3. Do YOU NEED TO BE AN AUTHORITARIAN STATE TO RESOLVE THE CORONA CRISIS?

9/4/2020

3. DO YOU NEED TO BE A DICTATORSHIP TO RESOLVE THE CORONA CRISIS?
There is a point of view that has emerged in the West that the relative success of China & Singapore in resolving the crisis (compared to Italy, for example) suggests that a pandemic is best solved by authoritarian political systems.
Watch this documentary and add a post discussing an aspect of it. This can be based on your opinion, linked to the course content, other examples etc. These are some questions as a starting point.

Arguments that democracies are not well set up to tackle this kind of crisis?
Why might authoritarian states be at an advantage?
What do democratic leaders have to rely on to get a lockdown?
What does this situation tell use about the power of the EU (our example of the strongest IGO in relation to its members) and sovereignty etc?
Do you think this will change European political perspectives?
For those of you studying History too (or are just interested) do you notice and parallels, and are these parallels worth making?
Is more authoritarianism desirable in Korea?
TO POST, SIMPLY USE COMMENTS FUNCTION TO ADD YOUR THOUGHTS. Remember forum etiquette - no more than 10 lines per post, focus on one main idea, use 'add'/'challenge'/'build' language if you want to respond to anyone else's points. BUT you are encouraged to post as much as you like!

10 Comments

Lucy

9/4/2020 08:07:49 pm

1. Arguments that democracies are not well set up to tackle this kind of crisis?
2. Why might authoritarian states be at an advantage?
4. What does this situation tell us about the power of the EU (our example of the strongest IGO in relation to its members) and sovereignty etc?
5. Do you think this will change European political perspectives?

Evidence shown against Democracies that they are not well set up to tackle this kind of crisis is the basis of their governments. With inputs from different sources, the citizens, to NGOs to their own governmental system, they take a considerably longer time to process this pandemic and think of a solution altogether. In comparison, authoritarian states such as China might have an advantage to the structure of their government. An authoritarian regime is able to act fast and decisively due to their pyramidal shape, with president Xi at the highest tier, his words surpassing any other regulations. This enables faster lockdown and quarantine of cities, and a better regulation of those who are infected. China was able to create a makeshift hospital built in the matter of days specifically for coronavirus patients. This efficient speed comes from the structural difference of an authoritarian regime, as President Xi needs no other inputs from other actors such as NGOs or IGOs.

This entire situation can show us many facets of the EU's power, and how they deal in a situation like this. The EU itself is the strongest IGO in relations to its members yet through this occurrence, it can be clearly seen that the EU has the opposite of sovereignty, with near to none control of all the people and property within their territories. European countries within the EU have been going at the entire pandemic alone, with a strong lack of solidarity among the community. Not only is there no inter-connectedness or cooperation, there have even been cases where countries within the EU ignored the pleas of Italy, a country that could perhaps be stated as one of the worst cases of COVID-19. This is exemplified when Germany banned protection gear exports to Italy. What an expert has said is that these countries within the EU are too integrated in their own countries to go at it alone but not integrated enough to come up with a coherent response to how to deal with this epidemic globally and together.

I think this would definitely change the European Political perspectives. It has been said that the truth strength is shown during times of pressure, and during the time of pandemic, the entire EU has shocked their own residents by somewhat turning their backs on each other and instead of opting to focus on themselves. This definitely shows the global audience the strength of these allegiances, and would test pre-existing perspectives.

