The current COVID-19 crisis has reinforced the role of States. On the verge of a possible collapse of sanitary systems in a large number of countries, centralized handling of sanitary resources and citizens’ behaviour have proven critical.
Main train station, Hamburg, March 2020
Yet at the same time, this increased centralization has raised many questions and concerns: has the efficiency of one-size-fits-all regulation infringed individual rights and personal situations? Will governments impose data-driven instruments to regulate our lives in the coming months and years? What are the right checks and balances to be put in place? High-profile intellectual figures such as Hariri and Kissinger have taken public positions in that sense.
“In this time of crisis, we face two particularly important choices. The first is between totalitarian surveillance and citizen empowerment. The second is between nationalist isolation and global solidarity.” (Hariri)
“While the assault on human health will — hopefully — be temporary, the political and economic upheaval it has unleashed could last for generations.” (Kissinger)
Examples need not be drawn from authoritarian regimes like China, putting in place mass surveillance, or Hungary, where the nationalist government has passed a law to put a state of emergency in place indefinitely. Democratic governments have been seen sourcing information from telcos or police using drones to enforce government restrictions.
China Town, London, April 2020
The implementation of tracking and tracing apps to fight against the spread of the virus is already being used in South Korea, Singapore and Israel and talked about in many other countries as a tool to control infections. Even though most countries are making a point in providing anonymity, encryption and local storage of data, these technologies are high-tech surveillance applications and there is a high risk of normalising these technologies in everyday life.
As another example of politicians using the crisis for completely unrelated political agendas, several of the United States republican-lead states, Governors are banning abortions. The reasoning behind it is to frame abortions as nonessential procedures that need to be postponed to save medical equipment.
This question is all the more crucial since it comes at the end of a cycle where democracy has been retreating. The trust in democratic institutions, representatives and political parties has been eroding. According to the Global Attitudes Survey only 45% of people questioned in 27 countries are satisfied with key aspects of the democracy they live in.
According to the Pew Research Center, dissatisfaction with the way democracy is working significantly decreased in about half of the countries questioned.
“Ideas at the core of liberal democracy remain popular among global publics, but the commitment to democracy can nonetheless be weak.” (Pew Research Centre)
The part of the population who believes in democracy as the most effective political regime is on a secular downward trend and even though commitments to representative democracies are still comparably high in wealthy, strong democracies, there is a notable growing number of people open to the idea of a non-democratic system. It appears to be a world-wide phenomena that can be observed in both advanced and emerging economies.
Fairy tale fountain, Berlin, March 2020
Yet at the same time, decentralized movements have flourished around the world (Occupy Wall Street, Arab Spring, Yellow Jackets, youth environmental movements), putting increased direct democracy at the core of their claims. This is a sign of hope as it hints the fact the distrust in democracy is also fed by a dissatisfaction with the way it is put in practice. A recent survey in France has shown that a majority of voters who support extreme-right or extreme-left parties are in fact in favour of “horizontal power” rather than vertical. The question is not to decide whether democracy must be direct or representative, institutionalized or liquid, majority-led or consensus-based. In a world driven by complexity, there is probably no unique solution that meets all needs. But in a context of global centralization trends, there is an undebatable urgency for balancing them through increased forces of decentralization. Electronic voting can be one of these forces. Challenges around security, in particular tallying and identification, and confidentiality are still critical. But promising experiments are on the way. “We should definitely make use of new technologies too, but these technologies should empower citizens.” (Hariri) Electis is one of them. The Cross-University Vote project is a platform for students and academics that are passionate about the topic of e-voting and democracy, to help develop and test a new and open-source and blockchain-based e-voting protocol. This is a first step towards a trustworthy e-voting platform in the hands of the community to be an opposing force to growing centralization of our political system.