April was, of course, that the press freedom in the independent journalism is blocked or impeded in more than 130 countries. The press freedom index covers 880 countries. Jair Bolsonaro is just an example that we use here. There are several others. And we also would like to claim and we do claim that journalism, independent journalism is the best vaccine that we have against this information or misinformation. So as Benedict was talking about all these media platforms on internet that claim to be journalism, you should be very cautious when you look at their sources, their messages, what are their purposes and who is behind these platforms. This is the map, you have probably seen it, and it's not a perfect map, of course there are nuances we have to remember, but I'm half Danish, I will say before I say that you should cover Greenland with your hand and then you try to find the white colored countries, which are the countries where we have a good situation. There are few countries up North. Costa Rica, not to forget. New Zealand, it's not because... No, Marmalade. New Zealand and Portugal I would like to get back to later. But these are, this is the map and it's a darker map. I think, yes, I was trying to put them together, but it's very hard to see. So you have to try, I can go back and forth if you want to. But this is the map from 2015. Of course they have changed, these are my colleagues in Paris, they have changed the graphics, but if you look here, you see, remember the Americas, remember Africa and remember Europe. And then you look at this from six years ago, you see of course Europe is much more white, the Americas are much lighter, and also Africa. The one part of the world that press freedom actually is kind of stagnant, I would say, is Asia. We see over the course of the years, it's more or less the same, the countries change a little, but it's more or less the same. So this process has been, oh sorry, I'm quick, going on for eight years since we changed our methodology for doing this index, the index will turn 20 next year. So I can't say with security that everything has gotten worse since 2002, but I think we can agree that it's been getting worse. In this picture I have to state that there's a fall, I just realized this a few days ago, they have forgotten to, Mozambique and down is supposed to be red color, they have a small detail. This doesn't say that much, but you can see just briefly that how countries change in the index up and down over the year, and of course if you look at this in a data set over of several years, you can see the, if they go up and down, and there are though a few countries here that sticks out, as you say in Swedish, stick it out, and those countries are mentioned in your report. Coincidentally, it's Myanmar, Ethiopia, I did bring India, Brazil, Serbia for example, and you also mentioned Poland, Hungary, Slovenia. So there is similarity in our map with of course the map that you have in your global state of democracy report. Yeah, it's not much to say, I would just like to say that what you see here is if you go back to the map here, I would like to put a positive little parenthesis, the black colored countries, the very serious situation where I would say that there is no journalism. Most journalists are in jail, exiled, or killed, worst case, are getting fewer too. So we see fewer white colored countries, we see fewer black colored countries, but we see many, many, many more countries with a difficult situation and a problematic situation. Just briefly to say that when you look at this map, you tend to think of abuses, but we look at all these indicators, which of course include democratic values and principles, institutions, transparency, legislative framework, pluralism, everything that you need to deliver news and to consummate news or media. And an interesting thing here is for example, Sweden, which is in place number three, we have five companies, five owners of 90% of Swedish newspapers. It's a terrible statistics. And if you then put yourself in a place where someone would like to change the content of all these newspapers, it's fairly easy. This is what's happened, for example, in Hungary, where we have, I don't know, I think it's 500 media outlets that have more or less, their owners are more or less promised not to report bad on Viktor Orban. I do this lecture for schools, I usually say, imagine if you had a country where we have media in Sweden that promise not to write bad about Stefan Löfven or Magdalen Andersen or whoever he's gonna be on Monday. But that's the situation. So we have to be cautious also in our countries up north where the situation is good or in Costa Rica. But just to talk about what are the causes for this. Of course, there's a democratic problem. We see more and more states who are becoming authoritarian and pushing back, press freedom, journalism. We also see a democratic problem on the technological side on the global media tech giants or digital platforms. Because you have to remember that journalism or journalists, we are, the whole system is structured for a system that's not digital. But now we are moving into a territory where Facebook or Metta, Twitter, YouTube, Google, et cetera are the big global players and there are no democratic principles on these platforms. So we need to work with these actors, together with state actors, together with civil society, together with media actors to push for more democratic principles, more press freedom on the global digital media platforms. We also need to talk and to work with politicians, policymakers to respect media freedom and press freedom. Because what we see now is also a trust problem. Actually not in Sweden, we have a more bigger trust today in media than last year. But in most countries in the world, more and more people mistrust media and journalism. And this is not something that just comes from the kitchen table or the school. It comes from the top, from Jair Bolsonaro, from Donald Trump, from Abhi Ahmed, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, from Modi in India, et cetera, et cetera. These actors, they have a big, big responsibility for press freedom and that said, also