Is Democracy in Decline?: Russia: Imperialism and Decay
Is Democracy in Decline?: Russia: Imperialism and Decay
Is Democracy in Decline?: Russia: Imperialism and Decay
Is Democracy in Decline?
Francis Fukuyama Robert Kagan
Marc F. Plattner Larry Diamond Thomas Carothers
Philippe C. Schmitter Steven Levitsky & Lucan Way
Alfred Stepan Alina Mungiu-Pippidi
Scott Mainwaring & Aníbal Pérez-Li~nán
E. Gyimah-Boadi Tarek Masoud
S ince the publication of its inaugural issue in January 1990, the Jour-
nal of Democracy has published well over a thousand articles, ex-
ploring all aspects of the workings of democracy and the struggles of
democratic movements. But we have been especially concerned with
tracking democracy’s advances and setbacks around the world. For
25 years, we have been “taking the temperature” of democracy. Since
1998, we have published annually an article summarizing Freedom
House’s survey of Freedom in the World, and we have featured nu-
merous other essays analyzing democracy’s global trajectory, begin-
ning with Samuel P. Huntington’s classic 1991 article introducing the
concept of the “third wave” of democratization. So it should not be
unexpected that we turn to this subject as the central theme of our
twenty-fifth anniversary issue.
Some may be surprised, however, by the headline on our cover—“Is
Democracy in Decline?”—which faithfully reflects the way in which
we posed the question to our contributors. For a journal that is unabash-
edly in favor of democracy, this obviously is not the kind of celebratory
theme that might be preferred for marking a historic milestone. Yet this
seemed to be the question that everyone was asking as 2015 approached,
and we decided that it deserved a thorough examination.
Tracing the viewpoints and opinions expressed over the years in the
Journal (especially on its five-year anniversaries) suggests how evalua-
tions of and sentiments about the state of democracy have evolved since
1990. The editors’ introduction that Larry Diamond and I wrote for the
inaugural issue was animated by the view that democracy was experi-
encing a “remarkable worldwide resurgence,” but also by a concern that
it lagged behind its rivals with respect to political ideas and organiza-
tion. Five eventful years later, we recognized not only that democracy
had spread to many more countries but also that it had hugely improved
its standing in terms of ideas and organization. We asserted that democ-
racy had “gained enormous ground” with respect to “international le-
gitimacy” and that it now “reign[ed] supreme in the ideological sphere.”
Multilateral organizations were increasingly endorsing democratic prin-
ciples, and a whole new field of international democracy assistance had
emerged. At the turn of the century, these trends seemed only to be
growing stronger. In introducing a special tenth-anniversary issue on
“Democracy in the World” modeled on Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democ-
racy in America, we argued that Tocqueville had supplanted Marx and
concluded, “We are all Tocquevilleans now.”
By 2005, however, our tone had grown far more downbeat, and
we acknowledged a darkening mood among supporters of democra-
cy. We attributed this in part to the travails of democracy-building in
postinvasion Iraq and to Russia’s descent back into authoritarianism,
but argued that the overall global trends were mixed and did not jus-
tify discouragement among democrats. By 2010, we were prepared to
grant that “there now may even be grounds for speaking of an erosion
of freedom over the past few years, though its dimensions are very
slight.”
Confronting Decline
Yet here in our twenty-fifth anniversary issue, we feel compelled to
confront head-on the question of whether democracy is in decline. Why?
There are two aspects to the answer, which although intertwined are
in some measure separable. The first deals with what is actually tak-
ing place on the ground: How many countries are democratic? Is their
number rising or shrinking? What is the situation with respect to such
liberal-democratic features as freedom of the press, rule of law, free
and fair elections, and the like? The second, more subjective, aspect
concerns the standing of democracy in the world: How is it viewed in
terms of legitimacy and attractiveness? It is in this latter dimension that
the evidence, or at least the widespread perception, of decline is most
striking.
As readers will see, the first dimension is open to differing interpreta-
tions. The divergence among them is most sharply posed by comparing
Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way’s essay on “The Myth of Democratic
Recession” with Larry Diamond’s on the need for “Facing Up to the
Democratic Recession.” Levitsky and Way point out that even the Free-
dom House data show only a very slight decline in levels of freedom
since 2000 and that other indices show none at all. In addition, they
argue that during the 1990s most observers (including Freedom House)
Marc F. Plattner 7
were too prone to count any country where an autocratic regime fell as a
case of transition to democracy. In the view of Levitsky and Way, many
of these countries temporarily enjoyed “pluralism by default” because
of authoritarian weakness, but never truly established democracy. Many
of them have now seen a consolidation of authoritarianism, but because
their regimes were wrongly classified as democratic in the first place,
this should not be seen as evidence of democratic decline.
