Dismantling Democracy

KENNETH STROUPE

The American system of democracy is still very much an experiment.

JAMELLE BOUIE

Democracy has been somewhat discredited.

TED CRUZ

That system, it is the most successful democratic system the world has, I think, ever seen.

IAN BREMMER

I experienced the American dream. deThere's no other countryd has, Iin the world seen. that I could create from nothing where I am today.

JALANE SCHMIDT

This isn't the land of the free. That hasn't been the experience of many people.

explosions

TIM KAINE

There is an existential threat in the world right now.

CHRIS SABATINI

We're facing one of the great ideological battles of our time.

MICHAEL ABRAMOWITZ

Global democracy really depends on a strong American democracy.

STEVEN LEVITSKY

The way that democracies die today is not the way it died 50 or 60 years ago. We usually think of a violent takeover or seizure of power. Today, the dominant way in which democracies die is much more subtle.

DEREK MITCHELL

Really, populists rise to power through election.

crowd cheering

DEREK MITCHELL

It's not easy; democracy is hard.

ABRAMOWITZ

We have to fight for it every day.

ANN DOWD

We have to pay attention. We have to take a stand. We cannot assume someone will do it for us.

LARRY SABATO

If this system continues without reform, I think there is a very real possibility of violence and potentially a split in the United States.

CROWD

Don't shoot! White lives matter! White lives matter!

NARRATOR

The United States of America is governed by one of the world's oldest functioning democracies. But it's certainly not the only nation on the planet where citizens are able to actively decide who controls power and how policy is crafted. Around the world, democracy has many faces, and it's not a one-size-fits-all system, but it's all interconnected. In other words, if one nation's democracy fails, the ripple effect may have lasting consequences for everyone. If the people in the world can't prioritize personal liberty, what's the alternative for future generations?

NICOLE BIBBINS SEDACA

Democracy can work in any country. What's required for democracy is that people long for the rights that they deserve.

LEVITSKY

Democracy can emerge anywhere. That doesn't mean that it's got an equal shot everywhere.

STROUPE

There have been attempts to export American democracy. But in the end, democracy is rule by the people. The American system ultimately was crafted and designed for this country. In terms of human freedom could apply elsewhere in the world, I don't think you can simply lift this system and expect it to work everywhere in the world.

NARRATOR

Democracies, like any other state system of government, are not invincible. Throughout history, they have appeared and disappeared all around the globe. The Roman Republic is one example. More recently, Uganda, Venezuela and Ghana's attempts at democracy were foiled under authoritarian regimes.

ABRAMOWITZ

Democracies can collapse slowly and they can collapse quickly.

LEVITSKY

The way that democracies die today is not the way it died 50 or 60 years ago. It's not the way that we generally think of democracies dying.

BOUIE

A coup where the military has seized power is the most apparent way in which democracy can die.

BREMMER

The death of a democracy does not come about only through a coup d'tat, only through the military marching through the streets and tanks rolling up to a presidential palace.

LEVITSKY

Today, the dominant way in which democracies die is much more subtle.

ABRAMOWITZ

It can also be eroded slowly.

LEVITSKY

It is elected presidents and elected prime ministers who use the very institutions of democracy to subvert it, to wound it, to kill it.

SABATINI

There can be elected governments who systematically choke off means of dissent and opposition, systematically repress freedom, and erode over time the checks and balances that are essential for democracy, and we're seeing it more and more globally.

LEVITSKY

If it's elected presidents and elected prime ministers who subvert democracy, we have to pay a lot of attention to who we elect.

SABATINI

We see a, really a growing wave of anti-democratic governments and movements that are being elected or competing in elections but have no commitment to the democratic process over the long term. We're facing one of the great ideological battles of our time. There's been a notable rise in populism. And a lot of this you can track, again, this close connection between populism and anti-democratic behavior, with the decline of democracies worldwide or democratic practice worldwide according to the US think tank Freedom House.

ABRAMOWITZ

Freedom House, I think, is best known for our annual survey of political rights and civil liberties called Freedom in the World. Each country has a score of zero to 100 of where they rank in freedom. We catalog and rate countries for how they do against 24 core political rights and civil liberties. And this reins from having free elections, the freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, rule of law. All these principles we assess and from that derive an overall level of freedom for each country in the world.

SABATINI

You don't need democracy to be free. But you need democracies to sustain freedom and you need freedom to sustain democracy. Without freedom, democracy cannot survive. It is really the essence of what makes an accountable government, which is really the basic definition of a democracy.

ABRAMOWITZ

Democracy really had a long run of dramatic improvements that really dated from maybe the early '70s to the mid aughts. This included the fall of Latin American dictatorship.