democracy. We also see geopolitical problem where a challenge which has been going on for eternity, I would say, but we have the big players, China, Russia, even the United States, who trend to work against journalists and media abroad, not only in their countries. They try to influence and make it tougher and harder for journalists abroad in other countries. For example, in Sweden, we have to live with the ambassador of a country, China, who tried to influence Swedish media. And then we also have an economical challenge which goes more or less hand-in-hand with the technological challenge that we see all the advertisement diminishing. And also, which I think, I don't remember, what's very important is, of course, that state actors, democratic actors, democratic countries should invest in media. For example, Sweden put more money into media during the pandemic because Swedish government saw an importance in independent journalism during a pandemic. We need to have more journalism, more information to fight against this information, misinformation. All these challenges, of course, we have seen them over the years, but all these challenges have gotten worse because of the pandemic. I'm not gonna, we have talked about it and we'll probably talk more about it, but the pandemic, of course, has put more restrictions and been used as an excuse to stop journalism and push press freedom back. To end on a positive note, which I think we should remember and keep us, keep with us, the Nobel Peace Prize was given to before to the leader of Ethiopia because he opened up the jails and let journalists out. He unblocked internet pages. He made a dramatic, on this, two years ago, when we looked on this, you could see Ethiopia plus 40. I think no other country in the history of this index has made a big jump. Now it's stable, but I guess we will see a different view next year. But this year's Nobel Peace Prize winners, Maria Ressa and Dimitri Muratov, are representatives of this resistance that we need. We need people, civil society, activists, journalists, media, politicians that take this fight and to answer the question from Mexico. It's not too late. It's going to become better, I'm sure of it, but it's up to us. Thank you. Thank you, dear Eric, for your presentation and for sharing how press freedom and good independent journalism is a vaccine against disinformation, but also a vaccine against this environment, toxic and worrying environment that Benedict was mentioning earlier. And now with this hope, I turn to you, Dear Brigitte, who will present on Building Democratic Resilience, and in this case from the optic from the focus of political parties. Thank you, Brigitte. Thank you so much, Miguel, and good afternoon, everyone. It is a great pleasure for me to be here this afternoon at this international launch, at IDEA and the National Democratic Institute that I represent and IDEA, we go way back together. We have a very solid and strong relationship that we would like to continue to have. And as mentioned, my name is Brigitte Olson, and I spent almost two decades across the water here with the Prime Minister's office and the Swedish parliament as a member of parliament and minister for European affairs and democracy. And going to that, I'm going to highlight a few things related to political parties. So international ideas, excellent global state of democracy report. It confirms many of the tragedies that we've seen through the last years. As mentioned before, for the fifth consecutive year, the number of countries moving in an authoritarian direction exceeds the number of countries moving in a democratic direction. And we've heard this before. Freedom House reports and others are also focusing on that we have the 15 consecutive year of decline when it comes to democracy in the world. And what I really admire and like about this report is that you have a very kind of action oriented focus and I think that's what we actually need today, that democracy needs to deliver, democracy needs to rebuild and democracy needs to prevent the authoritarianism and democratic backsliding. Showing kind of the urgency, but also the opportunity. And as our chair at NDI, with Secretary Madeleine Albright, is always saying that democracy is fragile, but it's also very resilient. And we need to acknowledge that, that most people in the world want to live in democratic countries and they're fighting for it every single day. So, supporting democratic political parties is what we do at NDI every single day and I'm going to focus on how to build a democracy within the political parties. And what parties do and how they act is reflected in everything from Parliament's governments and our lives. And I was part of a coalition government myself when I was in the Swedish government and sometimes I think when we're discussing political parties, we kind of reflect upon them as a kind of private entity, but everyone knows that there's been a minister or member of parliament, there is interaction and the parties are so relevant for this. And that's why we need to discuss this more. And let us say, they're not always that good at representation, representing the citizens. In 2020, the global proportion of women in Parliament reached a record of 25.5%. Yet, at the current progress, it will take another 50 years before we reach gender parity in Parliament's worldwide. And for instance, only 10 countries have a female head of state today and just 13 countries have a woman's head of government. It will take actually 130 years for women to be equal to men in the highest positions of state and so on. And also the global situation regarding young people in politics is very poor. We have as mentioned here that with 50% of the world's population under 30, only 2.6% of the total number of MPs globally are younger than 30. And we have actually 25% of the world's parliaments that have no members of parliament at all under the age of 30. And quite a few of them have maybe populations that have 60% that are so young. So this is something that we need to discuss, I think. And from this background, we need to make parties more relevant to the voters. And it all ends up with that if