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The long lines on election days across countries and continents suggest dynamic democracies. But despite the calendar aligning for a record-setting number of people worldwide eligible to vote this year, democracy itself is actually imperiled.
That’s the clear conclusion from Freedom House, which said in its annual “Freedom in the World” report that “flawed elections and armed conflicts contributed to the 18th year of democratic decline.” The “breadth and depth of the deterioration was extensive,” the think tank reported, adding that “political rights and civil liberties were diminished in 52 countries, while only 21 countries saw improvements.”
That analysis was amplified in a similarly grim report from the Economist Intelligence Unit, which starkly stated that “conflict and polarization drive a new low for global democracy.”
This dire data corresponds with, and may have been caused by, a commensurate retreat in media freedom, as evidenced by Reporters Without Borders’ annual World Press Freedom Index, which warned that “press freedom around the world is being threatened by the very people who should be its guarantors — political authorities.”
Indeed, if democracy were a stock, “it would have suffered something of a price correction over the last 20 years,” said Richard Haass, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Haass, a veteran envoy who served Republican and Democratic administrations, was speaking via video on Tuesday night at a Minnesota Peace Initiative forum called “The World Votes: Global Democracy at a Crossroads.” The event, held in Minneapolis at Norway House (fitting, considering Norway held the top spot in the World Press Freedom Index and along with fellow Scandinavian nations is ranked as the world’s most free by Freedom House), drew a capacity crowd with many more online to hear from Haass, me and three other panelists: Chad Vickery, vice president of global strategy and technical leadership at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems; Aram Gavoor, a former Justice Department official and current professor at the George Washington University Law School; and Thomas Hanson, diplomat-in-residence at the University of Minnesota Duluth.