We will undoubtedly remember 2020 as the year of the global pandemic, the ‘state of exception’ and the restrictions we had to face to deal with it. The year that is just coming to an end, however, was also marked by other important political events – not least the presidential elections in the United States of America, which is where this issue of Human Security begins. Joe Biden’s victory seems to herald the ‘end of the Trump era’ and, by extension, new lifeblood for the promotion of the liberal order at a global level. In his article, Gabriele Natalizia, Lecturer in Political Science at the Sapienza University of Rome, traces the history of the US’s answers to the ‘dilemma of democracy’ from the Cold War to the present day. In doing so, he reveals a counterintuitive continuum grounded in the strategic approach of the Obama, Trump and (in all likelihood) Biden administrations.
Also in 2020, state–society relations in many parts of the world have been shaped by (bio)securitization, and this trend has been accompanied by emerging and enduring protest movements. The presidential elections in Belarus kept ‘Europe’s last dictator’ at the helm of a country torn apart by the economic, health and social situation. The elections also brought thousands of people into the streets and squares of Belarus to support the all-female leadership of the political opposition, giving a bottom-up boost to the democratization process. Mara Morini, Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Genoa, reviews the events that characterized Belarus’s political life in the last few months and outlines the reactions of the European Union and Russia to the ‘Lukashenko crisis’.
The squares and streets of Hong Kong also continued to serve as a stage for rallies and riots. On 1 July 2020, the new national security law came into force, de facto delegitimizing and criminalizing the protest movement born in spring 2019. As argued by Gaia Perini, sinologist and Lecturer at the University of Bologna, Beijing’s iron fist has so far put a damper on political activism in Hong Kong, but over time this can only feed protests and dissent: as the socialist adage goes, ‘where there is oppression, there is revolt’. Next, Devparna Roy, Lecturer in Sociology and Anthropology at the Nazareth College of Rochester, shifts the focus of this issue of Human Security to the world’s largest democracy: India. Roy describes the light and shadow that result from the delicate relationships between religion, nationhood and political tolerance in a country with an extraordinarily rich and varied cultural heritage.
The last two articles bring the African continent into the discussion on democracy and elections. Starting from the re-election of Ivorian President Ouattara (in power since 2010), Andrea Cassani, Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Milan, addresses the question of the consolidation of democratic institutions by analysing patterns of respect and manipulation of presidential term limits in sub-Saharan Africa. With equal rigour, Anna Myriam Roccatello and Ilaria Martorelli – respectively Deputy Executive Director and Program Expert of the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) – offer an analysis of the difficult process of reconciliation and democratic transition in Ethiopia, broken by the political and armed clashes triggered by the unilateral management of the elections at the national level (postponed) and those in the Tigray region (held despite the ban by Addis Ababa).
The complete issue of Human Security n. 14 is available at this link (in Italian).
Published in:
