Loading summary
Transcript33 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the new Brooks Network.
- [01:17]
B
Welcome back to another episode of the Brooks Meets World podcast. Today we are here in collaboration with the Democratic Dialogues and we have the honor to interview our special guest, former and first female President of Costa Rica, Laura Chinchilla. I'm Amadou an and I am with the Brooks School of Public Policy.
- [01:32]
C
My name is Annalee Santana. I'm a master's student at the Brooks School of Public Policy and I'm so glad to be here with the Cornell Policy Review podcast today. I'm Rachel Beatty Riedel. I'm the director of the center on Global Democracy and your host for Democratic Dialogues. And Democratic Dialogues is a podcast that is about bringing cutting edge research on democracy to you, our listeners. And each week we feature episodes regarding questions about how democracy is facing challenges and new ways in which democracy can continue to preserve, to maintain, and even to deepen. So, as we know, today we're with our very special guest, President Laura Chinchincia, who has been a leader in these questions of preserving, promoting and making democracy thrive in her own country of Costa Rica as well as around the globe. With her continuing work in international organizations and diplomacy. As a distinguished leader with experience at the highest level of national and global political affairs, President Chinchilla brings really distinctive viewpoints to our campus and now to our podcast in this conversation and we'll be able to engage with her around a range of questions around fostering democracy and democratic politics, public policy and civil discourse. President Chinchilla is a political scientist and has a Master's degree in Public Policy from Georgetown University. She was, as we know, the first woman to be elected President of Costa Rica and served from 2010 to 2014. Previously, she also served as the Minister of Public Security, a Congresswoman, the Minister of Justice, and Vice President. Since her time in office, she continues to remain very active in public affairs and global leadership. She currently serves as the co chair of the Inter American Dialogue Think tank and as of this week, the newly inducted president of the Club of Madrid, which is an independent, nonpartisan organization created to promote democracy. And she's also a member of many international initiatives like the UN Human Development Report and the International Olympic Committee. So today we'll take on a number of these pressing issues around democracy and I'll turn it over to my co host with the Cornell Policy Review. Wonderful. So, Senora Chinjia, our first question is, can you share with our listeners what brought you to political office and who inspired you along the way?
- [03:58]
D
Well, first of all, thank you very much for inviting me. I feel very excited about this opportunity to share our reflections with the rest of the community. And congratulations on this podcast. When I think about which kind of people inspired to me, it is impossible not to mention the role of my family, especially my father, because he was involved in public service. He was not a politician, but a very dedicated public servant who was in charge of doing probably the most complex tasks in any government, which was combating corruption. So he was the kind of general inspector. And so he was constantly sharing with me how important it was to think about the good and efficient use of public resources. So he was very critical in my decision to dedicate part of my professional career to to public service, analyzing all the phenomena of government, et cetera. But I will also mention, of course, I have read the biographies of those big men, great men and women who were part of our history. But I will say that many people that I met, just people in the streets, during my meetings, during my political careers, when I was even a student, other professors and other students. In our conversations, I brought many inspirational ideas that brought me to the political career. So it will be very hard to individualize only one person. But I should mention the role, the critical role that my father played in my dedication to public service and politics.
- [06:19]
C
That's beautiful. Thank you so much.
- [06:21]
D
Thank you.
- [06:22]
C
Great. I was wondering if you can think about you coming from that moment of inspiration. How do you see today during your time of serving in office and, and continuing as you have moved beyond political office and in these international organizations that promote democracy? How do you see the range of urgent issues that are challenging to democracy today? We'll come to some of each of these in turn. But do you see the challenges that democracy faces as interconnected or potentially quite separate terrains? And how do you think these challenges to democracy might be playing out in Costa Rica? Do you see parallels to the rest of the world? Across the Americas, including the United States, Europe, other, other continents, Africa, Asia?
