The Rise of Illiberal Democracy Stable URL - Koç …media.library.ku.edu.tr/reserve/resfall15_16/Sosc116_SEaytac/Week3.pdfby the rule of law, a separation of powers, and the protection

The Rise of Illiberal DemocracyAuthor(s): Fareed ZakariaSource: Foreign Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 1997), pp. 22-43Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20048274 .

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The Rise of

Illiberal Democracy

Fareed Zakaria

THE NEXT WAVE

The American diplomat Richard Holbrooke pondered a problem on the eve of the September 1996 elections in Bosnia, which were meant

to restore civic life to that ravaged country. "Suppose the election was

declared free and fair," he said, and those elected are "racists, fascists,

separatists, who are publicly opposed to [peace and r?int?gration]. That is the dilemma." Indeed it is, not just in the former Yugoslavia, but increasingly around the world. Democratically elected regimes, often ones that have been reelected or reaffirmed through referenda, are

routinely ignoring constitutional limits on their power and depriving their citizens of basic rights and freedoms. From Peru to the Palestinian

Authority, from Sierra Leone to Slovakia, from Pakistan to the Philip

pines, we see the rise of a disturbing phenomenon in international life?

illiberal democracy. It has been difficult to recognize this problem because for almost

a century in the West, democracy has meant liberal democracy?a

political system marked not only by free and fair elections, but also

by the rule of law, a separation of powers, and the protection of

basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion, and property. In fact, this latter bundle of freedoms?what might be termed constitu

tional liberalism?is theoretically different and historically distinct

Fareed Zakaria is Managing Editor of Foreign Affairs and a Con

tributing Editor for Newsweek.

Ua]



The Rise of Illiberal Democracy

from democracy. As the political scientist Philippe Schmitter has

pointed out, "Liberalism, either as a conception of political lib

erty, or as a doctrine about economic policy, may have coincided

with the rise of democracy. But it has never been immutably or

unambiguously linked to its practice." Today the two strands of

liberal democracy, interwoven in the Western political fabric, are

coming apart in the rest of the world. Democracy is flourishing; constitutional liberalism is not.

Today, 118 of the world's 193 countries are democratic, encom

passing a majority of its people (54.8 percent, to be exact), a vast

increase from even a decade ago. In this season of victory, one

might have expected Western statesmen and intellectuals to go one

further than E. M. Forster and give a rousing three cheers for

democracy. Instead there is a growing unease at the rapid spread of

multiparty elections across south-central Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, perhaps because of what happens after the

elections. Popular leaders like Russia's Boris Yeltsin and Argentina's Carlos Menem bypass their parliaments and rule by presidential decree, eroding basic constitutional practices. The Iranian parlia

ment?elected more freely than most in the Middle East?imposes harsh restrictions on speech, assembly, and even dress, diminishing that country's already meager supply of liberty. Ethiopia's elected

government turns its security forces on journalists and political

opponents, doing permanent damage to human rights (as well as

human beings).

Naturally there is a spectrum of illiberal democracy, ranging from modest offenders like Argentina to near-tyrannies like

Kazakst?n and Belarus, with countries like Romania and

Bangladesh in between. Along much of the spectrum, elections are

rarely as free and fair as in the West today, but they do reflect the

reality of popular participation in politics and support for those

elected. And the examples are not isolated or atypical. Freedom

House's 1996-97 survey, Freedom in the World, has separate rankings for political liberties and civil liberties, which correspond roughly

with democracy and constitutional liberalism, respectively. Of the

countries that lie between confirmed dictatorship and consolidated

democracy, 50 percent do better on political liberties than on civil

FOREIGN AFFAIRS- November/December 1997 [23]



Fareed Zakaria

ones. In other words, half of the "democratizing" countries in the

world today are illiberal democracies.1

Illiberal democracy is a growth industry. Seven years ago only 22

percent of democratizing countries could have been so categorized; five years ago that figure had risen to 35 percent.2 And to date few

illiberal democracies have matured into liberal democracies; if any

thing, they are moving toward heightened illiberalism. Far from

being a temporary or transitional stage, it appears that many coun

tries are settling into a form of government that mixes a substantial

degree of democracy with a substantial degree of illiberalism. Just as nations across the world have become comfortable with many variations of capitalism, they could well adopt and sustain varied

forms of democracy. Western liberal democracy might prove to be

not the final destination on the democratic road, but just one of

many possible exits.

DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY

From the time of Herodotus democracy has meant, first and fore

most, the rule of the people. This view of democracy as a process of

selecting governments, articulated by scholars ranging from Alexis de

Tocqueville to Joseph Schumpeter to Robert Dahl, is now widely used by social scientists. In The Third Wave, Samuel P. Huntington explains why:

Elections, open, free and fair, are the essence of democracy, the in

escapable sine qua non. Governments produced by elections may be

aRoger Kaplan, ed., Freedom Around the World, 1997, New York: Freedom House,

1997, PP- 21-22. The survey rates countries on two 7-point scales, for

political rights and

civil liberties (lower is better). I have considered all countries with a combined score of

between 5 and 10 to be democratizing. The percentage figures are based on Freedom

House's numbers, but in the case of individual countries I have not adhered stricdy to

its ratings. While the Survey is an extraordinary feat?comprehensive and intelligent? its methodology conflates certain constitutional rights with democratic procedures,

which confuses matters. In addition, I use as examples (though not as part of the data

set) countries like Iran, Kazakst?n, and Belarus, which even in procedural terms are

semi-democracies at best. But they are worth highlighting as interesting problem cases

since most of their leaders were elected, reelected, and remain popular. 2 Freedom in the World: The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties, 1992

199J, pp. 620-26; Freedom in the World, 1989-1990, pp. 312-19.

[24] FOREIGN AFFAIRS Volume76No. 6



inefficient, corrupt, shortsighted, irresponsible, dominated by special interests, and incapable of adopting

policies demanded by the public good. These qualities make such

governments undesirable but

they do not make them un

democratic. Democracy is

one public virtue, not the

only one, and the relation

of democracy to other pub lic virtues and vices can

only be understood if democracy is clearly distinguished from the other characteristics of

political systems.

This definition also accords with the

commonsense view of the term. If a

country holds competitive, multiparty

elections, we call it democratic. When

public participation in politics is increased, for example through the enfranchisement

of women, it is seen as more democratic. Of

course elections must be open and fair, and this

requires some protections for freedom of speech and assembly. But to go beyond this minimalist

definition and label a country democratic only if

it guarantees a comprehensive catalog of social,

political, economic, and religious rights turns the

word democracy into a badge of honor rather than

a descriptive category. After all, Sweden has an economic system that many argue curtails individual property rights, France until

recently had a state monopoly on television, and England has an

established religion. But they are all clearly and identifiably democracies. To have democracy mean, subjectively, "a good gov ernment" renders it analytically useless.

Constitutional liberalism, on the other hand, is not about the proce dures for selecting government, but rather government's goals. It refers




Fareed Zakaria

to the tradition, deep in Western history, that seeks to protect an indi

vidual's autonomy and dignity against coercion, whatever the source?

state, church, or society. The term marries two closely connected ideas.

It is liberal because it draws on the philosophical strain, beginning with

the Greeks, that emphasizes individual liberty.3 It is constitutionalbccause

it rests on the tradition, beginning with the Romans, of the rule of law.

Constitutional liberalism developed in Western Europe and the United States as a defense of the individual's right to life and property, and free

dom of religion and speech. To secure these rights, it emphasized checks on the power of each branch of government, equality under the law,

impartial courts and tribunals, and separation of church and state. Its

canonical figures include the poet John Milton, the jurist William Black stone, statesmen such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and

philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Adam Smith, Baron

de Montesquieu, John Stuart Mill, and Isaiah Berlin. In almost all of its

variants, constitutional liberalism argues that human beings have certain

natural (or "inalienable") rights and that governments must accept a

basic law, limiting its own powers, that secures them. Thus in 1215 at

Runnymede, England's barons forced the king to abide by the settled

and customary law of the land. In the American colonies these laws were

made explicit, and in 1638 the town of Hartford adopted the first written

constitution in modern history. In the 1970s, Western nations codified

standards ofbehavior for regimes across the globe. The Magna Carta, the

Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, the American Constitution, and

the Helsinki Final Act are all expressions of constitutional liberalism.

THE ROAD TO LIBERAL DEMOCRACY

Since 1945 Western governments have, for the most part, embodied

both democracy and constitutional liberalism. Thus it is difficult to imagine the two apart, in the form of either illiberal democracy or liberal autocracy. In fact both have existed in the past and per sist in the present. Until the twentieth century, most countries in

3The term "liberal" is used here in its older, European sense, now often called classical

liberalism. In America today the word has come to mean something quite different,

namely policies upholding the modern welfare state.

[26] FOREIGN AFFAIRS-Volume 76 No. 6




Western Europe were liberal autocracies or, at best, semi-democ

racies. The franchise was tightly restricted, and elected legislatures had little power. In 1830 Great Britain, in some ways the most

democratic European nation, allowed barely 2 percent of its pop ulation to vote for one house of Parlia- _

ment; that figure rose to 7 percent after

1867 and reached around 40 percent in the

1880s. Only in the late 1940s did most

Western countries become full-fledged democracies, with universal adult suffrage. But one hundred years earlier, by the late

Democracy does not

necessarily bring about constitutional

liberalism.

1840s, most of them had adopted impor tant aspects of constitutional liberalism?the rule of law, private

property rights, and increasingly, separated powers and free speech and assembly. For much of modern history, what characterized

governments in Europe and North America, and differentiated

them from those around the world, was not democracy but consti

tutional liberalism. The "Western model" is best symbolized not

by the mass plebiscite but the impartial judge. The recent history of East Asia follows the Western itinerary.

After brief flirtations with democracy after World War II, most East

Asian regimes turned authoritarian. Over time they moved from

autocracy to liberalizing autocracy, and, in some cases, toward liber

alizing semi-democracy.4 Most of the regimes in East Asia remain

only semi-democratic, with patriarchs or one-party systems that

make their elections ratifications of power rather than genuine con

tests. But these regimes have accorded their citizens a widening

sphere of economic, civil, religious, and limited political rights. As in

the West, liberalization in East Asia has included economic liber

alization, which is crucial in promoting both growth and liberal

democracy. Historically, the factors most closely associated with full

fledged liberal democracies are capitalism, a bourgeoisie, and a high

Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia are

examples of liberalizing autocracies, while

South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand are liberal semi-democracies. Both groups, however, are more liberal than they

are democratic, which is also true of the region's only liberal

democracy, Japan; Papua New Guinea, and to a lesser extent the Philippines, are the

only examples of illiberal democracy in East Asia.




Fareed Zakaria

per capita gnp. Today s East Asian governments are a mix of democracy, liberalism, capitalism, oligarchy, and corruption?much like Western

governments circa 1900.

Constitutional liberalism has led to democracy, but democracy does not seem to bring constitutional liberalism. In contrast to the

Western and East Asian paths, during the last two decades in Latin

America, Africa, and parts of Asia, dictatorships with little back

ground in constitutional liberalism have given way to democracy. The results are not encouraging. In the western hemisphere, with

elections having been held in every country except Cuba, a 1993

study by the scholar Larry Diamond determined that 10 of the 22

principal Latin American countries "have levels of human rights abuse that are incompatible with the consolidation of [liberal]

democracy."5 In Africa, democratization has been extraordinarily

rapid. Within six months in 1990 much of Francophone Africa lifted

its ban on multiparty politics. Yet although elections have been held

in most of the 45 sub-Saharan states since 1991 (18 in 1996 alone), there have been setbacks for freedom in many countries. One of

Africa s most careful observers, Michael Chege, surveyed the wave of

democratization and drew the lesson that the continent had "overem

phasized multiparty elections . . . and correspondingly neglected the

basic tenets of liberal governance." In Central Asia, elections, even

when reasonably free, as in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakst?n, have resulted

in strong executives, weak legislatures and judiciaries, and few civil

and economic liberties. In the Islamic world, from the Palestinian

Authority to Iran to Pakistan, democratization has led to an increasing role for theocratic politics, eroding long-standing traditions of secu

larism and tolerance. In many parts of that world, such as Tunisia,

Morocco, Egypt, and some of the Gulf States, were elections to be

held tomorrow, the resulting regimes would almost certainly be more

illiberal than the ones now in place.

Many of the countries of Central Europe, on the other hand, have moved successfully from communism to liberal democracy,

5 Larry Diamond, "Democracy in Latin America," in Tom Farer, ed., Beyond Sover

eignty: Collectively Defending Democracy in a World of Sovereign States, Baltimore: Johns

Hopkins University Press, 1996, p. 73.





having gone through the same phase of liberalization without

democracy as other European countries did during the nineteenth

century. Indeed, the Austro-Hungarian empire, to which most

belonged, was a classic liberal autocracy. Even outside Europe, the

political scientist Myron Weiner detected a striking connection

between a constitutional past and a liberal democratic present. He

pointed out that, as of 1983, "every single country in the Third

World that emerged from colonial rule since the Second World

War with a population of at least one million (and almost all the

smaller colonies as well) with a continuous democratic experience is a former British colony."6 British rule meant not democracy? colonialism is by definition undemocratic?but constitutional lib

eralism. Britain's legacy of law and administration has proved more beneficial than France's policy of enfranchising some of its

colonial populations. While liberal autocracies may have existed in the past, can one

imagine them today? Until recently, a small but powerful example flourished off the Asian mainland?Hong Kong. For 156 years, until

July 1,1997, Hong Kong was ruled by the British Crown through an

appointed governor general. Until 1991 it had never held a meaningful election, but its government epitomized constitutional liberalism, pro

tecting its citizens' basic rights and administering a fair court system and bureaucracy. A September 8,1997, editorial on the island s future

in The Washington Post was titled ominously, "Undoing Hong Kong's

Democracy." Actually, Hong Kong has precious little democracy to

undo; what it has is a framework of rights and laws. Small islands may not hold much practical significance in today s world, but they do

help one weigh the relative value of democracy and constitutional lib

eralism. Consider, for example, the question of where you would

rather live, Haiti, an illiberal democracy, or Antigua, a liberal semi

democracy. Your choice would probably relate not to the weather, which is pleasant in both, but to the political climate, which is not.

