Biggest election year ever: autocracies on the rise

In 2024, the year in which the most people were ever allowed to vote, the world has not become more democratic. On the contrary: according to two international research institutes that monitor the state of democracy worldwide, most of the world is actually moving towards an autocracy, in which one person has all the power.

So-called electoral autocracies in particular are on the rise, says researcher Carl Knutsen of the Swedish organization V-Dem. “On the surface, they seem like democracies. But the elections there are full of fraud and manipulation. The ballot box is not intended to choose the next leader, because that has already been determined.”

At the same time, 2024 is also the year in which many populations and institutions pushed back to protect democracy. But did they succeed?

On paper, more than two billion people in dozens of countries were allowed to choose new leaders this year. But that there was not really anything to choose from everywhere, is also seen by International IDEA, which, like V-Dem, analyses election results worldwide.

Despite the fact that the year is not over yet, IDEA has already drawn an important conclusion. “The group of strong democracies is getting smaller and smaller”, says Europe director Sam van der Staak. “For the eighth year in a row, there has been a shift away from the Western model based on democratic values.”

Van der Staak mentions Georgia as an example. “They wanted to be part of Europe for a long time and did their utmost to become democratic. But in this year’s elections, they blew up the bridge between themselves and the EU. The elections were rejected by international observers.” The elections were fraudulent, and an anti-Western former professional footballer was elected president.

Another example is Venezuela, where incumbent president Nicolás Maduro claimed victory, despite the fact that few doubt that the opposition candidate received the most votes. “The elections have been labelled as completely unbelievable by all international observers,” says Van der Staak.

Trump

Not all election results are so easy to interpret. Elections can also be fair, but still produce a winner who has or later turns out to have autocratic tendencies. IDEA and V-Dem therefore look at many more indicators to determine how democratic a country is.

“It is a complex concept to measure,” says Knutsen. “It concerns formal matters, such as whether a country has multiple parties and voting rights for everyone. But we also look at how these rules and institutions work out in practice. So if there is freedom of expression, to what extent are residents able to express their opinion without having to fear repression?”

V-Dem gives all countries a score based on hundreds of characteristics. These were the results last spring:

A major country that could get a significantly different score in the upcoming report is the United States. “Donald Trump clearly has an authoritarian tendency,” says Knutsen. “There is a lot of concern about how democratic institutions will be put under pressure by Trump. I would bet that the US will still be a democracy in five or ten years. But I would no longer bet my house on it.”

During his campaign, Trump said, among other things, that he had “no problem” with violence against the media, he questioned the rule of law and continued to cling to the lie that he was the winner of the 2020 elections. He wants to get rid of a large part of the civil service, in his words the “deep state” that hinders progress.

The fact that voters voted en masse and consciously for Trump shows that countries can move towards an autocracy even without large-scale election fraud, says Van der Staak. “Democracy has a built-in risk. It only works with the trust of the entire population.”

“These days, everyday problems of citizens go beyond national borders. And that makes leaders say: if you elect me, we will make decisions that are much faster, easier and better. That is a breeding ground for people who want to harm the system.”

Knutsen sees other factors that are leading to the rise of autocracies. “In some countries, leaders have used the corona pandemic to concentrate more power in themselves. And new technological developments make it easier to monitor the behavior of the population and the opposition online and to spread propaganda more easily.”

Autocracies help each other

The autocratic trend also has a self-reinforcing effect, the researchers see. “To stay in the saddle themselves, autocrats copy tricks from each other,” says Van der Staak. Such as continuing to organize elections, no matter how obviously rigged they are, to legitimize their own position of power.

Autocracies help each other to protect themselves