- [07:21]
D
Yes. When I compared the years I was president, it was between 2010 and 2014. And I see what is happening today. And the kind of challenges that many leaders in office are confronting is like totally two different kind of scenarios. I don't mean that there are many challenges that didn't exist before. There are many challenges associated to the democratic deterioration we are experiencing that began many, many years ago. Like I mentioned, for example, the growing gap in access to the opportunities, in terms of the distribution of wealth. We can also mention the growing role of social media and disinformation. The also role that fake news has been playing in the deterioration of our conversations, but not in the same magnitude that we had at that time. So now my main concern is that there are too many challenges playing a role. At the same time, they are overlapping. And so the impression is that this is too much pressure on the democratic institutions. While at the same time, instead of facing those challenges, what we see is a new kind of leadership which basically is concerned about dismantling democracy. Instead of fixing problems that we must fix, they are more concerned about dismantling democracy and affecting the main pillars of a democratic system. I don't remember the kind of attacks to free press that we are witnessing today. I don't remember the systematic attacks to the judicial branch, to judicial independence, to justices that we are witnessing today. And most importantly, I don't remember a global backsliding of this magnitude before. Before you had one or two countries in one of the regions. That was the case in Latin America. We lost two democracies in only 10 years, Nicaragua and then Venezuela. But those were the exceptions. Today, according to the different analysis that we have at hand, there are many democracies that are experiencing different degrees of backlash. So I would say that probably that is part of the difference. First, many overlapping crisis which is creating too much pressure on democracies. And secondly, the widespread deterioration of democracy.
- [10:51]
C
Ballooning or Snowballing that many, many countries across regions are experiencing these pressures.
- [10:58]
D
Exactly. And let me tell you that when we probably there are some specific situation that can explain the different scenarios in different nations, in different countries, but basically. The trajectory is about the same in all the countries. It starts with people concerns and there are justifications for people's concerns about the way democracy is delivering. But instead of again having the right leadership responding to those challenges, what those leaders are doing is just building their political projects based on the frustration of the people and in that sense the script that those leaders are following. They are almost the same for most of the countries that I know. And believe me, I have been working in many different nations with the same kind of issues. And I find many similarities in the way democracy is deteriorating when it comes.
- [12:13]
B
To holding office at the level that you did. Would you be able to speak to your experience of being the first elected female president and some of the hurdles that you faced when it came to advocating for policy, or maybe some of the hurdles you faced during your presidential bid or communicating ideas across the political aisle pertaining to gender and maybe how does this translate to the scene today, the global scene today for democracy building and, and making sure democracy is bolstered?
- [12:50]
D
Well, thank you for asking that question. There are many discussions about the role of women in politics. And also if once that we are in a position like a president, if there are differences in the way we deliver, but also the way we are treated by public opinion and media. And yes, I mean, I will say that it is not that we have very different conditions from men and then from women, but it is true that there are some kind of similar to situations that we women confront when we are in politics. Number one.
- [13:38]
C
I don't know why, but.
- [13:39]
D
They usually put attention to very minor kind of things. For example, I remember the media covering me about which kind of dresses I was wearing, if my makeup was good or not, the way I could my hair. So that kind of stuff. And I asked myself, but why they are looking at that? Because if they are looking at that, it means that probably they are not putting attention to what is more importantly in any kind of leadership. And that is what are my thoughts, what I'm saying and what I'm doing. Because this kind of coverage debilitates the women's leadership because we are presented through very non important issues. So that is something important to understand. The second thing is that sometimes when it comes to the relationship with some sectors, you feel that they are trying to diminish your leadership. That experience Was probably harder with some business sectors, not with the people, not with the communities, not necessarily with other colleagues working also in politics, but with the business sector. Sometimes there is kind of barrier. And I think that this is why when we speak about the need of having more women in politics, we at the same time are saying, yes, but it is also important to have more female leaders in the corporate sector. And finally, I will say that in the way we deliver, there are interesting features when it comes to, to female approach to power in general. I would say that we have a less arrogant approach, so we are more willing to listen to the experts, to the scientists, to those who really know about specific issues. Because it is important, of course, when you take any decisions, trying to support those decisions on the best knowledge possible. In fact, I remember that during the pandemic there were some analysis explaining how those governments that were led by women during the pandemic did a better job than the governments that were led by men. And basically one of the explanations is, look, women were more willing again to listen to the scientific community, et cetera, in order to adopt the different issues that was necessary to adopt in order to, to tackle or to confront this huge problem that the humanity experienced. While in the case of some male leaders, it was harder for them not to understand that that was a moment in history when politics needed to be in certain way behind science. And it was not just about if you wanted or not. It was just about that you have to take this decision. And so I think that there are differences in the way female leaders behave and the way we approach the power as compared with men. Of course, men have many other kind of good things when we analyze also the way they lead. It's just that I think that when it comes to the discussion about the role of gender in politics, what we need to understand is that there is a space for everybody. And when we have the opportunity to open spaces to men, but also to women, everybody wins because we can complement each other and deliver probably in a better model.
