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Author name: Pravar Petkar

Protecting British Democracy from Big Tech’s Big Money

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Author: Pravar Petkar, Head of Strengthening Democracy Desk Who do politicians work for? Modern democracy relies on decision-makers being accountable to the people they govern. Yet political parties seem increasingly in thrall to those with deep pockets, ranging from well-heeled private donors to the titanic influence of Elon Musk on Donald Trump’s re-election campaign. The risk to British democracy has been laid bare by rumours that Musk was planning a $100 million donation to Reform UK. In this climate, the UK must urgently introduce a monetary cap on donations to political parties and needs more extensive public education for citizens on political party funding.  The holes in the current framework  The UK’s regulatory framework for donations to political parties is relatively relaxed. There is no formal cap on how much any donor can donate to a political party. Donations under £500 need not be reported, whilst those over £11,180 must be by law, a threshold increased from £7,500 in early 2024. The transparency of one’s financial transactions is the only real limit in play. Transparency is also having to do more work than ever before: the outgoing Conservative Government increased the general election campaign expenditure limit for each party from £30,000 to £54,010 per constituency, alongside other limits relating to candidates’ expenses. If parties and candidates can spend more, fundraising efforts – and larger and larger donations – will only increase. As Tom Brake has recently pointed out, this situation is exacerbated by donations made by unincorporated associations. These bodies range from golf clubs to dining societies and need not report their finances in the way charities or companies do.  In comparison to the UK’s European neighbours, state funding for political parties is minimal, producing a reliance on private donations. Following the 2024 General Election, just under £7 million was distributed to opposition parties in the House of Commons in ‘short money’ to support parliamentary business, travel costs and the Leader of the Opposition’s office. An additional £1.9 million was disbursed in policy development grants across all political parties in the 2023-24 financial year. In Germany, by contrast, the cap on state funding of political parties in 2024 was €219 million, with private donations a much smaller financial source.  Despite this, the UK is better-off than some other major democracies around the world. For the last 15 years, since the famous Citizens United decision, corporations in the USA have been able to spend unlimited amounts on elections, since any restrictions are considered by the US Supreme Court to violate free speech rights. Meanwhile, India’s Supreme Court declared in February 2024 that it was unconstitutional for political parties to receive donations through anonymous promissory notes termed ‘Electoral Bonds’.  Whilst this protects voters’ rights to information in form, it may also increase the number of unreported cash donations to parties, thus making Indian democracy more opaque.  Why Musk’s donations are a new kind of threat  In this landscape, Musk’s donations – as well as those of any other social media giants – raise a new kind of threat for democracy. All political parties need some form of funding, whether from private donors or the state, to finance their campaigns and provide a space for those with similar political views to assemble and exchange ideas. Yet major private donors can also leverage their financial hold over parties to secure their desired political outcomes, or simply turn a profit.   Musk poses not only this threat, but one that strikes at the heart of any democracy Increasingly, social media platforms such as X not only aspire to be the public sphere, but are it. Research by Ofcom in 2023 shows that 47% of UK adults use social media for news, rising to 71% of 16–24-year-olds. Those like Musk and Mark Zuckerberg who own and control social media platforms have almost unrestricted power to control what ideas can be exchanged in these public spaces, with no accountability to their users or to government. When this power is turned towards the interests of one political party, democracy is eroded from within, because electoral politics is no longer a level playing field. Musk’s role in government following Trump’s re-election should raise alarm bells here, as should his recent appearance at an Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) rally ahead of the German federal elections in February. Because of this, policymakers cannot treat the owners of social media companies as they would any other private donor: more extensive restrictions and transparency requirements are needed because such donations open up multiple paths to influencing elections.   A cap on donations is needed  Discussion about a cap on donations to political parties has intensified in recent weeks in the UK. In an Opinium poll carried out for pressure group Unlock Democracy, two-thirds of the 2,000-odd respondents across parties supported some limits on donations. The Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Ed Davey, raised a question in Parliament on the matter on 8 January 2025, reiterating a position from his party’s 2024 spring conference. Most recently, Liberal Democrat MP Manuela Perteghella introduced a Bill into the House of Commons on 12 February 2025 to impose a fair cap on donations and outlaw foreign donations. Since Musk might use a British subsidiary of X to make a donation, a cap is the most straightforward option for tackling the challenge he poses: it will ensure that nobody – Musk or otherwise – could donate $100m to one party in one go.  Where that cap is set is another matter entirely. Recent commentary for The Constitution Society argues that there is no ‘silver bullet’ for reforming party funding: any cap on donations would “significantly reduce party income and expenditure”, to the detriment of parties’ ability to engage the electorate and hold governments to account. Although political parties today are often viewed as tribal fronts, rather like rival football teams, a political world made up solely of independent politicians would lack the infrastructure to regularly bring elected politicians at all levels and the public together to campaign around

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Evolving Democracy in the Age of AI

