The corrected report on creeping authoritarianism.
By Curt_Anderson November 28, 2021 7:10 pm Category: Government (0.0 from 0 votes)
Rules of the Post
You might have gotten the wrong impression if you read HtS's article "COVID-19 Made Democracies More Authoritarian and Authoritarian Regimes Even Worse".
That report looked at measures of democracy and authoritarianism only through the end of 2020. In other words, the January 6th insurrection was not covered nor was any day of the Biden presidency. The authoritarian tendencies mentioned in the report happened under Trump's watch. Trump was repeatedly singled out as a cause of America (and other countries) being a backsliding democracy.
The following is taken directly from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance report. See link below.
The Global State of Democracy Indices provide quantitative data on democratic quality for the same countries, based on 28 indicators of democracy up until the end of 2020.
Significantly, the United States, the bastion of global democracy, fell victim to authoritarian tendencies itself, and was knocked down a significant number of steps on the democratic scale.
The number of countries undergoing ‘democratic backsliding’ (a more severe and deliberate kind of democratic erosion) has never been as high as in the last decade, and includes regional geopolitical and economic powers such as Brazil, India and the United States.
Some of the most worrying examples of backsliding are found in some of the world’s largest countries (Brazil, India). The United States and three members of the European Union (EU) (Hungary, Poland and Slovenia, which holds the chair of the EU in 2021) have also seen concerning democratic declines.
Electoral integrity is increasingly being questioned, often without evidence, even in established democracies. The former US President Donald Trump’s baseless allegations during the 2020 US presidential election have had spillover effects, including in Brazil, Mexico, Myanmar and Peru, among others.
In the United States, for example, research indicates that some states’ voter registration and voting laws, either recently approved or currently under discussion, end up disproportionately affecting minorities in a negative way.
Disputes about electoral outcomes are on the rise, including in established democracies. A historic turning point came in 2020–2021 when former President Donald Trump questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election results in the United States. Baseless allegations of electoral fraud and related disinformation undermined fundamental trust in the electoral process, which culminated in the storming of the US Capitol building in January 2021.
The IDEA report concludes on a positive note listing some of the good and promising things that are happening throughout the world. They cited Joe Biden's child tax credit:
"In the United States, a new child tax credit is expected to cut the poverty rate by nearly 50 per cent and lift 4.1 million children out of poverty this year. The first round has decreased food scarcity from 15.7 per cent to 9.9 per cent compared with the period immediately before receiving the monthly child tax credit payments."
The views and claims expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views and beliefs of SelectSmart.com. Not every statement made here can be assumed to be a fact.
Comments on "The corrected report on creeping authoritarianism.":
You might have gotten the wrong impression if you read HtS's article "COVID-19 Made Democracies More Authoritarian and Authoritarian Regimes Even Worse".