- [18:38]
B
Absolutely. The aesthetics of how a political leader responds to the science behind policy is absolutely interpreted differently by the public. Thank you very much.
- [18:48]
D
Thank you. Thank you.
- [18:50]
C
So I want to come back to the kinds of broad challenges that democracy faces. And as you mentioned, it's certainly occurring. The challenges to democracy are occurring in Costa Rica and they're occurring in very similar ways across the world. And so I'm wondering if you can help us think from your experience, what areas are there for democratic resilience within society? Where do you see hope potential to draw from in order to help democracy to survive this moment and these particular challenges.
- [19:25]
D
I still see some hope in the role that the rule of law plays in a democracy. In some countries we can see how judges and justices have been able to put a limit on arbitrary decisions. There are some cases, not only in Latin America, but around the world, where the rule of law was able to do that, or also to protect, for example, the role of independent media, also to protect some minorities of the abuses of power. So I still offer many settings. The rule of law is also experiencing a debilitation. I still think that there is space for the rule of law to continue playing the very relevant role they are called to play during those times. And the second issue is civic engagement and political participation. This is about the people, this is about the civil society, about the communities. I can see that even in those countries experiencing a very extreme deterioration of democracy, citizens are willing to raise their voices, are willing to go out to the trees, to collectively express their concerns in a peaceful manner. Of course, we can see how more people are coming together to discuss about what is happening, to try to understand and a kind of collective reflection. And also we see many and more and more young people not only trying to understand what is this about democratic deterioration, but also asking about what can they do by themselves. So I think that if we are able to protect the role of civil society, we can put in place more mechanisms to encourage public participation in decision making process, in discussing the solutions for many community problems, et cetera. There is hope that democracy can survive.
- [22:23]
C
And I was just wondering, what role do you see the youth playing in rebuilding democracy, in diagnosing issues within the erosion of democracy?
- [22:33]
D
Well, at least if the question is in personal terms. Look, I understand that I have a voice and that this voice in some context probably is heard easily than other voices because of my previous experience. So, for example, in my country, I cannot keep silent whenever I see something that really concerns me, because that is something that is eroding our institution. So I, I, I try to, not to keep, to kept silence. That is number one. And I think that this is important now for, for everybody to do. I mean, just, just to express what you are feeling, feeling in a respectful manner, but try to do that. So that is number one. And secondly, I try to use my experience and my influence in accompanying many activists around the world who are trying to restore democracy in their countries, particularly in Latin America. That is the case with the Venezuelans, that is the case with the Nicaraguans, our neighbors. Nicaragua is our neighboring country in Costa Rica. So I am very close to them trying to support the different initiatives that they are putting in place. Because at this time, that is part of the challenges that we have during those times when you have too many crises evolving at the same time. Not only the kind of existential crisis like climate change change, like the technological revolution, like the demographic transformation, but at the same time you have new wars and terrible wars, like the war in Ukraine, like the conflict in Gaza. It is very hard to compete with the attention for countries like Nicaragua, which is a very small country, but they are going through very hard, hard times. But also in Africa, we have many countries having the same kind of problems. We had the situation in Venezuela. In Venezuela, we were very lucky to have Maria Corina Machado as the Nobel Peace Prize. So all the eyes of the world are in Venezuela right now because of this recognition. But it is very hard to compete with attention. And so I try to add my voice as much as I can to those activists who are fighting in order to restore democracy in their countries.
