IS DEMOCRACY IN RETREAT GLOBALLY?

I – MEASUREMENT

The mood about democracy globally is sombre now in comparison with the exuberance of twenty or twenty-five years ago at the height of the ‘third wave’ of democratization[1]. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) Democracy Index 2015 is subtitled Democracy in an Age of Anxiety. Freedom House’s (FH) Freedom in the World Report 2016 is subtitled Anxious Dictators, Wavering Democracies: Global Freedom under Pressure. And the Centre for Systemic Peace’s (CSP) Global Report 2014, based on Polity IV indicators, emphasizes that the world is at a critical juncture in global armed conflict and governance trends.

Each of these sources contain indicators of the state of democracy, or its absence, in countries round the world. This brief will summarize what these indicators show, while the next one will deal with their interpretation. The final brief will deal with aspects of the authoritarian push-back against the extension of democracy.

 The EIU Index covers 167 countries and divides them into four categories: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes and authoritarian regimes. The Index is based on five equally weighted categories: electoral processes and pluralism, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation and political culture. Flawed democracies have free and fair elections, but experience significant weaknesses in governance, political culture and political participation. In hybrid regimes, elections have substantial irregularities, widespread corruption, weak rule of law and a judiciary which is not independent and media under pressure. Many authoritarian regimes are outright dictatorships while others maintain some formal features of democracy devoid of substance. In 2015, the countries were distributed as follows:

In regional terms, the scores in 2015 compared with 2006 were (10=best, 0=worst):

[1] The Commonwealth of Independent States, centred on Russia

[2] Substantial improvements have taken place in Algeria, Israel, Kuwait, Morocco and Tunisia

The most notable improvement has been in Asia, followed by sub-Saharan Africa. The greatest decline has been in Eastern Europe and CIS, followed by Western Europe. There has been a small decline in the world as a whole. The picture which emerges from the EIU is little change in the world as a whole, but marked regional variation.

Freedom House rates political rights and civil liberties on a scale of 1 to 7 (1=best, 7=worst) and then categorises countries as free if they have a combined score of five or less, partly free if they have a score between six and ten and not free if they have a score of eleven and above. The position in 2016 compared with 2006 is as follows:

Like the EIU, FH finds a slight deterioration globally over the last decade, with improvement in Asia and North Africa and the Middle East.

FH also calculates an aggregate score based on 25 indicators. Using this score, it notes that deteriorations have outnumbered improvements in each of the last ten years,  

The CSP divides countries into three categories:

- Democracies

- Anocracies

- Autocracies

The Polity IV indices are based on the general qualities of political institutions and processes, including executive recruitment, constraints on executive action, and political competition. The indices are aggregated into a single index which ranges from -10 (fully institutionalized autocracy) to 10 (fully institutionalised democracy). Countries scoring less than -5 are regarded as autocracies, those with scores between -5 and +5 are regarded as anocracies and countries scoring more than 5 are democracies.

Anocracies are regarded as a middling category rather than a distinct form of governance. They are countries whose governments are neither fully democratic nor fully autocratic but, rather, combine an often incoherent mix of democratic and autocratic traits and practices. They reflect inherent qualities of instability or ineffectiveness.

The CSP graphs the numbers of democracies, anocracies and autocracies since 1945. It shows that the second wave of democratization (between 1945 and 1960) was modest in relation to third wave (from the late 1980s to 2005). It shows autocracies in steady decline since the mid-1970s, a recent stabilisation of the number of democracies and a recent rise in anocracies.

Conclusion

Globally, there has been, at worst, a small decline in democracy since 2005, and that the large gains from the third wave, while not advancing in the last ten years, have mostly been preserved. Regionally, Eurasia, the Middle East and North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa are most resistant to democracy, though there have been some gains in the latter two regions.

The next brief will consider issues of interpretation of these findings.

