Foreign Affairs Committee on April 30th, 2019

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Good morning, everyone.

I am pleased to call this meeting to order. This will be the third session of our study on threats to liberal democracy in Europe.

I want to welcome the members back after two weeks in their constituencies. I also want to welcome our two esteemed witnesses this morning, who are joining us from Hungary and New York city.

First, we have the Honourable Michael Ignatieff, president of the Central European University, by video conference. Michael Ignatieff was appointed president and rector of Central European University in 2016. Prior to that, he served as a professor of practice at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and, of course, he was a member of Parliament from 2006 to 2011 and former leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.

Good morning, Mr. Ignatieff.

[Michael Ignatieff, President, Central European University, As an Individual]

Good morning.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Joining us this morning from New York, we have Secretary General Martin Chungong from the Inter-Parliamentary Union. He has more than three decades of experience working on parliamentary democracy, and as part of his work on the IPU he serves as a gender champion, ensuring that gender equality is integrated into the IPU's work and functioning.

Gentlemen, we are most interested to hear from both of you this morning. You can each take around 10 to 12 minutes to provide some introductory remarks. Then we will open it up to all members for what I'm sure are going to be some really interesting questions.

Mr. Ignatieff, why don't we begin with you since you're calling in from a little further afield, just in case we have any issues with the video connection.

Please go ahead, sir.

[Michael Ignatieff]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks for the opportunity to address the committee, some of whom are colleagues from my days in the House. I send a warm and respectful greeting to members of the committee on all sides of the House. Greetings from Budapest.

Here at Central European University we provide world-class masters' and graduate education to students from over 100 countries, including from Canada. For two years, as you know, the Hungarian government has been trying to drive us out, but we're still here as a symbol of academic freedom in Europe. We've had support from universities around the world, including from Canada, and the Canadian government's support for our position and our right to stay here has been unequivocal and strong throughout.

The committee has heard from some extremely distinguished academic experts on central and eastern Europe and I concur with their findings. I read their testimony and thought I would try to concentrate on the implications for Canada. I'm going to go a little wide here and at a little high altitude, because that might be helpful to the committee as it puts its report together.

One way to think about the implications of the parlous state of liberal democracy in central and eastern Europe is to situate it in a wider context. You could almost say that the Atlantic Ocean has been getting wider and wider over the last couple of generations. By that, I mean that the gap between Europe and North America is growing and is likely to grow in the future.

One reason for this is that the memory of our shared history is fading. Canadians fought and died for European liberty and freedom in two world wars, and that memory is very important in our founding myths, but the memory of it is fading from Canadians' minds slipping out of Europeans' memory as well. People don't remember just how central Canada was to their story of liberty.

This is having strategic implications. Our American ally, as you know, is publicly questioning the value of the North Atlantic alliance, the NATO alliance. I sometimes wonder if in the future, Canadians will begin to question the value of the NATO alliance as well. We've done so recurrently over time. It hasn't become a salient issue in Canadian politics simply because it doesn't cost us very much, and it's not at the centre of Canadian debate, but it's only a matter of time before Canadians start asking, “What we are doing in NATO?”

On the European side, Europeans are increasingly aware that they will have to defend themselves, that the North Atlantic alliance was the alliance that got them through the Cold War but that they're going to have to start spending on defence and defending themselves.

Another factor that's changing the relationship between Europe and Canada has been the way in which our own population has been transformed. A decreasing percentage of our people trace their roots back to Europe. An increasing percentage trace their origins to Asia, Africa and Latin America. This has been a revolution in our country and an enormously positive one, but its net effect is to weaken the European-Canadian tie.

On the European side, when the Europeans, particularly in central and eastern Europe, look across to Canada, they see a model they increasingly reject. Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal have embraced the multicultural future. We're one of the great success stories in that way.

It's wonderful for our country.

However, if you look at Warsaw, Prague, Budapest and Belgrade, they've turned their backs on such a future.

We have a multicultural future in Montreal, Quebec City and across the country, but it's a future that the Eastern Europeans no longer recognize.

