Opinion | What’s driving the crisis of democracy around the world?
- Politicians in democracies are aware of the need for painful structural reforms but hesitate to undertake them for fear of losing the next election
- The problem lies with failures in decision-making and how different societies choose their leaders to make these tough decisions
This last view coincides with China’s white paper on democracy. It says that, “there is nothing wrong with democracy per se. Some countries have encountered setbacks and crises in their quest for democracy only because their approach is wrong.”
The V-Dem Institute’s Democracy Report 2021 reported that autocracies were home to 68 per cent of the world’s population. The Swedish research institute’s report said: “The level of democracy enjoyed by the average global citizen in 2020 is down to levels last found around 1990.”
The Economist Intelligence Unit, which publishes an annual democracy index, scores countries using five metrics: electoral process and pluralism; the functioning of government; political participation; political culture; and, civil liberties.
Based on these, countries are divided into full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes and authoritarian regimes. Its 2020 report found that 75 of 167 countries lived in some sort of democracy, while only 8.4 per cent of the world live in a full democracy.
