This episode explores current dilemmas faced by the European Union and the pursuit of strategic autonomy. How has a reliance on soft power, multilateral cooperation and economic integration created the current conditions of security and sovereignty in the EU? And what have the current and multiple crises brought to the forefront? Listen to hear what needs to be addressed regarding the EU’s current conundrums.
Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:
• Central European University: CEU
• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD
• The Podcast Company: Novel
Follow us on social media!
• Central European University: @CEU
• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @AHDCentre
Subscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a review and sharing our podcast in your networks!
DiQ S6 EP10
Daniela Schwarzer on Europe’s Strategic Conundrums (Part 2)
Glossary
What is an LNG terminal?
(04:32 or p.1 in the transcript)
LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) terminal is a reception facility for unloading of cargo from LNG tankers. These purpose-built ports are specially used for export and import of LNG. A variety of facilities for unloading, regasification, tanking, metering etc. of LNG are provided at these terminals. Natural gas is transported in liquified state using LNG gas tankers. At LNG terminals, the liquified natural gas is turned back into gaseous state (regasified) after unloading from ships and then distributed across the network.source
What is the Fridays for Future movement?
(05:48 or p.2 in the transcript)
For almost three weeks prior to the Swedish election in September 2018, Swedish climate activist 15-year-old Greta Thunberg missed school to sit outside the country’s parliament with a sign that stated “Skolstrejk för Klimatet” (School Strike for Climate). Although alone for the first day of the strike, she was joined each subsequent day by more and more people, and her story garnered international attention. After the election Thunberg returned to school but continued to skip classes on Fridays to strike, and these days were called Fridays for Future. Her action inspired hundreds of thousands of students around the world to participate in their own Fridays for Future. Strikes were held in such countries as Belgium, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Finland, Denmark, France, and the Netherlands. source
DiQ S6EP10
Shalini Randeria (SR): Welcome to Democracy in Question, the podcast series that explores the challenges democracies are facing around the world today. I am Shalini Randeria, Rector and President of Central European University in Vienna, and Senior Fellow at the Albert Hirschman Center on Democracy at the Graduate Institute in Geneva.
This is the tenth and final episode of season six of Democracy in Question. I'm very pleased to welcome back today Daniela Schwarzer. As a reminder, Daniela is currently on the executive board of the Bertelsmann Foundation after having served most recently as Executive Director for Europe and Eurasia at the Open Society Foundation.
She's a widely recognized expert on European affairs, as well as transatlantic and international relations with a distinguished career in policy as well as in academic circles. She's also a non-executive board member of BNP Paribas, but also an honorary professor of political science at the Free University in Berlin, and a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Today I'm continuing my earlier conversation from a fortnight ago with Daniela. It's inspired largely by her latest book titled “Final Call: How Europe Can Assert Itself between the United States and China”. As we discussed last time, the European Union is currently at a crossroads facing several dilemmas about how to pursue greater strategic autonomy.
The current juncture of multiple reinforcing crises, or as some observers have called it, the age of poly crises, has brought to the surface a number of long- neglected questions about security and also sovereignty in the European Union, which has traditionally relied on soft power, multilateral cooperation and economic integration.
Having already touched upon key aspects of Europe's Trans-Atlantic partnerships under the shadow of Russia's war in Ukraine during our previous conversation, I will ask Daniela today to talk a little bit about some of the related predicaments that the European Union faces today. Daniela, welcome back to the podcast and it's a real pleasure to have you with me once again.
Daniela Schwarzer (DS): Shalini, I'm really happy to be with you.
SR: Daniela, let me start by harking back to our previous conversation, which focused primarily on issues of security. We talked about the EU’s critical weaknesses in defensive military capacities and capabilities, which have been exposed by the Russian invasion in the last 18 months. Relying onto United States and NATO, along with the resilience bolstered by a newfound unity of purpose, has helped the EU so far in successfully rising to the security challenge posed by Russia at its eastern border.
But security covers so much more than just military aspects. Energy security, for example, is just as crucial for Europe today, especially if we consider the EU ambitious agenda for a green transition. So will the green transition be set back by its massive costs at a time when economic resources in all European Union countries will increasingly be used for military and defense purposes? And how will the green transition be affected by the drive to urgently reduce the dependence on Russian fossil fuels and also raw materials?