RONALD REAGAN

Just in the last five years, Brazil, Argentina, Guatemala, Honduras, Bolivia, Uruguay, El Salvador, and, yes, Grenada, have returned to democracy.

ABRAMOWITZ

It included the Berlin fall and the collapse of communism. At the end of World War I, there were less than a dozen democracies in the world. Now we have, you know, more than 120 democracies. Then, starting about 13 years ago, it started going into reverse. We see democracy under a lot of threat today. For 13 consecutive years, there have been more countries that have been experiencing declines in our ratings than improvements. Well, we started calling it democracy recession, but you can really call it kind of a crisis. I'm an optimist, but I'm worried.

NARRATOR

Over the past several years, the Asia Pacific region has been the only area of the world that has experienced a steady rise in political rights and civil liberties. It may be a little confusing, as this region includes China, which is neither free nor democratic. In fact, it's home to half of the world's not-free population. The Asia Pacific region also includes North Korea, which many point to as the antithesis of democracy.

DEREK MITCHELL

Well, different countries interpret democracy differently. I mean, it's the Democratic People's Republic of Korea that North Korea calls itself.

ABRAMOWITZ

They always rank the lowest in our scores. Kind of a modern totalitarian police state where there's basically, you know, no freedom of thought, everything is tightly controlled by the leader of the country.

MITCHELL

So democracy can be appropriated by any number of different regimes. But there are some fundamentals of democracy that are essential, which is a regular pattern of elections, people exercising oversight of their government to have transparency about what their government is doing and the ability to hold them to account. You need rule of law, you need strong congress or parliaments, political parties are important that are able to organize people and channel their interests, and then you have to have people govern justly. All of these are essential components of democracy. So those who appropriate the term "democracy," if they don't have these elements, then you don't have true democracy, you have fraud, and you have what I think is autocracy masking itself as populism and democracy.

BIBBINS SEDACA

We have a number of examples where we see the same group of people divided into democracy and non-democracy. If you look at Korea, South Korea and North Korea, people who share a history, a culture, a language, but they've been divided by two different governing systems. South Korea is a thriving, wonderful democracy where they have an active civil society and government that really is held accountable to its people. And I don't have to explain that North Korea has one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world. Same people, same history, same culture, but a massive difference in the opportunity that the people have and the rights that people have and the flourishing that each of the two communities have based singularly on their difference in governing systems. Sometimes it's hard for us to understand even what it means to have those freedoms curtailed. When there's something that we don't like, when a government leader in our country doesn't do something we like, we can openly criticize. In countries like China, if you were to write something opposing the government, that could cost you your life, it could cost you imprisonment, it could significantly impact all of your freedoms.

chanting

BIBBINS SEDACA

NARRATOR

Even though many are aware of what happened in Tiananmen, many are not willing to openly discuss it.

BIBBINS SEDACA

And we see in China, pastors, business leaders, political leaders, oppositionists all thrown in jail for what they believe. What we're also seeing now is over one million people, because of their ethnic heritage and their religious tradition, one million Uyghur Muslims, Chinese citizens, who have been put in internment camps singularly because of their ethnicity and their religion, and they are being retrained to think differently. That is the radical difference of living under a democracy and living under an authoritarian leadership. Who you are, what you believe, what you choose to say, who you worship, how you choose to lead your life could cause you to be in jail for a day, a year, or for your entire life.

BREMMER

China obviously is one of the most dramatic economic success stories of the last 30 or 40 years. We're the largest economy right now; within 10 years, it's going to be China. We thought over the last 20 years that as China got wealthier, they'd be more like us, they'd be economically more like a free market and politically more democratic. Not true.

ABRAMOWITZ

China is patterning a model in which they are coupling economic growth and capitalism with greater repression and authoritarianism.

BREMMER

Xi Jinping has gotten rid of term limits and he's now president for life.

MAN

Question really of course is, he's got all the power now, so what's he going to do with it? My own sense is in this case, probably the past will be prologue and the last five years that we've seen, which has been toward a more repressive, state-oriented system will be the direction of travel.

ABRAMOWITZ

The most populous country in the world, it is presenting a system where you can have economic growth without political rights and civil liberties. And that model, candidly, is quite attractive to other would-be autocrats in the world.

BREMMER

Increasingly, you have a lot of countries that may prefer the United States as a model, but the Chinese are writing the checks, so they're aligning more with Beijing. They're going to build their own alternative, and they're going to be too big to have us impose our will upon them.

JEFF FLAKE

After the Berlin Wall came down, we were the only real viable model out there. The Soviet Union was shedding republics by the day, and that Soviet socialist model was really discredited. Now, you look around the world, but they have what they feel are viable models in Russia and China. And we ought to all be concerned when more and more countries feel that that is a viable model to follow.