political parties are not working in the best interest of the citizens, who will vote for them in the long run. And people are not voting. We've seen the voter turn out decline through the last decades in quite a few countries around the world. This is studies from International Idea. So three major party trends that we studied at MDI and which we work with are the following. First, and this is kind of obvious that the decline in political party membership is happening globally. And in Europe, this is a far more broader trend, I would say. For example, declining membership rates have also been observed in other historically important social basis of democracy, like not only political parties, but also labor unions and churches. We've seen the drop in membership rates in Europe from 15% to 5%, and with the largest drop actually since the 1960s, with the largest drop in the Nordic countries. On the other hand, in the Scandinavian and the Nordic countries, we have very active political youthing organizations that are kind of a good base for young people to get into politics. So that's a bit of a benefit on the other side. But what we've seen through the last years, we've seen classical parties, I'm not going to mention the country, but they become kind of kidnapped by charlatan reformers in century old democracies. We've seen established parties going from movements to elite clubs far from the voters. But we've also seen during the past decades an increase in movement-based parties and new political actors. And I think it's important to acknowledge that no matter if political parties are 100 years old and once led their country's introduction to democracy, no matter if the political parties' roots are from revolution based on ideology, ethnicity, or socioeconomic class, no matter if the rising social movements are gathering millions of activists for crucial issues like climate, if they aspire to represent the citizens, get elected in free and fair elections, no matter the structure of history, they all should respect and contribute to democracy. And also I will say the last thing here that it's also kind of a wake-up call for traditional political parties so that quite a few young people are engaged in the decentralized political social movements like Black Lives Matters, like Fridays for the Future. And why are they not joining parties? We had a debate in Sweden around the COP26 a few weeks ago about Greta Thunberg, the icon of the environmental movement in the world today. And some politically young leaders said you should join a political party. And I think she should join a political party. That would be fantastic, I think, for Swedish democracy. But they're not answering the question themselves. Why are they not attractive enough for young people to join? Why are young people resisting? I was interviewing Vanessa Nakata, who is kind of the very well-known climate activist from Uganda, a year ago. And I was asking her, because when I was her age, 24 years old, I was very active, I was the president of the Liber Youth here in Sweden. And it was so kind of abyss for me to not be part of a social movement but to take the full responsibility of joining a political party. And for her, that was not a choice at all. And I think that's important to see that political parties need change to get the attraction for the engaged young people. Also, the next slide, the trust in the public institutions, we know that it's declining. And that also, of course, is reflected to political parties, unpolitical parties. And being right now in the midst of this miss and disinformation circle, it's important that democratic parties do their homeworks to protect themselves. That's very important. But also being able to compete with the authoritarians in the arena of technology and information. And the newest and most kind of complex challenge for parties is to win this battle over technology and information, which has become a critical area of contestation between democracy and authoritarianism. And while the authoritarian regimes are trying to use the internet to subvert and defeat democracy, we also see, like Eric mentioned, emerging forms of independence, for example, online media that provide potential sources for Democrats, enabling them to investigate abuses, country liberal narratives, and also inform and organize the citizens. So why parties at all? Because political parties can be the engine for the democracy in the country, but also be fueling authoritarian leadership. But still, I mean, political parties in a multi-party system with free and fair elections, there's still the backbone of democracy. We need to understand and never forget that. And it's still the best way for citizens to partake in democracy, promoting inclusion, plurality, competition of ideas. But there is room for improvement and also great possibilities for value space political parties to defend democracy in our time. And to defend democracy and countering the length authoritarian influence in the world, we need to strengthen the unity among Democrats. We need to win with democratic allies. And right now, democratic allies, they might have different opinions on everything from health issues, economy, and so on, but we need to build strong relations between different political parties worldwide to defend democracy. And today, there are kind of few spaces for political parties and networks to collaborate in this kind of cross-ageological and transnational manner. So that's something that we work a lot on in the eye with the party international globally to connect them. If you want to solve future and current pandemics, if you want to defend democracy, if you want to work on issues like climate change, you need to join, you need to work together and maybe to make multilateralism also great again. And democracy must deliver like idea is highlighting the core functions of the welfare state needs to work in rural areas, suburban areas, and city areas. There is no room in a country like Sweden, for example, for healthcare, police, or education to fail. The politicians need to deliver. And also to win with accountability and integrity and if parties are not acting themselves with