- [25:23]
C
Wonderful. And when you think about. So we're here today at Cornell University and joined by amazing students, surrounded by amazing students who inspire, inspire us and I think, give us a lot of hope for the future. And you think about the engagement or disengagement of young people in Costa Rica and across the Americas. What do you see as the potential or the challenges of young people today in contributing to democracy and upholding democracy? What is their role as we look ahead?
- [26:02]
D
Look, I am not pretending that every young person, every student or young professional get involved in politics. I understand that sometimes this is very tough and everybody has the right to have their own profession, etc. But. But what I usually say is that we need to learn that successful is not a kind of individual concept. Yes, it is true. We need to put attention to our goals, to our aspiration, try to do our best to achieve those personal goals and aspirations. But society counts as much as your personal conditions. If you are living in a society which has no future because democracy is experiencing a deterioration and must probably the scenario in some years will end up with political violence and with economic distress, et cetera, you will be impacted in personal terms. So you must put attention at what is happening around you. Be concerned about the social conditions, the community conditions of the rest of the people about what is happening. Try to keep informed about the developments in your country and just try to bring your voice to some discussions to try to create awareness about the problems that you can see and if you can Move a little bit more and try to participates in some kind of organizations defending different kind of topics can be climate change policies or any kind of different agendas. Do it because that is a way to contribute with democracy. The other issue that concerns me with the new generations is that different to what happened to previous generations is that it was very easy for us to know which were the reliable sources of information. Now you have access to much more information than the one we had access to before. So that is not the problem. The problem is trying to discriminate which information is true and which information is false. Which kind of sources are just trying to distract you because they are selling you lies and which kind of sources are telling you, I mean the true in terms of supporting that information in reliable sources. So that is, that is something that the new generation should put attention and trying, trying to learn how to use the information in the best possible way. And most importantly, number one probably is trying to discriminate the sources of that information.
- [29:47]
B
When it comes to liberal democracies, educated citizenry is often and assumption that we make. And in an age where we have so much misinformation and social media campaigns that are incentivized to provide facts that may not necessarily represent the truth, what role do you see education playing as a cornerstone of democratic life? And is there a role that education can play and offsetting authoritarianism in today's political climate?
- [30:22]
D
Well, yes, the short answer is yes, of course. Anyway, I think that education is probably the most important policy for every society. It's number one. If you ask me which are the three priorities for any country, I will say education, education and education. Because not only evidence is telling us that those who had access to educations are also those who are today understanding the problems of democracy. But also because through education you have the possibility not only of achieving your goals, so you are going to be a more satisfied kind of person when you have the skills and the instruments to achieve your goals, to achieve your dreams. But at the same time, education provides us with the possibility to have some shared values with the rest of the community. Is true education when we have the possibility to bring those principles and those values in which a nation is built, when you even don't know those values, you even don't understand about those principles, it doesn't matter you're part of a community or not, because you just don't feel part of that community. Yes, education is again not only an important instrument for our lives because it provide us with the knowledge, with the skills, but also it provides us with the most important civic values to feel that we are, are part of a community, a political community. And democracy is that it's a political community. Yeah. So for me, education is indispensable and indispensable ingredient. When we think about how to respond to the challenges of democratic deterioration, we need not only to work for a better kind of education education, but also to guarantee that nobody's going to left behind just because they cannot access to education. In my country, we decided, when we were still a very Young Independent Republic 150 years ago, we decided that education was going to be a human right. At that time, we don't have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and we put it in the Constitution. And we also decided that it was going to be mandatory for all the Costa Rican families to send the boys and the girls to these schools. And in order for them not to have any economic skus, we also decided that government was going to finance the education. Even today, 90% of our students are going to public education. So that was the way we found to create a community of values, but also to provide people with these skills so they can really, you know, have a personal professional front.
