Autocrats are gaining ground – World Democracy Report sees freedoms in danger – News

Democracy is in retreat around the world. This is the sobering conclusion of the global democracy agency International Idea in Stockholm in its latest annual report.

It’s not just the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine or the oppression of the people of Myanmar. All over the world, democratic freedoms are currently having a very difficult time.

International Idea, a globally active international organization of which Switzerland has been a member since 2005, comes to the conclusion that since 1990 there have been so few and weak democracies in the world as there are today. Conversely, the increasing number of autocratic states are becoming more and more repressive. The first casualty in many parts of the world is freedom of expression.

International Idea currently classifies more than a third of the more than 170 countries studied worldwide as autocracies. The democratic forms of living together still predominate. However, according to the annual report on the state of democracy in the world, these have been further weakened in almost 50 democracies in the past year. In eleven countries, the democratic form of government has even weakened in three or more of the 16 characteristics examined.

But there are also a few bright spots: Countries as different as Gambia, Sri Lanka and Moldova have taken positive steps towards more democracy.

In Kenya and Brazil, electoral authorities have proved their worth after losers made unfounded allegations of stolen elections. The annual report also gives a positive assessment of the increasing protests in many authoritarian states, including the most populous country in the world, the dictatorial China.

In the many places in the country with over 1.3 billion inhabitants, thousands of people have taken to the streets in recent days – to demonstrate against President Xi Jinping’s zero tolerance towards the corona virus.

Switzerland: Outstanding popular rights, low voter turnout

According to the World Democracy Report, the situation is different in stable democracies. In Switzerland, for example, the citizens even voted twice directly at the ballot box on the Corona policy being conducted.

According to International Idea, Switzerland has been one of the most developed and stable democracies in the world since the introduction of equal voting rights for women and men at federal level more than half a century ago. This finding is confirmed in the new annual report.

Switzerland is said to have made progress on questions of transparency in party financing, while there have been some cuts in freedom of the media in view of new restrictive laws.

Switzerland continues to be outstanding in the use of direct democratic people’s rights, but the average turnout in national elections is far below the average for comparable countries. A good 45 percent of Swiss voters took part in the last National Council elections in autumn 2019.