Why is Democracy in Decline?

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Only two decades ago, democracy was the triumphant form of government around the world. Autocracy was in retreat in the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, South Africa, South Korea and elsewhere. Today, the global trend is moving in the other direction.

In the late 1990s, 72 countries were democratizing, and only three were growing more authoritarian, according to data from published by Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), an independent research institute based at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden that monitors democracy.

By last year, though, only 15 countries grew more democratic, while 33 slid toward authoritarianism. Countries where domestic democratic systems are tilting toward autocracy span the globe, including Brazil, Poland, Niger, Indonesia, Botswana, Guatemala, Tunisia, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Guyana, Mauritius and Slovenia. 

In addition to these, V-Dem asserts that countries such as Hungary, the Philippines, and Turkey have already lost the fight.

Not only are long-established democracies turning toward authoritarianism, but autocratic regimes are tightening their grips on power. In countries such as Russia and Venezuela, authoritarian rule has been entrenched and civil liberties further curtailed. 

V-Dem researchers classify countries in four broad categories. In closed autocracies such as China and Qatar, there are no multiparty elections for the chief executive or legislature. In electoral autocracies such as Turkey and Venezuela, there are elections, but they are not free and fair. 

In electoral democracies such as Brazil and South Africa, there are free and fair elections, but inequality and a lack of effective rights for some minority groups. In liberal democracies, such as Germany and Sweden, there are free elections, guaranteed rights for minorities, and functional checks and balances between powers.

The 179 countries classified by V-Dem are almost evenly split between electoral or closed autocracies and liberal or electoral democracies. It has chronicled 81 periods of democratic decay in countries since 1900, half of which have occurred since 2000. In roughly 75 per cent of cases, the crisis resulted in a complete transition to autocracy.

While coups still happen, the current shifts to autocracy are often more gradual, incrementally building to the point where little of the old system remains. They have frequently coincided with the election of illiberal leaders such as Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Andrzej Duda in Poland, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey and Narendra Modi in India.

Another measure of political change, the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI), an independent foundation based in Gutersloh, Germany, has recorded more autocratic states than democracies around the world for the first time since 2004.

Of the 137 developing and transition countries examined, only 67 are still considered democracies. The number of autocracies has increased to 70.

The rise of digital media, cultural change, and economic stagnation in affluent countries are among the forces that help explain why democracy is struggling. People whose daily lives are threatened by poverty, hunger and social exclusion and do not see any improvement through democratic processes have turned to alternatives.

“This is the worst political transformation result we have ever measured in the 15 years of our work,” reported Hauke ​​Hartmann, BTI project manager. Around the world there are fewer free and fair elections, less freedom of opinion and assembly, as well as increasing erosion of the separation of powers.

Many democracies which had previously been well-established have now slipped into the category of “defective democracies,” the study’s authors note.

“For me, these are the democracies that ten years ago we classified as consolidating, as stable, and which now have major defects in their political processes,” noted Hartmann. In Europe, Hungary and Poland, for example, are thwarting European Union principles of the rule of law.

He pointed to Tunisia, a country that was long considered the last beacon of hope for the democratization movements of the Arab Spring. President Kais Saied ousted parliament and government in July 2021 and suspended parts of the constitution. Most recently, Saied dissolved the Supreme Judicial Council.

Brazil’s upcoming election Oct. 2 pits 76-year-old leftist ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, against the far-right incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro, a former congressman and army captain. 

Up for re-election and facing the first possible ballot box defeat of his career, Bolsonaro has suggested several times over the past year that he would not concede defeat if voters choose his opponent. “Only God can remove me from the presidential chair,” he declared.

“The actors that promote ‘autocratization’ are usually the chief executives, and they can have large parliamentary majorities,” indicated Sebastian Hellmeier, one of the V-Dem researchers who examined episodes of backsliding. “In the end, it is a kind of death by a million cuts, with a lot of smaller changes that are difficult to stop until it's too late, he concluded.