As surely as summer is turning to autumn in the northern hemisphere, respect for democracy across the globe is undergoing a substantial chill.
Larry Diamond, writing in Foreign Affairs, reports: “Between 2000 and 2015, democracy broke down in 27 countries, among them Kenya, Russia, Thailand, and Turkey. Around the same time, several other global “swing states”—countries that, thanks to their large populations and economies, could have an outsize impact on the future of global democracy—also took a turn for the worse. In nearly half of them, political liberties, as measured by the U.S. nonprofit Freedom House, contracted. Meanwhile, many existing authoritarian regimes have become even less open, transparent, and responsive to their citizens. They are silencing online dissent by censoring, regulating, and arresting those they perceive as threats. Many of them are attempting to control the Internet by passing laws, for example, that require foreign companies to store citizens’ data within the home country’s borders. Offline, states are also constraining civil society by restricting the ability of organizations to operate, communicate, and fundraise. Since 2012, governments across the globe have proposed or enacted more than 90 laws restricting freedom of association or assembly. Adding to the problem, democracy itself seems to have lost its appeal. Many emerging democracies have failed to meet their citizens’ hopes for freedom, security, and economic growth, just as the world’s established democracies, including the United States, have grown increasingly dysfunctional.”
The downturn can be seen both in nations thought of as “free,” as well as in those whose history of participatory government is far less developed. For some countries, the move away from representative government is not unexpected, but for others, including those considered the bastions of rule based on law and not raw power, the descent is a worrisome surprise.
In Russia, the death of Vladimir Putin critics Boris Nemtsov, Alexander Litvinenko and Boris Berezovsky made the headlines, but the facts run far deeper. Putin, a former KGB official, is steadily rebuilding the authoritarian regime he clearly prefers.
In China, notes the Reuters news agency, Chinese riot police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters in a village once dubbed a symbol of a small but hopeful grassroots local democracy movement. The harsh act represents a clear push to silence the concept of village elections, and is just the latest symbol that economic prosperity did not bring about a reduction of the omnipresent control of the Communist Party.
In Turkey, an aborted coup—which may have been instigated by the government itself–has been used as an excuse by the Erdogan government to crack down on anyone questioning its increasingly authoritarian rule.
In the Philippines, President Duterte has discussed assassinating journalists, and has boasted about his connection to vigilante killings. He has threatened to shut down his nation’s Congress.
Venezuela, which once had a promising future, has endured the death of democracy. It’s a nation whose leaders now model themselves after the harsh dictatorship of the Cuban regime.
Marc Plattner, writing in Democracy and Society, notes: “As democracy’s prestige has been dwindling, there have emerged signs of growing energy, political influence, and assertiveness on the part of the world’s leading authoritarian regimes—China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia—or the Big Five. Despite the existence of some very real differences and rivalries among them, these regimes are united in their desire to prevent any infringements on their sovereignty in the name of human rights or democracy. In pursuit of this goal, they not only directly work together in many cases in international forums; they also learn from one another, often copying domestic measures tried out by their fellow authoritarians. This has been the case with laws restricting the funding of civil society, pioneered by Russia, and with strategies for controlling content on the Internet, where China has led the way.”
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China’s goal to control internet content at home and abroad scored a significant success when President Obama’s move to transfer control of the internet from the U.S. to an international body influenced by Beijing, Moscow, Tehran and other authoritarian states was finalized on October 1.
But before the traditional democracies smugly look down on anyone, a review of their own increasingly elitist attitudes are in order.
In the United Kingdom, David Lammy, a Labour Party Member of Parliament, called for a “second vote” on Brexit since he, and other key political figures, didn’t agree with the public’s decision to drop out of the European Union. Attempting to overturn the will of the voters by repeated ballots, often influenced by leading media figures who are more in tune with elitist than the general citizenry, uses Democracy’s own tools against it.
Throughout the continent, the leadership has adhered to immigration policies that have become significantly out of step with and demonstrably harmful to their own constituencies.
Expanding in almost all western nations, the concept of “political correctness” has been used to censor free speech both in universities and in the broader spheres of public discourse.
Perhaps the most surprising examples come from the United States, a nation that once prided itself on a steadfast adherence to the principles of free speech, nonpartisan federal agencies, and a very wide-open political system. Throughout the tenure of the Obama Administration, key Washington bureaucracies, including the Internal Revenue Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, and, most disturbingly, the Department of Justice, have all been co-opted for partisan use. The nation’s highly partisan left-leaning media has buried all of these explosive abuses of public agencies.