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Author: Pravar Petkar, Head of Strengthening Democracy Desk As we near the end of the ‘year of elections’, liberal democracy’s report card is a decidedly mixed one. Although there have been peaceful transfers of power across the world, elections in the UK and France have raised issues of legislative representation and coalition formation. The recent US election has seen misinformation and polarisation in campaigning, and India’s elections continue to be vulnerable to vote buying and identity politics. A recent roundtable discussion hosted by the ICfS considered how we might improve democracy with the aid of emerging technology in this climate. The discussion highlighted that countries across the world should experiment with new ways of doing democracy at the grassroots level, supported by technology. This innovation must nonetheless be accompanied by greater enforcement of existing regulations and more agile development of rules, given the real risks posed by the rapid growth of AI.  Participation is the way forward – at the grassroots level at least  Trust in the current model of popular government has been falling in some of the world’s most long-standing democracies, including the UK and the US. This is for several reasons. There are structural flaws in the election systems of representative democracies: the UK election saw a large majority on little over one-third of the vote, whilst discussion of the US election was dominated by votes in seven key ‘swing states’. These are perhaps exacerbated by misinformation, as seen in the US election campaign. Moreover, once representatives are elected, they must deliver on their promises: yet in the UK in particular, public service delivery has deteriorated significantly over the course of decades. These various systemic flaws require new ways of ‘doing democracy’ to restore that trust.  After a successful citizens’ assembly on abortion in Ireland led to its legalisation in 2018, and the open-source Pol.is platform was used by the vTaiwan initiative to generate popular consensus on Uber licensing, interest has grown in finding new ways to directly engage citizens in public decision-making. Yet putting an issue to the people at national level does not always produce change, as shown by the French Citizens’ Convention on the Climate, amongst others. The design of these mechanisms is key, and not all topics are suitable. Putting major issues of economic policy to a participatory assembly, for example, could have adverse effects for market confidence. Local democracy, then, is perhaps the best starting point, with several instances of citizen participation at local council level in recent years. Evidence of success at local level is needed to make a stronger case for it at the national level.   The benefits of participation are not limited to better or more inclusive decision-making. The polarisation that affects democracy in the UK, US and elsewhere can, in part, be put down to a lack of faith in our fellow citizens to make sound decisions: in the US, many Republicans and Democrats view each other as a ‘threat’. Addressing this requires a means of fostering genuine citizenship, where all those living in a society view themselves as engaged in a common enterprise. Well-designed participatory processes can help here by directing citizens towards engaging with each other on a shared problem.  Technology is here to stay  Alongside participatory experiments, there is growing innovation in ‘DelibTech’ – technological solutions that facilitate deliberation and discussion between citizens. In Libya, the UN used the Remesh AI platform as part of its peacekeeping efforts to gather and cluster opinions and create ‘bridging statements’ to generate consensus amongst society, with the proposals put to a Government of National Unity. The Consensus AI tool has also supported the Conference on the Future of Europe, offering participants the opportunity to vote on statements and submit their own until a 60% majority in favour of one has emerged. The Decidim platform was used in the French Citizens’ Convention on the Climate for external contributions. Greater experimentation with these tools at local level – beyond simply holding deliberative assemblies over video-conferencing – can create the groundswell for future change.   The cost of participatory democracy means DelibTech will have an important role in scaling up these processes in due course. For example, Demos estimates a single 8-day citizens’ assembly with 100 participants would cost between £800k and £1.2m. This high level of expenditure would mean that holding multiple in-person citizens’ assemblies of this kind each year would quickly become financially unsustainable; cheaper options are required, whilst preserving the ability of all citizens to engage in democracy without compromising on the income needed to maintain a reasonable standard of living.  Mechanisms such as Pol.is, Remesh and Consensus AI are also different to social media sites such as Facebook and X: whilst participants can ‘upvote’ others’ comments and add their own, the conversation ‘threads’ that can often generate hostility on other platforms are absent. Whilst many may hold the view that this is good enough reason to avoid technology entirely, a tech-free future is hardly realistic: indeed, the recent migration of social media users from X to newer platforms such as BlueSky only reinforces that technology is here to stay.  The future of democracy requires better tech regulation and education  Whilst emerging technology can play an important role in opening up new opportunities for citizen participation, it is not without its own risks and challenges. Since Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT became widely available from late 2022, concerns have been raised around cybersecurity, data bias, privacy, copyright and the dissemination of false information. Questions were raised in this roundtable discussion about the ability of regulatory systems to keep up with rapid AI development, and whether existing regulations could be better enforced. There is also the risk that as systems such as Pol.is and Consensus AI grow, they will be taken over by large corporations. As Marietje Schaake has argued in The Tech Coup, companies such as Microsoft, Google and Meta can evade accountability from nation-states because of the practical power they wield and their influence within

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After Trump’s Victory: A Changing Global Order, Strained Democracies and Weakening Guardrails

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Author: Pravar Petkar, Head of Strengthening Democracy Desk Donald Trump will be the 47th President of the US, having crossed the threshold of 270 votes required from the Electoral College and having won the popular vote in the 2024 US elections. The Republican Party has also crossed a majority in the US Senate and currently holds a plurality of seats in the House of Representatives. Trump has promised to make a number of policy changes immediately upon entering office, many of which are encapsulated in the ‘Project 2025’ policy wish-list. In addition to the domestic policy changes proposed, the results and the manner of campaigning have implications both internationally and for the robustness of US democracy. In particular, the US-India relationship is set to continue across various sectors, the UK will be prompted to calibrate its own approach to China and there are reasons to be sceptical about the robustness of democracy in the face of misinformation and corporate control of technology.  The US-India relationship will continue  Trump’s presidency is unlikely to alter some aspects of the US-India relationship. There is a bipartisan consensus in the US at present that China is the principal geopolitical threat to US national interests. Trump’s approach to US-China relations – and to foreign policy in general – is hyper-realist: his overriding motivation will be to protect US national interests in whatever way he sees fit. Given this, India will retain its role as a geopolitical and economic ‘shield’ for the US, and an important collaborator in the Indo-Pacific. The Quad will not be suddenly disbanded, nor is Trump likely to renege on existing defence and intelligence sharing agreements as long as they continue to serve his aims. However, there are questions around the continuation of the US-India Climate and Clean Energy partnership launched in 2021, especially considering Trump’s desire to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement. The imposition of higher tariffs on trade with India cannot be ruled out either, despite the apparent camaraderie between Trump and PM Modi. Yet as Trump seeks a decoupling from China, and with the US running a significant trade deficit with India, there are good reasons for the Trump administration to pursue a closer relationship.  The UK needs a clear strategy on China  Given the importance the Trump administration will place on tackling the threat it perceives that China poses to US interests, the UK’s own strategy on China will be critical in future US-UK relations. Over the last decade, the UK has had a much more open approach to China than the US has, with collaboration under the 2010 coalition government replaced with greater wariness in recent years, especially concerning China’s imposition of the national security law in Hong Kong, its use of force around Taiwan and concerns about human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Tibet. The Labour Government’s review of UK-China relations thus comes at a critical moment. Economic benefits for the UK currently appear to be top of the agenda, though there will undoubtedly be pressure from the Trump administration to fall in line with the US approach, with possible tensions between the two emerging if the US seeks a more detached relationship in trading terms. As well as being a litmus test of Labour’s ‘progressive realism’ strategy, the UK’s approach to relations with China will have knock-on effects elsewhere, including for the UK-India relationship: given the tensions between India and China, any ‘Himalayan strategy’ the UK develops will impact the UK-China picture in the round.  ‘Offline’ misinformation is still an issue in the online world  Concerns were raised in early 2024 about how emerging technology – including generative AI and its potential to churn out deepfake video and images – would affect the integrity of some of the world’s most important elections. The 2024 US elections show that ‘offline’ misinformation – falsehoods uttered by politicians in campaign speeches – remain a challenge. The most prominent example was Trump’s claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating cats and dogs, despite having no evidence to support this. The remark was challenged in real time by the moderators, but this may not be enough in today’s climate, for two reasons. First, short clips from televised political debates are routinely shared on social media, often without full context or with sections – including the moderators’ response – cut out. Second, the polarisation of US political debate, along with the perception that it is less and less grounded in objective fact, impairs moderators’ legitimacy and ability to intervene. Some Republicans had claimed that the that the ABC moderators were biased against Trump, especially in what one Senator termed “so-called fact-checking”. Further innovation in fact-checking – especially for online platforms – will be necessary going forward to restore the shared information base that is necessary for democracies the world over the flourish.   Corporate control of the public sphere erodes democracy  Figures released earlier this year by Pew Research Center indicate that 59% of X (formerly Twitter) users in the US get their news from there. With over 100 million active X users in the US, this is a sizeable number. Elon Musk, the owner of X, has described it as the world’s “global town square”, which ought to be a space where people can freely exchange views and deliberate without national boundaries. However, as Marietje Schaake argues in her book The Tech Coup, corporate control of major tech platforms (especially in respect of content moderation) creates a significant accountability gap. National governments seem unable to regulate big social media companies such as Meta and X on which the public sphere is increasingly constructed. With Musk having donated significant amounts of money to the Trump campaign, and having been praised as a “star” in Trump’s victory speech, X is no longer a neutral public space. The bounds of free expression and the availability of information on which citizens make decisions about how their society is run is now controlled by private actors to a far greater

