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A Backlog of Shattered Democracies Is Growing, but They Can Be Repaired [1]
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Date: 2024-05
In late April, Haitian prime minister Ariel Henry resigned amid a deepening political and security crisis in the Caribbean nation. Long-overdue elections and the expiration of all executive and legislative terms have left the country without any constitutional leadership. And in recent months, armed criminal groups have unleashed increasingly brutal violence in the capital, Port-au-Prince, and pushed the country’s remaining state institutions toward collapse. These compounding problems threaten to make Haiti the latest member of a growing group of countries around the world where representative governance has been demolished.
Global freedom has declined for 18 consecutive years, according to Freedom in the World, and few factors have done as much to drive this deterioration as the dismantling of representative rule—that is, the breakdown or deliberate destruction of systems in which the government remains accountable to the people through free and fair elections.
In the 2024 edition of Freedom in the World, a total of 47 countries received the worst possible score—0 out of 4—on the report’s indicator for representative rule, compared with just 25 a decade prior. There were two principal causes for this downturn: In the past decade, rigged elections have stamped out representative rule in 11 countries, denying citizens a meaningful voice at the ballot box. Meanwhile, coups and power grabs in 15 countries, most of them in Africa, have smashed electoral procedures and mandates altogether.
Because representative institutions are easier to break than to make, there is a real danger that the recent decimation of political rights will have lasting effects on such countries’ democratic trajectories and their people’s experience of freedom. Over the past 10 years, just seven countries have successfully restored a degree of representative rule after it has been uprooted, lifting their scores back up from 0. Even fewer have been able to build on those modest gains.
For Fiji and The Gambia, two countries that have made significant progress in rebuilding democratic institutions, a series of independent guardrails—both external and internal to the domestic political sphere—were required to restore credible elections. These countries could provide Haiti and others in a state of democratic breakdown with important lessons about the potential routes to recovery.
Fiji and The Gambia: Lessons on restoring representative rule
Democratically legitimate elections in Fiji and The Gambia did not happen in a vacuum. In both countries, independent accountability measures played an essential role in restraining potential bad actors and restoring voters’ faith in the democratic process.
Fiji lacked representative governance in the years between a bloodless coup in 2006 and 2014, when former coup leader and military commander Frank Bainimarama won credible parliamentary elections and took office as the duly elected prime minister. In the run-up to the polls, election officials conducted a far-reaching voter registration and education campaign. Despite problematic restrictions on the ability of nongovernmental organizations to participate in these efforts, authorities were able to register 93 percent of the eligible voting population. Instead of enacting undue requirements that complicated the registration process, officials pursued a core goal of representative governance: maximum democratic participation.
While Fijian officials took some positive steps on their own, another key factor in the success of the 2014 elections was external to the country’s political system. That year, the contest was independently monitored by the Multinational Observer Group (MOG), a foreign observation mission that was invited by the Fijian government to assess the elections—meaning its actions to ensure electoral accountability were sanctioned by the authorities. In contests where officials are hostile to the work of independent observers, such as Nicaragua’s rigged 2021 general elections, monitors have been virtually powerless to denounce or deter rampant electoral abuses.
As in Fiji, the credibility of The Gambia’s 2016 presidential election, in which opposition candidate Adama Barrow defeated authoritarian incumbent Yahya Jammeh, depended on both internal and external factors. Though Jammeh deployed familiar intimidation tactics ahead of the vote, including the arrest and torture of opposition activists, the country’s Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) was able to count votes and report election results fairly.
The integrity of the IEC was bolstered by international support for a peaceful transfer of power. In the aftermath of the vote, Jammeh’s attempts to remain in office—which included the use of soldiers to seize the IEC’s headquarters—were opposed through sustained international pressure, culminating in direct intervention by an Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) military coalition in support of Barrow. Jammeh agreed to stand down just days later, paving the way for a presidential transition.
Restoring credible elections requires rigorous and multilayered accountability mechanisms. Not only must citizens endorse and shape the contest through their own participation, but independent institutions and actors must also be in a position to ensure that the voters’ choice is upheld. When incumbents attempt to improperly manipulate electoral outcomes, prodemocracy forces must not hesitate to apply pressure and impose sanctions on authoritarian perpetrators.
Opportunities for recovery
With elections scheduled in more than 50 countries this year, each contest represents an opportunity to strengthen or rebuild democratic institutions. In Venezuela, for instance, where previously flawed elections have allowed President Nicolás Maduro and his ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) to capture control of all branches of government, July’s presidential vote could be an inflection point in the country’s democratic trajectory.
Independent electoral observers must be allowed to monitor the balloting in Venezuela, and international actors should maintain pressure on the Maduro regime to conduct free and fair elections. Most fundamentally, Venezuelan citizens, many of whom have faced difficulties when registering to vote or updating their registration, must be allowed to freely participate in the democratic process.
However, all concerned should recognize that repairing democratic institutions in Venezuela, Haiti, and elsewhere will require ongoing attention—extending far beyond any single election day. The examples of The Gambia and Fiji show that representative rule can be restored after a period of severe degradation, but these positive experiences are rare. It is extraordinarily costly and difficult for countries to bounce back from a full democratic breakdown—making it even more imperative for democracy’s defenders to shore up representative institutions wherever they currently exist.
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https://freedomhouse.org/article/backlog-shattered-democracies-growing-they-can-be-repaired
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