ABOUT
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, 2020 was going to be a key milestone for those focused on the health of constitutional democracy worldwide.
This year marks the tenth anniversary of the Fidesz government’s election in Hungary, which has laid down a template for the active dismantling of democratic governance through incremental and sophisticated use of law and policy. Since 2010, the number of liberal democracies worldwide whose health, or even endurance, is now in doubt has grown exponentially.
Some states have closely followed the Hungarian script: Poland, under Law and Justice Party rule since 2015, has travelled toward constitutional break-down and after the elections in October 2019 saw the rule of that party consolidated.
In other states we see incremental deterioration of the democratic system that follows a less clear ‘masterplan’ but which remains highly troubling, from the USA, to India under the BJP, to Brazil under far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. In the UK, ongoing constitutional crisis occasioned by Brexit has raised rule-of-law concerns, while in Australia recent legislation and State action has prompted soul-searching about core democratic freedoms such as free speech.
The democratic trajectories of other states, such as El Salvador, Indonesia, Latvia, Malta, Malaysia, Nepal, and Sri Lanka remain understudied. Everywhere, democracy is in flux, challenged by interlocking trends like algorithmic governance, authoritarian populism, neo-liberalism, and corruption.
The pandemic has accelerated negative trends worldwide, while, at the same time, intensifying the global focus on reinvigorating and renewing constitutional democracy.
This Global Roundtable of the International Association of Constitutional Law (IACL) brings together a group of leading and emerging experts, to engage in a global ‘stock-taking’ exercise, aiming to map the health and trajectory of key democracies world-wide, pin-point gaps in analysis, and divine what broader lessons may be learned from multiple contexts and experiences.
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