Freedom House noted in March 2020 that we are entering the 14th year of consecutive decline in the health of democracy globally. Tracking the fate of the “third wave democracies”, Mainwaring and Bizzarro found that of the 91 democracies that emerged from 1974 to 2012, 34 experienced democratic breakdowns, while the quality of democratic practices stagnated in about 28 countries.

In fact, several of those regimes may now be considered democracies in name only. Illustrative examples include Putin’s Russia, Orban’s Hungary, Erdogan’s Turkey, and closer to home, Duterte’s Philippines.

Despite significant achievements since 1998, in recent years Indonesia appears to be catching up with this global trend. The practice of democracy in Indonesia has faced challenges such as violence and discrimination against minorities, arbitrary use of blasphemy and defamation laws to curb free speech, separatist tension in Papua and systemic corruption. Developments that have unfolded since COVID-19 appear to reinforce this trend, as shown, among other examples, by attempts to silence the strongest forms of government criticism during the pandemic.

We argue that while democracies have many different features that could both hurt and help during an ongoing crisis, democracy works better when there is a well-informed and open society. Now, more than ever, Indonesia needs guardians of economic policies to be critical citizens that help ensure that policies formulated to handle the crisis are truly in line with public interest.

In the context of COVID-19, if the balancing act between containing the disease and minimizing the economic costs is not tread carefully, a public health crisis could quickly wreak havoc on the economy, which in turn, would erode support for democracy

Recent public opinion polls suggest that something similar might be taking place in Indonesia, although we should note that correlations do not necessarily imply a causal relationship. Perceptions of economic deterioration moved in tandem with the slump in perceptions of democratic performance.

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