Learning from the Tbilisi OGP Summit: Hope and ideas in an age of closing civic space

Photo by @Nnenna

In the opening plenary session of the latest Open Government Partnership summit, one panellist offered his definition of open government: government of the people, by the people and for the people. That probably sounds familiar – the phrase is borrowed from a popular definition of democracy, most famously deployed by Abraham Lincoln.

Does this mean the definition of open government is essentially the same as the definition of democracy? In many ways it felt that way at the 5th OGP Summit last week in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Two years ago, the 4th such meeting took place in Paris, a few weeks after the election of Donald Trump. That occasion veered uneasily between disbelief and business as usual, as delegates struggled to come to terms with the new reality. Open government no longer looked or felt like “an idea whose time has come”, but perhaps one whose time might have gone before it ever really took hold.

This week, perched on a hill above Tbilisi, a fightback was in evidence. This was clear from the opening plenary, from multiple sessions touching on civic space, and most directly at a session with the title “The Authoritarian Playbook”, convened by Mary Beth Goodman, a former advisor to President Obama, and Doug Rutzen, President of the International Centre for Non-Profit Law (ICNL). Their efforts are prompted not just by the election of Donald Trump, but also by a marked closing of civic space around the world and the rise of leaders with autocratic tendencies – Duterte, Erdogan, Orban, and others. Including Magufuli?

The Playbook comes in two parts, the first of which is for the Authoritarians themselves*:

1. V: Victory – come to power through the ballot box, generally by playing on the fears on those who feel threatened or anxious.
2. A: Amass power – concentrate power in the centre, and find convenient scapegoats to blame for the challenges people face.
3. C: Control critics – introduce restrictions on the media, civil society, political opponents, or discredit them.
4. U: Underscore legitimacy – appeal to an idealised past and a reassuring future – if people will put their trust in me, I will make X great again. (Incidentally, Goodman and Rutzen said the first leader to use this formula was Adolf Hitler – Make Germany Great Again – followed closely by Mussolini.)
5. U: Undermine norms – manipulate or change the rules around politics and elections, including those stated in law and those that exist simply as unwritten norms.
6. M: Maintain power – use outrageous propositions to shift the centre of the debate, keep up the scapegoating, put your supporters and friends into key positions.

Another session in Tbilisi taught me a new word – baccronym – for an accronym back-engineered to produce a desired word. There can hardly be a better example of this than the VACUUM represented by points 1-6 above, or indeed the one below. But while the particular headings chosen feel a little forced, the core ideas are compelling.

As you would expect from a former member of the Obama team, the second part of the playbook is designed to give hope – the People’s Playbook*:

1. P: Participate – call your elected representatives or write to them, vote and persuade others to vote.
2. E: Engage locally – all politics is local, so find ways to engage in local debates, address immediate needs.
3. O: Organise coalitions – institutions (and individuals) are stronger when they support and defend each other, when they act alone they are isolated and vulnerable.
4. P: Promote democratic norms – through civic education, teaching history, speaking up in public and in the media.
5. L: Listen – to those with whom you share something in common, to those you disagree with, and find spaces of civility where you can speak truth with (not just to) power.
6. E: Envision the future – focus on “I have a dream” over “I have a problem”, and find small winable goals that take us collectively in that direction.

None of these are new ideas, of course – a lot of similar ground has been covered by Timothy Snyder and many others – but they are nicely packaged here. Communicating good ideas matters too, almost as much as the ideas themselves.

Way back in 2011, David Eaves of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, wrote about the OGP as a “21st century containment strategy.” He explained:

[I]t is a effort to forge a new axis around which America specifically, and a broader democratic camp more generally, may seek to organize allies and rally its camp. It abandons the now outdated free-market/democratic vs. state-controlled/communist axis in favour of a more subtle, but more appropriate, open vs. closed.

At the time, I was asked for my thoughts on David’s article, by someone who saw the OGP more as a initiative to do encourage the adoption of practical approaches to improve transparency, and who was distinctly uncomfortable with the idea of becoming a pawn in a US-led geopolitical game. “So what if he’s right?” was my response. If the OGP is in part about spreading and strengthening democracy, and in part about prompting local actions to improve transparency, isn’t that a good thing on both counts?

After the election of President Magufuli in 2015, Tanzania’s official engagement with the OGP declined sharply, and the country formally withdrew two years later. Officially, this was just that the new administration felt it needed to focus on getting things right at home rather than engaging with lots of international initiatives, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile the government’s attitude to freedom of expression with membership of the OGP.

The US officially remains in the OGP, but the country’s official presence in Tbilisi last week was way down on 2016. I don’t expect it to happen, but it would not be the most surprising news if the current US government decided to followed Tanzania out of the door.

David Eaves’s “containment strategy” argument may need some revision, not least the suggestion that it is a US-led approach. But as an initiative to spread and protect democracy, the OGP is surely needed now more than ever. And whether any given country is part of it or not, the ideals it represents and the ideas it shares can still be of great value.

A People’s Playbook for Tanzania, anyone?

* The summaries of the Authoritarian Playbook and People’s Playbook are based on my notes from the session. Apologies to the originators for any errors I may have introduced.