6Myron Weiner, "Empirical Democratic Theory," in Myron Weiner and Ergun Ozbudun, eds., Competitive Elections in Developing Countries, Durham: Duke Univer

sity Press, 1987, p. 20. Today there are functioning democracies in the Third World that are not former British colonies, but the majority of the former are the latter.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS- November/December 1997 [ 2 9 ]



Fareed Zakaria

ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGNTY

John Stuart Mill opened his classic On Liberty by noting that

as countries became democratic, people tended to believe that "too

much importance had been attached to the limitation of power itself.

That. . . was a response against rulers whose interests were opposed to those of the people." Once the people were themselves in charge, caution was unnecessary. "The nation did not need to be protected

against its own will." As if confirming Mill's fears, consider the words

of Alexandr Lukashenko after being elected president of Belarus with an overwhelming majority in a free election in 1994, when asked

about limiting his powers: "There will be no dictatorship. I am of the

people, and I am going to be for the people." The tension between constitutional liberalism and democracy cen

ters on the scope of governmental authority. Constitutional liberalism is

about the limitation of power, democracy about its accumulation and

use. For this reason, many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century liberals

saw in democracy a force that could undermine liberty. James Madison

explained in The Federalist that "the danger of oppression" in a democ

racy came from "the majority of the community." Tocqueville warned of

the "tyranny of the majority," writing, "The very essence of democratic

government consists in the absolute sovereignty of the majority." The tendency for a democratic government to believe it has absolute

sovereignty (that is, power) can result in the centralization of author

ity, often by extraconstitutional means and with grim results. Over the

last decade, elected governments claiming to represent the people have steadily encroached on the powers and rights of other elements

in society, a usurpation that is both horizontal (from other branches

of the national government) and vertical (from regional and local

authorities as well as private businesses and other nongovernmental

groups). Lukashenko and Peru's Alberto Fujimori are only the worst

examples of this practice. (While Fujimori's actions?disbanding the

legislature and suspending the constitution, among others?make it

difficult to call his regime democratic, it is worth noting that he won

two elections and was extremely popular until recently.) Even a bona

fide reformer like Carlos Menem has passed close to 300 presidential decrees in his eight years in office, about three times as many as all

[30] FOREIGN AFFAIRS - Volume j 6 No. 6



previous Argentinean presidents put to

gether, going back to 1853. Kyrgyzstan's Askar Akayev, elected with 60 percent of the vote, proposed enhancing his

powers in a referendum that passed

easily in 1996. His new powers include

appointing all top officials except the

prime minister, although he can dis

solve parliament if it turns down three

of his nominees for the latter post. Horizontal usurpation, usually by

presidents, is more obvious, but ver

tical usurpation is more common.

Over the last three decades, the Indian

government has routinely disbanded

state legislatures on flimsy grounds,

placing regions under New Delhi's

direct rule. In a less dramatic but typical move, the elected govern ment of the Central African Republic recently ended the long

standing independence of its university system, making it part of

the central state apparatus.

Usurpation is particularly widespread in Latin America and the

states of the former Soviet Union, perhaps because both regions

mostly have presidencies. These systems tend to produce strong leaders

who believe that they speak for the people?even when they have

been elected by no more than a plurality. (As Juan Linz points out,

Salvador Allende was elected to the Chilean presidency in 1970 with

only 36 percent of the vote. In similar circumstances, a prime minister

would have had to share power in a coalition government.) Presidents

appoint cabinets of cronies, rather than senior party figures, main

taining few internal checks on their power. And when their views

conflict with those of the legislature, or even the courts, presidents tend to "go to the nation," bypassing the dreary tasks of bargaining and coalition-building. While scholars debate the merits of presidential versus parliamentary forms of government, usurpation can occur

under either, absent well-developed alternate centers of power such as

strong legislatures, courts, political parties, regional governments, and

FOREIGN AFFAIRS- November/December 1997 [ 31 ]



Fareed Zakaria

independent universities and media. Latin America actually combines

presidential systems with proportional representation, producing

populist leaders and multiple parties?an unstable combination.

Many Western governments and scholars have encouraged the cre

ation of strong and centralized states in the Third World. Leaders in

these countries have argued that they need the authority to break down

feudalism, split entrenched coalitions, override vested interests, and

bring order to chaotic societies. But this confuses the need for a legiti mate government with that for a powerful one. Governments that are

seen as legitimate can usually maintain order and pursue tough policies, albeit slowly, by building coalitions. After all, few claim that govern

ments in developing countries should not have adequate police powers; the trouble comes from all the other political, social, and economic

powers that they accumulate. In crises like civil wars, constitutional

governments might not be able to rule effectively, but the alternative?

states with vast security apparatuses that suspend constitutional

rights?has usually produced neither order nor good government. More often, such states have become predatory, maintaining some

order but also arresting opponents, muzzling dissent, nationalizing industries, and confiscating property. While anarchy has its dangers, the greatest threats to human liberty and happiness in this century have

been caused not by disorder but by brutally strong, centralized states, like Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and Maoist China. The Third

World is littered with the bloody handiwork of strong states.

Historically, unchecked centralization has been the enemy of liberal

democracy. As political participation increased in Europe over the

nineteenth century, it was accommodated smoothly in countries such

as England and Sweden, where medieval assemblies, local govern

ments, and regional councils had remained strong. Countries like

France and Prussia, on the other hand, where the monarchy had effec

tively centralized power (both horizontally and vertically), often ended

up illiberal and undemocratic. It is not a coincidence that in twentieth

century Spain, the beachhead of liberalism lay in Catalonia, for centuries

a doggedly independent and autonomous region. In America, the

presence of a rich variety of institutions?state, local, and private?made it much easier to accommodate the rapid and large extensions in suffrage that took place in the early nineteenth century. Arthur Schlesinger Sr.

[32] FOREIGN AFFAIRS -Volume 76 No. 6



has documented how, during Amer

ica's first 50 years, virtually every

state, interest group and faction

tried to weaken and even break up the federal government.7 More

recently, India's semi-liberal

democracy has survived because

of, not despite, its strong regions and varied languages, cultures, and even castes. The point is log ical, even tautological: pluralism in the past helps ensure political

pluralism in the present.

Fifty years ago, politicians in

the developing world wanted ex

traordinary powers to implement then-fashionable economic doc

trines, like nationalization of in

dustries. Today their successors

want similar powers to privatize those very industries. Menem's

justification for his methods is

that they are desperately needed

to enact tough economic reforms. I

Similar arguments are made by Abdal? Bucarem of Ecuador

and by Fujimori. Lending in

stitutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World

Bank, have been sympathetic to these pleas, and the bond market

has been positively exuberant. But except in emergencies like war,

illiberal means are in the long run incompatible with liberal ends.

Constitutional government is in fact the key to a successful economic

reform policy. The experience of East Asia and Central Europe sug

gests that when regimes?whether authoritarian, as in East Asia, or

7Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., New Viewpoints in American History, New York: Macmil

lan, 1922, pp. 220-40.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS - November/December 1997 [33]



Fareed Zakaria

liberal democratic, as in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic? protect individual rights, including those of property and contract, and create a framework of law and administration, capitalism and

growth will follow. In a recent speech at the Woodrow Wilson Inter

national Center in Washington, explaining what it takes for capitalism to flourish, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan concluded that,

"The p-nidinp- mechanism of a free market

The democratic

peace is actually the

liberal peace.

economy. .. is a bill of rights, enforced by an

impartial judiciary"

Finally, and perhaps more important,

power accumulated to do good can be used

subsequently to do ill. When Fujimori dis banded parliament, his approval ratings

shot up to their highest ever. But recent opinion polls suggest that

most of those who once approved of his actions now wish he were

more constrained. In 1993 Boris Yeltsin famously (and literally) attacked the Russian parliament, prompted by parliament's own

unconstitutional acts. He then suspended the constitutional court, dismantled the system of local governments, and fired several

provincial governors. From the war in Chechnya to his economic

programs, Yeltsin has displayed a routine lack of concern for consti

tutional procedures and limits. He may well be a liberal democrat at

heart, but Yeltsin's actions have created a Russian super-presidency. We can only hope his successor will not abuse it.

For centuries Western intellectuals have had a tendency to view

constitutional liberalism as a quaint exercise in rule-making, mere for

malism that should take a back seat to battling larger evils in society. The most eloquent counterpoint to this view remains an exchange in

Robert Bolt's play A Man For All Seasons. The fiery young William

Roper, who yearns to battle evil, is exasperated by Sir Thomas Mores

devotion to the law. More gently defends himself.

More: What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper: I'd cut every law in England to do that! More: And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned on

you?where would you hide Roper, the laws all being flat?

[34] FOREIGN AFFAIRS - Volume76No. 6




ETHNIC CONFLICT AND WAR

On December 8,1996, Jack Lang made a dramatic dash to Belgrade. The French celebrity politician, formerly minister of culture, had been

inspired by the student demonstrations involving tens of thousands

against Slobodan Milosevic, a man Lang and many Western intellec

tuals held responsible for the war in the Balkans. Lang wanted to lend

his moral support to the Yugoslav opposition. The leaders of the move

ment received him in their offices?the philosophy department?only to boot him out, declare him "an enemy of the Serbs," and order him

to leave the country. It turned out that the students opposed Milosevic

not for starting the war, but for failing to win it.

Lang's embarrassment highlights two common, and often mistaken,

assumptions?that the forces of democracy are the forces of ethnic

harmony and of peace. Neither is necessarily true. Mature liberal

democracies can usually accommodate ethnic divisions without violence

or terror and live in peace with other liberal democracies. But without a background in constitutional liberalism, the introduction of democracy in divided societies has actually fomented nationalism, ethnic conflict, and even war. The spate of elections held immediately after the col

lapse of communism were won in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia by nationalist separatists and resulted in the breakup of those countries.

This was not in and of itself bad, since those countries had been bound

together by force. But the rapid secessions, without guarantees, insti

tutions, or political power for the many minorities living within the new countries, have caused spirals of rebellion, repression, and, in

places like Bosnia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, war.

Elections require that politicians compete for peoples' votes. In so

cieties without strong traditions of multiethnic groups or assimilation, it is easiest to organize support along racial, ethnic, or religious lines.

Once an ethnic group is in power, it tends to exclude other ethnic

groups. Compromise seems impossible; one can bargain on material

issues like housing, hospitals, and handouts, but how does one split the difference on a national religion? Political competition that is so

divisive can rapidly degenerate into violence. Opposition move

ments, armed rebellions, and coups in Africa have often been directed

against ethnically based regimes, many of which came to power




Fareed Zakaria

through elections. Surveying the breakdown of African and Asian

democracies in the 1960s, two scholars concluded that democracy "is

simply not viable in an environment of intense ethnic preferences." Re cent studies, particularly of Africa and Central Asia, have confirmed

this pessimism. A distinguished expert on ethnic conflict, Donald

Horowitz, concluded, "In the face of this rather dismal account. . .

of the concrete failures of democracy in divided societies . . . one is

tempted to throw up one's hands. What is the point of holding elec

tions if all they do in the end is to substitute a Bemba-dominated

regime for a Nyanja regime in Zambia, the two equally narrow, or a

southern regime for a northern one in Benin, neither incorporating the

other half of the state?"8

Over the past decade, one of the most spirited debates among schol ars of international relations concerns the "democratic peace"?the as

sertion that no two modern democracies have gone to war with each

other. The debate raises interesting substantive questions (does the

American Civil War count? do nuclear weapons better explain the

peace?) and even the statistical findings have raised interesting dissents.

(As the scholar David Spiro points out, given the small number of both

democracies and wars over the last two hundred years, sheer chance

might explain the absence of war between democracies. No member of

his family has ever won the lottery, yet few offer explanations for this

impressive correlation.) But even if the statistics are correct, what explains them? Kant, the original proponent of the democratic peace, contended

that in democracies, those who pay for wars?that is, the public?make the decisions, so they are understandably cautious. But that claim sug

gests that democracies are more pacific than other states. Actually they are more warlike, going to war more often and with greater intensity than

most states. It is only with other democracies that the peace holds.

When divining the cause behind this correlation, one thing becomes

clear: the democratic peace is actually the liberal peace. Writing in the

8Alvin Rabushka and Kenneth Shepsle, Politics in Plural Societies: A Theory of Demo cratic Instability, Columbus: Charles E. Merill, pp. 62-92; Donald Horowitz, "Democ

racy in Divided Societies," in Larry Diamond and Mark F. Plattner, eds., Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict and Democracy, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994, pp. 35-55




eighteenth century, Kant believed that democracies were tyrannical, and he specifically excluded them from his conception of "republican" governments, which lived in a zone of peace. Republicanism, for Kant,

meant a separation of powers, checks and balances, the rule of law,

protection of individual rights, and some level of representation in

government (though nothing close to universal suffrage). Kant's other

explanations for the "perpetual peace" between republics are all closely linked to their constitutional and liberal character: a mutual respect for

the rights of each other's citizens, a system of checks and balances

assuring that no single leader can drag his country into war, and classical

liberal economic policies?most importantly, free trade?which create

an interdependence that makes war costly and cooperation useful.

Michael Doyle, the leading scholar on the subject, confirms in his 1997 book Ways of War and Peace that without constitutional liberalism,

democracy itself has no peace-inducing qualities:

Kant distrusted unfettered, democratic majoritarianism, and his argu ment offers no support for a claim that all participatory polities? democracies?should be peaceful, either in general or between fellow democracies. Many participatory polities have been non-liberal. For two thousand years before the modern age, popular rule was

widely associated with aggressiveness (by Thucydides) or imperial success (by




Fareed Zakaria

Machiavelli) . . . The decisive preference of [the] median voter might well include "ethnic cleansing" against other democratic polities.

