The Long Game

Why is democracy struggling so much around the world? Francis Fukuyama on the recent history and unwritten future of the open society. Brought to you by [Congo Clothing Company]( Recently from The Signal: Robert Hamilton on the [strategy behind Ukraine’s shocking, high-risk, high-reward nvasion of Russia](. … Today: Why is democracy struggling so much around the world? Francis Fukuyama on the recent history and unwritten future of the open society. … Also: Michael Bluhm on why Norway is so skittish about a big economic deal with China. Subscribe to The Signal? Share with a friend. … Sent to you? Sign up [here](. Last man standing Anastasiia Krutota For 18 years now, democracy has been struggling globally. According to the U.S.-based monitor Freedom House, not only has the total number of democracies dropped; the democratic standards of those left—including the two biggest among them, the United States and India—have declined, as well. [Tunisia](, the birthplace of the Arab Spring, has fallen back into dictatorship. [Sudan](, a great democratic hope after the 2019 overthrow of the Islamist dictator Omar al-Bashir, is engulfed in a chaotic civil war, in which the two battling factions are also both attacking the Sudanese people. Meanwhile, Europe is more than two and a half years into a horrible conflict that one of the most powerful authoritarian states in the world started by invading its democratic neighbor—with the dual aim of controlling it and rolling back democracy regionally. Why is all of this happening? Francis Fukuyama is a senior fellow with the Freeman Spogli Institute and the director of the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy program at Stanford University. He’s written extensively on development and international politics, including in his 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man—which has appeared in more than 20 foreign editions—and most recently, [Liberalism and Its Discontents](. Fukuyama sees democracy as facing a daunting set of shifting challenges—from rising autocratic alternatives to escalating internal conflicts, to challenges arising from media, technology, and even human psychology. Over the long term, though, he sees democracy as more resilient, and authoritarian alternatives as weaker, than they might seem … [Read on]( The Signal is a new current-affairs brand for understanding democratic life, the trend lines shaping it, and the challenges confronting it. Learn [more](. And [join](—to be a valued member, support our growth, and have full access. Advertisement From Francis Fukuyama at The Signal: - “We’ve seen a waning of mainstream or legacy media sources—television networks, public broadcasters, major newspapers, and so on—and their displacement by alternative kinds of media. On the one hand, there’s been a proliferation of niche media properties for fragmented audiences; on the other, there’s been the rise of big social-media platforms, and media companies dependent on them, with business models that thrive not on providing high-quality information or interpretations but on viral content. The second of these has contributed very significantly to political polarization, particularly in the United States—because virality in news media favors more extreme voices over more moderate or measured or empirically grounded ones. In this sense, I think, things are apt to get worse.” - “Many authoritarian systems look extremely strong and competent—up to the point when they collapse. And we’ve seen some big authoritarian failures over the past year—in Iran, with everything that led to the killing of Mahsa Amini and the protests following it; in China, with the zero-Covid policy; in Russia, with the biggest failure of them all in the invasion of Ukraine. The disaster of this war is something that wouldn’t likely have happened if Russia were a more liberal society—if it weren’t just Putin ultimately making all the decisions, albeit after using his power to create widespread buy-in. The zero-Covid policy in China, too, was the product of a single leader at the top, Xi Jinping, who continued with the policy way beyond the point when it made any plausible sense. And in Iran, although the protest movement has died down, society is seething—and it’s increasingly clear that a majority of Iranians don’t see the regime as legitimate anymore.” - “The main thing democracy has going for it is the fundamental lack of any coherent alternative. That’s really the issue I was trying to address in my End of History book back in 1992. This wasn’t an argument that democracy would necessarily triumph everywhere—certainly not in the next generation. It was an exploration of the question of whether there was another political system that’s coherent, stable, and flourishing—and not democracy. And I simply don’t see that in the world. Which means, in the end, people are going to have to come back to democracy—if they want to have economic prosperity; if they want individual freedom; if they want to have security. I think this is what can give us the most hope that, in the long run, there’s going to be a return to democracy around the world.” [Read on]( The world is complex, ambiguous, and inherently uncertain … That’s why we look at it the way a detective would: Everything The Signal does starts with good questions, and every answer leads us to more of them. Become a [member]( to unlock this full conversation and explore the archive. Advertisement Wary of fast fashion? Shop Congo Clothing Company and make a difference—in style. [Learn more]( NOTES A tough call in the Arctic Shaah Shahidh For months, Norway’s Port of Kirkenes has been negotiating with the Chinese state-owned shipping firm COSCO (not to be confused with an American big-box retailer) on a long-term lease to operate part of the port. The deal would include significant investments in Kirkenes. COSCO is massive: Its container fleet has more capacity than any other shipping company in the world, and it holds major stakes in ports in Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, and the United States. The deal looks sweet for Kirkenes—but it might fall through. Earlier this month, Norway’s minister of justice said the government was prepared to block it; the country’s center-right opposition party has asked Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store to intervene; and as Gahr Store visited Beijing this week—meeting with President Xi Jinping and a delegation of Norwegian business leaders—there was no mention of Kirkenes at all. What’s going on here? Kirkenes isn’t an ordinary European port. It’s above the Arctic Circle, only a 20-minute drive from Russia and 53 nautical miles from the Russian Port of Pechenga. And ever since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Kirkenes and ports like it have become more strategically important. At the same time, Moscow and Beijing have been working more closely together in the Arctic; and according to Norway’s security service, the Chinese Communist Party is trying to build up its position and intelligence activities there. COSCO itself, meanwhile, has links to the CCP—every COSCO ship carries a party official—and even, [according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute](, links to the Chinese military. As Martin Wolf [emphasized on The Signal earlier this year](, security concerns like these have become a primary focus for the U.S. and its European allies in international trade—especially trade with China. For more than 30 years—since the fall of Soviet communism and the spread of the internet—the West’s priorities in global commerce had been opening new markets. But since, with geopolitical competition between the West and China intensifying, the economics of international deals like the Kirkenes lease are belonging less important than their implications for national and global security. After the fall of Soviet communism more than 30 years ago, the West’s priorities in global commerce had been opening new markets and increasing trade around the world. But as geopolitical competition with China has been heating up in recent years, the economics of deals like the Kirkenes lease—however sweet—are becoming less important than their implications for global and national security. —Michael Bluhm [Explore Notes]( Want more? Join The Signal to unlock full conversations with hundreds of contributors, explore the archive, and support our independent current-affairs coverage. 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