II - INTERPRETATION

The first brief in this series delineated the uneasy equilibrium between democracy and authoritarianism in the last decade, with advances more or less matched with declines. This brief will consider some recent interpretations of this environment.

1. The gap between political and civil liberties on the one hand and transparency and the rule of law on the other.

Larry Diamond[2] points out that 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. This indicates extensive neopatrimonialism – a system in which the distinction between private and public interests is blurred within the state, and officials are more concerned with acquiring personal wealth and status than delivering public goods and services. The correlates are the erosion of democratic checks and balances, hollowing out of accountability and overriding of normative restraints.

2. The largest emerging market countries have been stagnating or slipping backward in the last decade.

There are 27 countries with populations over fifty million or with Gross Domestic Products of more than US $ 200 billion. Diamond points out that twelve of them had worse average freedom scores at the end of 2013 than they did in 2005[3]. Conditions have also deteriorated in Russia, Egypt and Bangladesh. Two countries have improved modestly: Singapore and Pakistan. Others have been stable: Chile, the Philippines, Brazil, India, China, Malaysia, Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates.

3. It has become clearer that authoritarian breakdown does not necessarily mean democratization.

Levitsky and Way[4] point out authoritarian breakdown can have three main outcomes: democracy, the establishment of a new authoritarian system, or state collapse. Historically, most authoritarian breakdowns have not produced democratization. The collapse of an authoritarian regime may usher in a brief period of pluralism which does not lead to democracy.

4. Hybrid regimes, displaying a mixture of democratic and authoritarian features, can stabilise autocracy, but on breakdown have a better chance of transition to democracy than purely authoritarian regimes.

Andrea Cassani[5] points out that hybrid regimes typically have periodic and formally (but not actually) competitive elections. Elections to legislatures can act as a discontent valve and can be an instrument of gathering information about citizens’ preferences and orientations. Elections, parties and legislatures may be channels for patronage.

They can fragment and divide the opposition. A ruling party promotes inter-elite co-operation, shares the distribution of benefits deriving from active support of the government and offers career advancement. Hybrid regimes are less likely to collapse than pure authoritarian regimes and are often resilient, representing a robust survival strategy. Democracies may degenerate into hybrid regimes.

5. Since several global developments have posed a threat to democracies, one might reasonably be surprised at their resilience.

These threats include the 2008 economic crisis, the declining influence of the United States and the European Union, the growing power and self-confidence of China and Russia, and a period (now past) of high oil prices.

6. Democracy itself is undergoing several important changes.

Philippe Schmitter[6] lists a number of contemporary developments in democracies: the increasing use of referendums and initiatives, public funding for political parties, quotas for women and social minorities as electoral candidates or members of the legislature and executive, devolution of powers to sub-national units, freedom of information legislation, the growing use of social media, the diffusion of human and civil rights across borders, and the growth of guardian institutions such as independent central banks, independent regulatory authorities, electoral commissions, human rights tribunals and anti-corruption agencies.

III - THE INTERNATIONAL AUTHORITARIAN PUSH BACK

A review of (eds) Larry Diamond, Marc Plattner and Christopher Walker, Authoritarianism goes global, Johns Hopkins Press, 2016

The first brief in this series delineated the uneasy equilibrium between democracy and authoritarianism in the last decade, with advances more or less matched with declines. The second brief considered some recent interpretations of the state of democratization. This brief concludes the series by considering authoritarian strategies.

1. International organizations of authoritarian states have been growing.

The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), formed at the time of the breakup of the Soviet Union has nine members: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, with Ukraine (participation suspended) and Turkmenistan as associate members.

The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), an intergovernmental military alliance has six members: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan, with Afghanistan and Serbia as observers. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), founded in China in 2001, is a Eurasian political, economic and military organisation which was founded in 2001.

Its members are China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, with Iran as an observer. In July 2015, the SCO decided to admit India and Pakistan as full members. During the Chavez presidency, Venezuela created a foreign aid organization Petrocaribe which has seventeen small Caribbean and Central American countries as members, and which won Venezuela diplomatic support. The Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) is an intergovernmental political and economic union, with Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, as members. All these countries are monarchies.