At the same time, in the biggest sense, the axis of the world is shifting inexorably from the North Atlantic linkage that was the centre of our foreign policy for the whole of the 20th century. The axis of the world is shifting from the North Atlantic to Asia-Pacific, and I think that means that Canada is going through the most substantial transformation of its foreign policy in my lifetime that I can remember. Canada is struggling to maintain its relationship with the United States. It is in deep difficulty in its relationship with China, and it's necessarily having to rethink its relationship with Europe. It's one of the architects of the post-1945 world order.

Canada was a founding partner of the UN, a founding partner of NATO, and a founding partner of the Bretton Woods achievement, and we were so because we thought multilateralism was a vital lever of influence for a middle power. But these institutions, all of these international multilateral institutions, are in some difficulty, particularly because the increasing standoff between the U.S. hegemon and rising powers is preventing these multilateral institutions from being effective.

This is a slightly gloomy tour d'horizon, but it's designed to make us think about the European-Canadian relationship in a new way. What do we do now as a country if we can't depend on others for traditional alliance structures?

A couple of things seem pretty evident to me. We're going to have to spend more on our defence. We're going to have to commit to defending the peace of others through our skills in peacekeeping. We need to remain a beacon of hope for people seeking to emigrate and become Canadian. We need to figure out how, as a major oil producer, we can meet our climate change commitments without blowing our federation apart.

We need to ensure, most of all, that our own liberal democracy remains vital and viable.

This means maintaining the national unity of the country, which is everyone's country.

We need to keep our federations civil, and we need to be a good example of freedom.

We need to teach our own people that liberal democracy is a balancing act between majority rule and minority rights, between parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law, and between cabinet government and parliamentary oversight. Liberal democracy is constantly having to be reinvented and retaught to the next generation, and I know that's something that parliamentarians take immensely seriously in their lives as members of Parliament.

What does this mean for eastern Europe? I think, to put it bluntly, we can't export democracy. We can't export our multicultural model to eastern and central Europe. The world may need more Canada, but I doubt that the world wants more Canada. That's a bit of cold water down our necks, but I think it's salutary. We're a much admired country. I love Canada. I love it even more being outside of the country, but we shouldn't be foolish about whether our models are exportable.

We need to understand whose business is whose here. Preventing the authoritarian turn in central and eastern Europe is not fundamentally the business of Canada. It's the business of the European Union, and they've concluded—very controversially—that keeping authoritarians inside the democratic club is better than expelling them, but I don't think Canada can assume the perennity, the indefinite future, of the European Union, because this tension between a Europe founded on democratic principles and an increasingly authoritarian eastern Europe might just, in 10 or 15 years, blow the whole wonderful experiment apart.

What can we do? I'm very impressed, as a Canadian working in central and eastern Europe, at the quality of our diplomats. Many of them are ambassadors. Three of them, I think, are female, and they're absolutely fantastic, but they all tell me in private that they don't have any resources. The Danes, the Swedes, the Dutch, the Germans, and especially the Norwegians have money to invest in civil society, free media, democratic education, student exchanges, and academic research exchanges between Canada and the countries of this region, but our diplomats have very little in terms of resources, and that's a shame.

We know what happens when we do invest. The Canadian investment in Ukrainian democracy, above all through election monitoring, has been a crucial part of the stabilization of Ukrainian democracy, and we need to follow that. When you think of central and eastern Europe, please don't forget the Balkans. These are frozen conflicts that can blow up at any moment. We would be well advised to invest in civil society and peace-building in that region, especially because their prospects of getting into the European Union any time soon are very slight. We can't neglect our security obligations. We've sent support to the Baltic states and their sovereignty. That has sent a message that we are prepared to stand in alliance to defend the sovereignty of these states. That seemed to be tremendously important.

Finally, we need to figure out what team we can play with. The Americans, to an astounding degree, have withdrawn from the security and stabilization of Europe. They regard Europe increasingly as a geostrategic and economic competitor. We are the North Atlantic society that still retains a commitment to liberal democracy in Europe, and we need to find the team we can play with. It looks like the Nordics, the Dutch, the French, the Germans and the Spanish are the pickup hockey team we want to be part of and working constantly with to sustain the democratic experiment in Europe. These are the democracies that give us some leverage. They're the team we want to be on, and I don't think there's another one. I don't think the Americans are coming back to this part of the world.