DS: Right now, we see, of course, a reduction of Russian fossil energy but, unfortunately, a replacement through other fossil sources. Germany, as an example, has just shut off its nuclear plants but it has increased using coal to produce electricity. We have created LNG terminals, floating terminals on the Baltic Sea to bring in LNG from, for instance, the United States. So, right now there is a shift of energy sources and, in parallel, a stronger investment into renewables. But we will see on a regional and then also on a global scale that fossil energy consumption will actually not fall. One reason being also that Russia has been very successful to find new markets for its oil and gas imports, India and China being countries that are extremely glad to buy comparatively cheap fossil energy from Russia. They need it, in particular also China needs cheap energy. And so, overall, in terms of climate transition, this does not look very good.
However, the awareness to do more for climate protection has risen considerably. It's also interesting from a democratic perspective to look at what is happening. Again, I'm quoting Germany, because people take to the street to protest against policies that they feel are not ambitious enough to tackle the climate transition that we actually need. This goes back to the Fridays for Future movement, which really mobilized young citizens very regularly every Friday. They took to the streets, skipped school and went to make their voices heard. And right now, we have a phenomenon in Germany, which is called the Klimakleber, so, people protest by gluing themselves, either to streets or in museums and other places, to really raise awareness. And they block public transport or, you know, street transport, cars. So, they are a nuisance to people. But this creates a situation, the debate: on the one hand, is this a legitimate form of protest? But on the other hand, we realize these are young people, or also not so young people, it's really a mixed-generation project, who are ready to be sentenced for disobedience, for the goal of creating policies that are more protective of our climate.
So, this notion of "something really has to happen" is very spread. And despite the constraints that you have mentioned, more money has to be spent on other things than climate transition. And military spending is going up in many EU countries. I believe the green agenda will still stay ambitious, but we see it has to be sustained by citizen support and pressure to push policy makers along that they stick to these goals. The fundamental thing we will be facing in the next few years is the higher expense for classic defense but also security in a very broad term, that pushes governments to make trade-offs. And those will be very difficult decisions. You can only spend every Euro once and there are limits to deficit and public debt set by the EU. In Germany we have a constitutional limit on top of that. So, it will be politically a very hot phase to make these directional choices for societies where to go.
Again, I think that, when we look at the EU in all of this, we should not underestimate the positive impact European cooperation can have, both in the area of green transition and the area of green-technology development, which we need. We know we are lagging behind China, for instance, to which we have lost literally our solar-panel industry. We need to do better in providing cheaper and more competitive technology for the green transition and any European program that can support research and development in that area that can create conditions for companies to thrive. I think is very welcome in this phase and it can, in my view, if it's well done, create synergies, take a bit of the burden of the member states.
SR: Daniela, to return to one point which you just made about democracies and a democratic transition, does it worry you that the move away from Russia is basically creating new dependencies on other authoritarian states, this time in the Middle East and Central Asia regimes? Unfortunately, the resources, especially oil, are distributed worldwide in states which are mostly authoritarian. So, it's not like there is much of a choice. But it's like shifting from one kind of authoritarian state to another. And so, you have the German Minister, Habeck, wooing the Middle Eastern states, in his search for cheaper and alternative energy resources for Germany. But it's not only the authoritarian states, there's a global dimension to this. These were countries which were also supplying energy resources to a country like Pakistan, etc. The fact that Germany bought them up meant that it created a shortage for others in the Global South.
DS: It would be much better if we could buy everything from Norway. But we can't. If you look at the distribution of fossil resources across the globe, yes, the map doesn't look pretty if your goal is to buy from Western-style liberal democracies only. You asked whether I'm worried. I would say not as worried as I was when Germany put all bets on Russia because risk diversification plays a role, of course. If we diversify energy sources, we cannot be blackmailed as easily. And Russia uses its energy ties to blackmail governments a lot. Look at the case of Moldova, for instance. So, I would say it's not a good constellation, but I am less worried if we have more single sort of authoritarian providers than just one big one.