- [34:17]
C
I would like to turn to the role of international organizations which since your time after leaving office as president, you've been very committed to international spaces and international diplomacy. And it's such an interesting and important kind of changing ecosystem. With the demise of US support through USAID for democracy and development, the changing priorities of the State Department, US foreign policy towards democracy has changed very dramatically over the last year. And at the same time, we know that the ability of illiberal or authoritarian networks to collaborate is increasing with technology, either through communication, dissemination of certain kind of messages, also through certain kinds of currencies. You know, their ability to coordinate is. Is accelerating in some ways with technological innovation. So I'm wondering, in this environment that is in flux, how do you see the potential for international collaboration and transnational networks for democracy? Are there new elements coming into the fold or existing networks that are championing democracy and can help it to preserve?
- [35:42]
D
That is a very important also question because since we are saying that the democratic backlash is of a globalist scale, that means that we need to organize also kind of global response. Now, the problem, as you mentioned, Rachel, is that at the same time the traditional institutions of the multilateral system are also experiencing a debilitation processes. They are being underfunding or they have their own problems because probably they evolved into two cumbersome bureaucracies not able to respond to many of the crisis that the world is experiencing. But the thing is that it is very clear that we need a global response. In that sense, I am relatively optimistic about what I am seeing since I belong to this initiative that you mentioned, the Leadership Alliance Club de Madrid. I know firsthand that there is already a global coalition of different organizations, international, regional organizations, and in some cases national organizations working together in terms of articulating different kind of programs. Those programs has to do some of them with working with the youth or trying to better understand the underlying causes behind these processes. In some cases we are just coordinating how to more effectively respond in certain kind of scenarios. In some others, we are just coordinating a global staining on some very urgent issues. But there are many things happening there that is very good because we need more about this. The second thing that I can see is that there are still some communities that are putting democracy at the center of the agenda. The conversation and the cooperation, for example, we are about to have in Latin America. No, yes. That is going to be where I think it's going to be in Colombia. In about one week we will have the Europe and Latin American summit. Latin American, Caribbean and European nations. This is a summit and I was invited just a couple of weeks ago to go to Brussels to give a lecture on how democracy can be part of. Of that side, how we can discuss about democracy, how we can encourage more cooperation between Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean. And well, the best news is that they are considering putting democracy in the agenda. And that is something very important because Europe and Latin America, they both have in common that they are a community of democracies. And in both regions we are experiencing similar challenges. Also you can find this happening at these other more official levels. And that is good. But yes, of course, at the same time it is very concerning the debilitation of some of the. The of programs in a country, for example, like the United States. For me, the usaid, USAID is a very dear institution for many reasons, but it was part of my years as a student in the school. I remember when we received those years, some, you know, support in terms of access to certain kind of medicines and pills. And I remember swallowing those pills. I hate at the time USAID for sending that to our countries, but it was very important because it has to do with tackling one of the diseases we had. I don't remember if it was malaria or something, but I remember myself, my classmate, swallowing those pills. And they reminded us this is thanks to the sait, and it helped us to to have a healthier society at that time. Later on I remember USAID helping us in developing different projects in different communities. And finally I remember working with USAID as a professional funded project seeing, trying to reform the justice system in Latin America according to the democratic values. And so what is interesting is that thanks to the assistance that we received from usaid, a country like Costa Rica was able to move from a low income nation to a middle income country, which means that we graduated. So at certain point we did not receive any longer that kind of cooperation. And it was good for us because we understood that it was just the time for us to do by ourselves the things that you helped us to do before and that it was time for USAID to continue working with other countries, with other nations. But yes, it helped us to achieve many of the national goals that we were able to achieve. So that kind of programs are important. It's very difficult to compensate that kind of cooperation. But at least what I can see is many efforts mobilizing around the importance of, of doing something about those concerning topics we are discussing today at a global level.
- [43:09]
B
So around the world we often or we're currently seeing the rise of many authoritarian to far right political parties taking power. What advice would you give the left parties as to maybe increase their reach or to reach out to the public?