BIBBINS SEDACA

In 1997, we saw the handover of Hong Kong to mainland China, and there was the establishment of what was called one country, two systems. Hong Kong enjoyed in many ways the same democratic openness and society that exists in many other countries around the world. In 2019, we also saw a bill that was tabled that would allow the extradition of individuals in Hong Kong to mainland China, and people quickly realized that opposition figures, people who chose to speak out against mainland China, could be extradited to a judicial system in mainland China that would not be free and fair and open and respectful according to international standards. And people went to the streets. They knew that lives were on the line, and they knew that their democratic freedoms could be systematically rolled back. They have asked for the same freedoms that we enjoy in the United States and many countries enjoy around the world.

siren

MAN

We learn what's happening in Hong Kong just from government media. And, you know, so, we think what's happening in Hong Kong is unacceptable because they are trying to get away from China government. When it comes to, like, sovereignty, when it comes to land issues, no, we'll always think, like, Hong Kong is part of China, and if they try to break away from China, then it's bad. Just like Taiwan. We did not want Taiwan to break away from China. Or exactly, Americans don't want Alaska to break away from it. We have democracy and we have freedom in Mongolia and we're actually called as democracy island. Mongolia is located in quite troubled region. Countries such as Russia, China, North Korea. Well, I am originally from India, which is the largest democracy in the world right now.

WOMAN

I think the one thing that I thought that was really fantastic in India this past election, the number of voters that came out and vote for the election was like amazing.

HUEBECK

When I went to Sri Lanka, they were at civil war for 30-plus years. And when I went there in 2009, that war was just ending. Their president had been granted an inordinate amount of power. They had a Bill of Rights similar to the United States, but the very last amendment said, "In times of duress or danger, the president has the right to declare all of these rights invalid." But it's hard to pull back power. And I think we've seen that in the United States after Vietnam, the executive is granted specific powers to make decisions quickly. But when you make decisions quickly, you can often be rushed into something that's not going to necessarily be the best for the country. But at least we have these institutions to rein it back in. I'm not sure that that happens all over the world.

NARRATOR

The Americas, a two-continent strip that nearly stretches from the North Pole to the South Pole. As a region, the Americas experience varying degrees of personal freedom. The United States boasts the longest-running democracy in the world. But according to Freedom House, Canada outscores the US in freedom. It's a different story in South America, where many countries are ruled by oppressive leaders who present challenging obstacles to freedom.

SABATINI

Latin America has a long history of populism, going back all the way to the days of independence, the infamous man on horseback. But what we're seeing increasingly is a different phenomenon, which is the arrival to public office through elections of populist leaders.

LEVITSKY

People don't usually vote in authoritarian governments. They usually vote in anti-system candidates or what are often called populists.

SABATINI

More than 80% percent of Latin American citizens believe that half or more of their politicians are corrupt. In other words, they have no trust whatsoever in their political class. And what this has meant has been the collapse of party system. This has bred this demand for outsider candidates.

LEVITSKY

It's a populist appeal that people vote for. They vote often out of anger, out of frustration, out of a dissatisfaction with the political status quo. And somebody, whether it's Juan Pern in Argentina in the '40s or Alberto Fujimori in Peru or with Chvez in Venezuela, promises to take on this elite on behalf of the people.

SABATINI

But once they have that legitimacy of elections, then go on once in office to tear down the checks and balances.

LEVITSKY

People don't vote for populists thinking that populists are going to assault democratic institutions; people vote for populists thinking they're going to assault some hated elite. And the problem is that candidates, outsider candidates who come to power with a mandate to take a wrecking ball to the elite, often do go on to assault democratic institutions.

ANNOUNCER

100,000 Venezuelans gather outside Caracas to march on the city.

BIBBINS SEDACA

Venezuela was a democracy that was thriving, where people had rights, where people were active part of their society, really a shining spot in South America. Now we see through the governance of Chvez and now Maduro, we see a country that's basically been reversed.

LEVITSKY

Venezuela is a perfect storm in a bunch of ways. It's a classic case of an oil-laden rentier state whose economy was a mess for a decade in the 1980s, which resulted in a setback in terms of the level of the country's wealth, extreme inequality. Hugo Chvez was elected as a classic populist. Hugo Chvez promised to confine the elite to the dustbin of history, promising to bring a wrecking ball to an elite that had failed to deliver even the basics to Venezuelans. And Chvez delivered on his promise, and got very, very lucky in the fact that oil prices soared over $100 a barrel. And, you know, my grandmother could govern Venezuela with oil prices at over $100 a barrel. Billions and billions of dollars of added revenue allowed him to buy massive public support really for a decade and essentially lock the opposition out. He died at the time that oil prices were coming down. The inefficiencies of his economic project were beginning to be felt, the economy was just beginning to slide into crisis. Subsequent to that, Venezuela has slid into hell. Venezuela's economy has crashed in historic proportions. It's one of the worst economic collapses in modern history.

