Works in progress

This year is certain to become the 16th consecutive year when the U.S.-based nonprofit Freedom House will record an overall decline in its measures of democracy in countries around the world. In the United States, the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol revealed the disregard some Republican partisans have for election results and democratic rules, and the party has taken even more anti-democratic steps since then, passing state-level laws to suppress voting and install partisan election officials. Meanwhile, China is cracking down on civil liberties in Hong Kong and supporting the rise of authoritarianism globally. Both China and Russia are hacking into critical infrastructure in Western countriess, for espionage and for ransom. In Russia, President Vladimir Putin’s party brazenly falsified the results of recent national elections. Even in democratic countries, leaders have eroded democratic institutions and enacted authoritarian laws in India, Brazil, Turkey, and Tunisia. Is democracy losing to authoritarianism?

Fredo Arias-King leads the board of directors of the Casla Institute, a Prague-based nonprofit that shares insights from post-communist transitions with reformers in Latin America. Despite all the turmoil around the world today, Arias-King says, there are reasons to be confident in the long-term prospects for democracy. In his view, the democratic backsliding we see in a lot of countries, like Poland and Hungary, is only a temporary setback. From a broader perspective, he says, many of these places were totalitarian or authoritarian states not long ago, so their troubles today shouldn’t call into question the longer arc toward greater democratization. As Arias-King sees it, today’s problems are often rooted in economic insecurity or migration caused by rapid globalization, as extremists on the left and right exploit nationalist feelings or other emotions for political gain …

Michael Bluhm: How worried are you by the erosion of democracy globally?

Fredo Arias-King: I have a lot of confidence in democracy. I take a longer view. Alexis de Tocqueville said democracy is like a tide that will recede but come back much stronger. So even when it seems that everything is lost—and in many periods in history, in many geographies, everything has seemed lost—then suddenly, a waves comes and more follow.