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What will the next US President’s approach to China mean for a rising India?

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Author: Pravar Petkar, Head of Strengthening Democracy Desk How does a global ruling power react to a rising power? Harvard Professor Graham Allison argues that the ruling power’s fear can provoke conflict with the rising power, in what he terms the ‘Thucydides Trap’. For him, the US and China are locked in such a struggle. As India continues to aspire to global superpower status in the future, how will the US respond in the medium term, based on its ongoing tensions with China? Examining how the two candidates in the US presidential election approach the US-China relationship suggests that how India pursues greater influence will be critical to future US-India relations, with comments on its democratic credentials less significant in the current geopolitical climate.  The Harris approach  For the Democrats, there are two broad reasons why the US distrusts China. The first is more realist: China seeks supremacy in the Indo-Pacific for its own ends. It is catching up to the US in economic terms and has rapidly expanded in military terms. What John Hulsman calls the ‘Roosevelt Rule’ – that the primary geopolitical interest of the US is that no hegemon emerges on the Eurasian landmass, owing to the risks to the Western hemisphere – seems to be in play here, setting a notably realist base for Democrat policy. The second reason is more values-based: China is anti-democratic and seeks to reshape the international order to suit its own interests and way of governing, as the 2022 National Security Strategy notes. Ian Bremmer suggests that President Biden and Vice-President Harris approach this from different perspectives: for Biden, the key concern is the contest between democracies and autocracies, whereas for Harris, it is adherence to international norms and the upholding of a rules-based order. For the Democrats, the US must still cooperate with other nations to counter China, whatever their democratic credentials, and with China itself, to resolve shared global challenges. The idealism of the 20th century appears to have given away to a more pragmatic mindset: the Democratic administration does “not, however, believe that governments and societies everywhere must be remade in America’s image for us to be secure.”  The Trump approach  The evidence of the 2016-2020 Trump presidency and the claims of Project 2025 leave no doubt that Donald Trump views China as a major threat to US national interests. The US Strategic Approach to China from 2020 emphasises the risks of Beijing’s predatory economic practices, intellectual property theft and exploitation of other nations through the agreements made under the One Belt, One Road initiative.  For Trump, the interests of the US ought to come first in any bilateral agreements, resulting in a transactional approach that some regard as bringing a cost-benefit analysis into every interaction. This had made Trump’s foreign policy approach an unpredictable one, with US-China relations deteriorating during his presidency and the risks of an escalating trade war if he is re-elected and tariffs are raised on both sides. Yet Trump has also praised Xi Jinping in a rally in Michigan, and whilst president, agreed a deal to export semiconductors and chipmaking equipment to China which was later amended, perhaps due to national security considerations. What is certain is that Trump’s foreign policy approach to China will seek to prioritise at every turn what he views as the interests of the US.  A shared pragmatism  There is a shared degree of pragmatism in both the Republican and Democrat approaches to China that is likely to be transferred to US policy on a rising India. Both parties view the need to preserve the national interests of the US as essential: this is central to Trump’s approach, and notable in the willingness of the Democrats to work with countries that are not democracies to counter shared threats. This means criticism about India’s democratic credentials from within the US will not wholly determine the nature of the US-India relationship under the Democrats.   The trade relations between the US, India and China add important context here. In the 2023-24 year, India had a trade surplus of c.$37 billion with the US, and a trade deficit of $85 billion with China. The US has a trade deficit of $185 billion with China between January and August 2024. Whilst it is unlikely that either India or the US will decouple from China entirely in the next five years, a Trump presidency in particular may seek to deepen the US-India trading relationship to reduce the US’s dependence on China. A recent joint paper from the Takshashila Institute and the Hudson Institute highlights the potential for economic cooperation between the US and India on emerging technology, especially keeping in mind the threat China poses to both countries’ national security interests.  The manner of India’s rise  The manner of India’s rise will be of interest to both Republicans and Democrats in this context, given the nuances of their foreign policy approaches to China. Were Trump to adopt something like the Roosevelt Rule – as Hulsman argues the Republicans ought to do – then the US-India relationship may sour going forward if the US sees India as the ‘next China’, asserting its military might and engaging in predatory economic behaviour. This is unlikely in practice: as Tim Marshall has identified, China’s military expansion owes itself to geographical barriers in the territorial waters of the South China Sea that simply do not apply to India. Moreover, the idea of India as a vishwa guru (‘world teacher’) seems to prioritise sharing cultural values, resources and technology to benefit both India and the world, rather than the hegemony represented by contemporary China. As William Dalrymple charts in his recent book The Golden Road, this was precisely the role of the Indian subcontinent in the first millennium CE, as it interacted with Southeast Asia, China and the Roman world.  The Democrats under Vice-President Harris will be more concerned about how a rising India situates itself within the rules-based international order created in the aftermath of World War II.

