Explaining his objectives ahead of the recent G7 meeting for an American audience, US president Joe Biden wrote in a June 5th op-ed for the Washington Post: “[This] trip is about realising America’s renewed commitment to our allies and partners, and demonstrating the capacity of democracies to both meet the challenges and deter the threats of this new age.”
The president linked explicitly public benefit at a national level with the global political power of his envisioned alliance. He asked, “Can democracies come together to deliver real results for our people in a rapidly changing world? Will the democratic alliances and institutions that shaped so much of the last century prove their capacity against modern-day threats and adversaries?”
At the meeting itself, Biden and other leaders reinforced this optimistic message. However, in reality, and away from the fanfare of Cornwall, there is a lingering question about whether ambitious domestic policy agendas will convince citizens in democratic countries that their political system is working for them.
In the US, bi-partisan legislation supporting the greatest investment in scientific research in American history and the American jobs plan are cornerstones of Biden’s goal of strengthening democracy and countering authoritarianism. The legislation also responds, if only implicitly, to the correlation between declining faith in democracy and rising inequality, especially among younger generations.
Biden seems to be banking on job creation, the right to unionisation and better working conditions, wages, benefits and availability of affordable services like childcare to encourage belief in democracy. His goal is to jumpstart American manufacturing through innovation and, through this effort, generate opportunities for “well-paying, middle-class jobs”. Investment in conservation and community resilience, as well as those services like childcare that facilitate labour-market participation, will also produce “middle class” jobs.
Recovery plans
Facing their own high unemployment rates, particularly among the young, the EU and the Irish governments’ economic recovery plans aim to prepare jobseekers for the rapidly changing, post-pandemic job market. They all highlight reskilling, upskilling and lifelong learning. The Irish Government is promising 50,000 new education and training places and increased opportunity for apprenticeships and workplace experience. This effort mirrors the EU Youth Guarantee that commits to providing employment, education, an apprenticeship or traineeship to all under 30s in member states within four months of becoming unemployed or leaving education.
The Government is promising 50,000 new education and training places and increased opportunity for apprenticeships and workplace experience
Again, all of these plans are welcome. But are they enough? If Biden and other G7 leaders are serious about reinforcing democracy, then we urgently need to ask if accelerating the growth of particular industries like clean energy, reducing domestic unemployment and improving the quality of work are truly going to convince their citizens to trust and believe in their political system?
Influencing active participation in a political system at an individual level – or at least acceptance of it as a model to be protected and cherished – is a process, not a one-off accomplishment achieved by a piece of legislation. Citizens have to be able to envisage a lifetime full of opportunities and promise, where aspirations can be achieved, precisely because they live in a democracy. This visualisation differs from any political bounce due to one specific strategy or episode – like successful vaccination campaigns (ie Boris Johnson) – or inversely, declining political fortunes due to poor management of the pandemic (ie Narendra Modi).
Chinese families
The Chinese government’s decision this year to permit families have three children [the previous two-child policy was introduced in 2016 to replace the decades-old one-child policy] offers an instructive example of the influence economic security can have on trust and respect for policy decisions and the political system they uphold. Putting aside the agenda of dealing with an ageing population, the Chinese government’s pronouncement was packaged as liberation or even a celebratory moment for families. Yet, it seems to have been met instead with collective apathy.
Analyses suggest that couples, especially working women, do not want the economic burden of another child in addition to the probable responsibility, often as the only child, for the care of ageing parents. In addition, external supports, like childcare, are neither available nor affordable enough for women to be able to stay in work to earn the income necessary for another child. In sum, the Chinese government may want to influence – even impress upon – the aspirations of their citizens but they have not provided the necessary infrastructure of support for their citizens to be able to take advantage, if they so desire, of a policy change.
For democratically elected governments, the lesson from this is to connect the dots or approach problems multidimensionally, and to view their societies as interconnected and complex, rather than objects to manipulate or disassemble into political supporters and opponents.
The lesson is to view societies as interconnected and complex, rather than objects to manipulate or disassemble into political supporters and opponents
For instance, here in Ireland, it does not make sense to invest in training and education without improving the working conditions of the trainers, whether university faculties or staff managing apprentices. Likewise, providing more places for further education should correspond both with reductions in the use of often-exploitative, temporary contracts in the sector and the employment of more permanent lecturers to reduce Ireland’s high student/lecturer ratio, which benefits no one.
Fear of repression
Authoritarian regimes can, of course, arguably make an easier connection between sustaining a political model and economic support. They simply ensure that politically important groups benefit from policy while they restrict or even forbid public criticism, limit access to information and monitor behaviour. Of course, once the economic position and social status of these favoured groups declines, collective anxiety is likely to make citizens less afraid of repression.
I have spent many years conducting academic research in the Middle East and North Africa. Regimes have survived in part because they have invested in the growth of a middle class and routes out of poverty through access to education, jobs and services. When this investment declines, as it has from the 1990s onwards, leaders face resistance, leading to their fall or sustained political instability.
Whether or not the Biden- and G7-led, jobs-first approach to domestic policy reinforces or even rebalances global political power remains unknown. Certainly, would-be authoritarian leaders in democratic countries seem to be facing more mobilised oppositions while weary publics call for greater attention to domestic policy.
The longer-term, more ambitious, strategy would be to show that only democracies produce domestic policies detailed and far-reaching enough to look across the social and economic needs of different social groups. As critical as it is, job creation will not be enough to save democracy. That will take ensuring jobs allow for constructive life choices and aspirations for a better future.