Finally—and I'll stop here—the message of our country is incredibly optimistic in a troubled world. We are a very pragmatic, practical people who get up every morning and make this enormous country work. People admire the fact that we do it so well. This is a message of hope and optimism that the whole world needs, and I hope we have the investment in our diplomatic resources and the shrewdness of focus that allow us to spread that message of hope and optimism to this part of the world.

Thanks so much for listening. I'm happy to take any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much, Mr. Ignatieff.

We are going to go straight to Secretary General Chungong. If you can also take around 10 to 12 minutes, we'll then open up the floor to questions. Thank you, sir.

[Martin Chungong, Secretary General, Inter-Parliamentary Union]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. It gives me great pleasure to address your august committee this morning.

Of course, I am appearing before you as the secretary general of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, but most of the views I'm going to express today are my own and should not be construed as the official views of the organization.

As I address your committee this morning, the image that comes to mind is this mass movement that has been recurrent in France since November last year, called the gilets jaunes, or yellow vests. This vest epitomizes a level of discontent, anger and disenchantment among the European population and has fuelled a lot of violence that has no place in a democracy, especially in a liberal democracy.

You may then ask why it is that the very foundations of democracy are being rocked in the bastion of democracy that Europe should be. I think what is happening in Europe is reminiscent of what is happening in the rest of the world. The world has become a big village, and there are a number of factors that might be general, but also specific to Europe. If you asked me, I would say that the factors are at once political, societal and economic.

When we look at what is happening in Europe, we have the impression, and people feel, that their economy is failing them. There is growth in GDP in Europe, but the benefits are not being felt by the ordinary person. We see recently, for instance, that retirees in France have been complaining about their pension, which [Technical difficulty—Editor].... It does not compare....

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Mr. Secretary General, we're having some problems with the video. We'll suspend briefly while we get it back online.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

We're resuming.

Secretary General, please go ahead.

[Martin Chungong]

Okay, thank you. I'm very sorry for that.

I was just saying that people really believe that their economic systems are failing them, that these systems are not beneficial to the ordinary person. They feel that the system is heavily skewed in favour of the wealthy.

If you look at the political scene, too, you realize that there is a lot of disenchantment with the institutions of governance, in Europe in particular. While you have more informed citizens who want to be more involved in democratic processes, we see that opportunities for democratic consultation are shrinking. They boil down just to elections taking place every four to five years, whereas given the modern means of communication, the democratic engagement has to be more frequent and regular.

We also look at external factors, such as the influx of migrants into Europe that is fuelling discontent, that is fuelling xenophobia, because there is anxiety among the indigenous populations in Europe that migrants are taking over their jobs, are taking over those opportunities that accrue to them.

We can name any number of factors, but I do want mention also the issue of terrorism that is emerging in Europe. This terrorism is fuelled by conflict, intolerance and the development of hate speech. This has created a foundation for populism in Europe, whereby politicians are becoming unscrupulous and playing on the sentiment of anxiety among the population.

Let me just take a few moments to say a few words about how parliaments feature in all of this. We think parliaments, as institutions of democracy, have to restore popular trust in institutions of governance in Europe, as well as in the rest of the world. For this to happen, parliaments have to start from within. They have to be seen to be representative. They have to be seen to be more accessible and accountable to citizens, and they have to be seen to be delivering and being relevant. We believe it is important for us to move from the abstract conception of democracy and parliament to reality, looking at how parliaments can deliver for their citizens across the board. This is something that is important.

We also think when you talk of representative parliaments, you are not talking only of numbers; you are not talking of the number of women in parliament or the number of young people in parliament, but you are also talking about the ability of a parliament to address issues that appeal to the cross-section of society.

If I could dwell a little on representation, we see that Europe is just slightly above the global average when it comes to women's representation in parliament. The global average is 24.3%, whereas in Europe it's 28%. This is not enough. If we want to achieve gender equality, then we should be looking at more....