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The Citizens’ Jury on Assisted Dying – How Not to Do Deliberative Democracy 

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Author: Pravar Petkar, Head of Strengthening Democracy Desk Have we found the solution to navigating assisted dying in England? The recent citizens’ jury on assisted dying, organised by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, would appear to suggest so. Yet, research suggests that though a welcome innovation, the jury instead shows us how not to do deliberative democracy. This is down to the lack of a pathway to influence Government, the limited public awareness of the process and its small scale. This apparent failure should not put us off, but instead encourage further experiments on new ways to do democracy.  What are citizens’ juries?  A citizens’ jury is a three-stage process in which a randomly selected group of citizens comes together to learn about an issue, deliberate upon it and produce recommendations for policymakers. It is usually regarded as a smaller version of a citizens’ assembly, following the same process in a shorter time and with fewer participants. Citizens’ juries are examples of deliberative and participatory democracy: they rely on directly bringing citizens into the policy process to come to reasoned conclusions.  What did this citizens’ jury decide?  The jury members agreed that the law should change to permit assisted dying in England where adults with decision-making capacity are terminally ill. This could be either through physician-assisted suicide or voluntary euthanasia. This follows the introduction of a Private Members’ Bill on assisted dying into the House of Lords, and a similar Bill into the Scottish Parliament. The Lords’ Bill is expected to be withdrawn, as a Bill is to be introduced into the House of Commons on 16 October 2024.  Best practice: the Irish case  The best example of a deliberative exercise on a morally controversial issue is the Ireland Citizens’ Assembly on abortion, which took place between 2016 and 2018. 99 randomly selected citizens came together as an independent body established by the Irish Parliament for five structured weekends, at the end of which they produced a series of recommendations. Each weekend featured expert presentations and the consideration of submissions from members of the public, followed by structured roundtable discussions on specific issues. A committee of both chambers of the Irish Parliament considered the assembly’s recommendations to replace the constitutional ban on abortion with a provision allowing Parliament to legislate on the matter. The proposal was approved by Parliament, and then the people in a referendum on 25 May 2018. The evidence sessions were broadcast to the public, providing objective information for the referendum vote and creating wide awareness of the assembly process.  The Jersey case: success closer to home  Deliberative democracy has already been tried in the UK on the matter of assisted dying. In 2021, a citizen’s jury met in Jersey to provide its legislators with a detailed community response to the medical, ethical, legal and regulatory issues involved in permitting assisted dying. Following ten sessions of learning and deliberation, each lasting between 2 and 2.5 hours, the citizens’ jury recommended that assisted dying be permitted for Jersey residents aged 18 or over with a terminal illness or who were experiencing unbearable suffering. The citizens’ jury discussed a series of safeguards for the process, including a pre-approval process, the necessary involvement of medical professionals and the rights of those professionals to be conscientious objectors to the procedure. Two months’ later, Jersey’s legislature (the States Assembly) approved the availability of ‘assisted dying’ in principle. A Bill to allow assisted dying is now being drafted.  What went wrong in England?  Since both the Ireland citizens’ assembly and the citizens’ jury in Jersey were successful in both driving change and meaningfully engaging citizens, it seems logical to repeat the exercise in England, as the Nuffield Council on Bioethics did. Despite this, there are three design issues with the citizens’ jury that reduce its effectiveness and legitimacy:  No clear pathway for the jury’s recommendations to influence Parliament.  Where citizens’ juries are set up by institutions external to the official decision-making process, there is no guarantee that decision-makers will consider the jury’s recommendations, still less that they will follow them. The most successful citizens’ juries in the UK have been initiated by local councils which have then directly implemented the recommendations.  Limited public awareness of the process.  A crucial factor in both the Irish case and the citizens’ jury in Jersey was the public awareness around the process. This occurred through making the learning sessions of the deliberative process publicly available. In Jersey, moreover, the citizens’ jury followed an e-petition and an online public survey. Yet in England, only the results of the jury have been covered in the media, with seemingly little public information on the topics and experts who presented. It is difficult to view it as a genuinely ‘national’ conversation.  The scale of the citizens’ jury was perhaps too small.  The citizens’ jury on assisted dying in England had 30 participants. This is slightly bigger than Jersey’s citizens’ jury, but a third of the size of Ireland’s citizens’ assembly. Even though the 30 participants were randomly selected by an objectively fair algorithm, many might doubt that there were enough participants to genuinely represent the views of over 55m people.   The need for further experiments  No process of experimentation or innovation has a 100% success rate; partial successes and errors are valuable in pointing in the right direction. The citizens’ jury on assisted dying in England plays a role like this, identifying some pitfalls to avoid as the country mulls over this complex issue. Yet there is enough evidence from elsewhere in the world to suggest we are barking up the right tree. Further deliberative exercises taking into account some of the issues raised here will benefit us, not only in resolving the issue of assisted dying but in crafting a more effective British democracy. 

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Should India’s ‘One Nation’ have One Election? 

