The fundament of the West’s rule of law promising equality before the law to every citizen of a liberal-democratic state has been the idea of the emancipation of the individual from subordinating oneself to a group and being subjugated by restrictive customs, laws and authorities (Ball, 2021). Basic rights include the freedom of thought, belief, political opinion as well as the right of assemblage and intellectual property to name but a handful. These have been under attack by non-Western states and radical Western groups as exhaustively covered in mainstream media and research. That basic rights have been infringed upon by Western governments themselves, however, has been widely omitted from the political discourse.
That something is not right with the current state of society and politics is reflected in falling numbers of trust in governments in the West, a majority of people there believing that politicians and media purposely try to mislead with false or grossly distorted information and perceptions of rising inequalities (Edelman, 2021). And low trust in government institutions endangers the survival of democratic systems and facilitates the rise of autocratic regimes.
A long-promised “return to normal” eliminating gradually restrictions on individual freedoms in most Western countries has been drawn out by politicians ever citing fears of uncontrollable outbreaks of Sars-CoV-2 infections. Vaccination programs show sobering results across EU countries, which begun with a planned-economy style collective purchase of vaccine doses to be then distributed according to fixed quotas. At last, with the upcoming summer season there is hope that restrictions will be lifted as the economic impact of artificially closing down whole economies over months and instigating stimulus packages consisting of money-printing schemes is starting to show negative effects. With increases of money supply in the US (around 30% since January 2020 until April 2021 according to the Federal Reserve, 2021) and EU (almost 20% in the same period according to data from the European Central Bank, 2021) up to new record highs while economic output has shrunk, this is the textbook definition of inflation.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic prompted governments to introduce months-long lockdowns and restrictions, there have been already consistent and mounting pressures from different authorities and institutions on basic individual rights. More blatant incidences of basic rights violations have been the increasing intrusion of the FBI and NSA on American as well as European citizens, the unjustified prosecution of individuals due to their ethnicity or religion and the disregard to stem executive abuse (Guardian, 2015; German, 2019). Or the neo-Marxist, and hence anti-democratic, demands of dismantling Western democracies of agenda-driven, violence-embracing political movements like Black Lives Matter (Issar, 2021).
Basic rights under attack
During the Covid-19 pandemic, governments in Western states have seized the opportunity to infringe on basic rights, like the right to assemble in public and private, and extended their own remits.
There have been restrictions on free speech before and most strictly during lockdowns, mainstream media would ridicule renegade opinions and suppress dissenting voices from other corners of science, largely giving the stage to virologists working in government-related institutions (Council of Europe, 2021). Violations of the freedom of journalists through state authorities have not only taken place in authoritarian regimes but also in Western democracies. Consequences are that access to independent sources of information, vital to democracies, has become more difficult and the spread of disinformation larger as well as the monopolizing of the media space by government narratives (Reporters Without Borders, 2021).
Claiming that lockdowns were absolutely necessary to stave off rising infection numbers and avoid huge numbers of dead, the most recent publication from the Clinician Outreach and Communication Authority Webinar from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention uncovered the deception of such declarations. The overall survival rate of a Covid-19 infection for hospitalized adults (all age groups) is a whopping 97.2% quickly falling with a rising number of comorbidities (the most important relating to coronary vascular diseases, diabetes and obesity, not taking age as the main risk factor into account) to 66.6% for in-patients with five or more comorbidities (CDC, 2021). Also, the number of infections shows an apparent seasonality with spikes in the colder months of the year (Economist, 2021). The reasoning of lockdowns may look convincing on paper but they ignore realities of human society. Not to look at therapies denied to patients with organic diseases at hospitals and basic care services (e.g. routine immunization, dental services, rehabilitation programs), the reduced access to mental healthcare facilities should have raised concerns in times of increased cases of anxiety, depression and addiction (Ciucci, 2020). This does not even include a rising number of intrafamilial conflicts and cases of domestic abuse due to stay-at-home orders, the risk of a larger amount of suicides or higher levels of community distress (Pirkis et al., 2021).
The widespread introduction of new emergency powers in Western democracies appeared to be rational as a reaction to a pandemic, but the measures taken in national parliaments deserve a closer scrutiny. Several European governments have assumed more powers to regulate financial and political decision-making enlarging their hold over sub-national levels of politics. For example, the German government amended the Infection Protection Act in fact granting the federal government in Berlin to overrule the decision of federal state governments if deemed necessary without specifying exact indices. In France, a new law on urgent measures was adopted similarly granting extensive powers to the government, though only by parliamentary approval, measures can be prolonged indefinitely. In Italy, new laws were introduced due to the absence of prescriptions in its Constitution; however, the practice of the Italian government of ruling by prime ministerial decrees which has raised questions for the lack of legal certainty and suspicions of abuse of government powers to the detriment of parliamentary control (European Parliament, 2021). History teaches us that governments like to accrue temporary powers during periods of crises (be the real or artificial) which then tend to remain in place after the emergency has passed.
A further basic right that has come under attack has been intellectual property. The idea of intellectual property and how to protect it have its origin in the 19th century and have contributed to a flourishing of research and development (Ball, 2021). Recent discussions about a waiver on intellectual property rights for the newly-developed vaccines against Sars-CoV-2 would set a dangerous precedent to subvert this important keystone of the Western system of values. Proponents claim that access to the patents would put developing states into the position of mass-producing vaccines. Unfortunately, the lack of infrastructure and material to produce the components means that even with an exemption on the patents, these countries will not be able to produce any significant amounts in the first place (Ellyatt, 2021). Such proclamations are nothing but populism dressed as humanitarian aid. Actually, there exists already an agreement (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, TRIPS) which allows states seeking access to medicines to grant obligatory licenses; these licenses, nevertheless, have to comply to many requirements such as a fair compensation for the patent holder (Bonadio & Fontanelli, 2021). Claims to get free access to patents disregard the immense costs and use of resources to develop new pharmacies. Policies of collectivizing benefits of intellectual property and not compensating private companies are pernicious to basic rights in democracies.
Conclusion
As long as governments are not willing to rethink their policy approaches, citizens’ trust in the Western model of democracy will decrease. Governments need to increase the transparency of political deliberations and policymaking as well as empowering citizens’ voices in the political process assured by a decentralization of decision-making to a local level where policies can be attuned to the needs on the ground. As most central governments and the EU institutions in Brussels have had an abysmal record of responding to the Covid-19 pandemic, discussions of further centralizing decision-making powers away from the sub-national level in questions of health are alarming. Setting precedents in undermining basic rights such as increasing government powers in self-declared emergencies or the suspension of (intellectual) property rights is a real danger for democracies. The unsettling consequence of a continued autochthonic attack on the basis of the West’s rule of law by state institutions puts consequently all global supranational institutions of jurisdiction, such as the United Nations or the International Court of Justice, in peril.
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By Andreas Rösl : The European Institute for International Law and International Relations.