But it is absolutely true that, as soon as you have a certain degree of dependency, your foreign policy scope of action vis-a-vis that country shrinks. And this is really the conundrum that this current German government is facing where we have a green foreign minister, who came into office with a very pronounced values-based approach, we have a vice chancellor and minister of the economy and climate who's also of the Green Party who very much has the same values base in what he says. But then you see that this same person needs to travel to the Gulf Region to open up new energy deals. And that's the reality we are facing at the moment.
And one of the answers is, indeed, not only for climate reasons are renewable energies a very smart and strategic choice for Germany but also for reasons of being less dependent on authoritarian states and actually, again making Germany or Europe stronger facing even systemic competitors like China, when we interact globally. So, this idea of inner strength, which, for me, is always a combined one of a competitive economy and a resilient democracy that need to go hand in hand with each other, plus a very smart vision of how cooperation across EU countries can enhance our performance and can make us stronger together, this is really where we have to go even more quickly than we maybe thought before the beginning of this phase of the war in Ukraine. And we have a transition phase where fossil energy still plays a big role, where we have to diversify to other authoritarian states, but the direction is very clear. And the political challenge now in all our democracies is to manage this in a way that, A) climate transition happens in a just and equitable way; B) that people understand why, to some extent, they have to bear higher costs and; C) a vision is clear where we want to take our country, and the European Union as a whole, in a world which, in the next few years, will be even more characterized by conflict and tensions and systemic rivalry.
SR: I think the interesting thing, Daniela, about the renewables is that not only with the reduced dependencies on these authoritarian governments but, in a sense, they are much more highly democratic, I think, because they also lead to decentralization and to a lot more of local autonomy within the country. So, I think renewables have a democratizing effect even within the country, which may be an interesting thing to think about, rather than this concentration of fossils. But I want to take you back to "The Final Call," your book, and to the China question and ask you to comment on a sentence there where you say, and I quote you, "Washington will hug its European allies in a tight grip looking to enlist them into the attempt to stop the rise of Chinese dominance." And you said this much before the U.S.-China tension became so strong and palpable. So, the question here would be, how could the EU learn to navigate more deftly between the U.S. and China, between a key ally and a very large economic partner, without being drawn into the conflict between the two of them?
DS: We will not avoid being drawn into the conflict because of those ties to both sides, but we can prepare to make it less harmful and give us a stronger and more productive role vis-a-vis both partners. And that is again that question of, first of all, inner strength. So, what has Europe done over the past years, first of all, to create transparency on the dependencies which we have? That has happened through investment screening systems that are being applied now in all EU member states to understand where does China already sit and where does it want to buy its way into? Critical industries, for instance.
That was really an idea that the former president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, launched. It's a law which started years back, but which is now implemented, and we have systems in place which, through the COVID-19 crisis, suddenly now also encompass industries of the health sector and others because our thinking about strategic industries is today much broader.
Another element is, of course, how do we build our own competitiveness. And one instrument here is, for instance, the European Chips Act, which is one tool of a stronger European industrial policy. We should not imagine we can steer the economy and innovation through state intervention, but in terms of providing conditions for research and innovation that are better than what we have today, encouraging European cooperation on the really big new technological inventions that need to be done also here, and not only in China and the U.S., Europe is well advised to work together.
And then another thing is the Raw Materials Act. So, where are our import dependencies from China? So, what do we need to sustain our industry? Where are the alternative sources for rare earth? And again, we come to the question of Africa here. I would say the EU today is already in a better place than two years ago when I was working on the book. So, something has happened here.
And then we have to be a stronger and more convincing player when we interact internationally. Vis-a-vis the U.S., we've already discussed the dimension of our defense alliance with the U.S. that really plays in decisively, in my view, if we are an appreciated and trusted partner that contributes more to NATO, that is definitely helpful for anything we do with the United States. We should not forget that we actually are an attractive partner also in economic terms. We often look at the weaknesses, but we also need to see we are still the largest and most wealthy market the U.S. will want to trade with in the world. And so does China. We need to make sure we sustain that market, we work against the potential divisions within the market and make sure that our trade policy gets more ambitious again because we have had a phase where, under that general theme of criticism of globalization, even deglobalization that seemed to happen, trade deals were really on the back burner. After, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership that failed between the U.S. and the EU, I think now is the phase where we recognize that having good trade deals that include minimal standards in areas that we care about, for instance, climate transition, labor laws, and other things, we are in a better place when we have them than when we don't have them.