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Author: Pravar Petkar, Head of Strengthening Democracy Desk How do you conduct elections in the world’s largest democracy? A new proposal by the Indian Government, called ‘One Nation, One Election’ says, “all at once”. Indian elections today are like a feast with an endless number of courses, coming one after the other. The ‘One Nation, One Election’ scheme initially aims to synchronise national and state elections to a fixed period every 5 years. Though it will certainly make elections more efficient, the proposals raise questions about whether local issues will be sidelined and the accountability of state legislators to their constituents.  What will it involve?  Elections for the Lok Sabha (the lower house of the national parliament) and the Vidhan Sabha (state legislatures) occur every five years, but not at the same time. Following the 2024 General Election, there will be state elections in Jammu & Kashmir, Haryana, Maharashtra and Jharkhand before the year is out. The ‘One Nation, One Election’ scheme would synchronise all state and national elections across the country initially; a proposed second phase would also synchronise some municipal elections, though some local bodies have different term lengths.  Fewer elections, more governance  India’s elections are some of the costliest in the world, not least because of their size and scale: for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Finance Ministry requested an additional Rs 3,147.92 crore (around £282m) for election-related expenses, and Rs 73.67 crore (around £6.6m) to cover the Election Commission of India’s administration costs. The report of the High-Level Committee on ‘One Nation, One Election’ claims the cost of holding Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections in the current format is Rs 4,500 crore (around £402m). It did not indicate how much might be saved through simultaneous elections, though identifies scope for savings on administrative expenses, transporting voting machines and re-deploying people from other jobs to assist with election conduct. This should be welcomed as long as election integrity is not compromised.  When elections take place in India, governance stops. This is because of the Model Code of Conduct, a set of rules governing what parties, candidates and incumbent governments can and cannot do. It ensures incumbents cannot use the state’s power to unduly influence voters during the campaign, a necessity in a country where welfare schemes are crucial to politics at all levels. The Code prohibits new financial grants, the initiation of new projects, promises to construct roads and even the provision of drinking water facilities. Ongoing welfare projects can continue only if work has already started. Other projects, including some forms of emergency relief, require the Election Commission’s permission to proceed. Several political parties (both national and regional ones) reported to the High-Level Committee that many days of governance were lost because of the frequent imposition of the Code, with a reported 307 days lost in Maharashtra between 2016 and 2017. Although the Code is a necessary safeguard, streamlining its imposition can safeguard democracy and ensure the conditions for local growth.  National issues may dominate over local ones  Some critics see the proposal for simultaneous elections as a threat to India’s federal system. However, India’s central Election Commission holds responsibility for Vidhan Sabha elections, and none of the proposals made affect states’ powers or the status of their legislatures. There are questions whether synchronising elections will sideline local issues in favour of national ones. The High-Level Committee itself reports that in 24 out of 31 previous instances of simultaneous elections between 1989 and 2014, the major parties had similar polling numbers in the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha. This trend continued in 2024: the Bharatiya Janata Party and the state incumbent Biju Janata Dal returned similar numbers in both the national and state elections in Odisha, whilst the Telugu Desam Party came out on top in Andhra Pradesh in both votes. The 2024 UK local elections show how national and international issues – here, the Israel-Palestine conflict – can shape local politics in some areas. In campaigning for the Haryana state elections, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath sought to garner votes for the BJP by focusing on the revocation of Art 370 in Jammu & Kashmir and the construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, despite neither of these relating to local issues. Simultaneous elections will only worsen this state of affairs.  Fixed-term parliaments risk deadlock and disempowerment  Simultaneous elections also require the parliamentary term to be fixed at no more – and crucially no less (in ordinary circumstances) – than five years. State legislatures can lodge a Vote of No Confidence in their governments if they do not hit the mark. If this passes on a simple majority, the Governor must invite the second-largest party to form a new government. Although a Vidhan Sabha can be dissolved mid-term, this would not ‘reset the clock’ under the new proposals: the newly elected legislature would sit only until the next simultaneous election period. With an inevitable election at fixed intervals and coalition government the norm, the incentive for an early election to seek a fresh mandate from the people will vanish – instead, there will be more ‘horse trading’ within the legislature if coalitions break down, where parties might compromise on their manifesto commitments. This disempowers voters, who will likely lose the opportunity to influence their representatives during the five-year term, making accountability more challenging. It can also lead to policy deadlock: where coalitions shift, some policies can get stuck, and it may be difficult for governments to find a majority for others, as happened to the UK during the infamous Brexit deadlock of 2017-2019 under its own (now abolished) fixed-term parliamentary system.  Where do we go from here?  Efforts to ensure the efficiency of Indian elections should be encouraged, given their vast scale. Whilst the ‘One Nation, One Election’ proposals as they stand do raise issues for local politics and accountability, careful design can ensure that simultaneous elections can go ahead. First, policymakers must consider how to strengthen local party politics and

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Citizens’ assemblies: miracle cure, or much ado about nothing? 

