2020s: the disruptive decade

Ten­sion and in­equal­ity

“In the next few years, so­ci­ety’s de­mo­graphic sit­u­a­tion will mean the bal­ance be­tween the world’s eco­nomic, so­cial and po­lit­i­cal sys­tems will be more tense. The sys­tems of in­ter­gen­er­a­tional and class sol­i­dar­ity, the na­tion state as a struc­tural fig­ure, im­mi­gra­tion… are ten­sions that will grow. What we don’t know is whether they will con­tinue to cause the ex­clu­sion of ever more col­lec­tives from the po­lit­i­cal process and so in­crease in­equal­ity and dis­af­fec­tion,” says UAB po­lit­i­cal sci­ence re­searcher, Berta Bar­bet.

What could also emerge is a form of pol­i­tics that looks for spaces of in­clu­sion. “A re­think that al­lows peo­ple with­out re­sources to im­prove their sit­u­a­tion, a pro­ject that is not so­cial democ­racy un­der­stood as a state that col­lects taxes, but rather a struc­ture on a dif­fer­ent level, per­haps a supra­na­tional level. The great chal­lenge is whether the cur­rent ten­sions turn into a re­ac­tion that al­lows for peo­ple to be­come in­volved in de­ci­sion mak­ing, or whether we con­tinue with the cur­rent dy­namic,” says Bar­bet.

Par­tic­i­pa­tion

For the ex­pert in for­ward plan­ning, Jordi Serra, the process of col­lec­tive de­ci­sion mak­ing must be ex­panded, en­hanced and di­ver­si­fied. “Today, we have many op­tions for par­tic­i­pat­ing, but per­haps in the fu­ture peo­ple will want to choose their rep­re­sen­ta­tives dif­fer­ently, closer to the way we choose those who rep­re­sent us in com­mer­cial mat­ters, with con­tracts and pa­ra­me­ters. If the rep­re­sen­ta­tive does not keep to them, we can get rid of them, with each per­son de­cid­ing to what ex­tent they want to be rep­re­sented,” he says. “In my case, I’m happy for some­one to make de­ci­sions for me in mat­ters of en­ergy pol­icy, be­cause I don’t know much about it, but if I were an ex­pert in ge­netic en­gi­neer­ing, maybe in those mat­ters I’d want to de­cide for my­self. This di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion is pos­si­ble, but is hard to take on board men­tally,” he adds.

The fu­ture of Cat­alo­nia

Pro­fes­sor of po­lit­i­cal sci­ence at the UB, Xavier Tor­rens, thinks it will be dif­fi­cult to in­crease po­lit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion in so­cial move­ments in the short term “as they have had high par­tic­i­pa­tion for a long time, and are show­ing signs of fa­tigue; the most re­cent pub­lic protests were not as big as be­fore.”

On the pos­si­bil­ity of Cat­alo­nia achiev­ing in­de­pen­dence, Tor­rens thinks that we will only see an in­de­pen­dent re­pub­lic dur­ing the next decade if two key fac­tors are in place. “First, that the per­cent­age of Cata­lans in favour of in­de­pen­dence goes above 50%. And sec­ond, that an­other win­dow of op­por­tu­nity opens up, as one did on Oc­to­ber 10, 2017, when jour­nal­ists from all over the world fo­cused on Cat­alo­nia, after the po­lice bru­tal­ity on Oc­to­ber 1 and the bel­liger­ent mes­sage from the King of Spain that fol­lowed.”

Cit­i­zens and states

For Serra, the Cata­lan issue shows that the Spain that came out of the tran­si­tion to democ­racy is “in a su­per­crit­i­cal phase”. “Does that mean Cat­alo­nia will be in­de­pen­dent? It doesn’t guar­an­tee any­thing. All it does is ex­pose that the Span­ish sys­tem as it is is falling apart, and that they were un­able to see the Cata­lan issue as an op­por­tu­nity to take it to a higher level. Right now, na­tion states are more a part of the prob­lem than the so­lu­tion. At one time they al­lowed for progress and throw­ing off the yoke of feu­dal­ism, but now they have be­come an­other yoke,” he says.

That’s why Serra be­lieves we could move to­wards a dif­fer­ent type of par­tic­i­pa­tion. “Today’s tech­nol­ogy al­lows for cre­at­ing struc­tures that do not nec­es­sar­ily have to be linked with a ter­ri­tory. The big bar­ri­ers to big change are not phys­i­cal or tech­no­log­i­cal, but rather cul­tural and men­tal,” he says.

Ac­cord­ing to Bar­beta, what is hap­pen­ing in Cat­alo­nia could lead to three sce­nar­ios: that the con­flict be­comes in­creas­ingly po­larised, that it be­comes more in­clu­sive with a de­bate in which every­one can play a part, or that it stays as it is, but be­yond the in­sti­tu­tions, which can­not man­age it. “This would mean con­tin­u­ing with the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. The in­sti­tu­tions would be dis­con­nected, closed in on them­selves, but the so­cial ten­sions would con­tinue. To a large ex­tent it will de­pend much more on the lead­er­ship that might emerge,” she says.

Man­ag­ing con­flicts

One un­known of the next decade is what will hap­pen with pop­ulist move­ments. “We give the name pop­ulism to things that are very dif­fer­ent. If we see such move­ments as ques­tion­ing the major in­sti­tu­tions of lib­eral democ­racy, then there are two pos­si­bil­i­ties: that they are wildly suc­cess­ful or that they end up fail­ing be­cause they serve lit­tle pur­pose and stop being rel­e­vant,” says Bar­beta.

Pop­ulism can be un­der­stood as a trend that is not so much about op­pos­ing lib­eral democ­ra­cies, but about re­think­ing cer­tain forms of con­sen­sus and chang­ing struc­tures, the Eu­ro­pean Union for ex­am­ple. “It could mean mov­ing to­wards a world in which pol­i­tics is more in­clu­sive and going back to a so­ci­ety based on agree­ment,” she adds.

For this po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist, there are a num­ber of fu­ture sce­nar­ios: the end of democ­ra­cies as we know them and the es­tab­lish­ment of con­flic­tive Trump or Putin-style pol­i­tics; the fail­ure of pop­ulist move­ments and in­sti­tu­tions turn­ing in on them­selves to gen­er­ate tech­no­cratic so­ci­eties; or a sce­nario of “in­tu­itive” pop­ulism that cre­ates new forms of con­sen­sus. “De­pend­ing on which type of pol­i­tics we get, we will get a dif­fer­ent re­sponse to prob­lems such as cli­mate change, im­mi­gra­tion, in­equal­ity,” she says.

For his part, Tor­rens fore­casts that in the next few years the far right will in­crease its in­flu­ence on so­ci­ety. “That’s not a po­ten­tial fu­ture sce­nario, but rather a crude re­al­ity that’s al­ready started and will go on at least for a few years. Sadly, the ex­pres­sion of prej­u­dices will be on the rise,” he says.

At the same time, an­other el­e­ment that will be­come more es­tab­lished, which we are al­ready see­ing, is the end of clas­sic bi­par­ti­san­ship. Tor­rens makes a pre­dic­tion about the next elec­tion in Cat­alo­nia. “The sys­tem of Cata­lan par­ties that will emerge in the Cata­lan elec­tion to take place in 2020 will pro­duce an elec­toral re­sult that will open up a new Cata­lan par­lia­ment, with the pro-in­de­pen­dence par­ties hav­ing more weight,” he says. And as for the Span­ish panorama, he be­lieves it will come down to two par­ties on the left, the So­cial­ists and Podemos, and two par­ties on the right, PP and Vox. “And all con­di­tioned by the four na­tion­al­ist par­ties: ERC, JxCat, PNB and EH-Bildu,” he adds.

Fur­ther chal­lenges

Both on the global and the local level, an­other major chal­lenge in the fu­ture will be bring­ing an end to cor­rup­tion. Tech­nol­ogy can help fos­ter trans­parency in gov­ern­ments’ de­ci­sion mak­ing, al­though Tor­rens warns that “cor­rup­tion will only de­crease in line with an in­crease in hand­ing prison sen­tences and penal­ties to po­lit­i­cal par­ties.”

It is also clear that tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vances will allow for se­cure vot­ing on­line, which is only a mat­ter of time. Mean­while, new se­cu­rity sys­tems will help to make sure that data are not ma­nip­u­lated. This is the sphere in which the strug­gle against cyber-at­tacks and ter­ror­ism will take place at all lev­els.

New wars

As for armed con­flicts, the war in Syria might end “but the tragic con­se­quences will con­tinue for the refugees and the im­pov­er­ish­ment of thou­sands of fam­i­lies sub­ject to a tyran­ni­cal regime,” says Tor­rens. “The decade of the 2020s,” he adds, “will con­tinue to bring wars in the Mid­dle East as long as Arab coun­tries do not be­come de­mo­c­ra­tic states.”

The ex­perts also argue that at­ten­tion should be paid to Latin Amer­ica. “Many peo­ple don’t know it, but the con­ti­nent with the most in­equal­ity is not Africa, which is the poor­est, but Latin Amer­ica. The fight against cor­rup­tion is the main tool for com­bat­ing Latin Amer­i­can poverty, but gov­ern­ments there are usu­ally heav­ily cor­rupt, whether on the right or the left,” he con­cludes.

Yet, Serra points out, the com­plex­ity of these sit­u­a­tions makes it al­most im­pos­si­ble to know what will hap­pen with cer­tainty. But that does not mean we should not be pre­pared. “Mass demon­stra­tions show that there are peo­ple who want change. How­ever, it is re­al­ity that will have the final say.”