BIBBINS SEDACA

People now have very little economic opportunity. People are suffering on extraordinary levels. Opposition members, journalists are being rounded up and imprisoned because of their political views.

LEVITSKY

Usually when the economic crisis is bad enough, when a large number of people take to the streets for an extended period of time over and over again, either the government decides sort of the game's up and steps down, or the government doesn't see the writing on the wall, the military will whisper in the government's ear or nudge the government, or if necessary, grab the government and throw it under the bus. In this case, the Chavista government, the government of Maduro and the clique that surrounds him, has very, very stubbornly clung to power. It's able to use oil money to buy off enough people to kind of maintain itself in power, and it's managed so far to prevent the military from rising up. Although that could change literally any day now.

BIBBINS SEDACA

Some people have responded by leaving the country. They've left the country that they love because of the lack of democratic leadership.

KAINE

I recently traveled to the border of Colombia and Venezuela. And if you want to see what democracy versus authoritarianism looks like, this is where you ought to go, Ccuta, Colombia. 40,000 Venezuelans fleeing across the border into Colombia every day. Now, Colombia is a democracy that 15 years ago was almost a failed narco state. They've done remarkable work to try to find a peace process to end a civil war, to move forward, to invest in parts of the countries that have been abandoned for decades because of the war. And they got a lot of problems still and they're not perfect, but they're making advances toward democracy. You look on the other side of the bridge, and you have Venezuela that was one of the richest nations in the Americas even 20 years ago. They have the largest petroleum reserves in the world. But two successive authoritarian governments by Chvez and Maduro have run that country absolutely into the ground. But when you stand on that border and you see 40,000 people leaving this failed authoritarian state every day to cross the border into Colombia. But what most struck me was the number of 60 and 70-year-olds I talked to. They've left behind everything they've ever known, because this authoritarian government of a nation with significant resources and wealth has run it into the ground to enrich cronies and generals at the expense of regular, everyday people. That tells me the difference between authoritarians and democracies, and that democracies still are the great hope for people if we can protect and preserve and promote them. The US is a leading democracy. We're not the only one.

SABATINI

In Mexico, with the election of Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador, who came to power, again, with all of the warning signs. He was elected claiming that he didn't need other people, he didn't need technical capacity, he alone was not corrupt, he alone would clean up the party system and clean up the corruption within Mexico and he alone would guarantee security. He didn't need a team. He didn't need any specific policy proposals. All he had was himself, which actually sounds very much like a certain other president just north of the border along the Rio Grande. In addition, you have the populist Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who has really come to power in large part also with the base of evangelical movements. JAIR BOLSONARO

translated

SABATINI

: When I emerged in the political scene as a Catholic, and above all, as a Christian, I became a natural choice on the part of evangelical leaders who also wanted change and did not accept or did not want a return of the left wing or the Workers Party to the federal administration. So, yes, evangelical Christians were extremely important during my election. That in many cases have fused themselves to these populist leaders in places like Costa Rica, where Alvarado was not elected, but he was a preacher, who was an evangelical preacher who came out against LGBT rights. You have, even in the case of Mexico, a leftist president, Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador, is allied with the evangelical party. Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua is allied with the evangelical party, and Jair Bolsonaro, actually his party is an evangelical party. And in all these cases, what they come is promising a certain amount of moral purity, to roll back and reclaim culture. But what that actually is is really rolling back progressivism, the advance of rights that we've seen over the last couple decades, whether it's LGBT rights, women's rights, Afro-descendant rights. For a long time, I think people believed that simply the mere act of being elected made someone a democrat. And while that's necessary for a democratic government, it is not sufficient. And while that's necessary for a democratic government, who, once in power, go about to ensure that they remain in power indefinitely.

NARRATOR

Eurasia emanates from atop Russia, the largest country in the world. It also includes other former Soviet satellite countries. Not surprisingly, the region is largely undemocratic. Most Eurasian countries fall near the bottom of Freedom House's list and have low ratings for political rights and civil liberties. Some have struggled to democratize. Despite a 2014 Russian invasion, Ukrainians still fight to hold on to their democratic freedoms. We know from Russia's efforts to undermine democratic societies around the world that their leadership harbors a deep distaste for anything other than absolute power.

BREMMER

Russia has elections, but they're in no way a democracy. They're Potemkin institutions behind them. It's nothing but raw power. That's not true of advanced industrial democracies in the world today. It's possible that we will lose a couple of weak democracies to legitimate authoritarianism as a system. But I don't see that in any way happening in the United States or among most of our allies.