And we need to talk about trade policy with our societies in a much more engaged way because if you look at public opinion poll data, people don't like that very much. But we need to explain why in the world of today where our global order that Europe needs, which is built on rules and institutions, is under so much threat, all the bits and pieces that we can create and maintain are actually helpful, and trade deals are one of them. I believe that Europe has many things to do vis-a-vis China. It also needs to be very clear-eyed not only on the risk that the relationship, which is very close with China, has for us in Europe but also, when European countries work in China, they also run certain risks, for instance, that their business activities, at some point, get restrained by China, that there are offers to make deals with Chinese partners that may create a situation where companies lose control over certain business areas, and so on. So, a lot is happening in the Chinese market as well. And it seems to me that, in particular medium-sized enterprises that operate there are increasingly risk-aware.
Now, having spoken about so many risks in the Chinese-European relationship, I still think it is, at this point, a relationship which is beneficial to both sides, and that we need to bear in mind. Also, China, in the short and medium term, will not turn away from Europe. But it will increase its competitiveness, it will, at some point, crowd some of the European companies out of their market. That can happen to the European automobile industry, maybe more quickly than we may think today, because they are gaining competitiveness very quickly, they have reached a level of...for instance, in the field of battery, of technological advancement that we simply don't have in Europe so that there are real pressures here on Europe to do better.
But the last point I wish to make where we need a partnership with China actually is on global climate transition. Because China is such a huge actor globally with so many inroads into countries in Africa, in Europe, in the Middle East, that, if China buys into a global climate-change agenda and becomes a helpful partner in ensuring just climate transition worldwide, we will all be in a much better place together. While we see China as a systemic competitor and as an economic competitor, the big challenge is really to keep it on board as a partner as well.
SR: Daniela, I would love to speak more about China, but I think what I do want to talk to you about is the whole question of the resilience of democracies in the face of all the kinds of formidable crises, the polycrises, as they are called, wars, pandemics, climate change, which all require strategic responses that may even be in tension with one another. So, if you recall, at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, often people argue that autocratic regimes were much better equipped than liberal democracies to deal with public-health crises. And, of course, people looked at China and said, "Look, they've got it right and we are not doing such a good job." Now, in retrospect, it doesn't appear that China did such a good job and it's not very clear that the authoritative states did much better in dealing with the pandemic. In fact, I think the only constant is that all the governments which were led by women leaders did much better under COVID. So, gender seems to have played a greater role than democracy. But given that is the case, do you think there will be or has to be some kind of trade-off between security and economic performance and democracy? So, do you think our growing concern with security, the tendency towards securitization that you are pointing to, that will transform democracies in many ways, and detrimental ways, so that the core values of individual freedom, liberty, which are at the heart of European self-understanding, as a polity, can be at risk when they could be eroded in the name of security and that could feed authoritarian tendencies?
DS: This definitely describes a situation that we see happening around the world. I remember very well that, at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis when European countries, but also the EU as a whole was struggling for its answers, I was interviewed, and journalists were really completely convinced that authoritarian regimes do a much better job and are the superior system at times of crises. And, as we have now become used to multiple crises happening at the same time and years of crises management, I felt there was suddenly a moment where people said, "After all, maybe our systems are just dysfunctional?"
And that is, of course, something that is shocking and also fundamentally wrong. It doesn't mean the system as such is wrong, but it means we have to think about how to improve the system. And, in some cases, this can mean more decentralization, in other cases it may mean more things done together on a European scale. And definitely it should not mean we end or exclude democratic process, but we may need to rethink ways of consulting, ways of deciding, and really step into a much more open-minded reflection or new forms of participation.
So, my answer would be exactly the other than saying, "Okay, the system is crap, we should just turn towards those that pull through from the top and can decide quickly and then implement within society." We see now the failure of the approach of China, which was so clear, and actually endangered the stability of the government there. I think the bottom line is pretty clear here.