The distinction between liberal and illiberal democracies sheds light on another striking statistical correlation. Political scientists Jack Snyder and Edward Mansfield contend, using an impressive data set, that over

the last 200 years democratizing states went to war significantly more

often than either stable autocracies or liberal democracies. In countries

not grounded in constitutional liberalism, the rise of democracy often

brings with it hyper-nationalism and war-mongering. When the politi cal system is opened up, diverse groups with incompatible interests gain access to power and press their demands. Political and military leaders,

who are often embattled remnants of the old authoritarian order, realize

that to succeed that they must rally the masses behind a national cause.

The result is invariably aggressive rhetoric and policies, which often drag countries into confrontation and war. Noteworthy examples range from

Napoleon Ill's France, Wilhelmine Germany, and Taisho Japan to those

in today's newspapers, like Armenia and Azerbaijan and Milosevic's Ser

bia. The democratic peace, it turns out, has little to do with democracy.

THE AMERICAN PATH

An American scholar recently traveled to Kazakst?n on a U.S.

government-sponsored mission to help the new parliament draft its

electoral laws. His counterpart, a senior member of the Kazak parlia ment, brushed aside the many options the American expert was outlin

ing, saying emphatically, "We want our parliament to be just like your

Congress." The American was horrified, recalling, "I tried to say some

thing other than the three words that had immediately come screaming into my mind: 'No you don't!'" This view is not unusual. Americans in

the democracy business tend to see their own system as an unwieldy con

traption that no other country should put up with. In fact, the adoption of some aspects of the American constitutional framework could ame

liorate many of the problems associated with illiberal democracy. The

philosophy behind the U.S. Constitution, a fear of accumulated power, is as relevant today as it was in 1789. Kazakst?n, as it happens, would be

particularly well-served by a strong parliament?like the American

Congress?to check the insatiable appetite of its president.

[38] FOREIGN AFFAIRS- Volume 76 No. 6




It is odd that the United States is so often the advocate of elections

and plebiscitary democracy abroad. What is distinctive about the

American system is not how democratic it is but rather how unde

mocratic it is, placing as it does multiple constraints on electoral ma

jorities. Of its three branches of government, one?arguably para mount?is headed by nine unelected men and women with life

tenure. Its Senate is the most unrepresentative upper house in the

world, with the lone exception of the House of Lords, which is pow erless. (Every state sends two senators to Washington regardless of

its population?California's 30 million people have as many votes in

the Senate as Arizona's 3.7 million?which means that senators rep

resenting about 16 percent of the country can block any proposed law.) Similarly, in legislatures all over the United States, what is strik

ing is not the power of majorities but that of minorities. To further

check national power, state and local governments are strong and

fiercely battle every federal intrusion onto their turf. Private busi nesses and other nongovernmental groups, what Tocqueville called

intermediate associations, make up another stratum within society. The American system is based on an avowedly pessimistic concep

tion of human nature, assuming that people cannot be trusted with

power. "If men were angels," Madison famously wrote, "no government would be necessary." The other model for democratic governance in

Western history is based on the French Revolution. The French model

places its faith in the goodness of human beings. Once the people are

the source of power, it should be unlimited so that they can create a just

society. (The French revolution, as Lord Acton observed, is not about

the limitation of sovereign power but the abrogation of all intermediate

powers that get in its way.) Most non-Western countries have embraced

the French model?not least because political elites like the prospect of

empowering the state, since that means empowering themselves?and most have descended into bouts of chaos, tyranny, or both. This should

have come as no surprise. After all, since its revolution France itself has run through two monarchies, two empires, one proto-fascist dictator

ship, and five republics.9

9Bernard Lewis, "Why Turkey Is the Only Muslim Democracy," Middle East Quar terly, March 1994, pp. 47-48.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS- November/December 1997 [ 3 9 ]



Fareed Zakaria

Of course cultures vary, and different societies will require different frameworks of government. This is not a plea for the whole

sale adoption of the American way but rather for a more variegated

conception of liberal democracy, one that emphasizes both parts of

that phrase. Before new policies can be adopted, there lies an intel

lectual task of recovering the constitutional liberal tradition, central

to the Western experience and to the development of good govern ment throughout the world. Political progress in Western history has

been the result of a growing recognition over the centuries that, as the

Declaration of Independence puts it, human beings have "certain in

alienable rights" and that "it is to secure these rights that governments are instituted." If a democracy does not preserve liberty and law, that

it is a democracy is a small consolation.

LIBERALIZING FOREIGN POLICY

A proper appreciation of constitutional liberalism has a variety of

implications for American foreign policy. First, it suggests a certain

humility. While it is easy to impose elections on a country, it is more

difficult to push constitutional liberalism on a society. The process of

genuine liberalization and democratization is gradual and long-term, in which an election is only one step. Without appropriate prepara

tion, it might even be a false step. Recognizing this, governments and

nongovernmental organizations are increasingly promoting a wide

array of measures designed to bolster constitutional liberalism in de

veloping countries. The National Endowment for Democracy pro motes free markets, independent labor movements, and political

parties. The U.S. Agency for International Development funds inde

pendent judiciaries. In the end, however, elections trump everything. If a country holds elections, Washington and the world will tolerate a

great deal from the resulting government, as they have with Yeltsin,

Akayev, and Menem. In an age of images and symbols, elections are

easy to capture on film. (How do you televise the rule of law?) But

there is life after elections, especially for the people who live there.

Conversely, the absence of free and fair elections should be viewed

as one flaw, not the definition of tyranny. Elections are an important virtue of governance, but they are not the only virtue. Governments





should be judged by yardsticks related to constitutional liberalism as

well. Economic, civil, and religious liberties are at the core of human

autonomy and dignity. If a government with limited democracy

steadily expands these freedoms, it should not be branded a dictator

ship. Despite the limited political choice they offer, countries like

Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand provide a better environment for

the life, liberty, and happiness of their citizens than do either dicta

torships like Iraq and Libya or illiberal democracies like Slovakia or

Ghana. And the pressures of global capitalism can push the process of liberalization forward. Markets and morals can work together. Even China, which remains a deeply repressive regime, has given its

citizens more autonomy and economic liberty than they have had in

generations. Much more needs to change before China can even be

called a liberalizing autocracy, but that should not mask the fact that

much has changed.

Finally, we need to revive constitutionalism. One effect of the

overemphasis on pure democracy is that little effort is given to cre

ating imaginative constitutions for transitional countries. Consti

tutionalism, as it was understood by its greatest eighteenth century

exponents, such as Montesquieu and Madison, is a complicated

system of checks and balances designed to prevent the accumula

tion of power and the abuse of office. This is done not by simply

writing up a list of rights but by constructing a system in which

government will not violate those rights. Various groups must be

included and empowered because, as Madison explained, "ambi

tion must be made to counteract ambition." Constitutions were

also meant to tame the passions of the public, creating not simply democratic but also deliberative government. Unfortunately, the

rich variety of unelected bodies, indirect voting, federal arrange ments, and checks and balances that characterized so many of the

formal and informal constitutions of Europe are now regarded with suspicion. What could be called the Weimar syndrome? named after interwar Germany's beautifully constructed constitu

tion, which failed to avert fascism?has made people regard con

stitutions as simply paperwork that cannot make much difference.

(As if any political system in Germany would have easily weath

ered military defeat, social revolution, the Great Depression, and

FOREIGN AFFAIRS- November/December 1997 [ 41 ]



Fareed Zakaria

hyperinflation.) Procedures that inhibit direct democracy are seen

as inauthentic, muzzling the voice of the people. Today around the

world we see variations on the same majoritarian theme. But the

trouble with these winner-take-all systems is that, in most democ

ratizing countries, the winner really does take all.

democracy's discontents

We live in a democratic age. Through much of human history the

danger to an individual's life, liberty and happiness came from the ab

solutism of monarchies, the dogma of churches, the terror of dicta

torships, and the iron grip of totalitarianism. Dictators and a few

straggling totalitarian regimes still persist, but increasingly they are

anachronisms in a world of global markets, information, and media.

There are no longer respectable alternatives to democracy; it is part of the fashionable attire of modernity. Thus the problems of gover nance in the 21st century will likely be problems within democracy.

This makes them more difficult to handle, wrapped as they are in the

mantle of legitimacy. Illiberal democracies gain legitimacy, and thus strength, from

the fact that they are reasonably democratic. Conversely, the

greatest danger that illiberal democracy poses?other than to its

own people?is that it will discredit liberal democracy itself, cast

ing a shadow on democratic governance. This would not be un

precedented. Every wave of democracy has been followed by set

backs in which the system was seen as inadequate and new

alternatives were sought by ambitious leaders and restless masses.

The last such period of disenchantment, in Europe during the in

terwar years, was seized upon by demagogues, many of whom

were initially popular and even elected. Today, in the face of a

spreading virus of illiberalism, the most useful role that the inter

national community, and most importantly the United States, can

play is?instead of searching for new lands to democratize and

new places to hold elections?to consolidate democracy where it

has taken root and to encourage the gradual development of con

stitutional liberalism across the globe. Democracy without con

stitutional liberalism is not simply inadequate, but dangerous,





bringing with it the erosion of liberty, the abuse of power, ethnic

divisions, and even war. Eighty years ago, Woodrow Wilson took

America into the twentieth century with a challenge, to make the

world safe for democracy. As we approach the next century, our

task is to make democracy safe for the world.?

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Facing Up to the Democratic Recession

Larry Diamond

Journal of Democracy, Volume 26, Number 1, January 2015, pp. 141-155(Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University PressDOI: 10.1353/jod.2015.0009

For additional information about this article

Access provided by KOC University (15 Jul 2015 15:51 GMT)

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jod/summary/v026/26.1.diamond.html

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jod/summary/v026/26.1.diamond.html

Facing Up to the Democratic recession

Larry Diamond

Larry Diamond is founding coeditor of the Journal of Democracy, se-nior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, and director of Stan-ford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

The year 2014 marked the fortieth anniversary of Portugal’s Revolu-tion of the Carnations, which inaugurated what Samuel P. Huntington dubbed the “third wave” of global democratization. Any assessment of the state of global democracy today must begin by recognizing—even marveling at—the durability of this historic transformation. When the third wave began in 1974, only about 30 percent of the world’s indepen-dent states met the criteria of electoral democracy—a system in which citizens, through universal suffrage, can choose and replace their leaders in regular, free, fair, and meaningful elections.1 At that time, there were only about 46 democracies in the world. Most of those were the liberal democracies of the rich West, along with a number of small island states that had been British colonies. Only a few other developing democracies existed—principally, India, Sri Lanka, Costa Rica, Colombia, Venezu-ela, Israel, and Turkey.

In the subsequent three decades, democracy had a remarkable global run, as the number of democracies essentially held steady or expanded every year from 1975 until 2007. Nothing like this continous growth in democracy had ever been seen before in the history of the world. While a number of these new “democracies” were quite illiberal—in some cases, so much so that Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way regard them as “competitive authoritarian” regimes2—the positive three-decade trend was paralleled by a similarly steady and significant expansion in levels of freedom (political rights and civil liberties, as measured annually by Freedom House). In 1974, the average level of freedom in the world stood at 4.38 (on the two seven-point scales, where 1 is most free and 7 is most repressive). It then gradually improved during the 1970s and

Journal of Democracy Volume 26, Number 1 January 2015© 2015 National Endowment for Democracy and Johns Hopkins University Press

142 Journal of Democracy

1980s, though it did not cross below the 4.0 midpoint until the fall of the Berlin Wall, after which it improved to 3.85 in 1990. In 25 of the 32 years between 1974 and 2005, average freedom levels improved in the world, peaking at 3.22 in 2005.

And then, around 2006, the expansion of freedom and democracy in the world came to a prolonged halt. Since 2006, there has been no net expansion in the number of electoral democracies, which has oscillated between 114 and 119 (about 60 percent of the world’s states). As we see in Figure 1, the number of both electoral and liberal democracies began to decline after 2006 and then flattened out.3 Since 2006, the average level of freedom in the world has also deteriorated slightly, leveling off at about 3.30.

There are two ways to view these empirical trends. One is to see them as constituting a period of equilibrium—freedom and democ-racy have not continued gaining, but neither have they experienced net declines. One could even celebrate this as an expression of the remarkable and unexpected durability of the democratic wave. Given that democracy expanded to a number of countries where the objective conditions for sustaining it are unfavorable, due either to poverty (for example, in Liberia, Malawi, and Sierra Leone) or to strategic pres-sures (for example, in Georgia and Mongolia), it is impressive that reasonably open and competitive political systems have survived (or revived) in so many places. As a variant of this more benign interpreta-tion, Levitsky and Way argue in this issue of the Journal that democ-racy never actually expanded as widely as Freedom House perceived in the first place. Thus, they contend, many of the seeming failures of democracy in the last ten to fifteen years were really deteriorations or hardenings of what had been from the beginning authoritarian regimes, however competitive.

Alternatively, one can view the last decade as a period of at least incipient decline in democracy. To make this case, we need to examine not only the instability and stagnation of democracies, but also the incre-mental decline of democracy in what Thomas Carothers has termed the “gray zone” countries (which defy easy classification as to whether or not they are democracies),4 the deepening authoritarianism in the non-democracies, and the decline in the functioning and self-confidence of the world’s established, rich democracies. This will be my approach in what follows.