MITCHELL

They had a very difficult decade, first decade after the fall of the Soviet Union. They had economic problems, they had a problem with corruption. And the so-called democracy, or the political system that was in place at that time, didn't deliver for people. And then you had folks like Putin who said, you know, "We were victimized in the Cold War and we are being victimized now by the West, and we have to stand up as Russia." And they harken back to an old Russia that was very highly nationalistic, very highly authoritarian. The genetics of Russia from centuries past is not very democratic. So it's going to take a while for Russia to become more democratic. But I think every people desire to have a voice and will just off to have their own path.

SABATINI

Putin wants to be a player. He strives to be seen as a global leader for both his own domestic political reasons, but as well as his own ego. And so whether in Syria or whether in Venezuela and other places, Putin is inserting himself in these conflicts because he wants a seat at the table. He wants to both stick his finger in the eye of United States as well as be seen as a broker in which the United States has to sit down with him to resolve these conflicts, and he's getting this. As late Senator John McCain once said, "Vladimir Putin has a very weak hand, because his economy is very small and struggling, but he's playing it very well." It only takes a few million dollars to, in these moments of political flux and the rise of populism and strife, to be able to sow real discord and to play on existing divisions in ways that will destroy political systems. And he's doing it also of course throughout Europe. And we've seen it with the Brexit vote, we're seeing with the Catalonian movement. This is his modus operandi, and I'll be honest, he's playing it well.

FLAKE

And the problem when it's a government like Russia, this is not an effort to spread freedom around the world, but rather to spread their own version of authoritarianism. And that's not a good thing for us or for the world.

MITCHELL

The desire to see a more democratic Russia is not a desire to see a weak Russia but actually a very strong Russia. But that conforms to the norms and the values of the international system that in fact have created conditions for development, conditions for security, and conditions for stability for the past 70 years.

NARRATOR

In terms of personal liberty, it's hard to imagine a more repressive system than that of the old Soviet Union. Yet that's where Turkmenistan finds itself today. Liberated from the Soviet Union in 1991, the country fell prey to back-to-back authoritarian leaders who rose to power through a fraudulent election system. Turkmenistan is today one of the world's most repressive countries, closing itself off from the media and allowing few freedoms to its citizens. Geographically, sub-Saharan Africa lies south of the Saharan Desert. Freedom House classifies three major systems of government

in the region

democratic, autocratic and hybrid regimes. Much of Sub-Saharan Africa is ruled by authoritarian regimes. In fact, only 11 out of 54 countries on the entire continent are listed as free. The region showed increased democratic potential during the 1990s. However, today, countries like Uganda and Ethiopia rank among the world's worst human rights violators. In the 1990s, South Africa formally abolished apartheid, its system of institutionalized racial discrimination. Yet in the years since, the country has not demonstrated a consistent pattern of equality. The ruling National Congress has been accused of undermining state institutions to protect corrupt officials. What progress South Africa has made comes largely as the result of a sustained demand for change among its citizens.

LEVITSKY

If you allow democracy, if you allow poor people the right to vote, if you allow poor people the right to organize, they're going to threaten the rich too much, and the rich are going to run to their nearest autocrat. So that's probably the most important effect of wealth. The US civil rights movement, which is one of the United States' most important democracy movements, didn't just emerge spontaneously. It was based in a robust civil society, predominantly churches. South Africa's democracy movement, which is a classic case of a democratization, the South Africans attempted to do something parallel to the US civil rights movement back in the 1950s and early '60s; they failed. They failed mostly because South Africa was still a mostly rural society, not very industrialized, and there was not much of a civil society to sustain a democracy movement. The other thing that wealth does is allow for a stronger civil society. In general, if you have a society that is populated mainly by subsistence-level peasants who have to work from sunrise until sunset just to put a minimum of food on their kids' table, people like that are generally not the ones who go to meetings. It's generally middle class people, people with a certain amount of wealth or at least comfort and enough time on their hands to join organizations and to be active citizens. When the anti-apartheid movement took off again, a few decades later, a generation later in the 1980s, by then South Africa was much more industrialized, had a powerful labor movement, had a whole infrastructure, student and other civic organizations that became the backbone of the democracy movement.

BIBBINS SEDACA

In many regions, we're seeing a wide variety of developments. Some progress and some regression in democratic development. In sub-Saharan Africa, we've seen progress in Ethiopia, which is really heartening. And we've also seen candidates who are willing to create more space for opposition and for the growth of democratic values to move forward. We've seen troubling trends in Uganda. We've seen more restrictive legislation, more responses to journalists and the media. Uganda had been a country with really rigorous democratic progress.

