Did Biden’s democracy summit work?
Was this the shot in the arm democracy needs? This week US President Joe Biden pulled together more than one hundred global participants from government, civil society, and beyond for a two-day virtual Summit for Democracy. Among the outcomes was a $424 million US commitment to fight corruption and help independent media. But now comes the hard part: Putting in the work to prove that democracy isn’t dying out. Our experts—former US government officials with frontline democracy experience—share their insights on what to make of the big event and what to expect next.
- The great hope for this week’s gathering, says Rose, who worked with the Biden administration to shape its agenda for the summit, was to get democracies to “grapple with the very real challenges they each face at home and around the world. That means, in particular, working on issues that are so interlinked they can’t be defined as just ‘foreign’ or ‘domestic.’”
- Two interlinked areas stand out: corruption and technology. Rosesays the administration “nailed it” on the former, after putting out a well-regarded anti-corruption strategy. But she thinks the latter was a “missed opportunity” despite the administration’s “excellent effort to limit the export of surveillance-tech to autocrats.” Why? “Knowing something is important and knowing what to do about it are two different things.”
- What democracies should do about it, Graham says, is pursue three priorities for the coming year: “to counter authoritarian tech use, drive down a dangerous variance in tech policy approaches among allies and partners, and produce coherent domestic approaches to technology.”
Συνέχεια εδώ
Πηγή: atlanticcouncil.org
