Over half of the world’s population cannot fully exercise their political and civil liberties – and that number is growing. Perhaps even more disquieting is the fact that the majority of these people do not live in de jure authoritarian states. Rather, they live in democracies that are failing. And these failing democracies are predominantly developing countries. This blog will explore the causes of this worldwide political crisis and joins other democracy advocates in searching for ways to mitigate these trends by tracking and promoting the growth of democracy in developing countries around the world.
According to Freedom House’s 2010 Freedom in the World Report, which rates countries as Free, Partly Free, or Not Free, freedom in the world declined in 2009 for the fourth consecutive year – the longest continuous period of decline in the 37 year history of the report. According to the report, in 2009 20% of the world’s population lived in countries that were partly free and 34% of the world’s population lived in countries that were not free. In other words, 54% of the world’s population lives in societies that are not fully free.
This is a crisis not only for those people living in these countries – whose fundamental rights are infringed upon, are made increasingly vulnerable to violence, famine, and other natural disasters, are the victims of corruption, and poor economic development – but also for the rest of the world. Authoritarian regimes or countries without strong rule of law have proven to be havens for terrorist activities while democracies have a famous history of not fighting one another.
The map below compares Freedom House’s “de facto” ratings of freedom with de jure systems of government and highlights developing countries (defined in this case as having a score of .7 or lower on the UN Human Development Index).
This map illustrates a few important trends. First, it’s easy to see that the number of failing democracies (blue with red dots) is much greater than the number de jure authoritarian states (all red). In other words, there are only a handful of countries that are de jure authoritarian states – the far bigger (and more alarming) problem in terms of freedom in the world is the number of de jure democracies that are not completely free. These are countries whose citizens have fought for and adopted a democratic model of government but that model is failing at the hands of corrupt autocrats and patronage politics.
A second major trend is that the majority of these failing democracies are also developing countries – most of which are located in Sub-Saharan Africa with the rest located mainly in Central America and Central/Southeast Asia. While scholars have debated at length the exact relationship between development and democracy – whether development is a prerequisite for democracy to work or if democracy is essential to any long term development plan – it is clear that developing countries face unique and difficult challenges in the democratization process.
These trends are the central issues that this blog will explore – why democracy is struggling throughout the world and particularly in developing countries and what can be done about it. Despite the fact that over half of the world currently lives in states that are not fully free, the good news is that there are more tools than ever before to increase transparency, accountability, and make citizens’ voices heard. This blog seeks to add to those voices and will be an active searcher for what works – examining the issues, news, and success stories in the development of democracies in order to share the information with others committed to promoting democracy around the world.
Excellent curtain-raiser. I’m very excited to see this thing grow. Keep it up!
Pingback: Guinea’s Historic Elections « DEVELOPING DEMOCRACIES