Larry Diamond, while not necessarily disputing Levitsky and Way’s
criticism of how these countries were rated in the early 1990s, finds
other empirical evidence that the past decade has been “a period of at
least incipient decline in democracy.” He cites an increasing incidence
of democratic breakdowns, the poor performance of new democracies
according to various measures of good governance and rule of law, and
democratic backsliding or stagnation in the biggest and wealthiest non-
Western countries. There are strong arguments on both sides of this de-
bate, but ultimately I do not think that analyses of the Freedom House
(or other) numbers can settle the larger question.
Moreover, the broad contours of the trends revealed by the data are
not really in dispute. Democracy began to make significant gains in the
world in the years 1975–85. It then advanced at a prodigious rate in
1985–95. Its progress then began to slow, and only modest gains were
achieved in the following decade, with scores peaking sometime in the
early 2000s. Since then, the pattern has been one of stasis or very mi-
nor decline—certainly nothing like the “reverse waves” that Huntington
identified in previous eras. The absence of democratic progress can be
characterized negatively as “stagnation” or more hopefully as the con-
serving of prior democratic gains. But even if one discerns in the data a
slight fall in the number of democracies, this cannot account for the per-
ception of decline that has been spreading among democracy’s friends,
foes, and skeptics alike.
In my view, then, we must look elsewhere for the real sources of “de-
clinist” sentiment about democracy, and several of the essays in this is-
sue can help us to locate them. A number of these sources are introduced
in the latter part of Larry Diamond’s article. One, which Diamond labels
“bad governance,” is elaborated in the essay by Francis Fukuyama. This
term refers in the first instance to the failure of many new democra-
cies to build effective modern states. Because of this failure, which can
lead to lagging economic growth, poor public services, lack of personal
security, and pervasive corruption, the citizens of such countries under-
standably feel disappointed by democracy. Fukuyama contends that “the
legitimacy of many democracies around the world depends less on the
deepening of their democratic institutions than on their ability to pro-
vide high-quality governance.” Of course, bad governance afflicts most
(though not all) nondemocratic countries as well, but this offers scant
consolation to citizens who feel that their government is failing them.
8 Journal of Democracy
powers, often but not always the result of wars, can have a significant
effect on the domestic politics of the smaller and weaker nations of the
world.” Kagan asserts that the United States is in “a state of retrench-
ment” in the international arena, and that this is inflicting “collateral
damage” on the fortunes of democracy.
In 2014, these trends became manifest. The rise of ISIS in Syria and
Iraq, amid the disappointed hopes of the “Arab Spring” (outside Tunisia)
and worries about Afghanistan, made it clear, as Tarek Masoud under-
lines, that Western efforts to impose some kind of order and to encourage
democracy in the broader Middle East were not succeeding. Meanwhile,
China’s muscle-flexing in the East and South China Seas seemed to fore-
shadow a return to the use of force in Asia. And most important of all, Rus-
sia’s brazen annexation of Crimea and stealth invasion of eastern Ukraine
showed that the rules-based international order built by democratic powers
could no longer be taken for granted. Moreover, if Lilia Shevtsova is right
in her analysis of Russia’s political system, “the Kremlin will henceforth
approach the outside world in a militarist mode, with any compromises
limited to the realm of tactics and not meant to be lasting.”
If the liberal world order is indeed coming apart under pressure from
the authoritarians, the future of democracy will be deeply affected. In
a globe divided into spheres of influence and power blocs, a country’s
ability to follow a democratic path will be determined above all by its in-
ternational alliances and its geography. As Alina Mungiu-Pippidi points
out, it increasingly looks as if the fate of democracy in the countries of
the postcommunist world will depend on which side of the emerging
border between Russia and the EU they find themselves.
This new salience of geopolitics threatens to change the rules of the
game. It may both limit the centrality of the internal balance of forces
in shaping a country’s regime choices and increase the chances that the
imposition of external force will be decisive. Moreover, if the geopoliti-
cal balance appears to be tilting the authoritarians’ way, they will seem
much more attractive to the many individuals and nations that seek above
all to be on the stronger side. Under these conditions, democracy would
lose much of its luster. Where it broke down, there would be less demand
to restore it. One could no longer be confident that time would still be on
democracy’s side.
This gloomy scenario is far from being foreordained. The authori-
tarians have many weaknesses (which will grow if the recent oil-price
drop persists), and democracy has many strengths, including the capac-
ity for self-correction. Though it is often complacent and slow to move,
democracy also has shown a remarkable ability to respond to crises.
It was arguably in deeper trouble in the 1970s than it is today, but it
bounced back. It can do so again. But first its supporters must undertake
a clear-eyed appraisal of its current decline and summon the resolve and
seriousness of purpose needed to reverse it.