CIVICUS discusses the state of democracy around the world with Staffan I Lindberg, professor of Political Science and director of the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

V-Dem is a global project with a dataset on democracy covering 202 countries from 1789 to 2023. Involving over 4,200 scholars and other experts from 180 countries, it tracks more than 600 different aspects of democracy, providing a detailed and comprehensive view of how democratic institutions function worldwide. Researchers at the V-Dem Institute present an analysis of their key findings in the annual Democracy Report.

What are the key findings of the latest Democracy Report?

The 2024 Democracy Report paints a scary and gloomy picture – and it’s getting worse. The level of democracy enjoyed by the average global citizen at the end of 2023 is comparable to that recorded in 1985, the year Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union Communist Party: a time when the Berlin Wall was still standing, half of Europe was communist, most African countries were under one-party or military rule and only four African countries held multiparty elections.

Today, 71 per cent of the world’s population – 5.7 billion people – live under autocratic regimes. We have never recorded so many countries moving backwards at the same time: autocratisation is taking place in 42 countries, home to 2.8 billion people, 35 per cent of the world’s population.

We have no evidence suggesting this trend is reversing or slowing down. We can expect it to get worse over the next few years. Before things can improve, this downward trend would have to slow, then stop and reverse – but we are nowhere near that point.

What are the main causes of democratic regression?

This trend has affected all regions of the world over the past 20 years. While we can identify country-specific dynamics, its worldwide nature suggests there are also global drivers.

China, for example, responded to the end of the Cold War by launching a 40-year plan in 1995 to counter the trend of expanding freedom and achieve global dominance. This dominance is not limited to the financial sphere, but extends to the military, ideological and developmental spheres. China has particularly focused on promoting its model in the global south, although its influence extends much further.

Then there is Russia under the leadership of Vladimir Putin. Immediately after he came to power in 1999, Russia and all the former Soviet republics experienced democratic decline. Several wars of aggression followed, Ukraine being the latest. Putin also interfered in elections and spread disinformation to increase polarisation across Europe and North America. For 25 years, he has financially and strategically supported far-right nationalists and reactionary movements and parties around the world.

Saudi Arabia has also influenced the rise of authoritarianism. Since the late 1980s, Saudi oil money has helped spread the Salafist version of Islam, setting up Salafist universities throughout the Sahel. In Indonesia, home to the world’s largest Muslim population that was historically characterised by a liberal interpretation of Islam, Saudi-imported Salafist education has brought radicalisation.

Another probable driver is economic inequality. Since the 1980s, our societies have seen a huge increase in relative socio-economic inequality. In the global south, this has been exacerbated by the free-market policies and structural adjustment programmes of the Washington Consensus. While some reforms may have been necessary, they had devastating consequences in terms of rising inequality and growing disillusionment with democracy. Studies show that people who feel their future, living conditions and social status are threatened are more likely to vote for far-right and anti-pluralist parties and leaders who, once in power, will undermine democracy.

Internet, social media and artificial intelligence also play a role. They have provided undemocratic leaders such as Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Narendra Modi in India, Putin in Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey and Donald Trump in the USA with new tools to spread disinformation, increase polarisation and garner support.

Do you think people don’t value democracy as much as they used to?

In some middle-income countries, particularly in Latin America, people feel democracy has not delivered the expected benefits that make it a better system than dictatorship. And the reason is usually that their democracy isn’t good enough: there’s too much corruption and too much concentration of power. But that’s only part of the story.

The other part is that not all people want democracy all the time. Opinion polls such as those of the Pew Research Center show that among young people support for democracy is waning and opposition to authoritarianism is declining. More people think it could be good to have a strong leader who doesn’t have to worry about elections. Fortunately, this shift away from democratic values doesn’t explain much of what we are seeing.

Ultimately, scientific evidence also now shows that people adapt their idea of democracy to their preferred leader and his policies. In countries like Hungary, people think they have a better democracy now under Orbán’s authoritarianism than they did before. Many of Trump’s supporters also believe democracy is under threat in the USA and he will be the one to save it. Even if these leaders propose undemocratic measures such as deporting migrants, people prefer to accept them rather than lose a strong leader.

How should global civil society respond to autocratisation?

Every would-be dictator in the world today knows that mass protests can be their undoing. You’ve seen what happened in 2019 in Sudan, where protests deposed President Omar al-Bashir after 30 years in power, although things have gone wrong since, and the extreme measures mainland China has taken to suppress protests in Hong Kong, and also Putin banning even silent solo demonstrations.

In this context, civil society needs to act early and not expect things to improve on their own. It must be alert to the warning signs that civic space is being closed or media freedoms undermined, and respond with mass mobilisation. This old-fashioned tactic has proven effective, particularly around elections. When autocratic leaders try to claim power, civil society should organise large-scale protests and encourage people to vote against them. Working with political parties, the media and international partners, civil society can help reverse the trend.

Can you point to any success stories?

Yes, there are several examples where civil society has shown resilience and managed to reverse the process of autocratisation in countries that had fallen off the democratic track and become what are characterised as  ‘electoral autocracies’, such as Lesotho, North Macedonia and Zambia. Poland was also on the brink and turned around, as did Brazil. These turnarounds are becoming more common and give us hope.

It’s also worth noting that in the early 2000s there were more democracies in the world than ever before. This means now many countries have had a democratic experience, and when autocratisation begins, people may remember life was better under democracy, not accept oppression and try to take back their freedoms.

We are in a downward trend, but in the longer term this is a cyclical process. We’ve seen three waves of democratisation – after the First and Second World Wars and after the Cold War. We are now in the third wave of autocratisation and there should be an upward trend at some point in the future. But we can’t sit back and wait – we must work to make it happen.

Get in touch with the V-Dem Institute through its website or Instagram and Facebook pages, and follow @vdeminstitute and @StaffanILindber on Twitter.

Staffan presented the findings of the Democracy Report at this year’s Trust Conference, the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s annual flagship forum. Subscribe to the Trust Conference YouTube channel here and be the first to watch his presentation in full.