Financial Times :
The quality of worldwide democracy and governance has fallen to its lowest level in 12 years, with much of the decline occurring in free societies where some governments rule with an increasingly arbitrary hand, according to a study.
Turkey was named by the Bertelsmann Stiftung, a Germany-based think-tank, as the biggest backslider in democratisation since its last report in 2016. The report said President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s repressive measures after a failed 2016 coup had involved “a massive restriction of freedom of expression, the press and freedom of assembly”.
Some 3.3bn people are estimated to live under autocratic political systems, the largest number since the research group started its survey in 2006, while 4.2bn people are estimated to live in democracies.
Of 129 countries analysed, the Bertelsmann report classifies 71 as democracies and 58 as autocracies. The last survey classified 74 countries as democracies and 55 as autocracies. The institute’s studies exclude the mature democracies of North America, Europe, Japan, Australia and elsewhere.
“It is not so much the slight increase in the number of autocracies that is worrying. More problematic is the fact that civil rights are being curtailed and the rule of law undermined in an increasing number of democracies as well,” says the latest report, released on Thursday. “Former beacons of democratisation
such as Brazil, Poland and Turkey are among the countries that have fallen the most.”
The report, conducted between February 2015 and January 2017, identifies five countries – Bangladesh, Lebanon, Mozambique, Nicaragua and Uganda – as no longer meeting minimum standards of democracy.
“These five new autocracies have crossed a threshold that the defective democracies of Honduras, Hungary, Moldova, Niger, the Philippines and Turkey are nearing, though to varying degrees,” the study says.
It judges that Poland, “though much further away, is inching its way downward”.
The report says the world is experiencing “increasing political instability and a rapid decline in the acceptance of democratic institutions”.
“In more and more countries, government leaders are deliberately undermining the checks and balances designed to hold the executive accountable, thereby securing not only their own power, but a system of patronage and the capacity to divert state resources for their own personal gain,” the report says.
“… The long-term trend of increasing restrictions on political freedom and the rule of law continues unabated. While in recent years this was primarily due to greater repression in hardening autocracies, in this study there are above all some relatively advanced transformation countries whose governments are showing a more authoritarian leaning.”
The report nevertheless lists a number of success stories. In the southern hemisphere these include Argentina, where “a strengthening of the rule of law was accompanied by a correction of market-distorting regulations of the former government”, Mauritius and Uruguay.
The institute estimated that about one in five countries managed to maintain or strengthen the foundations of democracy and a market economy, picking out Botswana, Chile, Estonia and Taiwan.
Burkina Faso and Sri Lanka are now classed as defective democracies, having been classed as moderate autocracies in the 2016 report.
The quality of worldwide democracy and governance has fallen to its lowest level in 12 years, with much of the decline occurring in free societies where some governments rule with an increasingly arbitrary hand, according to a study.
Turkey was named by the Bertelsmann Stiftung, a Germany-based think-tank, as the biggest backslider in democratisation since its last report in 2016. The report said President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s repressive measures after a failed 2016 coup had involved “a massive restriction of freedom of expression, the press and freedom of assembly”.
Some 3.3bn people are estimated to live under autocratic political systems, the largest number since the research group started its survey in 2006, while 4.2bn people are estimated to live in democracies.
Of 129 countries analysed, the Bertelsmann report classifies 71 as democracies and 58 as autocracies. The last survey classified 74 countries as democracies and 55 as autocracies. The institute’s studies exclude the mature democracies of North America, Europe, Japan, Australia and elsewhere.
“It is not so much the slight increase in the number of autocracies that is worrying. More problematic is the fact that civil rights are being curtailed and the rule of law undermined in an increasing number of democracies as well,” says the latest report, released on Thursday. “Former beacons of democratisation
such as Brazil, Poland and Turkey are among the countries that have fallen the most.”
The report, conducted between February 2015 and January 2017, identifies five countries – Bangladesh, Lebanon, Mozambique, Nicaragua and Uganda – as no longer meeting minimum standards of democracy.
“These five new autocracies have crossed a threshold that the defective democracies of Honduras, Hungary, Moldova, Niger, the Philippines and Turkey are nearing, though to varying degrees,” the study says.
It judges that Poland, “though much further away, is inching its way downward”.
The report says the world is experiencing “increasing political instability and a rapid decline in the acceptance of democratic institutions”.
“In more and more countries, government leaders are deliberately undermining the checks and balances designed to hold the executive accountable, thereby securing not only their own power, but a system of patronage and the capacity to divert state resources for their own personal gain,” the report says.
“… The long-term trend of increasing restrictions on political freedom and the rule of law continues unabated. While in recent years this was primarily due to greater repression in hardening autocracies, in this study there are above all some relatively advanced transformation countries whose governments are showing a more authoritarian leaning.”
The report nevertheless lists a number of success stories. In the southern hemisphere these include Argentina, where “a strengthening of the rule of law was accompanied by a correction of market-distorting regulations of the former government”, Mauritius and Uruguay.
The institute estimated that about one in five countries managed to maintain or strengthen the foundations of democracy and a market economy, picking out Botswana, Chile, Estonia and Taiwan.
Burkina Faso and Sri Lanka are now classed as defective democracies, having been classed as moderate autocracies in the 2016 report.