[Technical difficulty—Editor].

Also, another point that needs to be addressed, and this is based on a study that we carried out last year, is violence against women, sexism, sexual harassment and other forms of sexual misconduct against women parliamentarians. When we did a survey of European parliaments, we realized that at least 85% of women reported having been subject to some form of violence, psychological, physical or otherwise. This is unacceptable because it's a major obstacle to women's political participation.

I also think parliaments should address the issue of youth empowerment. Many youth are apathetic to governance processes, to democracy today, because they believe their voice is not being taken into account. They see that their interests such as climate change, employment and educational opportunities, all of these, are not being factored into decision-making processes. It is important that we involve them in decision-making. It is important that we increase their numbers in parliaments so that democracy can be rejuvenated.

Those are some crucial points that parliaments need to address when it comes to restoring trust in democracy and the institutions thereof.

Let me just conclude by saying that I'm always an optimist. I do not think democracy, liberal democracy, is about to die. It will not die. It has proven its resilience over the years.

By the way, it is the only system of government of similar values that is self-correcting.

I want to go back to what I mentioned at the beginning, the gilets jaunes movement in France. If it were an authoritarian regime, the government would have sent troops, the military, to quell the riots in Paris, but no, being a democracy, albeit an imperfect one, the government decided to hold a general debate to listen to the people, to their concerns, and see how this could be addressed. That is the value of democracy, which we want to promote.

We also think it's important for us to reaffirm the validity and values of multilateralism. We work as a government in a global village, and the issues that we need to deal with in countries cut across national borders. We cannot be seen to be doing things in an isolationist manner. We want to call out those people who are calling into question the very foundations of multilateralism.

We have to work together at the interparliamentary level and at the parliamentary level. We think that parliaments have to stick together to reaffirm the validity of those values of democracy that have to do with freedom and respect for human rights.

Then, one particular thing I want to point out is that parliaments are under threat because their members are under threat. Even in Europe, which, as I said, is supposed to be a bastion of democracy, we see what is happening in Turkey where parliamentarians are arrested and thrown into jail because they have sought to express their views and perform their duties as members of parliament. This is unacceptable. This has to be addressed in a robust manner, not only within national borders, but also in the form of co-operation between parliaments in the form of parliamentary solidarity between members of parliament whose colleagues' parliaments' integrity would be jeopardized, which is not good for democracy.

I would like to stop at this point and answer any questions that members of the committee may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary General.

I thank you also, Mr. Ignatieff.

We're now going to go straight to question, beginning with MP Genuis, please.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

It's a pleasure to be here, Mr. Ignatieff. I remember when we first met when you spoke at Carleton University when I was a student. There were many protestors there who disagreed with your views on certain things. I wasn't among the protestors, though. I was just there to listen.

I want to ask for your reflections on a number of things that have come up over the course of the study. First of all, I think it's important that we don't conflate opposition to certain aspects of European integration, even people who are in favour of their countries leaving the EU, with opposition to liberal democratic values. In fact, much Euroscepticism is presented in fundamentally democratic terms, that is, as a critique of what is perceived as the undemocratic overreach of central European institutions. I'm curious for your comment on whether you would agree in principle that some people perceive threats to democracy coming from centralization and power taken by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. I don't mean that pejoratively, but it is part of the discourse. I would be curious about your response to that concern.

[Michael Ignatieff]

I think you're putting your finger on some important points. I think it would be grotesque to denounce the people who want to leave the European Union and are campaigning for Brexit as hostile to liberal democratic views. A lot of what they're saying is, “We want to restore British liberal democracy. We want to restore British parliamentary sovereignty.”

It's eminently democratic, eminently liberal, and the debate, despite bringing the country to the edge of a complete seizing-up of its institutions, has been eminently civil and democratic.