an ethical, transparent behavior, why would the voters trust them to run the country or the city with great responsibility and inclusion? If women are not seeing other women in a leadership position, why would they trust the political party that this party is serious around gender and democracy? Inclusion needs to be meaningful and sincere. And it all ends up with the culture of the party. I always say when I meet parties, culture beats strategy. If the culture is toxic, if the culture is rotten, it doesn't matter how many strategies for progress that you have. And it is quite simple. Women with integrity, lead with dignity, and lose with grace. If you have these three standards, you can be kind of a successful and decent politician in every single part of the world. And my last slide. We cannot only be working nine to five to save democracy. To long democratic recession is deepening and it's moving really, really fast. It's a 24-hour jobs that needs to be done by every decent Democrat in the world. And this is the only part in the country a singer is singing. Storms make trees take deeper roots. When we are in this midst of this perfect storm, it's a toxic cocktail of populism. We need to define our roots and who we are and what is important. So I think everyone joining up here together, let us make the year of 2022 our historic turning point for democracy. I sometimes say to younger staff at NDI that 2022 will be our Stalin grad, El Alamein or Midway. I'm not sure if they're following the historic references, but individual battles for democracy that could start a positive change. And we have close to 30 elections coming up worldwide next year. Some of the countries also nearby Sweden they're close to midnight, but let's create that instead to a popful dawn instead. And just mentioned to the report, democracy has also been strong through the pandemic. The populists have not been gaining in quite a few countries. We've seen that countries have been advancing special voting arrangements, trying to keep democracy working. And we know that in the coming weeks and the coming year defending democracy will be at the forefront of the global leadership. President Biden's upcoming democracy summit, the Swedish drive for democracy strategy and all the work that we do at NDI, ID and all organizations that you are representing here today. Democracy might be down, but not out. Thank you. Thank you very much dear Brigida for those inspiring words. And in addition to Dali Parton and also to connect to that question made from Mexico and YouTube, remember that it is always darker before the dawn. Now we will turn to the question and answers session from both in person participants and from people following the event on YouTube. But I would first like to start with a question to you, your panelists. As activists involved in the support and the fight for democracy, what is your opinion? What is your take on the global state of democracy report and more specifically on its policy recommendations? So if you would like to start, Benedict. Okay, well first I want to say that it's a very ambitious report and extremely impressive on the study of the health of democracy in 165 countries. Having said that and going to your recommendations, I think that I would like to focus on three recommendations that you have. You talk a lot about this renewal of social contractor and I think here we deal with the issue of trust and I think this is now essential. I mean we see that there is a lack of trust and even Brigida talked about that towards political parties, elected representatives and this is something that needs to be rebuilt and you have different recommendations on that and I won't go into them but I think that this is a major issue. Then the way also you talk about tackling inequalities and I talked about that when I spoke about the rise of populist because I think inequality is now is a major issue when it comes to democracy and we need to find ways to tackle it and then of course that we've all spoken about the role of civil society, of media and not the least what you mentioned in your report, the role of education and I mean I gave the example of what happens in Hungary when it comes to LGBTIQ issues and I think that if we from school, from the very start we give certain, we give the idea of certain values, democratic values, what it means, what it did and I think this is essential. So I know that you have all your recommendations are extremely interesting but for me I would say that I would really focus on those three ones but if I can just say one more thing, not recommendation but I'm so happy that you talked about the resilience of democracy because I think there is resilience in democracy and this is taking place and also the way you put a focus on what has happened in so many countries now, the pro-democratic movements in authoritarian and hybrid countries, we've seen it as you mentioned in your report in Belarus, in Cuba, in Myanmar, in Hong Kong and I think this is so important. I mean we're civil rights defenders, we work with these people and we support them and I think these are the, I mean we don't know when change is going to happen and it was all said change might take time and but these are the actors of change and it's important and I'm very happy that you give this focus on your report on what has happened in these countries because they need our support and they will bring change, it might take time but they will bring change. Yeah and maybe yeah 2022 might be our Stalingrad or a midway, good references. Eric, I'll leave it to you to answer this question about the conversation. Yes, I agree with Benedict of course but I would like to say that as I already mentioned that the report is very, it's parallel with our index of course, the findings but your report of course is much more ambitious and more ambitious as you say but one important thing is that I give lots of lectures and talk about our index and press freedom and I often get the question but how does this correspond with the democracy level or how the democracy development and the next time I can just bring this, I will bring this every time and I'll say you can read this