International democracies weaken as authoritarianisms deepen their shortcomings

MADRID, 30 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) -

International democracies, some of them historically established, have registered a worrying weakening in recent years, even more so in a period of climatic and economic uncertainty, while authoritarian regimes deepen their democratic deficiencies.

In addition, the global trend is not encouraging considering that the number of countries that move towards authoritarian governments is more than double that of those that point to a democratic system of guarantees.

This is clear from the latest report by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), which emphasizes that the number of countries in decline is on the rise.

In this list, the organization has highlighted the United States, a nation that even today, two years after the electoral defeat of Donald Trump, presents "problems of political polarization, institutional dysfunction and threats to civil liberties."

Thus, it has put on the table that the democratic conditions and the actions of international governments, in many cases, are not even better than those registered in the 1990s, 30 years ago.

To understand this authoritarian drift, International IDEA has highlighted several factors, such as the questioning of credible election results. The spearhead of this trend was the United States, where even supporters of President Trump stormed the Capitol, the seat of democracy, to try to stop the transfer of power.

With the United States as a mirror to look at, other electoral processes have been dotted with unfounded allegations of irregularities, such as the case of Peru in June 2021, or more recently in Brazil. In both cases, the losers of said elections have denounced, with greater or lesser insistence, a collusion against them.

It is precisely in the American continent where a large part of the countries with institutional weakness are concentrated. According to the organization, three out of seven receding democracies are found in a continent where even the most established systems are weakening.

America is also the scene of "instability and anxiety" that, accompanied by some populisms that continue to gain ground, translates into stagnation, and even regression, of innovations and growth in democratic matters.

At the European level, International IDEA has warned that "almost half of the democracies" of the old continent "have suffered erosion in the last five years", although it is true that the democratic system continues to be the dominant form of government. A downward trend is also confirmed in Asia and the Pacific, where only 54 percent of the population lives in a democracy, and 85 percent of them do so in a weakened or declining guarantee system.

In Africa, despite the innumerable challenges facing the continent, countries like The Gambia, Niger or Zambia seem to shed a ray of light that illuminates other countries in the area where renegotiations of the social contract are also certified with encouraging results.

On the contrary, Burkina Faso, Chad, Guinea or Mali are just some of the African countries that, victims of coups d'état and unconstitutional transfers of power, are now experiencing new horizons of increasingly entrenched instability in sub-Saharan Africa.

In the Middle East and the Maghreb, despite the social demands made more than ten years ago in the Arab Spring, failures continue to be detected in governments that do not guarantee services and fundamental freedoms, nor economic opportunities, social demands that predominate regional level.

Despite it all, people around the world continue to come together to achieve better social issues and demand that governments meet "the demands of the 21st century." This current ranges from petitions for municipal day care centers in Asia, to the guarantee of reproductive freedoms in Latin America.

Although the trend is not encouraging, the movements of young people to protest climate change stand out; indigenous groups, who raise their voices to claim their rights; or the Iranian population, who after the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, risked their lives to demand basic liberties.