The US has joined an annual list of “backsliding” democracies for the first time, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) think tank said yesterday, pointing to a “visible deterioration” it said began in 2019.
Globally, more than one in four people live in a backsliding democracy, a proportion that rises to more than two in three with the addition of authoritarian or “hybrid” regimes, the Stockholm-based International IDEA said.
“This year we coded the United States as backsliding for the first time, but our data suggest that the backsliding episode began at least in 2019,” it said in its report titled Global State of Democracy 2021.
“The United States is a high-performing democracy, and even improved its performance in indicators of impartial administration [corruption and predictable enforcement] in 2020. However, the declines in civil liberties and checks on government indicate that there are serious problems with the fundamentals of democracy,” report co-author Alexander Hudson said.
“A historic turning point came in 2020-21 when former president Donald Trump questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election results in the United States,” the report said.
In addition, Hudson pointed to a “decline in the quality of freedom of association and assembly during the summer of protests in 2020,” following the police killing of George Floyd.
International IDEA bases its assessments on 50 years of democratic indicators in about160 countries, assigning them to three categories: democracies, including those that are backsliding; hybrid governments; and authoritarian regimes.
“The visible deterioration of democracy in the United States, as seen in the increasing tendency to contest credible election results, the efforts to suppress participation [in elections], and the runaway polarisation ... is one of the most concerning developments,” International IDEA secretary-general Kevin Casas-Zamora said.
He warned of a knock-on effect, saying: “The violent contestation of the 2020 election without any evidence of fraud has been replicated, in different ways, in places as diverse as Myanmar, Peru and Israel.”
The number of backsliding democracies has doubled in the past decade, now accounting for a quarter of the world’s population. In addition to “established democracies” such as the US, the list includes EU member states Hungary, Poland and Slovenia. Two countries that were considered to be backsliding last year — Ukraine and North Macedonia — were removed this year after their situations improved.
Two others, Mali and Serbia, are no longer considered democracies.
While Myanmar moved from a democracy to an authoritarian regime, Afghanistan and Mali entered this category from their previous label of hybrid governments.
For the fifth consecutive year, countries veering towards authoritarianism last year outnumbered those enjoying democratization.
International IDEA expects this trend to continue for this year.
The group’s provisional assessment said the world counts 98 democracies — the lowest number in many years — as well as 20 “hybrid” governments including Russia, Morocco and Turkey, and 47 authoritarian regimes including China, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Iran.
Adding backsliding democracies to the hybrid and authoritarian states, “we are talking about 70 percent of the population in the world,” Casas-Zamora said.
“That tells you that there is something fundamentally serious happening with the quality of democracy,” he added.
The report said the trend toward democratic erosion has “become more acute and worrying” since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Some countries, particularly Hungary, India, the Philippines and the USA, have [imposed] measures that amount to democratic violations — that is, measures that were disproportionate, illegal, indefinite or unconnected to the nature of the emergency,” the report said.
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