Democracy is in peril in the world’s bonanza year
of elections
Democracy faces an existential test this year as
countries representing nearly half the world’s population head to the polls.
BY NICHOLAS
VINOCUR
JANUARY 1,
2024 4:00 AM CET
Is 2024 the
year when democracy hits a tipping point and slides toward autocracy?
It may seem
like an odd question to ask at a time when countries representing nearly half
the world’s population, or an estimated 3.8 billion people, are sending their
voters to the polls in some form of election.
Indeed,
from the United States to the U.K. and European Union, from India to Mexico,
and from Taiwan to Indonesia, some of the world’s most strategically important
countries will hold elections this year.
Yet even
amid this bonanza of balloting and voting, experts warn that dēmokratía — the
form of government pioneered by aristocrats in 6th-century B.C. Athens — is
entering a danger zone.
Not only
are dictators such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei expected to try to exploit the trappings of
democracy to prop up their own rule and stifle opposition, but democracy is
also at risk in the West, they argue.
U.S.
President Donald Trump is threatening to weaponize democratic institutions
against his political rivals if he wins re-elections next November. His
potential re-election is already spreading panic in Europe that he will turn
his back on Ukraine — and indeed on NATO — freeing Putin’s hand to rebuild
Russia’s empire and influence networks in Central and Eastern Europe.
In Europe,
the EU election in June looks set to signal that far-right parties — perhaps
most significantly in France and Germany — are building genuine momentum and
turning into potential national governments that would be hostile to EU
institutions in Brussels and Europe’s Muslims, while also being more
sympathetic to the Kremlin. The big question hanging over these parties is
whether they would dismantle linchpins of European democracy — such as
independent judiciaries and the free press — after using the ballot box to come
to power.
“It’s
absolutely legitimate to be very worried about the state of democracy in the
world,” said Daniel Kelemen, a professor of public policy at Georgetown
University and an expert in EU law. “Democracy is being challenged everywhere —
not just in places that rank poorly on surveys of democratic values, but also
in established democracies like the United States and the European Union.”
As 2023
shifts into 2024, the first high-stakes election on the horizon is Taiwan on
January 13, which will turn into a test of whether Chinese President Xi Jinping
will continue to tolerate a democracy on the island or will invade and
precipitate a major security crisis in the South China Sea.
Europe’s
political fragility has also been on full display over the last week of
December. Dozens were detained in Serbia after protesters cried foul over what
they say was a fraudulent election in Belgrade, where populist President
Aleksandar Vučić is being criticized for abusing his influence over media and
public employees. Russia has stepped in to play its traditional role stirring
up trouble, accusing the West of seeking to foment a Ukrainian-style “Maidan”
against Vučić, who has amicable relations with Putin.
A shrinking map
A quick
glance at studies examining the prevalence of democracy today versus other
forms of government reveals an alarming trend. According to the V-Dem Institute
at the University of Gothenburg, in Sweden, democracy has been rapidly losing
ground to autocracy for the past few decades.
Around the
world, “the level of democracy enjoyed by the average global citizen in 2022 is
down to 1986 levels,” V-Dem’s researchers wrote in their 2023 report. “There
are more closed autocracies than liberal democracies — for the first time in
more than two decades.”
Freedom House pointed to Russia’s full-scale invasion
of Ukraine in February 2022 as an example of democracy being under direct
assault by autocratic regimes |
With
startling declines recorded in the Asia-Pacific region, 72 percent of the
world’s population, or 5.7 billion people, were living under autocratic rule as
of 2022, wrote V-Dem’s researchers.
The latest
report from Freedom House, another major tracker of democracy, is no more
encouraging. “Global freedom,” wrote the Washington-based non-profit
organization, “declined for the 17th consecutive year” in 2023, with freedom of
expression being a primary victim of a global march toward autocracy.
Freedom
House pointed to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022,
which had the aim of snuffing out Kyiv’s democratic aspirations and severing
its ties with the EU, as an example of democracy being under direct assault by
autocratic regimes.
Yet even
amid this losing run, specialists who measure the health of democratic norms,
as well as their subversion, argue that 2024 carries great risks for democracy.
And nowhere is this more the case than in the US, which holds a presidential
election in 2024.
Nearly
three years after he urged crowds gathered in front of Capitol Hill to “fight
like hell” to overturn the result of the 2020 election, triggering an
insurrection, Trump is back and eyeing a return to the White House.
