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Turkish autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his wife Emine: Democracy under pressure

Photo: Turkish Presidency press office / AFP

In Russia, the Kremlin dictates how an "election" should be conducted, the military keeps Myanmar under their control, countries like Somalia, Yemen and Libya are descending into violence: democratic coexistence does not exist in many nations - and elsewhere it is under pressure.

The Bertelsmann Foundation has documented the situation in its current transformation index.

Accordingly, democracies in developing and emerging countries are in decline and autocracies are increasingly on the rise.

The Bertelsmann Foundation analyzed a total of 137 emerging and transition countries.

Only 63 democracies remain compared to a majority of 74 autocracies.

The index, which has been collected for 20 years, shows a continuous increase in the number of undemocratically governed states.

For the analysis, almost 300 experts evaluated detailed reports on emerging and developing countries.

The quality of democracy, market economy and governance were examined; a calculated value represents the state of democracy or its absence.

On the scale from 1 to 10, for example, Croatia scores 8.55, Turkey 4.23 and Yemen 1.57.

For the current study period from February 1, 2021 to January 31, 2023, the Bertelsmann Foundation counts 25 so-called moderate and 49 hard autocracies.

The experts also classify ten countries as having failed among the tough autocracies, including Syria, Yemen, Libya, Haiti and the Central African Republic.

Democracy is continually being eroded on the path to authoritarian rule

The countries with the worst scores include Myanmar, Afghanistan, Egypt and Russia.

Singapore, Nigeria, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, among others, are classified as moderate autocracies.

The authors of the study criticize the increasing restrictions on freedom of expression and the press, elections that are becoming less free and the disregard for freedom of assembly.

States like Turkey and Bangladesh would continually undermine democracy on the way to authoritarian rule.

However, the study also highlights positive examples.

In addition to the increase in autocracies, there are also growing democratic movements, for example in Brazil and Poland, where the population has voted out authoritarian forces.

“Authoritarian trends can be stopped at the ballot box,” says historian Hauke ​​Hartmann, who is co-responsible for the index.

“This requires civil society mobilization before the elections and a return to the rule of law after the elections.”

There are positive transformations in the Baltic states, among others, but also in Taiwan, South Korea, Costa Rica, Chile and Uruguay.

All countries would strengthen the rule of law and enable the population to participate.

In Brazil, Kenya and Zambia, for example, it was civil society pressure in cooperation with electoral authorities or constitutional courts that ensured clean elections and secured their results.

In Poland and Sri Lanka there were successful mobilizations to protect civil and social rights.

According to the analysis, these cases show that autocracies fail where the pressure of the street can combine with control bodies such as the judiciary, parliament or the media.

In addition to the quality of democracy, the Bertelsmann Foundation also examined governance - and came to the conclusion that mismanagement and corruption often go hand in hand with dictatorships.

According to the analysts, the narrative of authoritarian rulers that they can govern their country more effectively than a democratically elected government with lengthy parliamentary processes is not true.

At the end of their scale of efficient governance there are 45 disorganized and corrupt regimes from Cambodia to Zimbabwe to Venezuela, almost all of which are governed autocratically.

Although there are also efficiently run autocracies, they remain the exception.

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