The debate about whether there has been a decline in democracy turns to some extent on how we count it. It is one of the great and prob-ably inescapable ironies of scholarly research that the boom in compara-tive democratic studies has been accompanied by significant disagree-ment over how to define and measure democracy. I have never felt that there was—or could be—one right and consensual answer to this eternal conceptual challenge. Most scholars of democracy have agreed that it

143Larry Diamond

makes sense to classify regimes categorically—and thus to determine which regimes are democracies and which are not. But democracy is in many ways a continuous variable. Its key components—such as free-dom of multiple parties and candidates to campaign and contest; opposi-tion access to mass media and campaign finance; inclusiveness of suf-frage; fairness and neutrality of electoral administration; and the extent to which electoral victors have meaningful power to rule—vary on a continuum (as do other dimensions of the quality of democracy, such as civil liberties, rule of law, control of corruption, vigor of civil society, and so on). This continuous variation forces coders to make difficult judgments about how to classify regimes that fall into the gray zone of ambiguity, where multiparty electoral competition is genuine and vig-orous but flawed in some notable ways. No system of multiparty com-petition is perfectly fair and open. Some multiparty electoral systems clearly do not meet the test of democracy. Others have serious defects that nevertheless do not negate their overall democratic character. Thus hard decisions must often be made about how to weight imperfections and where to draw the line.

Most approaches to classifying regimes (as democracies or not) rely on continuous measurement of key variables (such as political rights, in the case of the Polity scale, or both political rights and civil liber-ties, in the case of Freedom House), along with a somewhat arbitrary cutoff point for separating democracies from nondemocracies.5 My own method has been to accept the Freedom House coding decisions except where I find persuasive contradictory evidence. This has led to my counting two to five fewer democracies than Freedom House does

Figure 1—The growTh oF Democracies in The worlD, 1974–2013

21% 24%

26% 30%

33% 35%

41% 40% 29% 34%

37%

45%

57% 58% 61%

59%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

Liberal Democracies Electoral Democracies


for most years since 1989; for some years, the discrepancy is much larger.6

The Democratic Recession: Breakdowns and Erosions

The world has been in a mild but protracted democratic recession since about 2006. Beyond the lack of improvement or modest erosion of global levels of democracy and freedom, there have been several other causes for concern. First, there has been a significant and, in fact, accel-erating rate of democratic breakdown. Second, the quality or stability of democracy has been declining in a number of large and strategically im-portant emerging-market countries, which I call “swing states.” Third, authoritarianism has been deepening, including in big and strategically important countries. And fourth, the established democracies, beginning with the United States, increasingly seem to be performing poorly and to lack the will and self-confidence to promote democracy effectively abroad. I explore each of these in turn.

First, let us look at rates of democratic breakdown. Between 1974 and the end of 2014, 29 percent of all the democracies in the world broke down (among non-Western democracies, the rate was 35 percent). In the first decade and a half of this new century, the failure rate (17.6 percent) has been substantially higher than in the preceding fifteen-year period (12.7 percent). Alternatively, if we break the third wave up into its four component decades, we see a rising incidence of democratic failure per decade since the mid-1980s. The rate of democratic failure, which had been 16 percent in the first decade of the third wave (1974–83), fell to 8 percent in the second decade (1984–93), but then climbed to 11 per-cent in the third decade (1994–2003), and most recently to 14 percent (2004–13). (If we include the three failures of 2014, the rate rises to over 16 percent.)

Since 2000, I count 25 breakdowns of democracy in the world—not only through blatant military or executive coups, but also through subtle and incremental degradations of democratic rights and procedures that finally push a democratic system over the threshold into competitive au-thoritarianism (see Table). Some of these breakdowns occurred in quite low-quality democracies; yet in each case, a system of reasonably free and fair multiparty electoral competition was either displaced or de-graded to a point well below the minimal standards of democracy.

One methodological challenge in tracking democratic breakdowns is to determine a precise date or year for a democratic failure that re-sults from a long secular process of systemic deterioration and executive strangulation of political rights, civil liberties, and the rule of law. No serious scholar would consider Russia today a democracy. But many believe that it was an electoral democracy (however rough and illib-eral) under Boris Yeltsin. If we score 1993 as the year when democ-

145Larry Diamond

racy emerged in Russia (as Freedom House does), then what year do we identify as marking the end of democracy? In this case (and many others), there is no single obvious event—like Peruvian president Al-berto Fujimori’s 1992 autogolpe, dissolving Congress and seizing un-constitutional powers—to guide the scoring decision. I postulate that Russia’s political system fell below the minimum conditions of electoral democracy during the year 2000, as signaled by the electoral fraud that gave Vladimir Putin a dubious first-ballot victory and the executive deg-radation of political and civic pluralism that quickly followed. (Freedom House dates the failure to 2005.)

The problem has continuing and quite contemporary relevance. For a number of years now, Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been gradually eroding democratic pluralism and freedom in the country. The overall political trends have been hard to characterize, because some of the AKP’s changes have made Turkey more democratic by removing the military as an autonomous veto player in politics, ex-

Year of Breakdown Country Year of

Return Type of Breakdown

2000 Fiji – Military coup2000 Russia – Executive degradation, violation of opposition rights2001 Central Af. Rep. – Military rebellion, violence, human rights abuses

2002 Guinea-Bissau 2005 Executive degradation, violation of opposition rights (military coup the following year)

2002 Nepal 2013 Rising political instability, monarchical coup2004 Venezuela – Executive degradation, violation of opposition rights2005 Thailand 2011 Military coup, then military constraint2006 Solomon Islands – Decline of democratic process2007 Bangladesh 2008 Military “soft coup”2007 Philippines 2010 Executive degradation2007 Kenya – Electoral fraud and executive abuse2008 Georgia 2012 Electoral fraud and executive abuse2009 Honduras 2013 Military intervention

2009 Madagascar – Unconstitutional assumption of power by opposition; suspension of elected parliament

2009 Niger 2011 Presidential dissolution of Constitutional Court and National Assembly to extend presidential rule

2010 Burundi – Electoral fraud, opposition boycott, political closure2010 Sri Lanka – Executive degradation

2010 Guinea-Bissau – Military intervention, weakening civilian control, deteriorating rule of law

2012 Maldives – Forcible removal of democratically elected president2012 Mali 2014 Military coup2011 Nicaragua – Executive degradation

2012 Ukraine 2014 Electoral fraud (parliamentary elections), executive abuse

2014 Turkey – Executive degradation, violation of opposition rights2014 Bangladesh – Breakdown of electoral process2014 Thailand – Military coup

Table—breakDowns oF Democracy, 2000–2014


tending civilian control over the military, and making it harder to ban political parties that offend the “deep state” structures associated with the intensely secularist legacy of Kemal Atatürk. But the AKP has grad-ually entrenched its own political hegemony, extending partisan control over the judiciary and the bureaucracy, arresting journalists and intimi-dating dissenters in the press and academia, threatening businesses with retaliation if they fund opposition parties, and using arrests and prosecu-tions in cases connected to alleged coup plots to jail and remove from public life an implausibly large number of accused plotters.

This has coincided with a stunning and increasingly audacious con-centration of personal power by Turkey’s longtime prime minister Re-cep Tayyip Erdo¢gan, who was elected president in August 2014. The abuse and personalization of power and the constriction of competitive space and freedom in Turkey have been subtle and incremental, mov-ing with nothing like the speed of Putin in the early 2000s. But by now, these trends appear to have crossed a threshold, pushing the country below the minimum standards of democracy. If this has happened, when did it happen? Was it in 2014, when the AKP further consolidated its hegemonic grip on power in the March local-government elections and the August presidential election? Or was it, as some liberal Turks insist, several years before, as media freedoms were visibly diminishing and an ever-wider circle of alleged coup plotters was being targeted in the highly politicized Ergenekon trials?

A similar problem exists for Botswana, where a president (Ian Khama) with a career military background evinces an intolerance of opposition and distaste for civil society beyond anything seen previously from the long-ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP). Increasing political vio-lence and intimidation—including assaults on opposition politicians, the possible murder of a leading opposition candidate three months before the October 2014 parliamentary elections, and the apparent involvement of the intelligence apparatus in the bullying and coercion of the political opposition—have been moving the political system in a more authoritar-ian direction. Escalating pressure on the independent media, the brazen misuse of state television by the BDP, and the growing personalization and centralization of power by President Khama (as he advances his own narrow circle of family and friends while splitting the ruling party) are further signs of the deterioration, if not crisis, of democracy in Botswana.7 Again, Levitsky and Way had argued a number of years ago that Botswana was not a genuine democracy in the first place.8 Nevertheless, whatever kind of system it has been in recent decades, “respect for the rule of law and for established institutions and processes” began to diminish in 1998, when Khama ascended to the vice-presidency, and it has continued to decline since 2008, when the former military commander “automatically succeeded to the presidency.”9

There are no easy and obvious answers to the conundrum of how to

147Larry Diamond

classify regimes in the gray zone. One can argue about whether these am-biguous regimes are still democracies—or even if they ever really were. Those who accept that a democratic breakdown has occurred can argue about when it took place. But what is beyond argument is that there is a class of regimes that in the last decade or so have experienced signifi-cant erosion in electoral fairness, political pluralism, and civic space for opposition and dissent, typically as a result of abusive executives intent upon concentrating their personal power and entrenching ruling-party hegemony. The best-known cases of this since 1999 have been Rus-sia and Venezuela, where populist former military officer Hugo Chávez (1999–2013) gradually suffocated democratic pluralism during the first decade of this century. After Daniel Ortega returned to the presidency in Nicaragua in 2007, he borrowed many pages from Chávez’s authoritar-ian playbook, and left-populist authoritarian presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and Rafael Correa of Ecuador have been moving in a similar di-rection. In their contribution to this issue, Scott Mainwaring and Aníbal Pérez-Li~nán assert that democratic erosion has occurred since 2000 in all four of these Latin American countries (Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bo-livia, and Ecuador) as well as in Honduras, with Bolivia, Ecuador, and Honduras now limping along as “semidemocracies.”

Of the 25 breakdowns since 2000 listed in the Table, eighteen have occurred after 2005. Only eight of these 25 breakdowns came as a result of military intervention (and of those eight, only four took the form of a conventional, blatant military coup, as happened twice in Thailand). Two other cases (Nepal and Madagascar) saw democratically elected rulers pushed out of power by other nondemocratic forces (the monarch and the political opposition, respectively). The majority of the break-downs—thirteen—resulted from the abuse of power and the desecration of democratic institutions and practices by democratically elected rul-ers. Four of these took the form of widespread electoral fraud or, in the recent case of Bangladesh, a unilateral change in the rules of electoral administration (the elimination of the practice of a caretaker govern-ment before the election) that tilted the electoral playing field and trig-gered an opposition boycott. The other nine failures by executive abuse involved the more gradual suffocation of democracy by democratically elected executives (though that too was occurring in several of the in-stances of electoral fraud, such as Ukraine under President Viktor Yanu-kovych [2010–14]). Overall, nearly one in every five democracies since the turn of this century has failed.

The Decline of Freedom and the Rule of Law

Separate and apart from democratic failure, there has also been a trend of declining freedom in a number of countries and regions since 2005. The most often cited statistic in this regard is the Freedom House


finding that in each of the eight consecutive years from 2006 through 2013 more countries declined in freedom than improved. In fact, after a post–Cold War period in which the balance was almost always highly favorable—with improvers outstripping the decliners by a ratio of two to one (or greater)—the balance simply inverted beginning in 2006. But this does not tell the whole story.

Two important elements are noteworthy, and they are both especially visible in Africa. First, the declines have tended to crystallize over time. Thus, if we compare freedom scores at the end of 2005 and the end of 2013, we see that 29 of the 49 sub-Saharan African states (almost 60 percent) declined in freedom, while only fifteen (30 percent) improved and five remained unchanged. Moreover, twenty states in the region saw a decline in political rights, civil liberties, or both that was substantial enough to register a change on the seven-point scales (while only eleven states saw such a visible improvement). The larger states in sub-Saharan Africa (those with a population of more than ten million) did a bit better, but not much: Freedom deteriorated in thirteen of the 25 of them, and improved in only eight.

Another problem is that the pace of decay in democratic institutions is not always evident to outside observers. In a number of countries where we take democracy for granted, such as South Africa, we should not. In fact, there is not a single country on the African continent where democracy is firmly consolidated and secure—the way it is, for exam-ple, in such third-wave democracies as South Korea, Poland, and Chile. In the global democracy-promotion community, few actors are paying attention to the growing signs of fragility in the more liberal developing democracies, not to mention the more illiberal ones.

Why have freedom and democracy been regressing in many coun-tries? The most important and pervasive answer is, in brief, bad gover-nance. The Freedom House measures of political rights and civil liber-ties both include subcategories that directly relate to the rule of law and transparency (including corruption). If we remove these subcategories from the Freedom House political-rights and civil-liberties scores and create a third distinct scale with the rule-of-law and transparency scores, the problems become more apparent. African states (like most others in the world) perform considerably worse on the rule of law and transpar-ency than on political rights and civil liberties.10 Moreover, rule of law and political rights have both declined perceptibly across sub-Saharan Africa since 2005, while civil liberties have oscillated somewhat more. These empirical trends are shown in Figure 2, which presents the Free-dom House data for these three reconfigured scales as standardized scores, ranging from 0 to 1.11

The biggest problem for democracy in Africa is controlling corrup-tion and abuse of power. The decay in governance has been visible even in the best-governed African countries, such as South Africa, which suf-

149Larry Diamond

fered a steady decline in its score on rule of law and transparency (from .79 to .63) between 2005 and 2013. And as more and more African states become resource-rich with the onset of a second African oil boom, the quality of governance will deteriorate further. This has already begun to happen in one of Africa’s most liberal and important democracies, Ghana.

The problem is not unique to Africa. Every region of the world scores worse on the standardized scale of transparency and the rule of law than it does on either political rights or civil liberties. In fact, transparency and the rule of law trail the other two scales even more dramatically in Latin America, postcommunist Europe, and Asia than they do in Af-rica (Figure 3). Many democracies in lower-income and even middle- or upper-middle-income countries (notably, Argentina) struggle with the resurgence of what Francis Fukuyama calls “neo-patrimonial” tenden-cies.12 Leaders who think that they can get away with it are eroding democratic checks and balances, hollowing out institutions of account-ability, overriding term limits and normative restraints, and accumulat-ing power and wealth for themselves and their families, cronies, clients, and parties.