On the other side, it's clear that there are lots of Europeans who are hostile to further centralization of power in Brussels. They are not anti-democratic forces. They are often eminently democratic. The difficulty in the central nations in Europe is that the campaign against Brussels that you see being led from Hungary, for example, doesn't have very much to do with democracy. It claims to be a defence of Hungarian democracy, but it's in some real way the defence of a single-party state and its clique to define the terms of the debate and shut other people out. It runs against Brussels Monday through Friday in the domestic media and then cashes Brussels' cheques on Saturday and Sunday. That's a very unpleasant thing to watch.

Where I would step back, finally, is to say that what's good about Europe is that there is ongoing, passionate debate in 27 national countries about how to balance the appropriate national sovereignty of national parliaments and national governments with the appropriate authority to be given to European institutions.

I don't think they're overweening; I don't think they're too powerful. I would make a bit of a case that they should be stronger still, since.... If you take the example—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Can I just jump in because I wanted to ask a follow-up question?

I understand there is a lot we could say in the debates about European integration. As I say, I don't really think it's my business to have strong opinions one way or the other.

I did want to follow up on some of the comments you made about Hungary. You referenced indirectly the Sargentini report. That report obviously wasn't viewed as favourable for the government of Hungary, but here's what the report said about the elections:

In its preliminary findings and conclusions, adopted on 9 April 2018, the limited election observation mission of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights stated that the technical administration of the elections was professional and transparent, fundamental rights and freedoms were respected.... The election administration fulfilled its mandate in a professional and transparent manner and enjoyed overall confidence among stakeholders.

There's confidence, according to the Sargentini report, in election administration. The criticisms of Hungarian democracy that were made in that report refer to—in the context of the elections, an “adverse climate”—concerns about government advertising and single-member constituencies. Again, these are important debates. I will observe—and you'll remember these discussions well—that issues like government advertising, the relative merits of single-member constituencies and the tone of debate overall are part of our democratic conversation in Canada as well.

I do wonder. As we talk about threats to liberal democracy, we compare Canada with other countries, and your comment about the Atlantic getting wider.... If we saw things like the SNC-Lavalin affair taking place in countries in central Europe, I wonder what the tone of criticism would be there and what people would say about what that says about the importance of the rule of law and the independence of institutions.

We're running tight on time, and I want to give you a chance to respond, but do you agree with the findings of the Sargentini report in this respect? Do you have further thoughts on their conclusions about the administration of the elections?

[Michael Ignatieff]

Eighty per cent of the media in Hungary is controlled by the government. The space for independent political debate is shrinking all the time. The capacity of the constitutional court and the courts to oversee and guarantee election integrity is diminishing.

Yes, there was an election in 2018. The OSCE did judge it to be fair. This is not a country where democracy has disappeared, but a country where democracy is in danger. With respect, sir, I think you're drawing a kind of continuity between controversies in Canada and controversies in Hungary, and it seems to me to be normalizing a situation in Hungary that just isn't normal. This country has been diverting, in a very serious structural way over eight years, from the norms of European liberal democracy. It just seems an empirical fact. It seems—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I didn't mean it as normalization. I wouldn't want us to normalize the SNC-Lavalin affair. To your comment about media control, we're having a debate in this country about a $600-million media bailout package from government where the government is—

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

MP Genuis, I'm sorry, but you're over time. Thank you.

We're now going to move to MP Sidhu, please.

[Jati Sidhu, Liberal, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm going to share my time with my colleague Borys.

It's nice to see you again, sir. It's been a while, actually. Welcome aboard.

[Michael Ignatieff]

Thank you.

[Jati Sidhu, Liberal, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

The term “liberal democracy” can cause some confusion. You have been quoted as saying that one cannot have democracy unless it's liberal. Could you please explore a little more the technicalities of liberalism and which elements, therefore, make up democracy?

[Michael Ignatieff]

Well, I certainly don't mean Liberal, with a capital “L”, and I hope that everybody around the table is liberal democrat in the sense that they believe in majority rule balanced by minority rights. That's a key part of liberal democracy. The rule of law, the separation and independence of the judiciary, a free media.... The genius of liberal democracy is that you balance majority rule with a lot of other institutions—the courts, the press, independent regulators—to make sure that the system is balanced. Therefore, minorities don't get crushed and majorities don't steamroll. Parliaments have a say, but it has to be consistent with the law. It's a balancing system, Mr. Sidhu. That's what we mean by liberal democracy. I think it commands widespread support—universal support—across our political divides in Canada. It's one of the great sources of our strength.

