The Seventh Value – Episode Three: Democracy

Speaker of the UK House of Commons – pre recording:
Order!

John McStravick:
In August 2019, the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson – who’d only come to power a month previously – prorogued the two House of Parliament which essentially means they shut down parliament. This happens, but it's usually a formality so you will close the parliament between sessions, and usually just for a few days. This time, the government was suspending Parliament for five weeks.

Speaker of the UK House of Commons – pre recording:
There were people shouting. There will be an opportunity for other points of order, but the Prime Minister must and will be heard.

John McStravick:
Most MPs and most peers agree that Brexit would happen in some form, but they really, really couldn't reach an agreement on what it would look like. What they did also agree on, as folks had shown, was they didn't want to leave the EU without any kind of deal whatsoever, a so-called no-deal Brexit. And the government was denying that it was trying to silence Parliament, but I think the unprecedented nature of closing Parliament for five weeks made it pretty clear that that was essentially what it was doing. What you had was essentially direct democracy versus representative democracy.

John McStravick:
Direct democracy because you had a referendum of which all citizens over 18 could have voted in, and the majority of people who voted had said they wanted Brexit. I think it was something like 17 and a half million people, which was the most Britons who'd ever voted for anything. And representative democracy because you had MPs who were representing those same citizens who were saying that they didn't want Brexit to be delivered in this way. The whole slogan of Brexit “Take back control” had been implemented or was being implemented by denying control to a lot of elected representatives. The sort of thing you see elsewhere, parliaments being closed down or trying to silence elected representatives, and it wasn't just me who felt that way.

Speaker of the UK House of Commons – pre recording:
This court has already concluded that the Prime Minister's advice to Her Majesty was unlawful, void, and of no effect.

John McStravick:
Two weeks later, the Supreme Court ruled that shutting parliament had been unlawful.

Speaker of the UK House of Commons – pre recording:
This is the unanimous judgment of all 11 justices.

John McStravick:
It was a real concrete example of democracy fighting with itself.

Introduction – Juli Simond
Europe is built around six different values that make up the fabric and face of the European Union: human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights. Over 70 years ago, these founding pillars were written into the Treaty of the European Union.

Guest:
The six European values.

Juli Simond:
But how have they with stood the test of time?

Guest:
And then...

Juli Simond:
From deconstructing the original meaning, to reimagining the future.

Guests:
Democracy.
The whole piece and democracy story is just window dressing.

Juli Simond:
This is The Seventh Value.

Guests:
Free economy. I'm really ashamed I don't know.
Economic gains.
No, I don't know the other ones.
Some sort of connection would be good.

Juli Simond:
Today, we talked to John McStravick from Agora. Where do you live?

John McStravick:
Belfast.

Juli Simond:
Where do you work?

John McStravick:
Agora.

Juli Simond:
What values are important to you?

John McStravick:
Democracy, freedom, liberty, happiness.

Juli Simond:
What motivates you to work hard?

John McStravick:
Duty to others and wanting to share knowledge with them.

Juli Simond:
What did you want to be when you were small?

John McStravick:
An architect.

Juli Simond:
And lastly, if you ruled your own country, what would be the first law that you would introduce?

John McStravick:
Better cycling provision. Belfast has many virtues, but all of the things that it's a very car driven.

Juli Simond:
Together, we look behind the often firmly closed doors of one of politics' most mysterious chambers, foreign policy. In other words, what to do with the EU's third value, democracy.

John McStravick:
I'm vice-chair and a co-founder of Agora. We call ourselves the open forum for foreign policy. So, we look as I think back at a whole range of issues, but we're also trying to bring more voices into that debate.

Juli Simond:
So, democracy. It's one of those terms we learned about in high school, often analyzing its roots in Greek history. Before we delve any deeper, how would you personally define democracy, John?

John McStravick:
There is the mechanics of it, if you like. It's people going to elections, and we talk about the democratic process, but I think it's really important that it's seen as more than that, so how does that tie in with legitimacy? How does that tie in with consent? How does that tie in with transparency and building trust between populations and the people that represent them? And of course, democracies have to be underpinned by other things, so I think you have other podcasts you're doing in the series on things like rule of law and freedom, and of course, that includes freedom of expression and freedom of information. So I would give it quite a broad definition, myself.

Juli Simond:
Do you know how or why there was a need to put this value in writing as fundamental in the treaty?

