Liberal democracies on the whole are on the decline in the world, which may not alarm Americans in their cushy first-world homes but for the fact that the United States is listed among those who are experiencing a downward trend away from democracy and toward a loss of freedom.
Freedom House, which publishes an annual report on the ability of individuals to live freely in their nations, reported in its 2016 study that for the 10th year in row, the number of free countries is on the decline. According to Freedom House, 40 percent of nations are free, 24 percent are partly free, and 36 percent are not free.
It reports:
The number of countries showing a decline in freedom for the year—72—was the largest since the 10-year slide began. Just 43 countries made gains.
Over the past 10 years, 105 countries have seen a net decline, and only 61 have experienced a net improvement.
Ratings for the Middle East and North Africa region were the worst in the world in 2015, followed closely by Eurasia.
Over the last decade, the most significant global reversals have been in freedom of expression and the rule of law.
The United States still ranks as a free nation in the Freedom House report, with a score of 90 on a scale of 100, but Freedom House says that the U.S. should be watched because freedom is receding. Specifically, Freedom House reports:
The United States received a downward trend arrow because of the cumulative impact of flaws in the electoral system, a disturbing increase in the role of private money in election campaigns and the legislative process, legislative gridlock, the failure of the Obama administration to fulfill promises of enhanced government openness, and fresh evidence of racial discrimination and other dysfunctions in the criminal justice system.
Freedom House has been conducting the study for 45 years, and while its results have been questioned before, mostly over whether it views freedom from an American-style left-right political lens, which doesn’t take into account cultural barometers, the results should be a concern to Americans, particularly since the decline appears to be acceptable to many on America’s college campuses.
Writer Rebecca Burgess draws from another study which shows that decreasing support for liberal democracies is evident on college campuses, whether university students and faculty want to admit it or not.
(F)ew scholars or commentators are keen to be the next generational crank and say forthrightly that democracy is in decline. This time, however, Foa and Mounk enlist “the language of survey research” to demonstrate that the young of this era no longer support democracy per se as prior generations of young citizens have.
Not only do fewer than 30 percent of US millennials believe it’s essential to live in a country that’s governed democratically, compared to 72 percent of those born before WWII, in 2011, 24 percent of those born in the 1980s and after considered democracy to be a ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’ way of running the country. Among the same cohort of Europeans in 2011, only 13 percent said the similar — itself an increase from the 1990s, when it was 8 percent.
Arguably, these are tenuous because still vague markers. But consider this: the minimal liberal understanding of representative democracy is centered on elections being free and fair. Twenty-six percent of US millennials say that it is ‘unimportant’ for a people in a democracy ‘to choose their leaders in free elections.’
This anchors the more concerning fact that the share of US citizens who believe that having a ‘strong leader’ who doesn’t have to ‘bother with parliaments and elections’ is a better way to proceed has risen to 32 percent from 24 percent in 1995; that 49 percent now approve of ‘having experts, not government, make decisions according to what they think is best for the country’; and that today, one in six of the survey respondents agree that it would be a good or very good thing for the army to rule. (Notably, the proportion in favor of military rule has risen in most mature democracies, including Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.)
To quote “Team America: World Police,” freedom isn’t free. And its loss, disappearing alongside liberal democracies around the world could be much sooner than a generation away if its defenders are not vigilant.