JiWon

10/4/2020 08:20:42 am

China's initial response to COVID-19 has been hit hard by the international community. Despite the negative effects of Chinese bureaucracy, external factors such as the hosting of Hunan and the Communist Party of China and economic revitalization measures to revitalize the Lunar New Year's economy have had a major impact. Corona countermeasures have been pushed back by both rounds and the New Year's Day, but the Chinese government has taken more such measures than taking proper measures in the outbreak of coronavirus in the area around Wuhan. He seemed to be pursuing responsibilities by taking care of things, such as clearing up hoaxes and controlling information, and just before the Spring Festival, proper measures were finally taken but lost already late. President Xi Jinping has been trying to recover from the downturn caused by the trade war and make the most of the Lunar New Year. In that regard, Xi prevented people from being agitated through media control instead of taking appropriate response and information disclosure of this crisis. In addition, China has a history of making international cooperation difficult by not officially admitting infection of the virus for 6 months during SARS, or reducing or concealing the actual situation of infection, so, in this COVID-19 situation, they could not get a great deal of trust from the international community. The irony is that at the time of the spread of SARS in China, the cause of the widespread of SARS was depicted as the initial hiding of information. This led to the introduction of the Information Disclosure Law in China in 2008 and pieces of information from the public institutions began to be open to the public. However, the Chinese government forgot that hiding the information brought significant negative impacts to the international community and repeated what the same mistake from the SARS crisis.

In most European countries, the government is largely transparent, and many countries have the basic medical competence of an advanced country. However, sustained proliferation shows that public awareness of the underlying healthcare systems and epidemic prevention in Western countries is much less than expected. The spread of COVID-19 in Europe has been hampered by governments, due to the prevailing social atmosphere in Europe where civilians refused to wear masks and place social distances, rather discriminating against those who protected them. It can be said that this is because of the safe social recognition of infectious disease prevention rather than sufficient measures.

Therefore, in an international disaster situation such as COVID-19, a democratic government that makes information transparent and empowers international cooperation is more efficient than an authoritarian government that reduces and conceals information and makes international cooperation difficult.

James Tipney

7/5/2020 11:40:36 am

Good insights here Jiwon. The opennness of the democratic systems should help and China is now getting a lot of criticism for not acting sooner - prioritsing politics over people. But at the same time, Western leaders were over confident that their political system would naturally adapt - and it didn't.

Len

10/4/2020 08:35:04 am

While it is valid that authoritarian political systems are easier to implement decisive policies that may help to contain the spread, I believe that not only authoritarian states are equipped with the authority to carry out those perhaps radical measures, and democracies are also equipped with the power the civic population is willing to grant to the state, in the times of an emergency. Such power that arises in a state in a crisis is called emergency power - an extraordinary power invoked as a means of resolving a crisis. Essentially, emergency power also grants democratic states the power to implement strong policies that they otherwise wouldn’t have had. I believe with the active utilization of emergency power to implement strong measures and the democratic free media that stimulates active reporting, democracies can prove to be more effective than authoritarianism. Taiwan’s case of the successful establishment of a sanitary cordon is a case where the state effectively utilized its emergency power, whereas in Europe, the government is unable to utilize the additional power they have.

10/4/2020 08:54:00 am

However, it is inevitably true that some emergency measures that are implemented with the purpose of containing the virus, are here to stay even after the pandemic - and this may lead to a breach in the current democratic systems in some states. This perhaps leads to a phenomenon where the government is perhaps attempting to permanently gain power. After the crisis, some states may maintain overly regulated policies and breach the civic populations’ personal liberty. Current example cases include Russia’s installation of one of the world’s largest surveillance camera systems equipped with facial recognition technology in Moscow, to regulate their civic population. Israel’s government also has cited the coronavirus to authorize its Shin Bet internal security agency to use vast amounts of location-tracking data from the cellphones of ordinary Israelis. Governments may want to maintain their temporarily increased power, and it may be hard to remove them, as the continuation of the surveillance dilemma after the September 11 attacks reveals. It may be a question of “Can democratic systems survive after the crisis?” rather than “Can states with democratic systems survive the crisis?”.

Jerry

10/4/2020 08:41:40 am

1. Arguments that democracies are not well set up to tackle this kind of crisis?

In times of a pandemic crisis, democracies are exposed to greater risk than authoritarian states for a number of reasons. One of its reasons is the interconnected network of global community that liberal democracies pursue. This is evident in the cases with the EU, where movement of people across borders are initially unrestricted due to the Schengen agreement, and thus creating an adequate condition for a contagious virus to spread pervasively. On the financial dimension, interconnection is problematic, as well - as international cooperation and trade is halted momentarily and nations, who are interdependent on their exports and imports with one another, are facing detrimental economic impact. Moreover, democracies are inadequate political system in making quick, decisive actions during a crisis, as often there are many procedural issues before making a governmental action and throughout such process, inevitably, there would be disagreements and quarrels. In addition, this specific crisis of COVID-19, requires a complete lockdown to prevent further spread of the virus, yet democracies, which are founded upon the pillars of individual rights and liberties, find difficulties in infringing such rights to a certain extent, to establish and pursue collective well-being and security.