In the process, they demonize, intimidate, and victimize (and occa-sionally even jail or murder) opponents who get in their way. Space for opposition parties, civil society, and the media is shrinking, and interna-tional support for them is drying up. Ethnic, religious, and other identity cleavages polarize many societies that lack well-designed democratic institutions to manage those cleavages. State structures are too often weak and porous—unable to secure order, protect rights, meet the most basic social needs, or rise above corrupt, clientelistic, and predatory im-

Figure 2—Freedom and governance Trends in aFrica, 2005–13

political rights civil Liberties transparency and rule of Law


pulses. Democratic institutions such as parties and parliaments are often poorly developed, and the bureaucracy lacks the policy expertise and, even more so, the independence, neutrality, and authority to effectively manage the economy. Weak economic performance and rising inequal-ity exacerbate the problems of abuse of power, rigging of elections, and violation of the democratic rules of the game.

The Strategic Swing States

A different perspective on the global state of democracy can be gleaned from a focus not on regional or global trends, but on the weight-iest emerging-market countries. These are the ones with large popu-lations (say, more than fifty million) or large economies (more than US$200 billion). I count 27 of these (including Ukraine, which does not quite reach either measure, but is of immense strategic importance). Twelve of these 27 swing states had worse average freedom scores at the end of 2013 than they did at the end of 2005. These declines took place across the board: in fairly liberal democracies (South Korea, Taiwan, and South Africa); in less liberal democracies (Colombia, Ukraine, In-donesia, Turkey, Mexico, and Thailand before the 2014 military coup); and in authoritarian regimes (Ethiopia, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia). In addition, I think three other countries are also less free today than they were in 2005: Russia, where the noose of repressive authoritarianism has clearly been tightening since Vladimir Putin returned to the pres-idency in early 2012; Egypt, where the new military-dominated gov-

Source: Freedom House raw data for Freedom in the World, 2013.

0.86

0.73

0.52

0.46

0.30 0.28

0.83

0.72

0.52 0.49

0.39 0.35

0.66

0.50

0.39 0.36

0.23 0.23

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1

CEE+Baltics LAC Asia Africa FSU-Baltics Arab States

Political Rights Civil Liberties Transparency & RoL

Figure 3—PoliTical righTs, civil liberTies, and TransParency/rule oF law, 2013

political rights

cee ( + Baltics) Lac asia africa FsU ( - Baltics) arab states

civil Liberties transparency and rule of Law

151Larry Diamond

ernment under former general Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is more murderous, controlling, and intolerant than even the Mubarak regime (1981–2011); and Bangladesh, where (as noted above) democracy broke down early in 2014. Only two countries (Singapore and Pakistan) are freer today (and only modestly so) than in 2005. Some other countries have at least re-mained stable. Chile continues to be a liberal-democratic success story; the Philippines has returned to robust democracy after an authoritar-ian interlude under President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (2001–10); and Brazil and India have preserved robust democracy, albeit with continu-ing challenges. But overall, among the 27 (which also include China, Malaysia, Nigeria, and the United Arab Emirates) there has been scant evidence of democratic progress. In terms of democracy, the most im-portant countries outside the stable democratic West have been either stagnating or slipping backward.

The Authoritarian Resurgence

An important part of the story of global democratic recession has been the deepening of authoritarianism. This has taken a number of forms. In Russia, space for political opposition, principled dissent, and civil society activity outside the control of the ruling authorities has been shrinking.13 In China, human-rights defenders and civil society ac-tivists have faced increasing harassment and victimization.

The (mainly) postcommunist autocracies of the Shanghai Coopera-tion Organization, centered on the axis of cynical cooperation between Russia and China, have become much more coordinated and assertive. Both countries have both been aggressively flexing their muscles in dealing with their neighbors on territorial questions. And increasingly they are pushing back against democratic norms by also using instru-ments of soft power—international media (such as RT, Russia’s slick 24/7 global television “news” channel), China’ssConfucius Institutes, lavish conferences, and exchange programs—to try to discredit Western democracies and democracy in general, while promoting their own mod-els and norms.14 This is part of a broader trend of renewed authoritarian skill and energy in using state-run media (both traditional and digital) to air an eclectic mix of proregime narratives, demonized images of dis-senters, and illiberal, nationalist, and anti-American diatribes.15

African autocrats have increasingly used China’s booming aid and investment (and the new regional war on Islamist terrorism) as a coun-terweight to Western pressure for democracy and good governance. And they have been only too happy to point to China’s formula of rapid state-led development without democracy to justify their own deepen-ing authoritarianism. In Venezuela, the vise of authoritarian populism has tightened and the government’s toleration (or even organization) of criminal violence to demobilize middle-class opposition has risen. The


“Arab Spring” has imploded in almost every country that it touched save Tunisia, leaving in most cases even more repressive states or, as in the case of Libya, hardly a state at all.

The resurgence of authoritarianism over the past eight years has been quickened by the diffusion of common tools and approaches. Prominent among these have been laws to criminalize international flows of financial and technical assistance from democracies to demo-cratic parties, movements, media, election monitors, and civil society organizations in authoritarian regimes, as well as broader restrictions on the ability of NGOs to form and operate and the creation of pseudo-NGOs to do the bidding (domestically and internationally) of auto-crats.16 One recent study of 98 countries outside the West found that 51 of them either prohibit or restrict foreign funding of civil society, with a clear global trend toward tightening control; as a result, international democracy-assistance flows are dropping precipitously where they are needed most.17 In addition, authoritarian (and even some democratic) states are becoming more resourceful, sophisticated, and unapologetic in suppressing Internet freedom and using cyberspace to frustrate, sub-vert, and control civil society.18

Western Democracy in Retreat

Perhaps the most worrisome dimension of the democratic recession has been the decline of democratic efficacy, energy, and self-confidence in the West, including the United States. There is a growing sense, both domestically and internationally, that democracy in the United States has not been functioning effectively enough to address the major chal-lenges of governance. The diminished pace of legislation, the vanish-ing ability of Congress to pass a budget, and the 2013 shutdown of the federal government are only some of the indications of a political sys-tem (and a broader body politic) that appears increasingly polarized and deadlocked. As a result, both public approval of Congress and public trust in government are at historic lows. The ever-mounting cost of elec-tion campaigns, the surging role of nontransparent money in politics, and low rates of voter participation are additional signs of democratic ill health. Internationally, promoting democracy abroad scores close to the bottom of the public’s foreign-policy priorities. And the international perception is that democracy promotion has already receded as an actual priority of U.S. foreign policy.

The world takes note of all this. Authoritarian state media gleefully publicize these travails of American democracy in order to discredit de-mocracy in general and immunize authoritarian rule against U.S. pres-sure. Even in weak states, autocrats perceive that the pressure is now off: They can pretty much do whatever they want to censor the media, crush the opposition, and perpetuate their rule, and Europe and the Unit-

153Larry Diamond

ed States will swallow it. Meek verbal protests may ensue, but the aid will still flow and the dictators will still be welcome at the White House and the Elysée Palace.

It is hard to overstate how important the vitality and self-confidence of U.S. democracy has been to the global expansion of democracy dur-ing the third wave. While each democratizing country made its own transition, pressure and solidarity from the United State and Europe of-ten generated a significant and even crucial enabling environment that helped to tip finely balanced situations toward democratic change, and then in some cases gradually toward democratic consolidation. If this solidarity is now greatly diminished, so will be the near-term global prospects for reviving and sustaining democratic progress.

A Brighter Horizon?

Democracy has been in a global recession for most of the last decade, and there is a growing danger that the recession could deepen and tip over into something much worse. Many more democracies could fail, not only in poor countries of marginal strategic significance, but also in big swing states such as Indonesia and Ukraine (again). There is little external recognition yet of the grim state of democracy in Turkey, and there is no guarantee that democracy will return any time soon to Thai-land or Bangladesh. Apathy and inertia in Europe and the United States could significantly lower the barriers to new democratic reversals and to authoritarian entrenchments in many more states.

Yet the picture is not entirely bleak. We have not seen “a third reverse wave.” Globally, average levels of freedom have ebbed a little bit, but not calamitously. Most important, there has not been significant erosion in public support for democracy. In fact, what the Afrobarometer has con-sistently shown is a gap—in some African countries, a chasm—between the popular demand for democracy and the supply of it provided by the regime. This is not based just on some shallow, vague notion that democ-racy is a good thing. Many Africans understand the importance of politi-cal accountability, transparency, the rule of law, and restraint of power, and they would like to see their governments manifest these virtues.

While the performance of democracy is failing to inspire, authori-tarianism faces its own steep challenges. There is hardly a dictatorship in the world that looks stable for the long run. The only truly reliable source of regime stability is legitimacy, and the number of people in the world who believe in the intrinsic legitimacy of any form of authori-tarianism is rapidly diminishing. Economic development, globalization, and the information revolution are undermining all forms of authority and empowering individuals. Values are changing, and while we should not assume any teleological path toward a global “enlightenment,” gen-erally the movement is toward greater distrust of authority and more


desire for accountability, freedom, and political choice. In the coming two decades, these trends will challenge the nature of rule in China, Vietnam, Iran, and the Arab states much more than they will in India, not to mention Europe and the United States. Already, democratization is visible on the horizon of Malaysia’s increasingly competitive elector-al politics, and it will come in the next generation to Singapore as well.

The key imperative in the near term is to work to reform and consoli-date the democracies that have emerged during the third wave—the ma-jority of which remain illiberal and unstable, if they remain democratic at all. With more focused, committed, and resourceful international en-gagement, it should be possible to help democracy sink deeper and more enduring roots in countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines, South Af-rica, and Ghana. It is possible and urgently important to help stabilize the new democracies in Ukraine and Tunisia (whose success could gradu-ally generate significant diffusion effects throughout the Arab world). It might be possible to nudge Thailand and Bangladesh back toward elec-toral democracy, though ways must be found to temper the awful levels of party polarization in each country. With time, the electoral authoritar-ian project in Turkey will discredit itself in the face of mounting corrup-tion and abuse of power, which are already growing quite serious. And the oil-based autocracies in Iran and Venezuela will face increasingly severe crises of economic performance and political legitimacy.

It is vital that democrats in the established democracies not lose faith. Democrats have the better set of ideas. Democracy may be receding somewhat in practice, but it is still globally ascendant in peoples’ values and aspirations. This creates significant new opportunities for demo-cratic growth. If the current modest recession of democracy spirals into a depression, it will be because those of us in the established democra-cies were our own worst enemies.

NOTES

I would like to thank Erin Connors, Emmanuel Ferrario, and Lukas Friedemann for their excellent research assistance on this article.

1. For an elaboration of this definition, see Larry Diamond, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (New York: Times Books, 2008), 20–26.

2. Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010); see also their essay in this issue.

3. I count as liberal democracies all those regimes that receive a score of 1 or 2 (out of 7) on both political rights and civil liberties.

4. Thomas Carothers, “The End of the Transition Paradigm,” Journal of Democracy 13 (January 2002): 5–21.

155Larry Diamond

5. Freedom House classifies all the world’s regimes as democracies or not from 1989 to the present based on whether a) they score at least 7 out of 12 on the “electoral process” dimension of political rights; b) they score at least 20 out of 40 overall on the raw point scale for political rights; c) their most recent parliamentary and presidential elections were reasonably free and fair; d) there are no significant hidden sources of power overriding the elected authorities; and e) there are no recent legal changes abridging future electoral freedom. In practice, this has led to a somewhat expansive list of democracies—rather too generous in my view, but at least a plausible “upper limit” of the number of democracies every year. Levitsky and Way suggest in this issue that a better standard for democracy would be the Freedom House classification of Free, which requires a minimum average score of 2.5 on the combined scales of political rights and civil liberties. But I think this standard excludes many genuine but illiberal democracies.

6. My count of electoral democracies for 1998–2002 was lower than that of Freedom House by 8 to 9 countries, and in 1999, by 11 countries. For example, I dropped from this category Georgia in 1992–2002, Ukraine in 1994–2004, Mozambique in 1994–2008, Nigeria in 1999–2003, Russia in 2001–2004, and Venezuela in 2004–2008.

7. Amy R. Poteete, “Democracy Derailed? Botswana’s Fading Halo,” AfricaPlus, 20 October 2014, http://africaplus.wordpress.com/2014/10/20/democracy-derailed-botswa-nas-fading-halo/.

8. Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism, 20.

9. Kenneth Good, “The Illusion of Democracy in Botswana,” in Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner, eds., Democratization in Africa: Progress and Retreat, 2nd ed. (Balti-more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 281.

10. The comparisons here and in Figure 2 are with the reconfigured political-rights and civil-liberties scales, after the subscales for transparency and rule of law have been removed (see endnote 11 below).

11. I created the scale of transparency and rule of law by drawing subscales C2 (control of corruption) and C3 (accountability and transparency) from the political-rights scale and the four subscales of F (rule of law) from the civil-liberties scale. For the specific items in these subscales, see the Freedom in the World methodology, www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world-2014/methodology#.VGww5vR4qcI.

12. Francis Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revo-lution to the Globalization of Democracy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014). See also his essay in this issue of the Journal of Democracy.

13. On Russia, see Miriam Lanskoy and Elspeth Suthers, “Putin versus Civil Society: Outlawing the Opposition,” Journal of Democracy 24 (July 2013): 74–87.

14. See Andrew Nathan’s essay “China’s Challenge” on pp. 156–70 of this issue.

15. Christopher Walker and Robert W. Orttung, “Breaking the News: The Role of State-Run Media,” Journal of Democracy 25 (January 2014): 71–85.

16. Carl Gershman and Michael Allen, “The Assault on Democracy Assistance,” Jour-nal of Democracy 17 (April 2006): 36–51; William J. Dobson, The Dictator’s Learning Curve: Inside the Global Battle for Democracy (New York: Doubleday, 2012).

