As President Joe Biden said in his State of the Union address, the ongoing crisis in Ukraine has starkly illustrated “the battle between democracy and autocracy,” and new research from Freedom House underscores just how dire this crisis of global democracy has become.
After 16 years of decline, nearly 40% of the world’s population now lives in countries that are not free, the greatest proportion since 1997. As Russian war-making has demonstrated, emboldened authoritarians have been instrumental to this erosion. Meanwhile, democratic countries have struggled to hold leaders like Vladimir Putin accountable. This is because democratic institutions are being attacked by a more insidious challenger, diluting their impact on the international stage. Since 2000, the majority of democracies have been dying at the hands of their own elected leaders, with the support of polarized, partisan and indifferent publics.
Some democratic citizens actively support undemocratic systems. In Latin America, about 13% of respondents told the Latinobarometer survey that they preferred authoritarianism. In the United States, a 2020 Democracy Fund survey found 13% of Americans stating that it would be positive if the military stopped elections, closed Congress and temporarily took charge, while 24% supported a “strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with Congress and elections.”
