Democracy R.I.P.?

By Shlomo Maital  

Source: The Morning Call

        Half the world is having elections this year, 2024.  And it looks really bad for democracy, all over the world.  Here are some statistics from the Univ. of Gotheberg, and its V-DEM website:

         “The world has not been more anti-democratic in 35 years.  The level of democracy enjoyed by the average citizen in 2022 was back to 1986 levels.  That means that 72% of the world’s population, 5.7 billion people, live under authoritarian rule”, according to Staffan Lindberg, Director of the V-Dem Institute.

            “…the number of countries that are currently experiencing democratic setbacks or autocratization, has greatly increased over the past ten years – from 13 to 42 countries between 2002-2022, which is the highest figure measured by V-DEM to date”.

           “..for the first time in two decades, the world has more closed autocracies than liberal democracies …   28% of the world’s population, 2.2 billion people, now live in closed autocracies, compared to 13%, 1 billion people, who live in liberal democracies”.

            These terrible numbers are deeply painful for me, personally.  My country Israel underwent a frontal assault on our liberal democracy by a far-right deluded government, with a narrow majority of 64 Knesset members (out of 120).  It appears that the resulting chaos and mass protests persuaded our enemy, Hamas, that we were vulnerable to attack – and they went for it, with disastrous results for both them and for us. 

I think I understand why this is happening. There is massive chaos in the world — pandemic, war, a new Cold War. In such times, people look for a strong leader. And leaders? When democracy threatens to dump them, they dump democracy. It’s that simple.

             I was born in 1942.  I have seen the cyclical nature of history, with big downs (WWII, Holocaust) and big ups (global economy, growth, spread of democracy), and now big downs.  There will be an up.  But meanwhile —  if good people remain complacent, the ‘up’ is going to be much much harder and much more delayed.