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Given Chinese officials’ penchant for diplomatese, not to say dialectic, it seems unlikely that the agenda for the ruling party’s annual “retreat” to a beach resort this week will set attendants’ pulses racing. But if the officials really wanted to be kept on their toes, there should be a last-minute change to the schedule to include a session on helicopters and autocracy — or rather on the lessons from the overthrow of Bangladesh’s long-serving leader, Sheikh Hasina.
Her flight by chopper from her residence in the face of an enraged crowd is not just a reminder of how seemingly the steeliest systems can be vulnerable to people-power; she had ruled increasingly despotically for the last 15 years. It is also the latest manifestation of a spirit of anti-incumbency sweeping the world. Whatever happens in Bangladesh now — and the revolution may not have a happy ending — it does seem after all to be premature to sound the knell for global democracy.
This year opened with a plethora of warnings about its fragility. (I should know as I wrote an essay on the theme.) The argument has firm statistical foundations. For 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, democracy was on a roll. Then the spirit of pluralism started to wither, not least in the world’s largest democracy, India. Simultaneously, established autocracies have become more bullish. China and Russia have in different ways turned more hardline. Allies and client states have taken note. Democracy seemed in the doldrums, if not decline.
Yet, halfway through the so-called year of democracy, in which more people are voting than ever before, a subtler narrative has emerged. If there is a common theme, it is that in election after election, whether in established liberal democracies, such as Britain and France, younger more rambunctious democracies with a dominant party such as India or South Africa, or authoritarian states such as Venezuela — and Turkey in its local elections — the incumbent has had a kicking.
And now Bangladesh. When in January it became the first country to vote in 2024, it seemed a harbinger of a grim year at the polls: Sheikh Hasina secured a fifth term after a sham of an election. Yet voters have had the last word. They may not have been able to oust her via the ballot box but they have via the street.
Inspiring as it is, Bangladesh’s upheaval does not of course on its own dispel the clouds over global democracy. Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria’s former president, warns of a frustration in Africa about western liberal democracy. Democratically elected leaders in Kenya and Nigeria have been served notice by street protests that victory at the ballot box is not a free pass. The most consequential election of all is still to come, in America, with the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, an avowed sceptic of the niceties of democracy. But right now if the FT was voting for its person of the year, the “voter” would be the obvious choice.
So what is an autocrat to make of all this? Digital technology has made it much easier for them to install surveillance states and exert control, and also to collaborate with other rogue actors in business and politics. Also, after the west’s debacles in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, Washington is seen in some parts of the world as a diminished rallying force for opposition parties. But autocrats are not immune to the pandemic of incumbency fatigue.
The cannier know there are two golden rules for survival: keep the army on side, and feed the people. Sheikh Hasina’s downfall had echoes of the most famous case of an autocrat fleeing by helicopter: Nicolae Ceaușescu, Romania’s longtime tyrant, in December 1989. Readers with longer memories will recall grainy footage of crowds outside the Communist party headquarters. The key moment was when shouts of armata e cu noi (“the army is with us”) rang out. The army — after days of shooting demonstrators — had changed sides.
So too the turning point in Bangladesh was when the army, traditionally close to Sheikh Hasina, made clear it would no longer repress the protests. In contrast, Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, has made sure the army leaders are embedded in a web of deals and corruption — as they are to different degrees in Beijing and Moscow.
Sheikh Hasina also lost sight of the second rule. She presided over jobless growth. Autocrats can oversee a basket case and survive. Zimbabwe is a case in point: it has a release valve, its border with South Africa, across which several million people have fled for work. North Korea is an extreme example of how totalitarianism plus isolation can ensure regime survival.
But the most powerful autocracies, Russia, China and Iran, need a subtler compact with their people. Vladimir Putin realised early on that if he improved living standards he would have a solid core of support. It seems a safe bet that for all his outward obduracy, and the apparent vibrancy of the militarised economy, he does not sleep easily at night.
As for Beijing, it was striking how swiftly it did a U-turn in 2022 when people took to the streets to protest over Covid restrictions. The apparatchiks are thought to have prioritised the economy for this week’s “retreat”. Quite right. It’s not just vital in the strategic competition with America. Ultimately, it’s about survival too.
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