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[00:00:00] The Y curve with Phil Dobby and Roger hearing.
[00:00:04] More than half the world is voting this year.
[00:00:06] More than 50 nations will decide who rules them through the ballot box.
[00:00:10] But democracy is under threat.
[00:00:12] Disillusion with politicians and their failure to tackle the big problems is spreading.
[00:00:17] Can the government work if it's led by people who only seek to win the next election?
[00:00:21] Autocracies like China claim their system works better.
[00:00:25] And even the beacons of democracy like it? Why are politicians there? Like, we see soon that you get the impression really he's there because it looks good on his CV. I mean, has he really got the interest of the country at heart? Well, we don't know. We can't see inside his soul, I suppose. And I think, but we get the politicians that you get as a result of the system you've got for men to be able to all William the politicians in the past, the churchills,
[00:01:42] the rest were a bunch bigger stature and more long sight Cook movie? I'm trying to remember the one where he becomes a dictator. He basically allows people to vote. He must have seen this movie. He allows everybody to vote. It's a classic movie. I would just wish I should have done some research from actually what it's always named plus to have a strong leader than a healthy democracy. You can see why in the sense if you say, well, a strong leader could do things and these people can't. But what if you get someone you don't like? You can't change it. Yeah, exactly.
[00:04:21] And we've got one at those. We can't get rid this, you know, we're a democracy once every five years. Yeah. So used to work, but now if people are simply thinking about the opinion polls, it kind of doesn't. Let's dig into this anyway and the problems with democracy and where it's going, with Natasha Lindstedt, who's a professor of politics at the University of Essex and
[00:05:40] she joins us now.
[00:05:41] So Natasha, I mean, if the Chinese obviously think they've got a better system and that
[00:05:45] democracy is riddled with all sorts of flaws, one of which of course, huge costs in the case of China. You have more executions there than anywhere in the world. And if we were actually just to look at on average how dictatorships perform, they perform much worse economically than democracies do. They perform worse on almost every different type of indicator that we might measure whether
[00:07:02] you say that. But if you look at China, whole world alone, this is an extraordinary year because we've got more than half the world's population voting 50
[00:08:21] countries, 4 billion people, I think, actually going to the polls theoretically. But democracy
[00:09:24] of the world's population is living in authoritarian regimes and there's more authoritarian regimes in the world than democracies.
[00:09:26] So we haven't had this in decades.
[00:09:30] We see that many countries that were even staunchly democratic are backsliding into more authoritarian
[00:09:39] styles of government and people are embracing it.
[00:09:41] It's not just that the leaders would be, they are supposed to be accountable. Is there
[00:11:01] something, some problem in the mechanism of is? You know, the clue is in the word. If people are popular, they will be elected and supported.
[00:12:21] If they're not popular, they won't.
[00:12:23] That is kind of what democracy is.
[00:12:24] I think some early definitions of populism have talked I mean, are we finding that in some parts of the world, in many parts of the world, perhaps we've got people who become dictators because they think that suggest that the system of checks and balances the constitution, everything else in the US, is that the problem? The actual formal mechanisms of the democracy just aren't
[00:15:00] working. So they're working a little bit. It's not, it's kind of complicated because
[00:15:04] on some levels, I see what's going on in, well, I've got to cheat the system to make the system work, isn't it? And we saw a bit of that with Boris Johnson as well, who really was, you know, Donald Trump in short pants. I mean, exactly the same situation. It was the cult of personality. And that's, you know, that has to be a big risk
[00:16:21] for democracy, mustn't it?
[00:16:22] In this internet age where we are easily hoodwinked
[00:16:26] by personality over substance. that people get. And I think dictatorships in particular and would be autocrats have really understood the power of propaganda and how you can shape people's minds and hearts so easily. You don't even have to tell the truth. You don't even have to sound like you're telling the truth. I mean, countries like Russia, like China, are excellent at doing this, but we see
[00:17:40] would be autocrats like in the case of the US under Trump.
[00:17:43] He's been also an expert at utilizing propaganda ended. And we've seen social media has actually been turned on its head and been used more by dictatorships or by forces, anti-democratic forces, to spread information, to flood the population with information that basically confuses them, or to just spread false information, and use that to legitimize their rule, and people are willing to believe whatever they want to.