With polls
showing him likely to both win his Republican Party’s nomination to run for
president and possibly defeat incumbent Joe Biden, Trump’s return to power
looks more likely than ever despite legal troubles that could yet scupper his
ambitions.
Trump dictatorship?
And while
Trump is playing the democracy game by campaigning for votes, his comments
during mass rallies held around the country are fueling fears that, if
reelected, the real estate mogul could turn the world’s most powerful nation
into a “dictatorship.”
In all
likelihood, a shift from democracy to dictatorship in the United States
wouldn’t be announced as such, but rather take place gradually via the
subversion of institutions and norms until nothing but the trappings and
appearance of democracy remains.
A case in
point is the independence of the judiciary. It’s a key marker of a functioning
democracy. Yet Trump has repeatedly asserted that he would use the Department
of Justice to go after political rivals if reelected, while vowing to stock the
ranks of key institutions with loyalists.
“I am
extremely worried about the United States, almost more than about any other
country,” added Kelemen. “The basic problem is that for a democracy to
function, you need at least two main parties committed to democratic norms and
processes. And unfortunately in the United States, the Trump forces, the MAGA
forces, have taken over the Republican Party.”
Trump has
repeatedly asserted that he would use the Department of Justice to go after
political rivals if reelected |
In Europe,
where hundreds of millions will vote in a pan-EU election in June, the danger
of a wholesale switch to autocracy appears less acute. However, Kelemen warns
that Europe’s tolerance for autocrats in its midst, namely Hungarian strongman
leader Viktor Orbán, sets a dangerous precedent by encouraging others to follow
in his path.
Indeed,
many European countries are vulnerable to Orbán’s model of power exercised
through crony networks and media control. Bulgaria is a flimsy democracy, where
parties act as large patronage networks, particularly around elections, while
organized crime and Russia play an outsize role. Greece is also increasingly in
the spotlight because of government pressure on public institutions, with the
government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis being accused of undermining the regulators
probing the state’s wiretapping of politicians and journalists.
All of this
matters to the functioning of the EU itself, which has had very limited success
in policing its member countries over failings in rule of law and democratic
backsliding, while those same countries have a free hand in thwarting the EU.
Orbán perfectly illustrates this major weakness in the EU as one
Kremlin-aligned leader can block progress on major decisions. For example, he
prevented a vital financial lifeline for Ukraine in December.
Kelemen
argues it was a grave mistake to keep pandering to the Hungarian leader by
agreeing in December to give Budapest €10 billion in EU funds which had been
frozen over rule-of-law concerns.
“There is a
huge price to pay for giving up your leverage,” he said, referring to Brussels’
ability to force Orbán into making pro-democracy reforms. “The whole mechanism
of suspending funds now won’t really have the same deterrent effect. Other
regimes will take note.”
More
broadly, confidence in the functioning of European democracy is on the wane in
several large EU countries including France and Italy, according to an IPSOS
survey published late last year.
Rise of the elected autocrat
As will
Putin and his admirers among the European far right, who have a shared interest
in undermining democracy in the EU, adds Kelemen.
Ahead of
the EU election, in which hundreds of millions will participate, far-right
parties are surging in France, the Netherlands, Germany and other big EU
countries. While these parties won’t secure power, they can exert ever greater
influence over EU policies if they score highly in the June 6-9 vote, forcing
Brussels’ hand to overlook rule-of-law problems in EU countries and step back
from defending values that underpin democratic society.
“This could
be the year when we see the breakdown of the rules-based order,” said Alberto
Alemanno, professor of EU law at HEC business school in France. “It’s terra
incognita.”
Whatever
the outcome of the world’s “election Superbowl” in 2024, it’s unlikely that
those who will do the most damage to democracy will cast themselves as wannabe
dictators or autocrats.
To the
contrary, the closer we get to a total eclipse, the more triumphant talk of
“democracy in action” we will hear from so-called “elected autocrats” like
Orbán who will rush to seize control of the media and crack down on their
opponents. Which makes the task of protecting democracy all the more difficult,
adds Kelemen.
“The
current breed of elected autocrats all try to dress themselves up in the mantle
of democracy,” he said. “It becomes confusing for a lot of people and it
becomes a challenge to call out these regimes for what they really are:
electoral autocracies, or one party-dominated systems.”
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário