Liberal and scientific

In recent days, some reports have highlighted the outstanding management of some women at the head of the governments of countries that have been able to contain the spread of the coronavirus, reduce the number of victims and face the prospect of economic recovery in more favourable conditions. Germany, New Zealand, Taiwan and the Nordic countries Finland and Norway, among others. Although in this dramatic moment, acknowledging the success of female leaderships is motivating for the democracies that need the push of the whole of the free and diverse society on which they are based. But the question of gender does not seem to be the only common denominator capable of interpreting these results. Weberian Angela Merkel, both a politician and a scientist, is the exponent of a great government coalition leader who has made consensus the banner of her political success and capacity to influence among Germans. Her credibility comes not only from the fact that she is a competent and balanced woman, but also from the fact that she projects a credible discourse based on her academic training and her ability to build bridges. Also because of her economic firmness, called neoliberal, even though she is a Christian Democrat.    

In New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern chairs another centre-left coalition that has reduced the number of coronavirus victims to four in her country. The Finnish coalition is similar, more open yet also with representatives of the political centre. Another coalition, but in this case a centre-right one, is the form of government led by Erna Solberg in Norway. That is, coalitions that are not defined by ideological activism, nor have they had the intention of deconstructing democratic systems or altering the constitutional order, or defending secessionist or other destabilising processes. Perhaps the most progressive of these international leaders is Taiwan's Tsai Ing-wen, who took 124 steps in January to deal with the spread of the virus from day one. Her main ideology is anti-communism. She is hated by the authorities in People's Republic of China and defends both the health of its people and the independence of its democracy from its giant Chinese communist rival.

Conservatives and Greens in Austria, Liberals and the centre right in the Netherlands, and Social Democrats supported by Greens in government and by centre and liberal groups outside of government in Sweden, they all have provided the necessary political stability to meet the challenge of a crisis on the scale of the current one. The parliaments, in these cases, and not the street mobilizations and polarization have stopped populism and the so-called left-wing constructivist radicalisms.  

Moderate and liberal, Justin Trudeau is leading the fight against the pandemic in Canada with measures similar to those imposed in southern Europe, but more successfully. Every day he addresses the population through social networks and once a week with a video straight to the population. It is a weekly example of credible, sophisticated and committed political communication with its nation and the common values that unite Canadians, who are as diverse as the citizens of modern democracies. The experienced Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, also a liberal leading the fight against COVID-19, also experienced moments of uncertainty until he decreed a state of health emergency. Implementing technological tools to combat the disease and his ability to gain social commitment are among his strengths. Both Canada and Japan, without having yet overcome the crisis, are closer to the results obtained by Germany and far from the rest of the G7 partners.  

Nevertheless, specialists in propaganda and recurrent social scientists such as Noam Chomsky insist on pointing to neoliberalism as the imaginary responsible for the crisis, when classic liberalism seems to be in charge of focusing governments and ideas, both to fight the pandemic from the balance, and to design measures and actions to recover the economy and strengthen the weakened societies. A few decades ago, neoliberalism was an economic interpretation of liberalism aimed at opening up markets, regulating trade and boosting economic activity in developing countries. But for the old critics - communists or neo-constructivists - it is a current concept that serves to lump together right-wing politicians, bankers, international economic institutions, and recently those responsible for the coronavirus. In order to deconstruct democratic liberalism, they maintain a term that is still present in the collectivist imagination. But in the international political reality, liberalism is where it was from its origin and beyond: far from authoritarianisms, in front of communism and next to free and equal citizens before the law. At the heart of modern democracy.