also so I think it's a very good document, do a tool for this and I would like to focus on one of your, the takes that you have, the deliver, you talked about the social contract and I also mentioned this, how civil society and media in many countries where there is a fight for democracy or a challenge for democracy, they need to be able to work together and they need the support of strong democratic countries I think from outside so we need to be able from countries like Sweden or other countries to support these actors and help them to take this struggle and with this comes education as you mentioned, it's very important. I usually say to Swedish students that you all are publishers, I don't have my phone here but I also show their phones and I say this is your printing press. You all print papers every day but do you check your sources? Do you check where they comes from the material? Do you check your values? And these are things that you need to learn in school that comes from democracy. Thank you. Thank you, dear Eric Brigitte. What I really appreciate that is that you have this truly kind of global approach. Very often when we do these reports we tend to concentrate on the worst countries and I think this is a global fight that we need to take together and also maybe from the American point of view, I mean we could see when we had some media connected to the report in the beginning of this week was kind of the folks and I think that's also important to share that this is a global approach and I really appreciate that. And also I might also end up with a deliberate focus here but connect that to hope. Because I mean it's very important I think through this report to be really strong on the problems that we have and the challenges and they are huge, they are huge in almost every single country in the world but also to have like a more optimistic. It's not too late. It might be close to midnight in some countries but we have a dawn coming and that I think is extremely important because right now so many people we have a lot of fatigue in the world because of the pandemic, we have a lot of fatigue and a variety of reasons and I think what people need to feel especially the people that are fighting the most to defend democracy is that that they are part of a global movement and I think that's something that we could create together. We had a year ago the big kind of call for democracy that idea was one of the leaders of the defend democracy and I think to create such more initiatives and do more things together and it's finally on parties and some of the conversations that I had with political parties five years ago they were not interdoing things with other ideologies I have to say on a global level but right now I mean conservatives from Europe are reaching out to me, socialists from Asia are reaching out to me and we have a very kind of vivid dialogue on how to defend democracy. They will never be able to cooperate on economy or something because they have totally different views but they understand that we need to build this kind of strong alliance for democracy and that's a new thing that I think is so important to us and I think we need to have a few well and work on. Thank you, thank you very much. I agree, authoritarians share recipes and strategies, why shouldn't we, right? On that, I'll turn to you to ask any questions either on the report or on the panel discussion. So please my colleague there will, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I realized I didn't mention who I was when I lost my last question. So I'm a spokesperson of Royal Wallenberg Academy and I'm also partner of an EU project at looking at the future of democracy in EU. It's called LIFT. And I have a question for Begitta. So you mentioned what the parties should do to increase participation and engagement. And what I see is the need for inclusivity because the members are so few and I think Taiwan is an extremely good example of how the government has worked with inclusivity. And I like your recommendations a lot but I don't see a lot of evidence of them. Do you see that happening, that parties are actually engaging more on the internet or with new tools for deliberation to engage people? A very good question and I think that we, maybe it's not as much as they should but I guess we have a program in the eye that's called Win With Integrity that we've been running for the last two years. And so we've been working in countries like Colombia, Colombia, North Macedonia, and now we're working in Coutibou, for example. And I've been quite astonished being part of this session, that how many times this has led to party reforms. For example, parties in Colombia, I think it was a few of the parties at the tender and that's part that's our part of parliament and well represented. They did like 10 party reforms each inside the party to be more inclusive, to open up, to use new tools to kind of so. And being part of this session, they've been kind of reflective because we're also inviting and the civil society organizations to be part of the sessions criticizing. So we have a very vivid dialogue for example between a LGBTQI group and political parties or women's rights groups and so on. So I think also parties, they see the need, they need to change because otherwise they're not getting voters and especially not the young ones. So I think we need to do more but we can see examples of that. And Taiwan is very interesting and also next year we will also have the world movement for democracy. Democracy will have their big event actually in Taiwan. So that's also something to look forward to. Thank you. I'll take a question from that gentleman and then I'll take one from YouTube. Thank you. I have a question. John Banner used to be ambassador in various places. I have a question regarding the report. When you are talking about the various trends towards authoritarianism, are you discussing the reasons? That is to say I'm thinking particularly about the elephant in the room, China. The fact that the authoritarian model has worked. So well in economic terms at least in China of course has had a tremendous impression or effect on a number of countries