The pandemic and the future of global democracy

Abstract

If global democracy were a patient, it was already ailing when the United Nations declared a global health emergency in January 2020. Democracy assessment organisations had been registering a 15-year trend of declines in the quality and persistence of liberal democracy worldwide, although counter-trends of democratic innovation and reinvention were also gathering momentum. This chapter reflects on the future of global democracy and capture key trends and developments in institutional and geo-political responses through three questions: has COVID-19 helped to rehabilitate liberal democracy’s reputation as a political system by revealing effectiveness in crisis? Has the pandemic crystallised a..