17. Darin Christensen and Jeremy M. Weinstein, “Defunding Dissent: Restrictions on Aid to NGOs,” Journal of Democracy 24 (April 2013): 77–91.

18. See the essays in Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner, Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2012) and the ongoing trailblazing work of the Citizen Lab, https://citizenlab.org/.

http://africaplus.wordpress.com/2014/10/20/democracy-derailed-botswanas-fading-halo/

http://africaplus.wordpress.com/2014/10/20/democracy-derailed-botswanas-fading-halo/

www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world-2014/methodology#.VGww5vR4qcI

www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world-2014/methodology#.VGww5vR4qcI

https://citizenlab.org/

A Return to the Iron Fist

Arch Puddington

Journal of Democracy, Volume 26, Number 2, April 2015, pp. 122-138(Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University PressDOI: 10.1353/jod.2015.0033

For additional information about this article

Access provided by KOC University (15 Jul 2015 15:48 GMT)

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jod/summary/v026/26.2.puddington.html

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jod/summary/v026/26.2.puddington.html

A RetuRn to the IRon FIst

Arch Puddington

Arch Puddington is vice-president for research at Freedom House. For more information on the survey, see the box on p. 124. For the rankings of individual countries in 2014, see the Table on pp. 126–27.

In a year marked by an explosion of terrorist violence, autocrats’ use of more brutal tactics, and Russia’s invasion and annexation of a neighbor-ing country’s territory, the state of freedom in 2014 worsened signifi-cantly in nearly every part of the world. For the ninth consecutive year, Freedom in the World, Freedom House’s annual report on the condition of global political rights and civil liberties, showed an overall decline. Indeed, acceptance of democracy as the world’s dominant form of gov-ernment—and of an international system built on democratic ideals—is under greater threat than at any point in the last 25 years. Even after such a long period of mounting pressure on democracy, developments in 2014 were exceptionally grim. The report’s findings show that nearly twice as many countries suffered setbacks as registered gains, 61 to 33, with the number of gains hitting its lowest point since the nine-year ero-sion began.

This pattern held true across geographical regions, with more de-clines than gains in the Middle East and North Africa, Eurasia, sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, and the Americas, and an even split in Asia-Pacific. Syria, a dictatorship mired in civil war and ethnic division and facing uncontrolled terrorism, received its worst Freedom in the World country score in more than a decade.

The lack of democratic gains around the world was conspicuous. The one notable exception was Tunisia, which became the first Arab country to achieve the status of Free since Lebanon was gripped by civil war forty years ago. By contrast, a troubling number of large, economically powerful, or regionally influential countries moved backward: Russia, Venezuela, Egypt, Turkey, Thailand, Nigeria, Kenya, and Azerbaijan. There were also net declines across five of the seven categories of dem-

Journal of Democracy Volume 26, Number 2 April 2015© 2015 National Endowment for Democracy and Johns Hopkins University Press

The Freedom House Survey for 2014

Puddington.NEW saved by BK on 1/13/15; 7,578 words. Puddington.NEW.MP saved by TB on 1/30/13—inc. preliminary cuts by MP (7,036 words). Puddington.NEW.AP saved from author email by TB on 1/31/15. Reflects author’s edits to Puddington.MP. (5,966 words.) TXT saved from NEW.AP by TB on 1/30/15. 5,826 words on 2/3/15. Changes accepted per AP email of 2/6/15. PGS created by BK on 2/20/15.

123Arch Puddington

Puddington.NEW saved by BK on 1/13/15; 7,578 words. Puddington.NEW.MP saved by TB on 1/30/13—inc. preliminary cuts by MP (7,036 words). Puddington.NEW.AP saved from author email by TB on 1/31/15. Reflects author’s edits to Puddington.MP. (5,966 words.) TXT saved from NEW.AP by TB on 1/30/15. 5,826 words on 2/3/15. Changes accepted per AP email of 2/6/15. PGS created by BK on 2/20/15.

ocratic indicators assessed by the report. Continuing a recent trend, the worst reversals affected freedom of expression, civil society, and the rule of law. In a new and disquieting development, a number of coun-tries lost ground due to state surveillance, restrictions on Internet com-munications, and curbs on personal autonomy.

Explicit Rejection of Democratic Standards

Just as disturbing as the statistical decline was the open disdain for democratic standards that colored the words and actions of autocratic governments during the year. Until recently, most authoritarian regimes claimed to respect international agreements and paid lip service to the norms of competitive elections and human rights. They now increas-ingly flout democratic values, argue for the superiority of what amounts to one-party rule, and seek to throw off the constraints of fundamental diplomatic principles.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including the outright seizure and formal annexation of Crimea, is the prime example of this phenom-enon. The Russian intervention was in direct violation of an interna-tional agreement that had guaranteed Ukraine’s territorial integrity. President Vladimir Putin made his contempt for the values of liberal democracy unmistakably clear. He and his aides equated raw propa-ganda with legitimate journalism, and treated human-rights activists as enemies of the state.

In Egypt, the rise of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has been accompa-nied by a relentless campaign to roll back the gains of the Arab Spring. In an unprecedented trampling of the rule of law, Egyptian courts sen-tenced 1,300 political detainees to death in a series of drumhead tri-als that lacked the most basic elements of due process. Under Sisi, a once-vibrant media sector has been bent into submission, human-rights organizations suppressed to the point where they can no longer operate, foreign scholars barred, and domestic critics (both secular and Islamist) arrested or forced into exile.

In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdo¢gan consolidated power dur-ing the year and waged an increasingly aggressive campaign against democratic pluralism. He openly demanded that media owners censor coverage or fire critical journalists, told the Constitutional Court that he does not respect its rulings, threatened reporters (and rebuked women journalists), and ordered radical changes to the school curriculum. Hav-ing risen from the premiership to the presidency in August, he formed a “shadow cabinet” that allows him to run the country from the presiden-tial palace, circumventing constitutional rules and the ministries of his own party’s government.

In China, President Xi Jinping continued to centralize authority and maintain hands-on involvement in policy areas ranging from domes-


Freedom in the World

Freedom in the World is an evaluation of political rights and civil liberties in the world that Freedom House has provided on an annual basis for more than forty years. (Established in New York in 1941, Freedom House is a nonprofit organization that monitors political rights and civil liberties around the world.) The survey assesses a country’s freedom by examining its record in two areas: A country grants its citizens Political Rights when it permits them to form political parties that represent a significant range of voter choice and whose leaders can openly compete for and be elected to positions of power in government. A country upholds its citizens’ Civil Liberties when it respects and protects their religious, ethnic, economic, lin-guistic, and other rights, including gender and family rights, personal freedoms, and freedoms of the press, belief, and association. The survey rates each country on a seven-point scale for both political rights and civil liberties (1 representing the most free and 7 the least free) and then divides the world into three broad categories: Free (countries whose ratings average 1.0 to 2.5); Partly Free (countries whose ratings average 3.0 to 5.0); and Not Free (countries whose ratings average 5.5 to 7.0). Freedom House also assigns upward or downward “trend arrows” to countries which saw general positive or negative trends during the year that were not significant enough to result in a ratings change for Political Rights or Civil Liberties from the previous year.

The ratings, which are the product of a process that includes a team of in-house and consultant writers along with senior scholars, are not merely assessments of the conduct of governments. Rather, they are intended to reflect the real-world rights and freedoms enjoyed by individuals as the result of actions by both state and nonstate actors. Thus a country with a benign government facing violent forces (such as terrorist movements or insurgencies) hostile to an open society will be graded on the basis of the on-the-ground conditions that determine whether the population is able to exercise its freedoms. The survey enables scholars and policy makers both to assess the direction of global change annually and to examine trends in freedom over time and on a comparative basis across regions with different political and economic systems. The electoral-democracy designation reflects a judgment about the last major national election or elections.

For more information about Freedom House’s programs and publications, please visit www.freedomhouse.org.

Note: The findings in this essay and the accompanying Table reflect global events from 1 January 2014 through 31 December 2014.

www.freedomhouse.org

125Arch Puddington

tic security to Internet management to ethnic relations, emerging as the most powerful Chinese Communist Party leader since Deng Xiaoping. He continued to bolster China’s sweeping maritime territorial claims with armed force and personnel, and while his aggressive anticorrup-tion campaign reached the highest echelons of the party, culminating in the arrest of former security czar Zhou Yongkang, it remained selective and ignored the principles of due process. Moreover, the campaign has been compromised by an intensified crackdown on grassroots anticor-ruption activists and other elements of civil society, including a series of politically motivated convictions. The government also intensified its persecution of the Uighur community, vastly restricting Uighurs’ ability to observe their Muslim faith and sentencing activists and journalists to long prison terms.

The Effects and Causes of Terrorism

In a variety of ways, lack of democratic governance creates an en-abling environment for terrorism, and the problem rapidly metastasized as a threat to human life and human freedom during 2014. In a wide swath of the globe stretching from West Africa through the Middle East to South Asia, radical jihadist forces plagued local governments and populations. Their impact on countries such as Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, and Nigeria was devastating, as they massacred security forces and civilians alike, took foreigners hostage, and killed or enslaved religious minori-ties, including Muslims whom they did not recognize as such. Women were particular targets: Young women and teenage girls were seized as war prizes; schoolgirls were kidnapped and raped; women educators and health workers were assassinated; and women suffered disproportion-ately in refugee camps. As horror followed horror, the year ended with a slaughter of more than 130 schoolchildren by the Pakistani Taliban.

The spike in terrorist violence laid bare widespread corruption, poor governance, and counterproductive security strategies in a number of countries with weak or nonexistent democratic institutions. The Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad had opened the door to the growth of the Islamic State and other extremist movements by brutally repress-ing first peaceful protesters and the political opposition, then the various rebel groups that rose up to defend them. The Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki also smoothed the militants’ path by persecuting opposition leaders, rebuking peaceful Sunni protests, and fostering corruption and cronyism in the security forces. More recently, the Sisi government in Egypt has made the same mistake in its remorseless drive to eliminate the Muslim Brotherhood, indirectly fueling an armed insurgency and contributing to the formation of an Islamic State affiliate in the country.

In Nigeria, neither the government nor the military has proved capable of dealing effectively with Boko Haram, which operates with impunity in


Country Pr CL Freedom rating


Afghanistan 6 6 Not Free Egypt 6 5 Not FreeAlbania* 3 3 Partly Free El Salvador* 2 3 FreeAlgeria 6 5 Not Free Equatorial Guinea 7 7 Not FreeAndorra* 1 1 Free Eritrea 7 7 Not FreeAngola 6 5 Not Free Estonia* 1 1 FreeAntigua and Barbuda* 2 2 Free Ethiopia 6 6 Not FreeArgentina* 2 2 Free Fiji* 3 4 Partly FreeArmenia 5 4 Partly Free Finland* 1 1 FreeAustralia* 1 1 Free France* 1 1 FreeAustria* 1 1 Free Gabon 6 5 Not FreeAzerbaijan 6 6 Not Free The Gambia 6 6 Not FreeBahamas* 1 1 Free Georgia* 3 3 Partly FreeBahrain 7 6 Not Free Germany* 1 1 FreeBangladesh* 4 4 Partly Free Ghana* 1 2 FreeBarbados* 1 1 Free Greece* 2 2 FreeBelarus 7 6 Not Free Grenada* 1 2 FreeBelgium* 1 1 Free Guatemala* 3 4 Partly FreeBelize* 1 2 Free Guinea 5 5 Partly FreeBenin* 2 2 Free Guinea-Bissau 5 5 Partly Free Bhutan* 3 4 Partly Free Guyana* 2 3 FreeBolivia* 3 3 Partly Free Haiti 5 5 Partly FreeBosnia-Herzegovina* 4 3 Partly Free Honduras* 4 4 Partly FreeBotswana* 3 2 Free Hungary* 2 2 FreeBrazil* 2 2 Free Iceland* 1 1 FreeBrunei 6 5 Not Free India* 2 3 FreeBulgaria* 2 2 Free Indonesia* 2 4 Partly FreeBurkina Faso 6 3 Partly Free Iran 6 6 Not FreeBurma 6 6 Not Free Iraq 6 6 Not FreeBurundi 6 5 Not Free Ireland* 1 1 FreeCambodia 6 5 Not Free Israel* 1 2 FreeCameroon 6 6 Not Free Italy* 1 1 FreeCanada* 1 1 Free Jamaica* 2 3 FreeCape Verde* 1 1 Free Japan* 1 1 FreeCentral African Rep. 7 7 Not Free Jordan 6 5 Not FreeChad 7 6 Not Free Kazakhstan 6 5 Not FreeChile* 1 1 Free Kenya* 4 4 Partly FreeChina 7 6 Not Free Kiribati* 1 1 FreeColombia* 3 4 Partly Free Kosovo* 4 4 Partly FreeComoros* 3 4 Partly Free Kuwait 5 5 Partly FreeCongo (Brazzaville) 6 5 Not Free Kyrgyzstan 5 5 Partly FreeCongo (Kinshasa) 6 6 Not Free Laos 7 6 Not FreeCosta Rica* 1 1 Free Latvia* 2 2 FreeCôte d’Ivoire 5 4 Partly Free Lebanon 5 4 Partly FreeCroatia* 1 2 Free Lesotho* 2 3 FreeCuba 7 6 Not Free Liberia* 3 4 Partly FreeCyprus* 1 1 Free Libya 6 6 Not Free Czech Republic* 1 1 Free Liechtenstein* 1 1 FreeDenmark* 1 1 Free Lithuania* 1 1 FreeDjibouti 6 5 Not Free Luxembourg* 1 1 FreeDominica* 1 1 Free Macedonia* 4 3 Partly FreeDominican Republic* 2 3 Free Madagascar* 4 4 Partly FreeEcuador* 3 3 Partly Free Malawi* 3 4 Partly Free