[Jati Sidhu, Liberal, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Borys, go ahead.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Professor Ignatieff, you've been quoted as saying that Hungary has moved away from communism and not towards liberal democracy. You address some of this in your answers to questions. It's headed towards a single-party state ratified by a democracy. Could you please explain that comment a little more succinctly? In your opening remarks, you not only referenced Budapest, but also mentioned Prague and Warsaw. What is this model of a single-party state ratified by a democracy?

[Michael Ignatieff]

The Orbán regime has won three or four mandates. Once it wins an election, it then sets about to increasingly control the media, to put independent media out of business, and then to begin to change the constitution and suppress the independence of the courts. It then imposes increasingly centralized controls over the economy in the sense that it uses political power systematically to reward its own cronies. That's what I mean by consolidating a single-party state. It takes a long time. The fact that it is ratified by democracy is important because that's the source of its legitimacy.

You quite rightly raise the question of how far this applies in other places. It think Hungary has taken it much further than anywhere else. The opposition in Poland is much more vigorous, but the ruling party has used some of the Hungarian tool kit on the constitutional court in Poland, as you'll be aware. The Czech Republic is a more mixed story.

Essentially, it's political regimes that, instead of supporting, sustaining, respecting and defending counter-majoritarian power—whether it's the courts, the media, independent regulators or Europe—seek to consolidate power in a very small number of regime hands.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Following up on that, it is interesting that that they're going through this process but are also using populism as one of their most important methods of continuing and building their support. In 2015, the Orbán regime targeted Syrian refugees. It proved to be very effective. In 2016, the targets were the UN, the EU, and those bodies forcing migrants onto Hungary. Soon afterwards, it was the NGO community. In particular, George Soros was an ideal target and was portrayed as a Jewish banker philanthrope who supported the degenerate values in open society and liberalism, which ran counter to Mr. Orbán's slogan of “God, homeland, family” and this whole concept of a Christian illiberal democracy.

The consequence is that you and the Central European University, a highly respected and prestigious institution, are being forced into Vienna. You haven't spoken of Vienna, but the government there is a coalition government. The junior party in that coalition is a far right xenophobic party. Their foreign minister was supported by this far right party and they in fact are having a tremendous influence on the politics within Austria. Do you feel somewhat unnerved that you may see similar processes in your new location in Vienna?

[Michael Ignatieff]

Some people say I'm going from the frying pan into the fire. I hope not. We've had very good co-operation from the coalition government, but you're quite right to indicate that there is a far right party. Let's understand that it is a constitutional party. There are parties that cross out of the constitutional order altogether and incite violence against other people. The FPÖ is not yet in that place, but you're right to be concerned, and it illuminates the problem: the increasing rightward turn of the political formations in central and eastern Europe. As you say, these are formations that depend on the continuous mobilization of their base by the creation of enemies, and you listed who those enemies are.

I do think that for a Canadian audience it's extremely important to notice the recurrent anti-Semitic tone and the recurrent anti-Semitic tropes here. This should concern all Canadians. The attack is not simply on George Soros; it's a reprise on the cosmopolitan rootless speculator who destroys ordinary God-fearing Christian lives. We know where that stuff comes from, and it's poison every time you hear it, wherever you hear it. I think Canadians ought to be concerned about that.

They have targeted the university that I have the honour to lead, I hope not because I'm leading it, because it's been 25 years as an independent institution here. It allows me to come back to what I said in answer to a previous question. The key challenge, I think, to democracy in Europe is the hostility towards counter-majoritarian institutions everywhere: hostility towards the media, hostility towards the courts, hostility towards civil society that asks probing questions and hostility to any of the independent regulators, in favour of a vision that the people must rule, the people must decide.

Well, that's not democracy. Democracy is this balancing between legitimate majority opinion, which must always be sovereign, and the countervailing power represented by universities, courts, etc.