NARRATOR

For thousands of years, the Middle East and North African regions fought for land ownership and sovereignty. In 2010, Tunisian merchant Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire to protest the confiscation of his shop's goods. That act sparked a three-and-a-half-year series of anti-government protests throughout the Middle East, known as the Arab Spring. The uprisings and armed rebellion sent a clear message to repressive regimes. The people of Egypt, Syria, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, and Morocco demanded a better standard of living and a voice in the government. Arab Spring protests resulted in the overthrow, imprisonment and even the assassination of several leaders.

BIBBINS SEDACA

We saw in some countries radical change. Tunisia had a significant change in government shortly thereafter and has been on a path of democratization, of building the institutions, building the political culture around democracy.

NARRATOR

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was forced to resign in 2011. In 2014, the Egyptian citizens also overthrew Mubarak's successor, Mohamed Morsi. Libya's National Transitional Council forces assassinate Colonel Muammar Qaddafi in 2011. In September 2014, the Houthi military forces overthrow Yemen's government.

explosion

BIBBINS SEDACA

We've also seen in countries like Syria brutal repression of those peaceful democratic activists that went to the street. Bashar al-Assad chose to respond through violence, and we've seen that that violence has led to the destruction of his country, and ultimately the creation of a massive number of refugees. Israel is the only democracy in the region. It has been for a long time, and it has institutions, it has regular elections, and it has all of the characteristics of a democracy.

BREMMER

They've got a fantastic educational system. They are extremely transparent, very non-corrupt. When someone does something that's corrupt, it gets known, it goes to court. There's this very strong rule of law, independent judiciary, very healthy, free media. The infrastructure works. I mean, you name it, Israel feels like a dem-- small, granted-- but a small democracy that really functions for its people. It's even true with Arabs that live in Israel. Increasingly significant minorities of Arabs consider themselves to be Israeli. There's only one exception, and that's the Palestinians living in the occupied territories. It doesn't apply to them.

NARRATOR

Prior to World War II, the region was ruled by the British and inhabited by Palestinian Arabs. After World War II, Israel was established in 1948. Palestinians fought for land, rights and their own state. Several subsequent wars have generated constant conflict and bloodshed. Countless attempts to create a two-state region have failed. At the center of the conflict,

one central issue

whether and how to provide a similar sovereign territory for the Palestinian people living in Gaza and the West Bank.

BREMMER

And if you go across the Israeli border to Gaza, you find literally, you know, 100 yards away, 50% unemployment, no educational opportunities, no employment opportunities. You see Palestinians who feel like they have no future and that they've been lied to for decades. And so what's interesting, as you now see, Palestinians throwing lots of rocks. You see them throwing their own bodies up against the defended, the heavy militarized Israeli border. Even though the Israeli Defense Forces have orders to shoot using lethal force against anyone trying to breach that border. And it's because you can't take away their voice. And I think that what we've been seeing of the Palestinians in the occupied territories is what we are increasingly seeing with populism in the United States, in Europe, with Brexit in the UK, in emerging market democracies all over the world. You are seeing people that are throwing themselves at the borders, they're throwing rocks. And in the United States, they do it differently because these are... In America, you're not talking about the same kind of depredation that you have if you're Palestinian in Gaza, but they're fed up and they don't think the system is going to fix it for them. They no longer trust that the people who have been saying that they're going to make it work really will, and so they're prepared to break things.

banging

NARRATOR

Europe, a tapestry of nations historically governed by sovereign kings and queens, has transitioned in large measure to democracy. Like other countries around the world, some European states are seeing a rise in populism. The change has been fueled in part by a dramatic rise in the number of immigrants, economic equalities and citizen dissatisfaction with establishment politics.

ABRAMOWITZ

The countries that tend to do well in our freedom scores are Scandinavian countries-- Finland, Norway, Sweden. They do well in our scores. Traditionally, there's less corruption, they run elections well. I think those countries, by the way, will be challenged over the next number of years by some of the issues that challenge America and other countries, where there's a greater diversity of population, where there's more immigration, and that tends to provide tests for governments about how well they can protect the rights of other people as opposed to just a monolithic majority.

MAN

Our country is mostly Lithuanians. As more people are moving into the country, it might create, like, an issue in the racism scale. Whatever. Yeah. I hope not. We, also with the Syrian refugees to Germany and, I mean, all the Turkish immigration that's coming into Germany for years, we kind of see the same trend of people, I don't know, being bitter and, like, having the thoughts of people stealing their jobs and stuff. And I think that's probably the same in the US, with, especially from the southern immigration. But I mean, America is a country of immigration. So it's an ongoing process. But I think that's the main point, and people are afraid of things changing, I guess, in the end.

BREMMER

Italy is a country I think that's about where we are. Italy has had a more chaotic democracy, and Italy is an example of a country that really has not delivered, you know, strongly across the way for economic growth and really functioning of democracy.

BIBBINS SEDACA

One interesting dynamic that we have seen is the recession of democratic values in Central and Eastern Europe.