John McStravick:
Well, it's not that unusual for the EU to put quite a lot of things in preamble that sometimes mean quite a lot and sometimes mean not very much, affirming one thing or committing to another thing, and people don't necessarily know for sure what that exactly means. I would view it very much as a post-World War II organisation, at least in its genesis, so there was a desire to differentiate the EU. So, democracy was very important for Europe's identity, and I think still is, particularly in some of those Eastern European countries that came in 2004 that saw joining the EU, at least at the time, very much as a way of proving at a certain democracy.

Juli Simond:
And if we dive quickly into the personal, how do you try to apply democracy in your day-to-day life?

John McStravick:
I think engaging people is always a positive thing. I don't know if engagement is necessarily the same as democracy, but for the purpose of this answer, I'm going to suggest that they're good friends of one another. I think having the strength of character as a person or as an organisation to be challenged and want to be challenged and want to listen to different views improves us.

Juli Simond:
If we think about the fact that the average person on the street doesn't know much about the foreign policy, the decision-making process of it all, does that mean that democracy is incompatible with how we conduct foreign affairs?

John McStravick:
No, I don't think they do have to be incompatible at all, and I think in a positive scenario, you would want them to be reinforcing each other. Thinking about my own personal experience, there is more of a closed door when it comes to foreign policy, maybe, than to other areas of policy. There is a recognition now when I speak to people who are engaged in foreign policy that they also want that challenge a little bit more, that when the nature of risk and threat is changing, but also is coming at civil services faster, they want wider range of views, and they want to hear from more people where they think those threats might be coming from. People will respect you more if they feel engaged. If it's explained to them, that two-way conversation where you've got policy makers listening to their populations.

Juli Simond:
Is there a great difference, then, between the people who have some say in the decisions and those who feel the impact?

John McStravick:
I think there's sometimes a bit of a false debate between, I suppose, on the one hand, this quite idealistic view that all policy, including foreign policy, should be up for debate and something that's discussed at length. Clearly, we don't want to get foreign policy wrong, or indeed any policy wrong, and therefore it is important to listen to experts, but I think we should also challenge that very pure, unalloyed view of some realists or some people who engage in foreign policy that it should only be the preserve of experts.

John McStravick:
I think there's a middle ground where we want to be engaging with people and listening to more voices, and then maybe it is experts that actually distill back that down into something. And we know that governments can feel tied in their foreign policy when they don't feel they have legitimacy. Look at the recent example of the US withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. That seems to be something which is quite popular with the American public, certainly popular with the Democrat-voting base. It doesn't seem to be going swimmingly well for Afghans and it's creating problems around now, people needing to leave because of drivers of migration. So, on one hand, you've got something which is democratically welcomed, but the effects of that aren't necessarily quite so welcome.

Juli Simond:
Do you think, then, that in order to have a more democratic foreign policy, it's also an education issue, because you've spoken about engagement, but what about educating people and just letting them know what's happening? I mean, this is the driving factor of engagement, isn't it?

John McStravick:
Absolutely, education is crucial. I mean, in lots of walks of life, not necessarily just this one, but it's absolutely crucial. We're in a funny position, really, as a society that there's more information out there than ever, but there's not necessarily more wisdom. So it's really important, not just that people are given access to information and can look these things up, though of course that is important, but also that maybe people are able to hear from experts and policy makers and educators on how they can make sense of that information, and what that actually means for people.

Juli Simond:
Many would argue that citizens' primary interests have to do with pocketbook issues. So, security, taxes, health, education. Do you think that people take enough notice of foreign affairs and has that changed throughout the years?

John McStravick:
Often people are interested in the non-core parts of international affairs, for example, so they might be, if there are green voter interested in using free trade agreements to make supply chains fairer or greener, more sustainable. Of course that's counter with the fact that people also want cheap clothes often, and maybe people, without knowing it, are quite interested in foreign affairs. Think sometimes, without realising it, we are interested in foreign policy as citizens, but it is not necessarily something that people are going to the ballot box to vote on.

Juli Simond:
So, if I can summarise, most of the government at large and the electorate isn't involved in foreign policy making. Is there currently any room for consent by the civil society in how one's country interacts with another?