added to which of course you also have the political pressure exercised by China on various countries and the help given to authoritarian regimes. Is that being discussed in the report or do you sort of limit yourself to the actual facts? No, we do discuss China specifically in the report in two primary ways. One is, well China and others but we commissioned research for this report to look at how democracies versus non-democracies respond to the pandemic and what success they had. And the main finding from that paper is that non-democracies do not do better than democracies at responding to the pandemic in terms of death rates, in terms of vaccination rates, et cetera. And then we also have a section in our report that looks at the way that China has used new technology to spread disinformation and also to sort of lead the way on new ways to deploy surveillance of its own citizens and others around the world. So in this report I think in the global report that's what we've done. In the Asia specific, Asia and Pacific paper there's more detail as well. And just to compliment that question the global state of democracy it's composed by several reports. So you have the global one, the regional ones and the others that Sima mentioned. And in the report on COVID-19 and democracy we specifically challenged that narrative of China being better than democratic regimes had addressing this using very strong data from death rates, from number of cases, vaccination and we highlight that that narrative that authoritarian states are better is just false. It's wrong. And we also discover that certain democratic attributes like impartial administration, like fundamental rights which are components of our framework are especially good for addressing and mitigating a pandemic. Yes, Secretary General. The microphone is arriving. Thank you so much. To the question of, well, both the drivers behind the phenomenon, but also the question about China. The short answer about the first one is that we need to do more in terms of explaining what the drivers are. I think the report is very, I would like to think it's very solid in terms of presenting the facts and increasingly, and we've invested a lot of time and effort in improving the policy recommendations that stem from the facts. But we have to do much more in terms of explaining what's behind all this. I mean, I have my own theory about what's happening but I won't bore you with the details but this is just to say that there are some inklings about what's happening in the report but that, in a sense, is the next frontier that we want to get to in the report. In terms of the question about China, one of the things I have the impression that we have to do a much better job on in terms of educating people is that one has to be careful when using China as a proxy for authoritarian systems writ large because China is a very specific case and one aspect in which, well, one aspect that I always use to highlight the weaknesses of authoritarian systems is that it's to some extent a matter of luck. I mean, in a democracy, you know for a fact that you will be able to throw the rascals out in four or five years if you don't agree with that. In an authoritarian system, you're playing the roulette. You might be very lucky and end up with Lee Kuan Yew running the show but you may also end up with Idi Amin without any opportunity to leave the room. So this is just to highlight that one of the crucial advantages of democracy is its capacity to correct the direction of public policies and hence, whatever happens in China, democracy would always have a structural advantage because of its capacity to self-correct and I don't think we do enough to highlight that. Thank you. I'll take one question from YouTube and it says, hi, I am Chani from Indonesia. With young people now having grown up as digital natives, is it possible that political parties are no longer the most effective vehicle to connect the will of the people to the governments of the world? Since younger people are now so used to voicing their aspirations directly and mobilizing outside of the political party realm. I give it to you, one two answer. Actually part of a podcast just a few weeks ago with young people from the Philippines that were active in social media and all summer active in political parties but it ended up in this discussion that it's good to join up with other people because if you're a group of people you can change the politics. If you're alone you can become a very strong, I mean voice on social media or TikTok or whatsoever but you need to join up together. So I think it's important to tell that still political parties in a multi-party system with democracy and free and fair elections, I think that's one of the strongest things that you could do as a young person to change the world after your opinion. But I also think it's important to see that it's not like a competition between the civil society organizations or political parties or independent voices or independent media or so on. I mean, we are part of the same movement and that's something that we need to fuel and just to make the connections between us a bit stronger than maybe today. And to just add to Ambassador Berners' question earlier what is also interesting with China right now is that we also have this system of the kind of the alliances of the bad guys. China is very active right now when it comes to connecting around the world different parties and others. They've been that before but now it's much more kind of formalized and that's something to see and that's why we need to join the good guys, the decent Democrats to create similar connections and systems. Thank you. Question from the room. Well, I thought I saw a hand. Okay, there's another one on YouTube and the question is what would you say are the main policy recommendations, the top three of the report? Have you had to choose? I mean, I would just reiterate the three building blocks to deliver, rebuild and prevent. I'm hesitant to rank any of them because I think they're all interconnected and you can't do one well without doing all of them. You can't isolate corruption from inequality for instance. You