Democracy IDEAs

Democracy IDEAs is the podcast of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, and it treats democracy as a set of working parts that can fail. Recent episodes all open the same way, with a promise to help make sense of what is happening in democracy worldwide. After that, the voice changes. Alistair Scrutton, the Institute's head of communications, talks with climate thinkers; Khushboo Agarwal, its advisor for money in politics, hosts an episode from a series on that subject; Alexander Hudson, of the Democracy Assessment Team in Stockholm, leads a conversation that grew out of a workshop with journalists. The guests arrive with a specific vantage point. At CIVICUS International Civil Society Week, where the Institute was launching a report called 'Let the Courts Decide' on climate litigation, a Thai lawyer who coordinates the Community Resource Center Foundation talks about where such cases are heading in Thailand, the Mekong and wider Asia. Her answer is candid. Young activists at home, she says, are more drawn to the political crisis than to environmental work, though she still has hope for a younger generation. The money-in-politics conversation gets usefully technical. Its guest explains how campaign spending ceilings can fail to reach social media, how Belgium tried a ban on online campaigning and later reversed it, and how codes of conduct have appeared for online platforms at EU level, for Dutch political parties and in Albania. Climate returns at a larger scale. Professor Frank Biermann, founder of the Earth System Governance Project, sketches a Planetary Protection Council, alongside an Earth System Council that others have called for, which would bring together scientific assessments like the IPCC's and carry normative weight in the UN system, advisory at first. The Club of Rome's honorary president, a co-author of 'Earth for All, a Survival Guide for Humanity', argues that populist framing has persuaded policymakers across Europe that citizens doubt climate change or oppose migration, and that the data does not show this. Her fix is to leave the echo chambers and talk with people. 'Legitimult: Making democracy crisis-proof III' comes out of a Horizon Europe-funded project on crisis governance and turns to journalism during COVID-19. One guest describes Swedish politicians deferring to the public health authority, preparedness that varied from region to region, and local reporters exposing nursing homes where staff lacked protective gear, with Germany and a vocal Angela Merkel as the contrast. Across these episodes the attention stays on mechanisms: courts, spending rules, UN bodies, newsrooms. Guests admit to doubt, and several land on a guarded, working hope. The sign-off asks listeners to take part in constructing better societies. For a first listen, 'From Billboards to Bots: Rethinking Political Finance for a Digital World' shows the show at its most concrete, and 'Facing the climate crisis and democracy backsliding by reforming global governance' shows its widest angle.