John McStravick:
Yeah, I think it's not just important, but it's essential. I think there is a role for more people to have their say and for it to be democratised in that sense. It's quite interesting, actually, in doing some thinking for this podcast, I went and had to look at original, very early thinking around democracy, and people back in Greece, Plato and Socrates, one of the issues that they had with democracy was... one of the examples they gave of it not working was over flip flopping over wars with Sparta and Athens, between Sparta and Athens, so that debate about whether democracy or a wider range of voices results in poorer or less consistent decision-making in foreign policy is not a new one.

John McStravick:
I'm speaking from the UK. There are real opportunities for example, with diaspora communities, but also these are the people who really understand those societies and maybe have a different perspective on what the implications of a foreign policy decision might be for them. So, I think it's really, really important, not just for the UK, but for other countries to do this and find that way of bridging a gap between civil society and those making policy. Doesn't have to always come from citizens directly. Their representatives can do this, and parties and opposition can do this. But yeah, I think it has to be about balance. Scrutiny is important.

Juli Simond:
So, in your opinion, which one is more important: our democratic process or a strong foreign policy?

John McStravick:
Well, I hope they're compatible, and that we don't have to choose. I suppose where I would see them as tying in with the each other is that it's actually necessary to counter those active threats to democracy through our foreign policy, and it's necessary to embody democracy, if we're telling others they should be doing it. A weak foreign policy, for me, stems from a lack of consistency, a lack of clarity and a lack of credibility. So, do your allies, and do, maybe, your competitors, can they predict the sort of way that you're likely to behave? What you're likely to stand for? And actually if push comes to shove, are you willing to stand up for those things that you say that you represent and are defending? That, to me, when those are absent, that's when you have a weak foreign policy.

Ursula von der Leyen:
We are entering a new era of hyper competitiveness, an era in which some stop at nothing to gain influence, from vaccine promises to high interest loans, from missiles to misinformation. An era of regional rivalries and major powers refocusing their attention towards each other. Recent events in Afghanistan are not the cause of this change, but they are a symptom of it.

Juli Simond:
You just listened to a part of the 2021 State of the Union by Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission.

Looking at our track record of foreign policy, it's sometimes hard to read why we intervene internationally in some cases, but not in others. Why we negotiate with some governments, and not with others. Why we chastise some leaders, and not others. What would you say is the main driving factor for foreign policy for European countries at the moment?

John McStravick:
I think all governments want their countries to be safe and to be prosperous, so that's a common thread that runs through all of it, even if sometimes decisions are made which can actually undermine that. You asked about Europe, there are of course differences within Europe, so countries such as France and the UK, I think because of their colonial history, tend to be more comfortable making statements or intervening abroad. A country like Germany is certainly less interventionist, again, possibly because of its history. I think that Europe, as a whole, maybe is doing a bit of soul searching, actually, when it comes as to its foreign policy priorities that I don't think it really fully knows what it wants this relationship with the US to be, for example. I don't think it fully knows what it wants its relationship with China to be. With both of these countries, I think there are areas where it's friend, and area where it's foe, or competitor, or at least has different stance in the world.

Juli Simond:
If your country's government officials can radically change every few years through new elections, can and how should we build a coherent foreign policy?

John McStravick:
That's a good question. So, I think that actually foreign policy is one area where there isn't quite such debate of left and right. One way of looking this, I suppose, might be that quite often, conservatives, including small state conservatives, will spend more on the military, for example, and foreign policy issues in general. But it also means that it's quite difficult for people to express their foreign policy preferences at the ballot box, so this is another reason why it's quite difficult to find a way of democratically dealing with foreign policy. To specifically answer your question on how can countries counter this, I think the countries that do well at this are ones that have a real strong sense of what they stand for. I think somewhere like Sweden people are not expecting the Swedes to go in and engage militarily, but they do have a very consistent policy when it comes to development aid.

John McStravick:
Of course, not everyone at any society is always going to agree with what the government does, but there seems to be a relatively high degree of public's support or at least public understanding for the fact that's what the government is doing. Canada, maybe, is another example of this. There has been a public debate, or at least there's been a process of development over a period, a number of years, that has helped people arrive at a sense of what a country stands for and what it is willing to do. That means that governments of whatever color are able to focus on the implementation of that and have some degree of consistency.

John McStravick:
I think it also means that government's policy makers, then, can be more effectively reactive to crises that emerge. There was a real problem in the EU when there was a so-called migration crisis in the mid-2010s that, really, a lot of countries hadn't had that debate about what it meant to have lots of migrants coming in from the Middle East into their countries, and they were having to debate that at the same time as making policy, and that didn't really work well for anyone, I don't think.