BREMMER

Some countries, Hungary, Turkey, maybe Poland, relatively young democracies that used to be reasonably functional, are becoming less so. And it is possible, it is plausible that over the next 10 years, some of those democracies will really not be democracies other than in name.

BOUIE

There is actual substantive democracy, and then there are regimes that are quite unfree but that maintain the faade of a democracy. You look at Turkey under Erdogan, which is superficially a democracy. People can go to the ballot box and they can vote. But there are state-favored press outlets, there are state media. Intellectuals who challenge the regime are basically silent. The energies of the state go towards shaping the band of acceptable discourse, such that the only things that remain are those that support the interests of the state. And that can all happen with the veneer of democracy, and I think that's the thing that we, that journalists should be aware of, but the public in general should be aware of.

NARRATOR

Many people wonder whether citizens can actually impact their government at all. Those who doubt need look no further than Poland to learn that when citizens band together, change happens. In the 1980s, Poland struggled behind the Iron Curtain. The Solidarity Movement, led by shipyard electrician Lech Walesa, created a democracy in a region that had been dominated by communism. Like many cycles of democracy, Poland is experiencing a familiar two steps forward, one step back swing in their personal liberty. Since 2015, Polish democracy has been challenged. The populist socially conservative Law and Justice Party has enacted numerous measures that threaten to reverse Poland's democratic progress.

ABRAMOWITZ

Hungary was one of the countries that really experienced a rapid democratization, liberalization after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but under the current government, headed by the Prime Minister Viktor Orbn over the last seven or eight years, they have been chipping away slowly at some of what you might call guardrails of democracy. They have chipped away at judicial independence, they have chipped away at the free press by sponsoring takeovers of opposition press. They conduct gerrymandering.

RYAN HEATH

There is a pattern of behavior in Hungary. It's a pattern of behavior that makes it difficult for people to operate freely as journalists. And Madam Cruz feels obliged to draw public attention to that issue.

ABRAMOWITZ

At the end of the day, I think that's fundamentally what you're looking for, giving people a fair shot at picking their leaders, and that's being eroded in Hungary in a slow way.

BIBBINS SEDACA

Places like Hungary and in Poland, they have chosen to tap into populist sentiment and illiberal thinking in their population to build political support for them and to justify their significant closing of democratic space.

SABATINI

What we're seeing in these cases is the rise of outsider candidates claiming to reclaim people's traditions, their culture. It's trying to harken back to an economic system and better days that really never existed. In fact, Poland and Hungary are doing far better thanks to European Union subsidies and the entry into the European market. But yet people are looking backwards and imagining unrealistically a better time, when in fact, the advantages they own now are largely to do with the very things that they hate.

BREMMER

This process of growing anxiety, disenfranchisement and anger is happening across the advanced industrial democracies. And we see it, for example, very strongly in France. They elected Emmanuel Macron, a young, complete outsider. And when Macron was elected, a lot of people said, oh, this is the end of populism. This is a turning point because he's actually in favor of globalization. He wants an integrated Europe. No. They voted for him as a young outsider who left behind the old party system and created his own. A few months in, and the people start to realize that Macron is basically arguing for the same sorts of policies that they hated before. And he's not really doing anything to address their fundamental mistrust and anxiety and upset and hostility with the leaders of France. And they start demonstrating and they start breaking things, and now every Saturday since November 2018, every Saturday, they're shutting down Paris and they're burning cars. And this yellow vests, this "gilets jaunes" movement in France, which doesn't really have a positive agenda-- their agenda is about breaking things-- but it's also in opposition to Macron, and Macron's popularity has fallen through the floor as a consequence about that.

popping

BREMMER

Most of the people that voted for Brexit, or even worse, most of the people that didn't bother to vote at all on the most consequential referendum of Britain's modern history, it wasn't because they thought Brexit was going to help things. It's because they were angry at all of the people that they thought were lying to them. They were angry at the mainstream media. They were angry at the scientists with all of their great education, the economists, they were angry at the CEOs and the bankers, and they were angry at their political leaders. And so they voted to break something, they voted to protest, to say no to something that all of those people lying to them themselves wanted.

THERESA MAY

I feel as certain today as I did three years ago, that in a democracy, if you give people a choice, you have a duty to implement what they decide. I have done my best to do that. I negotiated the terms of our exit and a new relationship with our closest neighbors.