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Author: Pravar Petkar, Head of Strengthening Democracy Desk Is British democracy working? Surveys show that satisfaction with democracy in the UK has nosedived since 2021. This should not be surprising: in our system of ‘popular rule’, all we do is cast votes every few years, with no way to intervene as our basic public services continue to struggle. What if we put the people back into the process of running our country, to make government more responsive to popular concerns? Citizens’ assemblies are one way of doing this. Ongoing research at the International Centre for Sustainability suggests that we should make more use of them in the UK: they can cut through thorny moral issues, provide objective information to the public and show consensus. Yet being difficult to get right, they are no miracle cure.  Why get the public involved in the first place?  Citizens’ assemblies bring together a randomly selected sample of citizens to learn about an issue, deliberate on it and make recommendations. Some believe they can “work wonders” and restore trust in politics. By bringing citizens into the political process, citizens’ assemblies can give people the skills and desire to participate more, making them more invested in how our society is run. They enable us to give direction to our representatives on key issues and review what they do for us, without being dragged into party politics. For those who say that this simply isn’t how we do democracy in the UK, we should look beyond our borders: India, for example, has a long-standing tradition of citizen deliberation at village level, through a rural assembly called a gram sabha.  What are the benefits of citizens’ assemblies?  There are four good reasons to use citizens’ assemblies:  They can help to resolve morally controversial issues.  They can provide an objective information base for public votes.  They can help to articulate consensus for major changes.  They can be used at local levels to drive regeneration projects.  This is shown from experience within and outside the UK. In Ireland, a citizens’ assembly was used to recommend the removal of constitutional provisions prohibiting abortion. More recently, an assembly in Jersey on assisted dying made recommendations that are now being translated into law. This is especially relevant to the rest of the UK, with Bills recently introduced into the Scottish Parliament and the House of Lords on the matter. Parts of the Irish Assembly were broadcast live, giving the public vital information for their vote in a 2018 referendum on the matter – a far cry from the UK’s experience with Brexit in 2016. The Irish example also shows how citizens’ assemblies can articulate a social consensus out of a public desire for reform – an encouraging sign for issues such as House of Lords reform. The citizens’ assembly model has also been successfully transposed into local contexts (often termed a ‘citizens’ jury’), with deliberative exercises in Romsey (2018) and Newham (2021) shaping local policy on town centre usage and developing green spaces respectively.  Where have citizens’ assemblies not worked?  The worldwide practice of citizens’ assemblies demonstrates three potential issues:  A remit that is too broad.  No clear pathway to influence elected politicians.  Self-selection of those who are already politically engaged.  Our research has found that assemblies which tried to solve too many issues at once – such as the Climate Assembly UK (2020) and the French Citizens’ Convention on the Climate (2019-2020) – were much less successful because they produced general principles and wants rather than specific proposals. They have also been much more effective in influencing policy change when set up by local councils than by parliamentary select committees or external research organisations (such as in a recent citizens’ jury on assisted dying). Yet there is a balance to be struck: where government at all levels is involved, the experts who inform citizens must remain independent. Moreover, because there is no compulsion for invited citizens to actually participate, there is the risk of ‘self-selection’ of those who are already politically engaged or interested in an issue. Emerging technology – such as AI-facilitated online deliberation, as in Taiwan – could address some of these issues.  Why do we need them when we already have the UK Parliament?  Some might say that we don’t need innovation, because we already have a citizens’ assembly in the UK: it is just known as ‘the UK Parliament’. Yet the devil is in the details. A randomly selected sample of citizens, stratified for demographics, will be more representative than the House of Commons (especially considering the cost of parliamentary campaigns). There is no political party representation in a citizens’ assembly. The stakes are also different: the UK Parliament passing legislation creates a finality absent from the advisory – yet potentially powerful – recommendations of a citizens’ assembly. The ‘learning phase’ crucial to citizens’ assemblies, where subject-matter experts share important background information, has no parallel in the parliamentary process. The UK Parliament is undoubtedly an assembly of citizens, but a citizens’ assembly it is not.   The path to democratic reform  There is no doubt that there are other pressing issues to solve in British democracy – our disproportionate electoral system, a lack of effective checks and balances on government and the role of the House of Lords. These all need considered discussion, but that should not stop us from experimenting elsewhere. Citizens’ assemblies, if designed well, can cut through complexity, provide citizens with clear and objective information and crystallise consensus on policy at local, regional and national levels.   

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Accountability, Participation and Civic Education: The Roadmap Towards Sustainable Democracy? 

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Author: Pravar Petkar, Head of Strengthening Democracy Desk In one of his first statements to Parliament as the new Prime Minister of the UK, Sir Keir Starmer referenced the lack of confidence in contemporary British politics, stating that “the need to restore trust should weigh heavily on every Member here, new and returning alike.” This is an ongoing issue: recent surveys by the Pew Research Center suggest that satisfaction with democracy in the UK has declined from 60% in 2021 to only 39% in 2024; the US has seen a fall from 41% to 31%, whilst France has dropped from 44% to 35%. Across the Channel, following gains for the far-right in the 2024 EU elections, some commentators have pointed to a divide between pro-democracy and anti-democracy factions in Europe. We are confronted by an urgent need to restore trust in our politicians and the very democratic systems in which they operate. Revitalising and regenerating contemporary democracies, I believe, must be underpinned by three central principles: accountability, participation and civic education.  Accountability  There is a worrying trend the world over in leaders seeking to evade the checks and balances on power. Recently, a British Prime Minister was found to have misled Parliament on the upholding of COVID-19 regulations. The former UK government’s ‘Rwanda Scheme’ for asylum seekers was pushed forward in reckless disregard of international law, as upheld by the UK Supreme Court itself. The Election Commission of India appears to have been politicised, judging by its lax responses to religiously divisive rhetoric from PM Modi during the recent election campaign, whilst Poland’s former ruling dispensation (the Law and Justice Party) enacted a series of reforms politicising the judiciary before losing power in late 2023. Few will forget the events of 6 January 2021, when supporters of President Trump stormed the Capitol to halt the peaceful transfer of power following President Biden’s confirmation.  Any successful and sustainable democracy needs robust checks and balances on power. The UK’s historical reliance on norms of good conduct – the ‘good chaps’ theory of government  – has proven unable to stem the tide; stronger restrictions are required, whether enforced by the courts or other independent bodies. These checks and balances have a dual role: to ensure citizens’ survival and so that they can have genuine influence over the state. The state must uphold those fundamental human rights necessary for the people it governs to harmoniously coexist, and which provide the essential conditions for democratic government to continue, including freedom of speech and freedom of assembly within reasonable limits. International human rights law cannot be seen simply as a needless check on power; it instead guarantees the conditions for the state to fulfil its purpose, making a culture of respect for international law – one which has been lacking recently in the UK – essential to ensure government is held to account.   Moreover, our electoral systems must reflect citizens’ policy preferences as closely and proportionately as possible: government is, after all, ‘for the people’. Citizens should, periodically, be able to have a say on how their society is structured and governed: models such as the US Constitution, under which change is so difficult as to be virtually impossible, are no longer sustainable. Rights to protest and assemble must always be available as a last resort to push elected officials towards change, but we cannot fall back on these options too often: our democratic systems must ensure citizens have regular opportunities to hold politicians to account.  Participation  Today, government is supposed to be for the people and is certainly framed as being ‘of the people’, but it is rarely by the people. The extent of most citizens’ democratic engagement is limited to the election of representatives at local, regional and national levels every few years. Yet the tide is now starting to turn. There is increasing experimentation with new mechanisms of participation such as citizens’ assemblies, the most well-known of which is perhaps that held in Ireland on abortion in 2018. There have been notable referendums, including the 2016 EU referendum in the UK, and even the crowdsourcing of new constitutional proposals in Iceland in 2012. Our world is starting to think beyond the representative democratic paradigm that has dominated our politics for the last 75 years.  If our democracies are to sustain themselves into the future, there must be more opportunities for citizen participation on a range of issues, from both difficult and controversial moral problems to local challenges. This is not a call for elected representatives to abdicate their responsibilities – we will still need elected politicians to stand up for our interests on common national and international issues. Yet it is becoming clearer that on a range of issues, giving the people more of a voice has great benefits. These range from enhancing policy debate by crystallising consensus on reform, to developing citizen awareness on key issues such as climate change and cultivating a sense of civic responsibility and social welfare. Our contemporary toolkit is no longer limited to in-person gatherings across weekends. Citizens’ panels and assemblies were moved online during the COVID-19 pandemic, whilst Estonia and Taiwan have led the way in creating online platforms where citizens can make and vote on policy proposals. The future is one of distributed networks for proposing and voting on legislative amendments, online participatory communities to review executive decision-making and even novel deliberative systems on bespoke online platforms, using the latest developments in generative AI to facilitate discussions, aggregate preferences and more. Whilst standing on a busy main road with a placard will not lose its significance overnight, the future of democratic participation is increasingly likely to be a digital one.  Civic Education  If people are to be well equipped to participate in public debate on key policy issues, our education systems must be in good working order. We are beset by misinformation – not only through clever political advertising and the use of ‘deepfake’ technology, but also on the social media platforms that increasingly

