Webinar On-Demand: Democracy's Challenge to Rising Authoritarianism

Part of the 'Electoral Frontiers' webinar series, including "Combating Disenfranchisement and Building Transparency" and "Political Engagement in the Digital Age." 

Folha de S.Paulo’s Ana Luiza Albuquerque dives into her podcast, Authoritários, in a conversation with PBS Newshour’s Simon Ostrovsky. Albuquerque highlights the “common causes for democratic decline” and the “common tools used by leaders” that she observed across countries experiencing authoritarian rises, despite vastly different histories and contexts.

Key Highlights:

• “I think the first step of all is to accept that liberal democracy is failing to meet the demands of a large part of the population. In other words, to recognize that it's not enough to embrace liberal democracy if people continue to suffer. You can't defend democracy for democracy's sake only,” Albuquerque said.
• “In most of the countries I visited, I noticed a scenario of toxic political polarization," Albuquerque said. "Effective polarization… is also associated with democratic decline. It's the idea that when you see the other not as an adversary, but as an enemy, a threat to your existence or to the country; when you see the other like that, you are more willing to use non-democratic measures to eliminate them.” 
• “[Democratic leaders] have long-term answers and people are not interested in waiting to see anymore. You have democratic leaders giving very rational answers… but you rarely can win an election just out of rationality,” Albuquerque said.
• “I was very concerned about focusing on the narrative aspect and bringing the victims to the center of the episodes. I didn't want it to be an abstract discussion about the failure of democracy… it isn't very effective usually because people have different notions of what democracy is. You can perhaps interview someone that was there on January 6th in the United States or on January 8th here in Brazil, and maybe they'll tell you that they were defending democracy,” Albuquerque said. 
  "So I thought it was really important to really show what happens in an authoritarian government. What happens in people's lives, like on a day-to-day basis because at the end of the day, that's what I believe can create empathy and really raise awareness in society.”
• “Another thing that I've noticed in several countries that I visited is a trend of glorifying the past, sometimes a past that didn't even exist.” Albuquerque said. “These leaders encourage this nostalgic feeling of a glorious past because they know that it will have an impact on a voter who is dissatisfied, who feels invisibilized by the elites, who feels that he lost his status, that he lost his prestige. What the far right or authoritarian leaders do is give the voter a prestigious pass. They give something for him… to cling to while he's absolutely dissatisfied.
  "I think that if the Democratic Front is going to compete with authoritarian leaders that have this national populist agenda, it needs to make people believe that it's possible for the future to be better. It needs to offer a future to convince the population to access their feelings and convince the population that there is a palpable better future that can be achieved. And I think that protecting democracy anywhere involves this realization.”