But now there is a different additional threat, and that is the feeling of citizens that their security is under a threat. And that is not only the military threat that Russia poses to Europe, it is the world's second largest nuclear power that is waging a war a thousand kilometers from the German capital. That as such is, obviously, a threat. But it's also a threat within societies. And people feel that things are happening. We suddenly discuss the resilience of infrastructure. So, it's a domestic security issue, that, if there is an attack, it can have very human consequences. So, people will feel it and they will be worried, and they will maybe ask for a stronger state and more protection.
This doesn't mean that democracy collapses but it means that, if in that moment you have authoritarian-minded leadership, still democratically-elected but with a certain leaning to actually wanting to strengthen the role of the state and actually wanting to cut down on certain civil liberties, this is their moment. And we should face that. In the COVID-19 crisis, this has already happened. Countries actually said we are in an emergency situation so we need to apply certain emergency laws which can mean we reduce the ability of the parliament to play its normal role. This happened, for instance, in Hungary. And this is a risk, really. Because the question is always, "When do you then declare the emergency to have ended? How do you exploit the situation while you have reduced the scope of rights for your domestic parliament?" I think those risks are actually very real. But the answer, again, can only be about strengthening and finding new ways for democratic decision making and participation on the one hand and then better protection.
So, the term we have to learn to live with is the term of resilience. Why is it such a big shift? Because, if we talk about resilience, we assume we will be attacked. We are vulnerable, we know that. Because resilience means the ability to bounce back. But before you have to bounce back, something bad happens. And to think through what we need to enable not only our infrastructure systems to work in an emergency where we have had an attack, it's also how does society digest attacks? It can be a terrorist attack, it can be an attack on fresh-water procurement, for instance, which can have health consequences. Things like that are imaginable. And those people who work on the protection of critical infrastructure in Western societies, they know very well because they sometimes prevent such attacks.
And to provide the mechanisms, the leadership, and the societal resilience to deal with those situations is crucial. We have to face the new reality in the 2020s, really, where, I would say, the illusion of moving from the Cold War to decades of stability and peace and a situation where things always go forward and get better, that is clearly over. So, we have to deal with multiple crises at the same time, possibly with attacks and with challenges, and we have to do it within our democracies. And that's where, I would say, the challenge of our time sits on top of the actual management of the crises. And here I would say that Russia's war on Ukraine is a crisis not only for Ukraine as a country but for the political West to defend fundamental norms and principles of non-attack of national sovereignty, of prosecution of war crimes. There's so much we all have to lose in Ukraine, which I think it's really a turning point, how this war ends will have repercussions for far more than just Ukraine and Russia.
SR: So, Daniela, one final question on the global perspective, situating both transatlantic relations; because, you know, from the perspective of China or India or Turkey, Europe and the U.S. are being clubbed together under "The West," and you've also used the term "the political West" often. And on the other hand, democracy is not doing well in most parts of the world. The question here would be, the U.S. has had several waves of trying to do democracy promotion abroad, not very successfully, to be very honest, and the question for me would be, under your idea of a strategic autonomy for the EU and for Europe, what kind of relationship do you envisage for the EU in a global arena in which maybe international institutions need to be reshaped but also the EU will have to take a stand on democracies not just within Europe? But at a time when we see a lot of erosion of liberal democratic values and principles in Hungary and Poland itself, the Europe will not be a very convincing actor and a persuasive one if it doesn't address its internal problems with democracy, but it will need to go out to pursue the goal of democratization supported, in some shape or form, elsewhere as well. For example, take a very concrete case of Afghanistan, and the case would be what kind of a cooperation should there be with a regime like the Taliban, which has basically made it impossible for girls to attend schools or women to go to universities? And yet, if we were to say, "Okay, there is going to be just no dialogue with them at all," we lose any possibility to support those who are fighting for their rights within these countries.
DS: You mentioned one crucial point, and that's that the EU's credibility suffers if it doesn't manage to sustain its own principles, which every single member state signed up to, within its own borders. So, for me, the starting point is that the EU does much better in protecting rule of law and democracy within the European Union, that's the starting point. And I think that the people who wrote the EU treaties that we have today, in the beginning, never thought that those principles could actually come under threat. Which is the reason why we are catching up with inventing now new mechanisms to actually protect the fundamental principles, but we need the buy-in of all countries, even those that already break the principles to install new mechanisms that can serve to protect them. So, it's, obviously, very complicated and only works if very smart deals are struck.
