We all see it and feel it: democracy is in decline. Social and political scientists call this "democratic backsliding". In this article I'll try to review the reasons why this is happening, as well as explain why this doesn't come as a surprise to a socialist who's been alive for more than a half century.
source: YouTube
Democracy worldwide was at its peak in 2010 - 2012, when there were the maximum number of democracies in the world. This is true whether we simply look at the number of democratic countries, or at the number of democratic rights people have within these democracies:
Democracy is in decline, regardless of how we measure it — whether we look at big changes in the number of democracies and the people living in them; at small changes in the extent of democratic rights; or at medium-sized changes in the number of, and people living in, countries that are autocratizing.
source: Our World in Data - September 06, 2022
From 2012 to 2022 the number of democracies has fallen from 97 to 89, and the number of people with democratic rights went down from 3.9 billion to 2.3 billion. To understand why and how this is happening, let's first ask ourselves what "democracy" really is.
Actually it's quite simple: democracy is supposed to be the "Great Equalizer". It's the very basic idea that when people have to live with the consequences of a particular choice or decision, they should have a say in that choice or decision. Consider the thermostat in your house; it's your house, you live there, you pay the rent, so you decide whether the heating is on and on what temperature. When you share the rent however, when you're living with one or more others in that house, it stands to reason that you discuss and agree on a temperature you all are comfortable with. The best and most honest way to make this decision is by the democratic method of one vote per person. Now, you could cloud the decision by arguing that whoever pays more rent has more of a say. But ask yourself: does the difference in paying rent change anything about the fact that you both have to live there? And what about the difference in wealth or income between you two? Maybe one pays more rent because they have more money or income. All that doesn't change anything about the fact that you both have to live there, comfortably if at all possible.
I'm sorry for going on about thermostats, temperature and the room or house, but I feel it's necessary to have a solid and easy to understand grounding for discussing democracy, its rise and the deplorable decline we're witnessing right now. The first thing to understand that this type of democracy we've never had; there's never been a situation anywhere in the history of the world where we had one person one vote. Not really. We've had gradations leaning more towards that principle or not. Democracies that do lean more towards being an actual democracy are called Social Democracies. The ones that don't are called Liberal Democracies. But all democracies retained the notion that the powerful and the wealthy had more of a say in the nation's decisions. Let me explain the difference between those two kinds of democracy though.
Social democracies are concentrated mainly in Europe. They were instituted and developed in post-war Europe, where robust social contracts were drawn with the aim of preventing fascism from ever happening again. Like I've explained a couple of days ago in my article Free Market Phantasm, the post-war consensus entailed many protections for the working class like a welfare state, universal healthcare and affordable education. These are the democracies that lean more towards ignoring who pays more rent. Liberal democracies on the other end concentrate on personal freedoms and personal responsibility, and lean towards the idea that if you pay more rent, your vote on the temperature in the room has more weight. As a consequence, liberal democracies are much more likely to be dominated by the will of the wealthy, the corporations, the multinationals and the banks.
Now let's review the immediate causes for democratic decline in recent years. The article on Wikipedia lists seven main causes and characteristics: populism, economic inequality and social discontent, personalism, COVID-19, great power politics, cultural conservatism, and a collection of other factors among which polarization and misinformation are most prominent. I'm not going to discuss them all, so if you want you can read the article on democratic backsliding for yourself. I'll just discuss the ones we're all personally familiar with, the ones we see happening in the daily news. Also, I'll concentrate on the decline in the quality of democracy, as we've yet to see the complete fall of democracy in the western nations I'm most familiar with, as I suspect most of my readers are.
I'll leave out COVID-19 for the obvious reason that it falls within the catastrophic anomalies politicians use to consolidate power. You know, when "leaders impose autocratic rules during states of emergency that are either disproportionate to the severity of the crisis or remain in place after the situation has improved". In that regard I'd much sooner point to the post-9/11 "war on terrorism" in the name of which personal liberties have been curtailed worldwide in a dramatic, yet relatively stealthy fashion. In an early step towards autocratization, the world's biggest liberal democracy opened up illegal detention camps (Guantanamo Bay) and publicly defended torture as a legitimate method for gathering intelligence. Whistle-blowers like Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning are persecuted in the name of "national security", further emphasizing the descent towards a surveillance state in which freedom of speech is stamped down upon when it threatens the seats of power.
One of the main factors indicating a nation's vulnerability to democratic decline is economic inequality and social discontent. As we've discussed earlier, liberal democracies do little to nothing to prevent economic inequality with their emphasis on personal liberty and responsibility. This nurtures the idea, between all economic, cultural and social strata of the nation, that individuals and social groups bear no responsibility towards each other. What's mine is mine, and you do yours. Mix this with cultural conservatism, which is the fear of social minorities gaining power, and you have the fertile ground where populists can rise to power by blaming these social groups for the discontent felt among the "silent majority". They do this by causing and feeding polarization through misinformation. You see, your wages are down because of brown people taking your jobs, not because of the employers who pay those wages and keep the economy running by relying on those brown people gratefully accepting lower wages. There you have it: almost all major causes for democratic backsliding in just one short paragraph.
If you want to read more, I can recommend an article on Freedom House titled New Report: The global decline in democracy has accelerated. It states that "While still considered Free, the United States experienced further democratic decline during the final year of the Trump presidency. The US score in Freedom in the World has dropped by 11 points over the past decade, and fell by three points in 2020 alone." On this loss of "freedom points" in 2020 it states:
Several developments in 2020 contributed to the United States’ current score. The Trump administration undermined government transparency by dismissing inspectors general, punishing or firing whistleblowers, and attempting to control or manipulate information on COVID-19. The year also featured mass protests that, while mostly peaceful, were accompanied by high-profile cases of violence, police brutality, and deadly confrontations with counterprotesters or armed vigilantes. There was a significant increase in the number of journalists arrested and physically assaulted, most often as they covered demonstrations. Finally, the outgoing president’s shocking attempts to overturn his election loss—culminating in his incitement of rioters who stormed the Capitol as Congress met to confirm the results in January 2021—put electoral institutions under severe pressure. In addition, the crisis further damaged the United States’ credibility abroad and underscored the menace of political polarization and extremism in the country.
source: Freedom House
I'll close by saying that democracy has been in decline before, in the 1930s and 1970s, and that on those occasions we've fought back and were so successful that 2012 we reached a democratic peak in the world. This time however is the first time that democratic backsliding is a truly global phenomenon; we're closer to global fascism than we are to global socialism which is a consequence of the the most influential voices and nations in the world embracing liberal democracy and not social democracy. Our European democracies have been developing towards liberalism, neo-liberalism to be precise, and we now have authoritarian right-wing majorities in many European countries as well. Looking at all of this I must say I'm pessimistic for the short and medium terms, hence today's title: Democracy's End. Now please watch the below linked video; my fellow countryman Rob Riemen perfectly summarizes the signs and portents of rising fascism, which is the bitter fruit of the democratic decline we now see happening.
"Never Again?" How fascism hijacks democracies over and over | Rob Riemen | Big Think
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