Kae

10/4/2020 09:00:30 am

1.Arguments that democracies are not well set up to tackle this kind of crisis?
2.Why might authoritarian states be at an advantage?
3.What do democratic leaders have to rely on to get a lockdown?

When it comes to imposing effective measures to cope with an emergency situation like COVID-19, the democratic states are disadvantaged compared to authoritarian states due to the nature of power and the structure of their political system. In liberal democratic state like Japan, it promotes political liberty and liberal ideas that allows its political system to be ruled by the majority characterised by freedom of speech and a high degree of human rights. Due to this nature of the democratic system, it does not have a centralised system of rule to enforce draconian measures that limit human rights without a basic consensus by the public. Despite it has recently declared a ‘state of emergency’ which empowered the government to perform certain actions, it still does not have law-abiding power to take authoritative actions. In a current state, what the government can do is instead ‘request’ certain restrictions including such as requesting the residents to avoid unnecessary travel or supplier chains to close. Due to this, Japan’s state of ‘lock-down’ significantly differs from ‘lockdown’ measures abroad as the government has limited enforceable power that they can exert within state control. This means that the government have to rely on the will of its people to make an effort to acknowledge the advice or request given by the state authority.

In an authoritarian state like China, on the other hand, they are effectively containing the virus by building hospitals, lock-down of certain provinces as well as travel restrictions and censorship of media. As China has a centralised system of rules that promotes elitism over populism, they can effectively take decisive measures to cope with the emergency system as the authoritative party have high degree of freedom in terms of the power they can exert. However, the counter-point can be shown with Taiwan’s effective response to the virus outbreak despite it is a democratic country. As Taiwan has previously experienced the SARS outbreak in 2003 and has renowned universal healthcare, they were able to effectively contain the virus.

This leads me to conclude that the authoritarian system are not necessary although they have advantages of coming up with swift measures. The states should seek for the way to protect civilian lives whilst guaranteeing human rights and perhaps this can be done by reassessing the basic emergency law at a national level and by cooperating at the international level to respond coherently in future.

Suin

10/4/2020 10:06:04 pm

I think this pandemic will definitely change European political perspectives since people will realize a need for the stronger government to provide a fast and decisive response. Also, there will be a paradigm shift in politics with the problems of populism - people are becoming aware of the need for expertise and realization of objective reality instead of travel bans and blaming others. Moreover, in my opinion, I think there will be a rise in eurosceptics since people realize that the power of IGOs like the EU is very limited and they cannot interfere with domestic politics. Even though the EU can actually provide credible solutions for such transnational issues that no single states can provide, states will be unwilling to compromise for the shared values with the ongoing domestic problems.

Gabriel

12/4/2020 04:34:21 pm

Why might authoritarian states be at an advantage?

One must realise that democratic systems are built upon the foundations of respect and collaboration (human rights), where some time is invested in order to collect opinions from different sub-state actors, and reach a consensus on what the majority believes to be 'the right way'. While this indeed has massive advantages, the often-disregarded authoritarian-style leadership is undoubtedly at a better position to deal with events of national crisis, including the Coronavirus outbreak, where speed and efficiency is crucial. China's radical (from the democratic pov) and decisive actions are an excellent example: its government, based on centralised control from the communist party, was able to accomplish feats, such as organising a task force that built a makeshift hospital within a matter of days, or using its police force to shut down the entire city of Wuhan. This contrasts with the situation in the US, where Donald Trump's initial travel ban policy had to be eased within a few hours after receiving criticism for its undemocratic nature from the local government and its citizens.

7/5/2020 11:43:19 am

Well considered - a good example of philosophy colliding with reality for sure.

3. Do YOU NEED TO BE AN AUTHORITARIAN STATE TO RESOLVE THE CORONA CRISIS?

Leave a Reply.

Author

Archives

Categories