2024 has been a significant one for democracy, with nationwide elections having taken place, or scheduled to take place, in over 70 countries, representing half the world’s population. Many of these campaigns have highlighted deep divides within our societies – politically and economically. There is a clear geography to those divisions – with “left behind places” voicing their frustration with a lack of economic opportunities.
Today’s geopolitical landscape has echoes of the years following World War II. Then, political “tugs of war” over whether a Soviet-inspired model, or the US led-Western democratic ideal, offered a better path to new prosperity for people and countries ravaged by war.
The US responded with the Marshall plan, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that flowed from it, to rebuild friend and foe alike. Nearly 80 years after the Marshall Plan worked to stabilise and revive economies and democracies in war-ravaged Europe, 2024 is a crucial year to take inspiration and lessons from it. These lessons may help us preserve and strengthen democracies today.
Across the world, festering economic inequities and populations whipsawed by change are nurturing support for those individuals and groups who offer to protect people from these disorienting dynamics.
In the latest EU Commission Report: The Geography of EU Discontent and the Regional Development Trap “the rise in discontent has been concentrated in places that have seen better times, where economic dynamism has long stagnated, and where the prospects of future economic development have diminished in recent years.”
“Given these dynamics, once again free and open societies must come together and develop a plan to strengthen democratic systems and protect open rules-based international order against mounting threats.” John Austin (2024)
Rebuilding trust and faith in our systems will only be possible through an urgent and focused effort among Western democracies to ease the simmering discontent in left behind places that lies at the root of polarising politics that have torn the fabric of democracy.
Left unhealed, these divides push residents of declining regions to support destructive political movements, and retreat from international engagements. These destabilising movements threaten the gains from globalisation that have brought peace and prosperity to citizens and countries around the world since WWII.
The Eisenhower Institute’s new report The Great Convergence: The Race to Save Democracy makes tangible recommendations for how democratic allies can work together to close regional economic divides and fend off threats to democracy. Those recommendations include:
- National and international leaders must adopt place-focused economic policies to address regions in economic crisis. We’re already seeing this happen here in the U.S. It must become a priority focus of international bodies like the G-7, U.S.-European Summit, OECD, European Union and Commission. They can begin with a simple statement, “Closing geographic economic divides is a top priority of our nation(s) and important enabler of healthy democracies”.
- Countries must refocus industrial and shared cohesion policies to support effective economic transition for people and places that have been left behind for too long.
- There should be a renewed commitment to multi-lateral forum and learning exchange between countries on what works in place-based and regional industrial policy–sharing analysis, experience, best practice and insights from the national place-focused economic change strategies and policies being animated across democracies. The OECD is just the place for such an exchange.
This work to bring new opportunity and hope to heartland residents is both urgent and long-term. It is an essential foundation supporting the ability of democracies to stand strong together in the face of threats to our international economic and political order. This approach must be given priority now.
John Austin is a Senior Fellow with the Eisenhower Institute at Gettysburg College, leading work on international economy-building and democracy strengthening. He also serves as a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he has directed efforts to support economic transformation in the American Midwest and industrial heartlands of Western democracies for over 20 years. Prior to joining EI, Austin created and led the Michigan Economic Center, a network-building organization that advanced the state's economic transformation. He coined the term "Blue Economy" and catalyzed initiatives in the Great Lakes region and globally. Austin previously served 16 years on the Michigan State Board of Education, including 6 years as Board President. He holds a Master's in Public Administration from Harvard's Kennedy School and a BA from Swarthmore in Economics & Political Science, with High Honors and Phi Beta Kappa.