tabLe—Freedom in the WorLd 2014:indePendent Countries

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Malaysia 4 4 Partly Free Slovenia* 1 1 FreeMaldives* 4 4 Partly Free Solomon Islands* 3 3 Partly FreeMali 5 4 Partly Free Somalia 7 7 Not FreeMalta* 1 1 Free South Africa* 2 2 FreeMarshall Islands 1 1 Free South Korea* 2 2 FreeMauritania 6 5 Not Free South Sudan 7 6 Not FreeMauritius* 1 2 Free Spain* 1 1 FreeMexico* 3 3 Partly Free Sri Lanka 5 5 Partly FreeMicronesia* 1 1 Free Sudan 7 7 Not FreeMoldova* 3 3 Partly Free Suriname* 2 2 FreeMonaco* 2 1 Free Swaziland 7 5 Not FreeMongolia* 1 2 Free Sweden* 1 1 FreeMontenegro* 3 2 Free Switzerland* 1 1 FreeMorocco 5 4 Partly Free Syria 7 7 Not FreeMozambique 4 3 Partly Free Taiwan* 1 2 FreeNamibia* 2 2 Free Tajikistan 6 6 Not FreeNauru* 1 2 Free Tanzania* 3 3 Partly FreeNepal* 4 4 Partly Free Thailand 6 5 Not Free Netherlands* 1 1 Free Timor-Leste 3 3 Partly FreeNew Zealand* 1 1 Free Togo 4 4 Partly FreeNicaragua 4 3 Partly Free Tonga* 2 2 FreeNiger* 3 4 Partly Free Trinidad & Tobago* 2 2 FreeNigeria 4 5 Partly Free Tunisia* 1 3 Free North Korea 7 7 Not Free Turkey* 3 4 Partly FreeNorway* 1 1 Free Turkmenistan 7 7 Not FreeOman 6 5 Not Free Tuvalu* 1 1 FreePakistan* 4 5 Partly Free Uganda 6 5 Not Free Palau* 1 1 Free Ukraine* 3 3 Partly FreePanama* 2 2 Partly Free U.A.E. 6 6 Not FreePapua New Guinea* 4 3 Partly Free United Kingdom* 1 1 FreeParaguay* 3 3 Partly Free United States* 1 1 FreePeru* 2 3 Free Uruguay* 1 1 FreePhilippines* 3 3 Partly Free Uzbekistan 7 7 Not FreePoland* 1 1 Free Vanuatu* 2 2 FreePortugal* 1 1 Free Venezuela 5 5 Partly FreeQatar 6 5 Not Free Vietnam 7 5 Not FreeRomania* 2 2 Free Yemen 6 6 Not FreeRussia 6 6 Not Free Zambia* 3 4 Partly FreeRwanda 6 6 Not Free Zimbabwe 5 6 Not FreeSaint Kitts & Nevis* 1 1 Free PR and CL stand for Political Rights and

Civil Liberties, respectively; 1 represents the most-free and 7 the least-free rating. indicate a change in Political-Rights or Civil-Liberties ratings since the last survey. (trend arrows) denote a positive or neg-ative movement without a change in rating.* indicates countries that are electoral de-mocracies.The Freedom Rating is an overall judgment based on survey results. See the box on p. 123 for more details on the survey. The ratings in this table reflect global events from 1 January 2014 through 31 December 2014.

Saint Lucia* 1 1 FreeSaint Vincent* 1 1 FreeSamoa* 2 2 FreeSan Marino* 1 1 FreeS~ao Tomé & Príncipe* 2 2 FreeSaudi Arabia 7 7 Not FreeSenegal* 2 2 FreeSerbia* 2 2 FreeSeychelles* 3 3 Partly FreeSierra Leone* 3 3 Partly FreeSingapore 4 4 Partly FreeSlovakia* 1 1 Free


parts of the country’s north. While the military has for decades played a large role in Nigerian political life, it has proved poorly equipped, badly trained, hollowed out by graft, and prone to scattershot tactics that fail to distinguish between terrorists and civilians. In Pakistan, the military and intelligence services have a long history of colluding with certain extremist groups, including some that are responsible for mass killings of civilians. When they do move against militant bastions, they too often resort to indiscriminate violence and fail to follow up with improved governance.

Many governments have exploited the escalation of terrorism as a jus-tification for new and essentially unrelated repressive measures. While a vigorous debate over how democracies should respond to terrorism at home and abroad is under way in Europe, Australia, and North America, leaders elsewhere are citing the threat as they silence dissidents, shutter critical media, and eliminate civil society groups. Thus the regime of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro has imprisoned opposition politi-cal figures as terrorists; Kenyan authorities have deregistered hundreds of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and unleashed security agen-cies while pursuing links to Somali militants; and China has invoked terrorism to support harsh prison sentences against nonviolent Uighur activists and Internet users, including a life sentence for well-known Uighur scholar Ilham Tohti.

A Return to Cruder Authoritarian Methods

The exploitation of the terrorism threat is just one aspect of a gen-eral trend in which repressive regimes are returning to blunt, retrograde tactics in their ongoing effort to preserve political control. In recent decades, autocrats had favored more “modern,” nuanced methods that aimed to protect de facto monopolies on power while maintaining a veneer of democratic pluralism and avoiding practices associated with twentieth-century totalitarian regimes and military dictatorships.

Over the past year, however, there were signs that authoritarian re-gimes were beginning to abandon the quasi-democratic camouflage that allowed them to survive and prosper in the post–Cold War world. Again, the most blatant example is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, whose official justifications included ethnic-nationalist, irredentist claims and which quickly drew comparisons to the land grabs of Hitler or Stalin. The move exposed Moscow as a committed enemy of European peace and democ-ratization rather than a would-be strategic partner. China’s government responded to public discontent with campaigns reminiscent of the Mao era, including televised confessions that have gained prominence under Xi Jinping. The Chinese authorities are also resorting to criminal and administrative detention to restrict activists instead of softer tactics such as house arrest or informal interrogations. Both China and Russia have

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made use of one of the Cold War’s most chilling instruments, the place-ment of dissidents in psychiatric hospitals.

In Venezuela and Azerbaijan, the ranks of political prisoners steadily increased in 2014, as leading officials railed against foreign conspira-cies aimed at fomenting revolution. Meanwhile, rulers in Egypt, Bah-rain, and other Middle Eastern countries, who just a decade ago felt obliged to move toward competitive elections, now resort to violent po-lice tactics, sham trials, and severe sentences as they seek to annihilate political opposition. And whereas the most successful authoritarian re-gimes previously tolerated a modest opposition press, some civil society activity, and a comparatively vibrant Internet environment, they are now reducing or closing these remaining spaces for dissent and debate.

The return to older authoritarian practices has included increased military involvement in governance and political affairs. In Thailand, the military leaders responsible for the removal of Prime Minister Yin-gluck Shinawatra and her elected government made clear that a return to democratic rule will not take place in the foreseeable future. The mili-tary commandeered the political transition after the ouster of Burkina Faso’s president, and armed forces continued to play a major role in a number of other African states, including Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. In Egypt, the Sisi government has cemented the mili-tary’s position as the leading force in society. A similar phenomenon has emerged in Venezuela, where the armed forces are involved in the economy, social programs, and internal security, and are thought to play a critical part in drug trafficking and other criminal ventures. Other no-table developments in 2014 included:

• Humanitarian crises rooted in undemocratic governance: In Af-rica, the Middle East, and parts of Asia, millions of refugees were forced into squalid camps, risked their lives in overcrowded boats, or found tenuous shelter on the margins of foreign societies. Authori-tarian misrule was a primary cause of these humanitarian crises. In Syria, the civil war was originally sparked by the regime’s attacks on demonstrators who were protesting the torture of students accused of antigovernment graffiti. In South Sudan, a political dispute between the president and his former vice-president—in the context of an in-terim constitution that gives sweeping powers to the executive—led to fighting within the army that developed into full-scale civil war. The combatants have targeted civilians, who are also facing acute food shortages and massive internal displacement. While the conflict in Ukraine has not reached the same level, Russia’s invasion has cre-ated a crisis like none seen in Europe since the Balkan wars of the 1990s. The aggression was precipitated in part by a confrontation between the Ukrainian people and their increasingly authoritarian president, following decades of corrupt Ukrainian administrations.


• Tunisia’s exceptional success story: In 2014, Tunisia took its place among the Free countries of the world. This is remarkable not just because it was ranked Not Free only five years ago, with scores that placed it among some of the most repressive regimes in the world, but also because Tunisia is so far the only successful case among the many Arab countries that exhibited some political opening in the 2011 Arab Spring. The improvements that pushed it into the Free category included a progressive constitution adopted in January 2014 and well-regarded parliamentary and presidential elections later in the year. As the only full-fledged Arab democracy, Tunisia can set a strong positive example for the region and for all countries that still struggle under authoritarian rule.

• The decline of Internet freedom: Restrictions on Internet free-dom have long been less severe than those imposed on traditional media, but the gap is closing as governments crack down on online activity. Censorship and surveillance, repressive new laws, criminal penalties, and arrests of users have been on the rise in numerous set-tings. For example, officials in Ecuador increased online monitoring in 2014, hiring firms to remove content deemed unfavorable to the government from sites such as YouTube and invoking the 2013 com-munications law to prosecute social-media users who were critical of the president. The Rwandan government stepped up use of a new law that allows security officials to monitor online communications, and surveillance appears to have increased in practice. Such restric-tions affect Free countries as well. After the Sewol ferry accident in South Korea in April and related criticism and rumors surrounding the president, the government began routine monitoring and censor-ship of online discussions. Israel also featured a stricter environment for discussion on social media this year, especially regarding contro-versial views on the situation in the Gaza Strip.

• Overlooked autocrats: While some of the world’s worst dictator-ships regularly made headlines, others continued to fly below the ra-dar. Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev won a landslide reelection victory against an opposition that was crippled by arrests and legal constraints, and the regime stepped up its jailing of human-rights activists, journalists, and other perceived enemies. Despite years of backsliding in political rights and civil liberties, however, Azerbai-jan has avoided the democratic world’s opprobrium due to its energy wealth and cooperation on security matters. Vietnam is also an at-tractive destination for foreign investment, and the United States and its allies gave the country special attention in 2014 as the underdog facing Chinese aggression in the South China Sea. But like China, Vietnam remains an entrenched one-party state, and the regime im-

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posed harsher penalties for free speech online, arrested protesters, and continued to ban work by human-rights organizations. Ethiopia is held up as a model for development in Africa, and is one of the world’s largest recipients of foreign assistance. But in 2014, its se-curity forces opened fire on protesters, carried out large-scale arrests of bloggers and other journalists as well as members of the political opposition, and evicted communities from their land to make way for opaque development projects. Finally, while several countries in the Middle East—most notably oil-rich Saudi Arabia—receive spe-cial treatment from the United States and others, the United Arab Emirates stands out for how little international attention is paid to its systematic denial of rights for foreign workers, who make up the vast majority of the population; its enforcement of one of the most restric-tive press laws in the Arab world; and its dynastic political system, which leaves no space for opposition.

Global Findings and Regional Trends

The number of countries designated by Freedom in the World as Free in 2014 stood at 89, representing 46 percent of the world’s 195 polities and nearly 2.9 billion people—or 40 percent of the global population. The number of Free countries increased by one from the previous year’s report. The number of countries qualifying as Partly Free stood at 55, or 28 percent of all countries assessed, and they were home to just over 1.7 billion people, or 24 percent of the world’s total. The number of Partly Free countries decreased by four from the previous year. A total of 51 countries were deemed Not Free, representing 26 percent of the world’s polities. The number of people living under Not Free conditions stood at 2.6 billion people, or 36 percent of the global population, though it is important to note that more than half of this number lives in just one country: China. The number of Not Free countries increased by three from 2013.

The number of electoral democracies stood at 125, three more than in 2013. Five countries achieved electoral-democracy status: Fiji, Kosovo, Madagascar, the Maldives, and the Solomon Islands. Two countries, Libya and Thailand, lost their designation as electoral democracies. Tunisia rose from Partly Free to Free, while Guinea-Bissau improved from Not Free to Partly Free. Four countries fell from Partly Free to Not Free: Burundi, Libya, Thailand, and Uganda.

Middle East and North Africa. Although Tunisia became the Arab world’s only Free country after holding democratic elections under a new constitution, the rest of the Middle East and North Africa was racked by negative and often tragic events. The Syrian civil war ground on, the Islamic State and other extremist militant factions dramatically


extended their reach, and Libya’s tentative improvements following the downfall of Muammar Qadhafi rapidly disintegrated as the country fell into a new internal conflict. Rival armed groups also overran a fragile political process in Yemen, and the effects of the Syrian war paralyzed elected institutions in Lebanon. Egypt continued its rollback of post-Mubarak reforms and solidified its return to autocracy with sham elec-tions and a crackdown on all forms of dissent.

Tunisia’s political-rights rating improved from 3 to 1, and its status improved from Partly Free to Free due to the adoption of a progressive constitution, governance improvements under a consensus-based care-taker administration, and the holding of free and fair parliamentary and presidential elections, all with a high degree of transparency.

Bahrain’s political-rights rating declined from 6 to 7 due to grave flaws in the 2014 legislative elections and the government’s unwilling-ness to address longstanding grievances among the majority Shia com-munity about the drawing of electoral districts and the possibility of fair representation. Iraq’s political-rights rating declined from 5 to 6 due to the Islamic State’s attempts to destroy Christian, Shia, Yazidi, and other communities under its control, as well as attacks on Sunnis by state-sponsored Shia militias. Libya’s political-rights rating declined from 4 to 6, its civil-liberties rating declined from 5 to 6, and its status declined from Partly Free to Not Free due to the country’s descent into a civil war, which contributed to a humanitarian crisis as citizens fled embattled cities, and led to pressure on civil society and media outlets amid the increased political polarization.

Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria all received a downward trend arrows. In Egypt, this was due to the complete marginalization of the opposition, state surveillance of electronic communications, public exhortations to report critics of the government to the authorities, and the mass trials and unjustified imprisonment of members of the Muslim Brotherhood; in Lebanon, to the parliament’s repeated failure to elect a president and its postponement of overdue legislative elections for another two and a half years, leaving the country with a presidential void and a National Assem-bly whose mandate expired in 2013; and in Syria, to worsening religious persecution, the weakening of civil society groups and the rule of law, and the large-scale starvation and torture of civilians and detainees.

Eurasia. Events in Eurasia in 2014 were dominated by the upheaval in Ukraine. Gains related to the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych through the EuroMaidan protests in February, which led to the election of a new president and parliament later in the year, were offset by Rus-sia’s seizure of Crimea in March and ongoing battles with pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. The Russian government coupled its re-jection of international pressure over Ukraine with intensified domestic controls on dissent, tightening its grip on the media sector and NGOs.

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The government of Azerbaijan renewed its assault on dissent in 2014, targeting traditional media and civil society organizations for legal ha-rassment, arbitrary detention, and physical abuse. Ratings for the region as a whole are the second worst in the world after the Middle East.

Ukraine’s political-rights rating rose from 4 to 3 due to improve-ments in political pluralism, parliamentary elections, and government transparency following the departure of President Viktor Yanukovych.

Russia’s civil-liberties rating declined from 5 to 6 due to expanded media controls, a dramatically increased level of propaganda on state-controlled television, and new restrictions on the ability of some citizens to travel abroad.

Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan all received downward trend arrows. Azerbaijan’s was due to an intensified crackdown on dissent, including the imprisonment and abuse of human-rights advocates and journalists. In the case of Kyrgyzstan, it was due to a government crack-down on freedom of assembly and the ability of NGOs to operate. And in the case of Tajikistan, it resulted from the constant abuse of opposi-tion parties at the local level in the run-up to parliamentary elections, the designation of the political-reform and opposition movement Group 24 as an extremist entity in October, and the arrest and temporary detention of academic researcher Alexander Sodiqov on treason charges.

Asia-Pacific. Citizens of three major Asian states—India, Japan, and

Indonesia—went to the polls in 2014, handing their leaders strong man-dates in what were largely open and fair electoral processes. These posi-tive achievements contrasted sharply with the coup d’état in Thailand, in which the military ousted an elected government, suspended the consti-tution, and implemented martial-law restrictions that drastically rolled back political rights and civil liberties. Burma, which has only partly abandoned military rule, began to veer from the path to democracy: Journalists and demonstrators faced greater restrictions; the Rohingya minority continued to suffer from violence and official discrimination; and proposed laws that would ban religious conversions and interfaith marriages threatened to legitimize anti-Muslim extremism.

Fiji’s political-rights rating improved from 6 to 3 as a result of September general elections—the first since a 2006 coup—that were deemed free and fair. Nepal’s political-rights rating improved from 4 to 3 due to the functioning of a stable government for the first time in more than five years following 2013 elections, and significant progress by the main political parties toward the completion of a draft constitution.

Bangladesh’s political-rights rating declined from 3 to 4 due to na-tional elections that were marred by an opposition boycott, as well as widespread violence and intimidation by a range of political parties. Burma’s civil-liberties rating worsened from 5 to 6 due to restrictions on media freedom, including the arrest and imprisonment of a number


of journalists. Sri Lanka’s civil-liberties rating declined from 4 to 5 due to increased pressure on freedom of expression and association, includ-ing curbs on traditional media and Internet-based news and opinion, and surveillance and harassment of civil society activists. Thailand’s polit-ical-rights rating declined from 4 to 6, its civil-liberties rating declined from 4 to 5, and its status declined from Partly Free to Not Free due to the May military coup, whose leaders abolished the 2007 constitution and imposed severe restrictions on speech and assembly.

Afghanistan received a downward trend arrow due to increased vio-lence against journalists and civilians amid the withdrawal of interna-tional combat troops. Malaysia received a downward trend arrow due to the government’s use of the Sedition Act to intimidate political op-ponents, an increase in arrests and harassment of Shia Muslims and transgender Malaysians, and more extensive use of defamation laws to silence independent or critical voices.

Europe. In Hungary, parliamentary and local elections revealed the extent to which recent legislative and other changes have tilted the play-ing field in favor of the ruling Fidesz party. Observers noted slanted me-dia coverage, the misuse of state resources, gerrymandering, and cam-paign-spending problems. Turkey drifted much further from democratic norms, with Erdo¢gan rising to the presidency and overseeing govern-ment attempts to quash corruption cases against his allies and associates. The media and judiciary both faced greater interference by the executive and legislative branches, including a series of raids and arrests targeting media outlets affiliated with Erdo¢gan’s political enemies.

Kosovo’s political-rights rating improved from 5 to 4 due to the com-paratively successful conduct of June elections and a subsequent agree-ment by rival parties to form a coalition government.

Hungary’s political-rights rating worsened from 1 to 2 due to an elec-tion campaign that demonstrated the diminished space for fair competi-tion given legislative and other advantages accrued by the ruling party. Macedonia’s political-rights rating worsened from 3 to 4 due to serious shortcomings in the April general elections and a related legislative boy-cott by the opposition.

Turkey received a downward trend arrow due to increased political interference in anticorruption mechanisms and judicial processes, and greater tensions between majority Sunni Muslims and minority Alevis.

Sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa again experienced extreme volatility in 2014. News from the continent was dominated by the Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, and a sharp rise in vio-lence by Islamist militants from Boko Haram in Nigeria and al-Shabaab in Kenya. Several other countries, particularly in East Africa, suffered democratic setbacks during the year, as repressive governments further

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limited the space for critical views. In Uganda, a series of recent laws targeting the opposition, civil society, the LGBT community, and wom-en led to serious rights abuses and increased suppression of dissent. Burundi’s government cracked down further on the already restricted opposition in advance of 2015 elections, and critics of the authorities in Rwanda faced increased surveillance and harassment online.

Guinea-Bissau’s political-rights rating improved from 6 to 5, and its status improved from Not Free to Partly Free, because the 2014 elec-tions—the first since a 2012 coup—were deemed free and fair by inter-national and national observers, and the opposition was able to compete and increase its participation in government. Madagascar’s political-rights rating improved from 5 to 4 due to a peaceful transition after recovery from an earlier coup and the seating of a new parliament that included significant opposition representation.

Burkina Faso’s political-rights rating worsened from 5 to 6 as a re-sult of the dissolution of the government and parliament by the military, which took charge of the country after President Blaise Compaoré was forced to resign amid popular protests over his attempt to run for reelec-tion in 2015. Burundi’s political-rights rating deteriorated from 5 to 6, and its status declined from Partly Free to Not Free, due to a coordinated government crackdown on opposition-party members and critics, with dozens of arrests and harsh sentences imposed on political activists and human-rights defenders. Nigeria’s civil-liberties rating went from 4 to 5 due a sharp deterioration in conditions for residents of areas affected by the Boko Haram insurgency, including mass displacement and a dra-matic increase in violence perpetrated by both the militants and security forces. Rwanda’s civil-liberties rating worsened from 5 to 6 due to the narrowing space for expression and discussion of views that are criti-cal of the government, particularly online, amid increased suspicions of government surveillance of private communications. South Sudan’s political-rights rating declined from 6 to 7 due to the intensification of the civil war, which derailed the electoral timetable and featured serious human-rights abuses by the combatants, including deliberate attacks on rival ethnic groups for political reasons. Uganda’s civil-liberties rating worsened from 4 to 5, and its status declined from Partly Free to Not Free, due to increased violations of individual rights and the freedoms of expression, assembly, and association, particularly for opposition sup-porters, civil society groups, women, and the LGBT community. Liberia received a downward trend arrow due to the government’s imposition of ill-advised quarantines that restricted freedom of movement and em-ployment in some of the country’s most destitute areas, as well as sev-eral new or revived restrictions on freedoms of the press and assembly.

Americas. In Mexico, public outrage at the authorities’ failure to stem criminal violence and corruption reached a boiling point after the disap-


pearance of 43 politically active students in Guerrero State. Protests ini-tially led by the families of the students, who were killed by a criminal gang linked to local officials, grew into mass demonstrations across the country that challenged the administration of President Enrique Pe~na Nieto. Organized crime and gang violence also continued to rise in Hon-duras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, leading thousands of citizens to flee to the United States during the year. The governments of Venezuela and Ecuador, meanwhile, continued their pattern of cracking down on the political opposition and other critical voices. A major development in the region was the announcement that the United States and Cuba had agreed to the normalization of relations after a rupture of more than fifty years. Although Cuba is the Americas’ worst-rated country in Freedom in the World, it has shown modest progress over the past several years, with Cubans gaining more rights to establish private businesses and travel abroad. Ecuador, Mexico, and Venezuela all received downward trend arrows. In the case of Ecuador, it was due to increased limits on freedom of expression, including the monitoring of online content and harassment of bloggers and social-media users. In the case of Mexico, it was because of the forced disappearance of 43 students who were engaging in political activities that reportedly angered local authorities in the town of Iguala, Guerrero—an atrocity that highlighted the extent of corruption among local authorities and the environment of impunity in the country. And in Venezuela’s case, it was due to the government’s repressive response to antigovernment demonstrations, including vio-lence by security forces, the politicized arrests of opposition supporters, and the legal system’s failure to protect basic due process rights for all detained Venezuelans.

Still the System of Choice

For some time now, the momentum of world politics has favored democracy’s adversaries. While the dramatic gains of the late twentieth century have not been erased, the institutions meant to ensure fair elec-tions, a combative press, checks on state power, and probity in govern-ment and commerce are showing wear and tear in the new or revived democracies of Central Europe, Latin America, and Asia. In the Middle East, the potential of the Arab Spring has given way to the chaos and carnage that prevail in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen, and to a ruthless dictatorship in Egypt. In Africa, the promise of freedom survives, but the dominant trend is one of corruption, internal conflict, terrorism, and ugly campaigns against the LGBT community.

Some might say there are few compelling advertisements today for the benefits of democratic government, and few signs that the retreat of open political systems can be reversed. Yet several major events during 2014 suggest that this gloomy assessment is off the mark. In Ukraine,

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hundreds of thousands of people rose up to defy a kleptocratic leader-ship that offered the country a political and economic dead end. Given the choice between a future course patterned on Russian authoritarian-

ism and a path toward Europe and its democratic standards, the majority did not hesitate in choosing the option of freedom, even with its uncertainties.

In Hong Kong, the student-led Um-brella Movement emerged after the Communist leadership in Beijing an-nounced that, contrary to previous commitments and public expectations, elections for the chief executive would require candidates to be nominated by a pro-Beijing committee, making uni-versal suffrage a hollow exercise. The controversy epitomized both Beijing’s refusal to countenance the basic tenets

of democracy and the ultimate weakness of its legitimacy among the public. It also stood as a powerful reminder that while China’s model of state-driven growth combined with strict political control is attractive to elites in authoritarian settings (and to some in democracies as well), ordi-nary people, and especially the young, find China’s rejection of freedom profoundly unappealing. Notably, the people of Taiwan, through student protests and local-election results during the year, strongly voiced their preference for a future in which popular sovereignty prevails.

Along with the emergence of popular movements for democratic change, the past year brought clear evidence of crisis in major undemo-cratic states. In Venezuela, a toxic mixture of corruption, misrule, and oil-price declines brought shortages, rampant inflation, and enhanced repression. Once touted as a possible template for left-populist govern-ments across Latin America, the system set in place by the late Hugo Chávez now stands as a textbook case of political and economic dys-function.

Plummeting oil prices also revealed the weaknesses of Vladimir Pu-tin’s dictatorship. But Russia’s problems run deeper than a vulnerability to the energy market. Corruption, cronyism, and the absence of the rule of law have discouraged investment and economic diversification. Per-vasive propaganda has virtually eliminated critical voices from policy debates. And the absence of checks on presidential power has led to disastrous foreign adventures and diplomatic blunders.

These and other examples from the year should remind the world how much democracy matters. Antidemocratic practices lead to civil war and humanitarian crisis. They facilitate the growth of terrorist movements, whose effects inevitably spread beyond national borders. Corruption

Democracies face many problems of their own, but their biggest mistake would be to accept the proposition that they are impotent in the face of strongmen for whom bullying and lies are the fundamental currencies of political exchange.


and poor governance fuel economic instability, which can also have re-gional or even global consequences.

Will the world’s established democracies come to recognize that the global assault on free institutions poses a threat to their own national interests? The sanctions placed on Russia by the United States, Europe, and others are a welcome development. They send a message that invad-ing one’s neighbor will have repercussions. The same might be said for the coalition against the Islamic State.

But such firm messages have been lacking when despotic regimes intimidate, jail, or kill their own people. President Sisi is treated as a strong ruler and a partner in the fight against terrorism despite his en-forcement of a level of repression not seen in Egypt in decades. The leaders of democracies compete for China’s favor even as Beijing steps up internal controls and pushes its expansive territorial claims. In Latin America, Brazil and other democracies respond to Venezuela’s dete-rioration with silence. In Asia, major democracies such as India and Indonesia have declined to use their influence to encourage a return to civilian rule in Thailand.

In short, democracies often seem determined to wait for authoritarian misrule to blossom into international catastrophe before taking remedial action. This is unfortunate, as even the most powerful repressive re-gimes have shown that they are susceptible to pressures from their own people and from the outside as well. And ordinary citizens have exhib-ited a willingness to challenge even rulers with established histories of bloodletting in the service of political control. Democracies face many problems of their own, but their biggest mistake would be to accept the proposition that they are impotent in the face of strongmen for whom bullying and lies are the fundamental currencies of political exchange. This is clearly not the case, even in today’s difficult times.

Documents

The Rise of Illiberal Democracy Stable URL - Koç …media.library.ku.edu.tr/reserve/resfall15_16/Sosc116_SEaytac/Week3.pdfby the rule of law, a separation of powers, and the protection