A quarter of a century ago, it seemed that totalitarianism had been defeated and democracy won the great ideological battle of the 20th century. Today, however, democratic values—including the right to free and fair elections and freedom of the press—are under assault and in retreat globally.
The most visible challenge is the resurgence of autocracy, with Russia and China single-mindedly targeting democracy and working relentlessly to undermine its institutions and cripple its principal advocates. But democracy can also die in less dramatic ways. It may be broken by elected autocrats who subvert the process that brought them to power: packing courts and other neutral agencies, buying off or intimidating the media, rewriting electoral rules and other core democratic processes, and otherwise skewing the playing field against opponents.
In 2017, repressive regimes across Africa and Asia made steady progress in their efforts to replace democratic norms with authoritarian practices. Elections were postponed or flawed, civil society was weakened and repressed, and state surveillance was ramped up. Despite these alarming trends, some countries managed to push back against the tide. In Ecuador, for example, new president Lenin Moreno shifted from the personalized and often repressive rule of his predecessor and worked to restore democratic checks and balances.
The convergence of the climate, pandemic, and geopolitical crises has intensified democracy’s vulnerabilities, in some cases giving oxygen to authoritarianism, but it has also prompted new commitments and potential for democratic renewal. These shifts suggest that the established discourse of democracy in crisis has become too narrow and one-dimensional to adequately capture what is actually happening.