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The Democratic Implications of the 2024 Labour Landslide

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Author: Pravar Petkar, Head of Strengthening Democracy Desk The 2024 General Election in the UK has brought an end to 14 years of Conservative government, ushering in a Labour regime with a landslide election victory. Of the 650 seats in the UK Parliament, the Labour Party has won 412, with the Conservatives on 121, and the Liberal Democrats on 71, on a turnout of 60%.[i] This represents the largest majority in the UK Parliament since the New Labour victory in 1997. However, the result has troubling implications both for the UK’s First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) electoral system and the prospects for reform, and will also shape the legitimacy of the new government’s major policy and constitutional reform proposals. FPTP and the 2024 General Election Results Under FPTP in the UK, Members of Parliament are elected in 650 single-member constituencies across the country. These are winner-takes-all contests: the candidate with the most votes will win the seat, even if they fall short of an overall majority. In the 2024 General Election, this has produced the following results: Party Seats Seat Share Votes Vote Share Votes per Seat Labour 412 63.4% 9,804,655 33.7% 23,798 Conservatives 121 18.6% 6,827,311 23.7% 56,424 Liberal Democrats 72 11.1% 3,519,199 12.2% 48,878 Scottish National Party (SNP) 9 1.4% 724,758 2.5% 80,529 Sinn Fein 7 1.1% 210,891 0.7% 30,127 Independent 6 0.9% 564,243 2.0% 94,041 Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) 5 0.8% 172,058 0.6% 34,412 Reform UK 5 0.8% 4,117,221 14.3% 823,444 Green Parties 4 0.6% 1,943,265 6.7% 485,816 Plaid Cymru 4 0.6% 194,811 0.7% 48,703 Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) 2 0.3% 86,861 0.3% 43,431 Alliance Party 1 0.2% 117,191 0.4% 117,191 Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) 1 0.2% 94,779 0.3% 94,779 Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) 1 0.2% 48,685 0.2% 48,685 Table 1: UK General Election Results 2024 The table above indicates some startling results. The total number of votes won by Labour is smaller than in the 2019 General Election by around half a million,[ii] yet this translated in 2024 to more than double the number of seats. Reform UK won the third-highest number of popular votes yet rank only joint seventh-highest (including the grouping of Independent MPs) in terms of seat share. Indeed, its vote share across the UK was higher than that of the Liberal Democrats, which won more than 14 times the number of seats. To gain any one seat, the Green Party needed over 20 times as many votes as Labour did for their respective seats, and Reform UK required almost 35 times as many votes. This indicates significant disparities in respect of the practical impact of individual votes under the current FPTP system in the UK. The data above verifies the pre-election predictions that this contest would produce one of the most disproportionate Parliaments in the history of the UK. FPTP has proven itself unsuitable to translating citizens’ preferences into legislative representation in what has become a genuine multi-party landscape. This reduces the extent to which the UK’s representative democratic system can be considered genuine popular self-government, the principle at the heart of modern democracy. Against this background, the case for reform is overwhelming. Alternatives to FPTP Amongst the alternatives, two forms of proportional representation emerge as potential candidates. The first is the nationwide system of proportional representation (PR) used in countries such as the Netherlands and Israel. Under this form of PR, the entire country acts as a ‘nationwide’ constituency, with seats in the legislature allocated in proportion to the number of votes cast for each party using either the d’Hondt or Saint-Lague formulas. Some such systems have a minimum overall threshold of votes which parties must reach to win a seat. This is designed to protect against the fragmentation of legislatures that would otherwise result from the representation of several small parties.[iii] However, a ‘nationwide’ constituency is not an appropriate hypothetical framework for any UK-wide election. Where the PR constituency is ‘nationwide’, all the political parties on the ballot paper must be nationwide political parties. This is because neither the d’Hondt nor the Saint-Lague systems for allocating seats are designed to differentiate between regional and national parties; this must instead be done when designing the constituencies for a PR system. The UK has several regional parties: the Scottish National Party only contests seats in Scotland, Plaid Cymru only contests seats in Wales, and Northern Ireland has its own political parties not found elsewhere in the UK (including Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party). Were the UK analysed as a ‘nationwide’ constituency using the d’Hondt formula and the number of votes actually cast for each party in the 2024 election, the following results might hypothetically be produced:[iv] Party Votes Vote Share Seats Seat Share Labour 9,804,655 33.7% 229 35.2% Conservatives 6,827,311 23.7% 159 24.5% Reform UK 4,117,221 14.3% 96 14.8% Liberal Democrats 3,519,199 12.2% 82 12.6% Green Parties 1,943,265 6.8% 45 6.9% SNP 724,758 2.5% 16 2.5% Sinn Fein 210,891 0.7% 4 0.6% Workers Party 210,194 0.7% 4 0.6% Plaid Cymru 194,811 0.7% 4 0.6% DUP 172,058 0.6% 4 0.6% Alliance Party 117,191 0.4% 2 0.3% UUP 94,779 0.3% 2 0.3% SDLP 86,861 0.3% 2 0.3% TUV 48,685 0.2% 1 0.2% Table 2: UK General Election Results 2024 – on ‘nationwide’ party list PR system With 326 seats required for an overall majority, a coalition would be required, with the most likely option being one between Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Parties (356 seats) producing a narrow majority. This would amount to 54.7% of the total seats in the UK Parliament on 52.7% of the popular vote, thus producing a considerably more proportionate outcome. Because the ‘nationwide’ constituency requires, in practice, a certain threshold of votes in order to secure a single seat, it is unlikely that any Independent candidates would be elected. However, it is unwise to draw major conclusions from this analysis, because it treats the SNP, Plaid Cymru and all the Northern Irish parties as if they were national parties. Given this, a preferable hypothetical model