have to work, we have to join together and use our comparative strengths and work together on everything at once, unfortunately. At once, yeah. Yes. Thank you. Oh, the microphone is there next to you. Not just a specific question for Birgitta. I mean, you sort of have been tiptoeing around this but using the example that you gave in your remarks, why is it? I mean, why do you think that someone like Greta Thumbre is not willing to join a political party? What would be your answer to that? I have no idea but maybe, I mean, I think she's such a strong voice, I mean, in herself and the movement that she created and yeah, maybe she thinks that that's enough for her procession right now to use this but just going away a bit from Greta Thumbre. I mean, it is a phenomenon that we see among many of the young people that are part of the social movements and I'm not also talking about young people that are not living in dictatorship countries because if you are a climate activist or feminist activist and you live in a country with authoritarian leadership, you might not be that into joining a party because it would kind of, it wouldn't benefit your cause but also the system is that also young people that live in good democracies seldom see the connection I would say to take the step to join a party and yeah, probably because of the parties are not maybe delivering and are not passionate enough and so on and when I was a young person myself I was very active when it comes to animal welfare issues before I joined a political party but I could see that if I wanted to change for these things I needed to join a party and to kind of continue that path because it's still in the parliament you take the decisions and I had just one thing when I was young, I hated to, when I went to the circus to see elephants on circus, I thought that was really sad for the elephants so I had that opinion when I was like five years old I became a member of parliament every year I passed my petition and when I left parliament in 2018 that became a Swedish law so you need to have this resilience it's like running marathon and so it took me 30 years but whatever. I think you have a very strong position here but also I joined the political party because I believed in democracy, solidarity and that's why I joined the liberal party because they wanted to have the 1% goal and development aid and strong solidarity kind of promoters so I think it's different but maybe not so much now than before so. Look I mean but I also have the impression also have the impression that if you if you are in a political party and you do your things through representative institutions you have to make compromises, inevitably where a single issue movements allow you to preserve your purity that's the big difference. I have another question from YouTube and I will ask this to Eric and Benedict what can actually be done by civil society groups to help countries experiencing democratic backsliding to change course and rebuild democracy? Yeah well I mean first of all I think that we need to support as I said mentioned earlier the human rights defenders who are active in these countries and who work for democracy so I think that is one thing I mean to give them an active support and there are many ways of doing that. Then I think also we need to bring up these issues in Brussels we need to bring them up at both the national and international level so we can lobby for these groups I think that is extremely important and we can also try in different ways with these groups to work on changing certain laws in these respective countries and this does happen I mean we've civilized defenders we have lobbied with certain groups in Serbia and the Balkans we've managed to change anti-democratic laws so I think this is the work really which can be done. Thank you Eric. Yes I would like to agree there and also what Birgitta says here which is 30 years of struggle I think we tend to forget when we have these reports that for example in Belarus or in Nicaragua there are groups who have been fighting for years and they will continue to fight and we can't forget them and we need to support them and I heard just recently from Ethiopia there's a conflict going there are lots of democratic challenges but it's still and the press freedom is on going backwards but they manage through civil society to have a conference on investigative journalism in the midst of this crisis with Swedish support and this is what's needed there are movements, there are civil society actors there are media actors but they need our support and also our active voice to mention them to not forget them I think it's very important to see the long game here and just to comment on Geta Thunberg and the Jung generation it's the same with media I would say why should I work in a newspaper when I have a newspaper in my pocket and the newspaper is still they only write about EU or they don't write about it but they only write about the parliament I don't see my issues my interests in this newspaper so I create my own newspaper we have to also acknowledge this and use this I think to see ways to use this for the fight for democracy and I think also there is another element in where we can support these pro-democracies human rights defenders I mean it's creating networks and we discussed that earlier and I think that the experience of one country can definitely be valid in another country because some of the signs are the same so I think that creating networks between these countries that facing the same problems is extremely important and for instance at civil rights defenders we do bring together every year about 300 human rights defenders coming from all different countries and they do share their experiences and they build networks and I think that is essential for them Thank you, thank you very much so as you can see from what our speaker said democracy is very much alive and institutions like ours are willing and committed to this fight so with this I ask you to join me in giving them a very big round of applause to see my own speaker today and with that positive note I invite you for some refreshments at the back part of the room thank you