2. Liberal democratic norms in international organizations are being countered by an emphasis on state security, civilizational diversity and traditional values.

The increased emphasis on state security has been a consequence of terrorism and is encountered mainly in the United States and Europe. China has been a particular advocate of civilizational diversity and has resisted the imposition of political and economic conditionalities by international organizations. Russia has been pursuing a traditional values agenda, counterposing these against universal human rights.

3. Repression of civil society.

The common charge by authoritarian regimes is that NGOs act on behalf of outside interests. Some countries have banned foreign funding outright and others force NGOs to secure government approval of any outside funding. Russia requires NGOs receiving foreign funds to register as ‘foreign agents’. There has also been a proliferation of government organized ‘non-governmental organizations’, countering independent NGOs.

4. Zombie election monitors.

The gold standard of election monitoring is the careful work of international organizations, such as the Office for Democratic Institution of Human Rights in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and some skilled NGOs. Hybrid regimes (countries with elections, the outcome of which is determined in advance) have sought the services of zombie monitors, which try to look like democratic observers, but in fact pretend that flawed elections deserve endorsement as free and fair. While these endorsements are not internationally credible, they confuse and distract citizens, and allow governments to complain that critical foreign observers are biased.

5. Cyberspace control.

Three levels of control can be identified. The first level involves limiting citizens’ access to information from abroad. The most extensive control is exercised by the Chinese government, with Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen and Vietnam coming close, and lesser degrees of filtering becoming common. The second level is a set of government requirements which force the private sector to police privately owned and operated networks according to government demands. Turkey, Ethiopia, Thailand, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, India, Singapore, Russia, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Belarus and Pakistan have all been active at this level. The third level is offensive and involve surveillance, targeted espionage and covert disruptions. Here again, China leads the pack. There are also efforts by governments to crowdsource antagonism against political enemies. An example is Venezuala’s chavista communicational guerrillas and there are a number of others.

6. Soft power projection.

This works at various levels. Communication is one. Russia’s international television broadcaster, Russia Today, claims to reach 600 million people globally. China has CCTV International. Three themes now dominate China’s foreign communication: ‘tell a good Chinese story”, the “Chinese dream’ (focusing on economic co-operation, with an emphasis on partnership and development) and “rich country, strong military” (which offers a softer version of hardline domestic communication on military matters). Venezuala founded Telesur, an international television news channel. It has international funding partners in Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Uruguay, as well as information sharing agreements with Al Jazeera, Russia Today, Iran’s IRIB, China’s CCTV, as well as the BBC.

Another level of soft power is economic. China and Russia both provide favourable economic access, investment opportunities and diplomatic support to authoritarian regimes.

If democracies are modernizing, so are authoritarian regimes, and the outcome is in the balance.

Charles Simkins is Senior Researcher at the Helen Suzman Foundation.

This article first appeared, in three parts, as HSF Briefs.

Footnotes:

[1] The first wave was the emergence of democracy from the late 18^th century to 1914. The second wave was in the wake of the Second World War

[2] Larry Diamond, Facing up to the Democratic Recession, (eds) Larry Diamond and Marc T Plattner, Democracy in decline?, Johns Hopkins University Press and the National Endowment of Democracy, 2015

[3] The twelve countries are South Korea, Taiwan, South Africa, Colombia, Ukraine, Indonesia, Turkey , Mexico, Thailand, Ethiopia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia

[4] Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, The Myth of Democratic Recession in (eds) Diamond and Plattner

[5] Andrea Cassani, Hybrid what? The contemporary debate on hybrid regimes and the identity question, Department of Social and Political Studies, Universita degli Studi di Milano, September 2012

[6] Philippe C Schmitter, Crisis and Transition, but not Decline, in (eds) Diamond and Plattner