BREMMER

We can all sit here and say, "Look how stupid they were," and "They're not going to get anything." They did get something, they got a result that showed that they had a voice, that showed that you could not just walk on them without consequence. And I think when Trump goes after the mainstream media every day, he's making a lot of people that voted for him feel good, even though he's doing nothing to drain the swamp, even though his cabinet is actually as entrenched if not more entrenched with special interests in the US than we've seen from recent cabinets in decades. But at least he is a thumb in the eye to many of those in the establishment that desperately wanted anyone but Trump, and they're so angry about the fact that he is president, I think that makes a lot of people that think the system is rigged really happy, or at least makes it feel like they matter. At least makes it feel like they are of consequence. And I think we can't ignore that. We can't pretend that that's not important.

applause

NARRATOR

Boris Johnson is proving to be one of the most controversial figures in the complex and interconnected web of European politics. Supporters praise his candor as a breath of fresh air and see his unconventional policies as the right recipe for the times. His critics, on the other hand, find him brash and accuse him of cronyism, bigotry and lies.

BORIS JOHNSON

The doomsters, the gloomsters, they are going to get it wrong again. The people who bet against Britain are going to lose their shirts because we're going to restore trust in our democracy.

NARRATOR

At least for now, a slight majority of the people of Great Britain seem supportive of his populist appeal to exit the European Union.

JOHNSON

We must take some immediate steps. And the first is to restore trust in our democracy...

murmuring

JOHNSON

...and fulfill the repeated promises of Parliament to the people by coming out of the European Union and doing so on October the 31st.

murmuring

BREMMER

This is all happening when economies are doing comparatively well. So what do you think is going to happen when suddenly it's not as easy to do deficit spending? What's going to happen when the tax cuts run out? Then we've got a real problem.

BIBBINS SEDACA

It's not unusual for democracies to face challenges. The question now is how will democracy resiliently respond through strong institutions and through the consistent protection of liberal values and human rights through strong leadership?

NARRATOR

The web of democracy around the world is deeply interconnected. As we examine the struggles that other countries have and are still facing today, we should remember that the United States isn't immune to some of the same challenges. As democracies rank around the world, the US is not the most free. However, it isn't anywhere near the least free, either.

LEVITSKY

The global environment is much less favorable to democracy today than it was, say, in the 1990s. The growing power of China, the growing aggressiveness of Russia and the pretty striking decline in the power and prestige of both the United States and Europe, there's clearly storm clouds on the horizon, there are things to worry about. But there actually has not been a decline in the number of democracies in the world. There has been a pretty steady state for the last 15 years.

BIBBINS SEDACA

We cannot rest on our laurels and say we've been at this for so long and we just can coast into the next decade. We have to be vigilant at all times, because democracy, as we're seeing in many countries around the world, can slide backwards.

SABATO

In the United States, we have become so secure with our system. We believe that nothing can ever shake it, that it will remain the way it is forever. That simply is not true. We're just as susceptible as other societies to some of the disturbing events that have changed world history. There were periods when certain societies in Europe were healthy democracies and they became authoritarian systems. It is entirely possible for the ingredients to mix in just the right way or just the wrong way to produce a split in the American republic. So we shouldn't ignore that.

STROUPE

When we're crafting our own public policy, for us to be aware of what's going on elsewhere around the world, we should be aware of that. If for no other reason than we're just one tragedy away from it happening to ourselves.

ABRAMOWITZ

America is a robust democracy, and we can't forget that. We have some of the greatest freedom of the press in the whole world. We've given the world the First Amendment, and for all the problems that we've had in recent years, it's still a very lively press we have here and a lot of other freedoms we enjoy. But our scores do indicate an erosion of US democracy. And so, now America used to be at the level of countries, you know, to which we've been traditionally compared-- countries like England, Germany, France, and now we're closer to countries like Italy, Croatia, Poland. These are countries that are around where America is right now. And so we really say this is a wake-up call for Americans and aspire to improve. We're not in the same boat as countries, you know, like Turkey, which is throwing journalists in jail, or Hungary, which has suffered a substantial erosion of freedoms over the last 10 years, or Russia or China. You know, we still have a very vibrant, free society, but we have problems that we need to pay attention to.

HUEBECK

When you're born as an American citizen, you hit the citizenship lottery. You can live in a place, Somalia, Haiti, other failed states, there's no way to address your government and petition your grievances, because the government isn't functioning, and what does function only functions for the handful of people that have money and power. And for here in the United States, we are blessed that there is something we can do.

NARRATOR

If there is a universal lesson,

it's this

citizens of democratic societies must work to keep a democracy in good health. They must watch, act and remain diligent in their efforts to improve and protect human rights. Democracy is as difficult to repair as it is to build. Nations must work together across differing opinions, economic challenges and the belief that together we are better. The lessons of history are clear. When citizens act together, they can create change. Despite democracy's challenges, there is a reason for hope and optimism. It starts by understanding that true power in a democracy rests ultimately with the people. Knowing how to use that power is key. Are we up to the task? Next time on "Dismantling Democracy." VPM. A UVA Center for Politics Series.