Juli Simond:
Many of today's challenges transcend borders, cyber crime, terrorism, environmental issues, migration. This underlines the need for greater EU integration in foreign policy. How can the EU create foreign policy strategies that involve all member states and leave aside the particular interests of each of them?

John McStravick:
If either of us have the answer to this question, we'd be extremely popular in the EU's External Action Service. I mean, I think the cool thing about European foreign security policy is that actually not... I mean, this is the case with lots of areas, but not all EU member states want to be involved, for a number of reasons. Someone like Denmark is really opposed to the pooling of sovereignty in this area, particularly opposed to it. Other countries, Ireland springs to mind, are sort of non-interventionist constitutionally, so the number of opt-outs in EU policy areas has grown exponentially over the last couple of decades anyway, but particularly in matters that relate to security and defense policy.

John McStravick:
I think something which is particularly pertinent to Europe is this desire to want to defend what's sometimes called the rules-based international system or the rules-based order. This is really important if you're a small country, right? So, if you're the US, or if you're China, maybe if you are India or Russia, you have other tools you can use for asserting yourself internationally. I think that there is an acceptance now amongst all European countries that if you're relatively small, if you don't have lots of that hard power to bring to the party, then it's really important for your trade and your prosperity and your freedom to have these international organisations and some sort of rules to the road that protect you, to some extent, and allow you to get on in the world.

John McStravick:
The EU is good at technical work. It's not always quite so good at work that you might consider strategic. When it's had forays into more traditional foreign policy areas, they've not always gone brilliantly, but really the engine of foreign policy is still the European Council. The heads of the various member states, they're the ones who are making the decisions. A lot of those decisions require unanimity. So what we're left with is quite lowest common denominator foreign policy, which is not very effective.

John McStravick:
I think there are a number of things that can be done, though. I think that EEAS needs to build its credibility, and that isn't necessarily done by trying to be more ambitious or extend its reach, but by being seen as a safe pair of hands by national capitals in the way that it gathers information and in the recommendations that it makes. Maybe also the EU can prove its worth by helping member states to deal with newer threats. Again, I think about something like cyber attacks, where there aren't necessarily those expertise at the same level in all member states, but if you've got an integration economy across all the EU, it's in everyone's interest to ensure that we're resilient online in all of them. I don't see a EU common foreign security policy replacing national foreign policies anytime soon, and I'm not sure that it should try to, actually, but I think that by sticking to a narrow range of areas where the EU can provide added value, it can probably complement those national policies quite effectively.

Juli Simond:
Time to wrap up, but not before we look ahead. What should the future of foreign policy look like?

John McStravick:
I have a research as a version to answering questions too directly that say “should”. I don't quite trust myself saying how things should look, but I'll make some suggestions. I think that the problem is when one has a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and I think that a lot of the structures that are in place for those hammers for creating foreign policy in European countries, they really were formed at a time that was different to ours. Going back to the Cold War, or state-to-state conflict, and that's not necessarily the nature of the threats that we face now. If you think about threats online, if you think about threats from non-state actors, if you think about much more threats that have layers to them, such as those arising from the climate emergency. Those will require different tools that aren't the traditional hammer to deal with them.

John McStravick:
Generally, people working foreign policy have been quite good, at least in recent decades, at keeping Europe safe and prosperous. That's a good thing. I think the goal is to find a way of getting a wider range of actors to speak to each other that increases legitimacy and that enhances the quality of decision-making through that engagement. And I think there is a role for education here.

Juli Simond:
And then I guess one large caveat of this idea of having more discussion, more voices coming in, is that we also don't want it to slow everything down?

John McStravick:
That's absolutely true. You don't always have the time to find a consensus, and that is a challenge. It's a challenge, but just because it's a challenge doesn't mean that we shy away from it.

Juli Simond:
Today, we've only discussed one of the six values of the European Union: human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights. If you could add anything to the mix, what would be your seventh value?

John McStravick:
It might seem a little bit highfalutin idealistic, but I think compassion. I think that those are great tools that we have in the six for underpinning rights for people as individuals, but you've got to tie those people together somehow, and I think the great thing about compassion is that it can allow people to do that.

Juli Simond:
Thank you for listening to The Seventh Value, a podcast in collaboration between Are We Europe and the Evans Foundation. I am Julie Simond, your host, and with me in the studio, our producer Anneleen Ophoff, and sound designer Wederik De Backer.