The latest and, I think, most powerful addition to the toolkit was the conditionality in the NextGenEU fund, which is a 750 billion EUR fund which can only be paid out if the recipient countries fully implement rule of law conditionality that comes with the fund. So, that's very important.
Now, turning this to the world outside, it is very hard that, in a case like Afghanistan, you have a regime in place which is so radical and closed off that, from government to government, you can't really have a dialogue on principles, for instance, of human rights. You mentioned the issue of girls not being able to go to school, so, things that Europe would support, and not only ideally but also financially. And yet it can't. So, what is happening at the moment is that, in a pretty pragmatic way, refugees from Afghanistan and the diaspora, which may have left before the recent takeover of the Taliban, try to pursue good work outside of Afghanistan and try to reach into the country as best as they can, they get support from the EU and other governments, of course, from foundations. And that is at least something one can do. And they are citizens from Afghanistan, so, they have legitimacy to get engaged in the fate of their own country.
The tricky question in terms of foreign policy towards Afghanistan is, if you completely turn away and say, "We do not want to work with this regime. We do not want to have economic deals," the risk is, of course, always that society suffers greatly. And in Afghanistan the situation on the ground is extremely dire. Food crisis, health crisis in many parts of the country, and now, very recently, real restrictions on international NGOs working in the country. So, for some months, it looked like, okay, on a government level, there's no productive dialogue but you can still help citizens within the country through established channels of humanitarian aid, NGO activities, and so on, and so on, but, most recently, this space has shrunk further. So, it is a real challenge.
But, as a principal, because you also asked for the legitimacy of that external aid coming, I believe if there is a demand from within the country for certain ways – and here we are talking about basic needs, right, it's not, you know, even human-rights work, which also is of key importance but it's basically feeding children, families, it is providing healthcare what is needed so dearly on the ground. I think if there is a demand from the country, there's almost a humanitarian obligation to help. And once those needs are met and people stop dying...and again, there is a demand by actors from within the country to get some kind of support for what they think they can do for their own country, this is then where aids by governments can come to maybe, at some point, prepare the grounds for really improving the situation in terms of girls going back to school again, women getting back at least certain rights. At this moment, we are really seeing the consequences of this huge backlash in Afghanistan in a very humanitarian-crisis way, but the agenda is very big, what people from Afghanistan want to achieve in their country because they have had better times.
SR: Daniela, thank you so much for this really wide-ranging conversation on EU strategic conundrums, but also on a very sharp analysis of what it will mean for Europe to act and the EU as a collective actor in a messy, complicated multipolar world.
DS: Thank you so much, Shalini. Thanks for all your challenging questions and I really enjoyed the conversation with you.
SR: One of the most important questions for European societies today is whether and to what extent the war in Ukraine may undermine the coordinated efforts to address the climate crisis through the green transition. While there are certainly uncomfortable trade-offs between environmental protection and increasing military expenditure in the current context, Daniela has just reminded us that a sufficiently broad and comprehensive view of security should, in principle, strive to reconcile such seemingly antithetical strategic priorities.
However, the tension between democratic values and progressive foreign policy ideals on the one hand, and new energy dependence on autocratic regimes in the Middle East on the other should not be minimized. The ‘greening’ of the European economy as planned is there for not only an environmental imperative, but also a political one. Climate transition is also a key strategic objective where the European Union can and indeed must cooperate with China. This would certainly tame and partly keep in check the systemic economic rivalry between the two. Speaking of China, we can't ignore the dangerously seductive appeal of autocratic regimes in our current age of multiple crises. The illusion of greater security and societal resistance can easily undermine faith in democracy. So, this will be a particularly formidable challenge for European societies, highly polarized as they also are in the years to come. Still, the European Union will only be able to provide an adequate response to these challenges if it also seriously addresses anti-democratic tendencies within each of its member states and continues to invest both symbolic and material resources, in supporting democratic efforts elsewhere in the world too.
This was the tenth episode of season six of Democracy in Question. Thank you very much for listening and do join us again for the next season starting soon. Please go back and listen to any episode you might have missed. And of course, let your friends know about the podcast if you're enjoying it. You can stay in touch with the work of the Central European University at www.ceu.edu, and the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy at www.graduateinstitute.ch\democracy.