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The 2024 Lok Sabha Elections – What Next?

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Author: Pravar Petkar, Head of Strengthening Democracy Desk The world’s largest democratic exercise has now concluded. The BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate and incumbent PM Narendra Modi is set for a third term in office. Yet the dynamics now are very different to those in 2014 and 2019: gone is the BJP’s overall majority; Modi instead must govern in a coalition with the BJP’s partners in the National Democratic Alliance, which collectively won 293 out of the 543 seats in India’s Lok Sabha (Lower House). The result shows India’s democracy is alive and kicking: to borrow Mark Twain’s phrase, reports of its death are greatly exaggerated. No democracy worth its salt can fail to have free and fair elections, with a peaceful transfer of power and the possibility that incumbents might be voted out. The results of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections show a democracy in action. From 2019, the BJP lost 63 seats (falling from 303 to 240), with the NDA as a whole dropping 60 seats. Conversely, the Indian National Congress (INC) almost doubled its vote share from 2019, rising from 52 seats to 99. The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) of which the INC was part held only 91 seats in 2019, but the newly formed INDI Alliance (Indian National Development Inclusive Alliance), established before the campaign began, secured 234 seats in total. This represents a significant anti-incumbent swing, with around 642 million of the 970 million registered voters having turned out to vote (approximately 66%). This puts some perspective on allegations by the INC before the announcement of the results that the counting process was rigged in favour of the BJP. There is also little concrete evidence that Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) were manipulated, with the Supreme Court of India affirming the integrity of the process in April 2024. In fact, the celebration of the results by all the major parties only lends further credibility to India’s electoral arrangements. The results suggest that Indian democracy is shaped by a complex series of factors that cannot be reduced to the politics of religion. Some commentators have suggested that the BJP’s loss of seats demonstrates that economic issues will always trump the politics of religion. Whilst the BJP campaign did draw on religion – including an address by PM Modi in Rajasthan in which he claimed that under the INC, Muslims would have “the first right” over people’s wealth – both parties highlighted India’s current issues of youth unemployment. That said, the INC manifesto was headlined by a proposal for a nationwide socio-economic and caste census, and the promise of increased affirmative action for Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Other Backward Class (OBC) groups. As they have in previous elections, caste politics may have shaped the outcomes in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state. For many, the question is whether the politics of religion have run aground on the rocks of democracy: the answer is not yet clear. For most, the outcome of these elections is rather unexpected. It had been assumed across the world in the lead-up that the BJP would secure another overall majority. Amit Shah, the Home Minister from 2019 to 2024, had even suggested that the NDA was aiming for 400 Lok Sabha seats, a record majority. It is difficult to square the BJP’s downturn with the view – expressed by the INC, members of the international media and academic commentators – that India had simply ceased to be a democracy between 2014 and 2024 because the BJP was in power. As Rahul Verma of the Centre for Policy Research in Delhi puts it, “the assertion that the erosion of democratic values is the creation of one party and its recent electoral success is an untenable oversimplification.” This is neither to obscure nor deny the religious nationalism of the 2019 BJP Government, or the way in which a one-party government has led to the centralisation of political authority in India. However, judgments about the health of any country’s democracy must be made based on structural and long-term factors, and as Verma suggests, by reference to standards attuned to each country’s unique institutional and cultural features. A flourishing and sustainable democracy does not cease to be so simply because a different party comes into power, nor does democracy suddenly become re-awakened when authoritarian, populist or anti-democratic parties are voted out. There are nevertheless two structural challenges to Indian democracy which are currently worthy of attention. First, recent commentary by the ICfS has noted issues in the appointment process for the Election Commission of India (ECI): after the Supreme Court of India had mandated the Leader of the Opposition’s involvement in appointments, the BJP Government legislated to replace the Leader of the Opposition with a Cabinet Minister instead. The natural conclusion is that a watchdog that ought to be independent has been politicised. This has raised questions around whether the ECI’s application of the Model Code of Conduct – including a finding that PM Modi’s Rajasthan speech violated the code – was truly objective, as violation notices were issued to both the INC and BJP as parties, rather than to individual candidates. Maintaining India’s long-term democratic health requires the new NDA Government to reverse these changes and safeguard the ECI’s independence. Second, questions persist over whether India’s regulatory framework for tackling AI-generated misinformation is up to scratch. The 2024 Lok Sabha election campaign saw deepfakes of Bollywood actors criticising PM Modi , as well as fabricated videos of two deceased politicians in Tamil Nadu addressing today’s voters. Recent Government-issued advisory notes emphasise the obligations upon social media platforms and AI companies to be transparent about AI-generated content and remove anything unlawful. However, the broader regulatory scheme exposes platforms to criminal liability for unlawful speech where content is flagged by Government-approved fact-checkers as ‘false’. This raises free speech concerns that go the heart of whether Indian citizens can make decisions at the ballot box based on a wide range of perspectives. With the BJP Government having

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