- [43:31]
D
Yes, well, the first thing I would love to see is that we stop talking about right on left or about libertarianism and socialism, or liberals and conservatives, because all of those labels had resulted in many conflicts in the past. According to my experience, you can find very positive things under those labels if you try to find something, not all of them, but some ideas, some specific policies. I prefer to, to be a more kind of pragmatic leader and trying to learn from different experiences, experiences without any concern about which kind of ideas inspire that. Because what is important about taking decisions with real impact on people is just, you know, asking yourself what has happened, what was done in this country and the other. If it works here, probably I can adapt to do it in the same manner. And also what is of course very important is to have a set of values, a set of principles that need to be protected. In that sense, I think that protecting human dignity is number one, protecting freedom, protecting the rights of the people. That means respect and diversity. That is not true that democracy is only about the rule of the majority. It is also about respecting the rights of the minorities. So those are values that have been protected under many of those kind of ideologies. And sometimes the differences has to do with the role of state vis a vis the economy and that. So I would love just to see if it is possible to start first thinking in terms of, you know, the only one who is speaking is a person like me. They have the same kind of rights, they have the same kind of aspirations. Probably we have different ideas. Why don't we come together to see which are the common ground that we can find. But having said this, having said this, you have a point here and this is that I don't think it's exactly about the right and left. I think it's about those leaders. Because, for example, in, in Latin America, the autocracies that we have in Latin America are from the left. That is the case of Venezuela, that is the case of Nicaragua. In other countries they are more right leaning governments. I think that the risk of autocracy is coming from both the right and the left. But what is what they are doing, this new kind of autocrats, the new kind of populist leaders that the democratic leaders are not doing? I will say that it has to do with the way they are using communication. They are very effective in doing that. They are very effective in connecting with people because they are using emotions to connect with the people. Is that correct? To use emotions? I think it is. I think it is valid. I think that the democrat people, it doesn't matter if they are Republicans or Democrats, but the people who really have democratic kind of values, they are not crossing any red line when they try to use the emotion as an ingredient for communication. Because if we only speak in rational terms, I think, you know, I'm afraid we are going to continue having those problems to connect with the people. The difference is while the populist leaders, the autocrats, use emotion to exploit the most negative sentiments in people. Fear, rage, revenge. The leaders who truly believe in democracy should use a more shared to encourage other kind of sentiments. Responsibility, solidarity, commitment, because the goals are different. While the populists are just trying to dismantle democracy, the democratic leaders are trying to strengthen that collective experience of living in democracy. So I will say that probably that will be my advice.
- [49:10]
C
I think that's so helpful to bring back the conversation to the role of emotion as well and to think about alternatives to the negative emotions. And I think just to wrap up, maybe you could share with our listeners, you know, digging into this question, what gives you hope or courage? You know, what kinds of things when you look around the world today, what inspires you?
- [49:35]
D
Well, the things that really inspire me the most are the younger generations you know, I have my, you know, not home because he's no longer living with me since more than 10 years ago. But I have a boy, he's 29 years old and he has his partner. And so I learned many things, you know, from what they are thinking, doing, their aspirations and, and I think this is a beautiful generation. Truly. I, I can say this, it is not only about that they are very intelligent, they are very well prepared, but also they have a way to see the world which is very contrasting to ours. I think they are more concerned not only about very responsible with their own things, but also they are looking at many things that were time we didn't see. For example, the commitment they have with the environment is impressive. And I think that, you know, we are able to use what this generation is doing in favor of stopping this or trying to counteract against the climate change. If we are able to expand their attention to other areas like democracy, I think we will win this very complex struggle that we are experiencing now.
- [51:21]
C
I think that's such a wonderful note to leave us on. And on behalf of Democratic Dialogues and the Cornell Policy Review, thank you so much for sharing your.
- [51:30]
D
Thank you. I have truly enjoyed the conversation with all of you. Thank you very much for your questions.
- [51:43]
C
Sa.