More than 50 countries that are home to half the planet’s population are due to hold national elections in 2024, but the number of citizens exercising the right to vote is not unalloyed good news. The year looks set to test even the most robust democracies and to strengthen the hands of leaders with authoritarian leanings.
From Russia, Taiwan and the United Kingdom to India, El Salvador and South Africa, the presidential and legislative contests have huge implications for human rights, economies, international relations and prospects for peace in a volatile world.
In some countries, the balloting will be neither free nor fair. And in many, curbs on opposition candidates, weary electorates and the potential for manipulation and disinformation have made the fate of democracy a front-and-center campaign issue.
A possible rematch between President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump looms large in the election calendar; a Trump victory in November is perhaps the greatest global wildcard. Yet high-stakes votes before then also will gauge the “mood of dissatisfaction, impatience, uneasiness” among far-flung electorates, said Bronwen Maddox, director of the London-based think-tank Chatham House.
Tricky one this.
On one hand, such articles frequently position Western democracy as Best-ern Democracy and keen observers will know it’s largely a conceit : the varying archaic electoral systems are maintained to serve existing Power structures, the best funded campaigns usually win, the elected representatives are then in hoc to Capital to deliver the policies Ut wants, rather than in hoc to the electorate that put them there.
And that’s just the legal flaws, before we get to corruption in its many forms.
On the other hand, perhaps we should not take the stability and peace we have for granted. Most of the West now has developed far right organisations, that are trivial to activate, operating as they do on populist dogma. A small proportion of them genuinely harbour racist agendas - but the majority have just been propagandised to the point they are motivated for violent insurrection or other acts of terror .
Neither position sparks joy .