[00:19:05] So it's very difficult to have a the exception of North Korea, of course. In the past where people were being completely controlled by both Paprican and secret police, but they've been able to harness technology. In other ways, we have facial recognition systems. The Chinese government in particular is really good at knowing exactly what its citizens
[00:20:21] are doing and it is an expert at propaganda. encouraging an insurrection. And so there have been much, let's say, less harsh reasons why people have been pushed off a ballot than trying to orchestrate a coup. I mean, trying to undermine the very institutions that democracy hinges on, which are elections. So he's a
[00:21:41] dangerous individual, a really, really dangerous person. as the tropical trompe rightly, give the example of Duterte in the Philippines. And what are the, you know, even in autocratic countries, where you're taking on huge risks, if you look in the case of Iran, in some of those protests that started in September 2022, that people are willing to take on huge risks to fight for important freedoms and just basic human rights that democracies are supposed to offer.
[00:24:22] So I would imagine there'll be a point where there will be a backlash
[00:24:26] against this autocratic trend. basis in Europe and possibly in Latin America. I'm not saying it's happened yet, but I think that there's only a matter of time where people have had enough of this. Do we give too much power to politicians in democratic regimes? Do we give too much control to Donald Trump, for example? So if you think about if you were running a company, if you were the CEO, you'd have to answer to a board. Now that board doesn't, you could say, well,
[00:25:43] okay, the board is the people of the country, they surprises me how seemingly intelligent people are big strong Trump supporters.
[00:27:02] Well, I think he taps into something that they may not want to always articulate, but the two years in the case of Congress or five years or whatever it is need to keep an eye on the opinion polls the whole time in order to direct whatever it is they're doing. So therefore that's what governs what they do rather than any desire. Yes, that's a short term. It's too much democracy. They're just responding. Yeah. And that's how it's going to be a question I was going to raise. It's just about getting back to the whole idea of a CEO running a business. You've got a long term view as government
[00:28:23] is obviously short term. And I'm looking at, for example, in policy making, where you really do have experts. But that's the danger of these populist, autocratic forms of governance and what Trump did. I mean, he just wasn't filling positions with experts. He was either filling them with his cronies of people that didn't have even a degree in the appropriate agency that was needed or didn't even know the agency that they were
[00:29:44] running or that were just directly loyal to him or he just wouldn't build the position
[00:29:48] itself. for example, in Venezuela, using referenda, using too much democracy to, you know, do people and get people to vote for things and policies that actually benefit them. So we have these issues in the US as well. I mean, but you have to understand the US is such a complicated country because it's federal, because you have states, you have states with their own
[00:31:03] governments, with their own things that's the example. Democracy has failed.
[00:32:20] It's very easy now for anyone anywhere in the world to say, well, democracy isn't a
[00:32:23] great system and point to America. struggling to make a trade surplus. Probably got a fairly hefty trade deficit having to borrow in American dollars, for example. These countries, particularly over the last few years, are really struggling. Democracy isn't going to fix that for them, and maybe that's why people look for autocratic leaders.
[00:33:40] But you've got America that is pretty successful, as some of which that he's already lost. So I think we're just at the cost of a very important moment. I do think 2024 in the US, that election is incredibly important.
[00:35:02] Is there danger, final question,
[00:35:03] about autocracy is teaming up against democracies?
[00:35:06] I mean, is that the way the large communist powers with a communist idea, and this is the future, this is what we're doing. But now it's not that. It's hard to say quite what it is, other than the idea that autocracy works. Other than that, and also just the personalist, whatever the idea is of that particular leader,
[00:36:23] we see cult of personalities, personalist forms of dictatorship rising,, in your retirement, perhaps becoming a dictator. But I think so. I just pick it down. I mean, look around the world. There's more to be somewhere. I'm sure I can be like you. I've only got the whole BBC World Service. You're a known entity. I'm kind of a voice already. So I just, you know, grab the podium. Just a sodium step. Yes. Weigh my fist up and down. People will march in step with me. I don't think so. I just wouldn't have the confidence.
[00:37:40] This is one of the things.
[00:37:41] You know, you have to be very confident to be a dictator, I suspect.
[00:37:43] Yeah.
[00:37:44] You have to think you are right about everything.
[00:37:46] Despite all the contrary evidence, that's right.
[00:37:48] Indeed.