A new wave of autocracy

In its current 2020 report, V-Dem is most concerned about the erosion of democracy in India

Francis Fukayama’s ‘end of history’ thesis — put forth in early 1990s — claiming the ascendency of Western liberal democracy as a near inevitability has been turned on its head. Instead we have seen an unanticipated rise of what is now being described as a “third wave of autocratisation”.

An autocracy can basically be described as a country where unlimited authority and power is exercised by one person or group. Autocratic tendencies are antithetical to the notion of democracy and the resurgence of autocratic tendencies around the world is a serious cause for concern.

Latin America is back to a level last recorded in early 90s. Eastern Europe and Central Asia are experiencing democratic erosion which reminds us of the Soviet era. India is now being described as on the verge of losing its status as a democracy. Countries with large economies, exercising considerable military power and political influence, are not safe from this wave of autocratisation either.

Set up in 2014, the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project based at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, provides a new approach to conceptualising and measuring democracy. V-Dem uses a multidimensional and disaggregated dataset that reflects the complexity of the concept of democracy as a system going beyond the simple presence of elections.

The V-Dem project distinguishes between five high-level principles of democracy: electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian, and collects data to measure these. It disaggregates these principles into dozens of lower-level components of democracy such as regular elections, judicial independence, direct democracy, and gender equality.

The V-Dem report for 2020, based on developments in 2019, painted a dire picture. It estimated that almost 35% of the world’s population (around 2.6 billion people) were living in autocratising nations in 2019, compared to only 6% in 2009.

Turkey lost its status as a democracy in 2014. But in 2019, the US was also seen suffering from substantial autocratisation, alongside other large countries like Brazil. The EU too saw a non-democratic country amongst its ranks, as Hungary was classified as an electoral authoritarian regime.

The erosion of democratic freedoms over the past two decades have steadily seen the process of elections becoming more doubtful. Varied constrains have been placed on freedom of association, freedom of expression of media, and of ordinary citizens.

The situation is not great in our part of the world either. The democratic situation in South Asian countries such as Bhutan, and Nepal has improved in recently, but India’s performance has seen a drastic downturn. While the V-Dem report did not express concern about Sri Lanka, its next version (based on 2020 data) which will need to take into account strongarm tactics deployed after the Rajapaksa brothers’ return, will most certainly lead to a downgrading of Sri Lanka’s democratic record.

In its 2020 report, V-Dem is most concerned about the erosion of democracy in India. It notes the problems unleased by the introduction of the Citizenship Amendment Act and Modi’s crackdown on freedom of expression. It compares these to tactics used by Indira Gandhi’s regime during the 1975-77 state of emergency. While V-Dem expresses concern about the deteriorating situation in Kashmir, the report’s findings were not able to consider the highhanded manner in which Modi handled the Covid-19 crisis and used it as an excuse to further throttle the resistance in Kashmir.

V-Dem uses what it called the Liberal Democracy Index (LDI) to rank countries. Due to the above-mentioned concerns, India’s LDI ranking fell drastically over the past few years, ranking it at 90 out of 177 countries in 2020, which was barely above the democratic threshold. On the other hand, Pakistan’s ranking has not seen much significant change, but that is not any cause for jubilation, given it was ranked 126^th in 2020. Given ongoing developments in the country, it’s unlikely our ranking will improve when V-Dem comes out with its 2021 report.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 6^th, 2020.

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