RUSSIA, VENEZUELA, NICARAGUA… WHY DO AUTOCRACIES SURVIVE?​

Vladimir Putin has the electoral magic potion. In the last 12 years, he grew, at least, 10 percentage points between each presidential election. In 2012, he won 64.35% of the vote; in 2018, 77.53%; in 2024, 87.28%, and, better still, with a record turnout of 77.46% of the roll. The success came despite the fact that, in these years, Putin’s Russia went through recessions, a pandemic with thousands and thousands of hidden deaths and mass protests. Also an opposition movement (and a leader) such as the country has never had in a century, two invasions of Ukraine, forced conscriptions, armed uprisings. In any other country, only one of these phenomena would have cornered a president until he lost the elections. But nothing is stopping the Russian president’s electoral train.

If Putin’s impervious success were to continue and if he wanted to run for a sixth term (what could prevent him from doing so?), it would be hardly surprising if, in 2030, he were to register 100% of the vote, with 100% turnout. A milestone in contemporary history! Yes, a milestone if it were a democracy….

The last almost 600 years of history show that Russians like strong and authoritarian leaders. Some 450 years of tsars were followed by 74 years of Bolshevik revolution and then the Soviet regime. In the 1990s, the democratic spring – which was then beginning to illuminate Latin America – covered the former Eastern Europe and Russia. The West became illusioned with the rule of freedom and human rights.

The road was neither smooth, nor easy, nor short, but most of these nations strove to cement democracy and succeeded. Russia tried for a while, but relapsed into its authoritarian habit, from which today nothing seems to keep it away, neither the hundreds of Western sanctions nor the isolation of part of the world.

Other countries are flirting with this authoritarian relapse, including some that are part of the bloc that made democracy an exclusive way to ensure peace after half a century of wars, the European Union (Poland, Hungary).

This pendulum between democracy and authoritarianism is not exclusive to Russia or countries of the former Soviet orbit; it also occurs in Asia, Latin America and Africa. And in many countries it is not a swinging pendulum either; it is, rather, a one-way street. Almost 10 years ago, according to indices from several continents, the trend of democratization in the world reached a dead end and autocracies began to grow in number.

Today, these authoritarianisms are entrenched and are more and more difficult to reverse, despite internal and external efforts and despite the fact that they barely compete with democracies in terms of quality of life. Of the top 25 countries in the United Nations Human Development Index, only one, Singapore, has authoritarian traits. So how do autocracies survive?

1. THE PARADOX OF DEMOCRACY AND STRONG LEADERS

Venezuela was, in the last decades of the last century, one of the strongest democracies in Latin America. Today, despite all kinds of diplomatic attempts by dozens of countries, despite the pressure and condemnation of international organizations, despite strict economic sanctions, despite the resistance of a tireless opposition, it is on its way to becoming an unmitigated dictatorship.

China has an authoritarian bent similar to that of Russia: emperors, civil wars and an all-powerful, repressive communist party with totalitarian chapters. However, at the beginning of this century, the West hoped that China’s economic take-off and its trade integration with the rest of the world would lead Beijing to relax its hard fist on the Chinese. With Xi Jinping’s rise to power, just over 10 years ago, the opposite happened and the regime advanced on the nearest corner of democracy, Hong Kong.

The world’s largest democracy, India, is showing signs of explicit autocratization with the popular Narendra Modi, who is up for re-election this year. Tunisia, the Arab nation that made the most democratic footprint with the Arab Spring, today has reversed its advances in institutional transparency. Turkey, Pakistan, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Iran: all of them are embarked in some degree of authoritarianism of little return despite the crusades for democracy and freedom launched by internal opposition movements or by Western nations.

The review of five reports on the quality of democracy -V-Dem, IDEA, Freedom House, Economic Intelligence Unit and Polity- provides a crude and compelling x-ray of the same two-sided phenomenon: while autocracies grow stronger and more entrenched, democracies are increasingly challenged from within by “illiberal forces” and by the inability of their leaders to solve the daily problems of their societies. The figures for 2023 are eloquent.

2. A STARK DIAGNOSIS, A THREATENING PROGNOSIS

“Today, 71% of the global population lives in autocracies, an increase of 48% from ten years ago,” says V-Dem’s 2024 report, the most widely used by academics, and warns that “levels of democracy experienced by the average person dropped to 1985″ levels.

Polity, a report that stopped being done in 2017, adds a historical variable for the entire 20th century. Post-World War II, it saw a boom in authoritarianism that disintegrated along with the Soviet Union, in the early 1990s. At that time, for the first time in the century, the number of democracies began to outnumber autocracies.

But in the second decade of this century the process weakened, thanks in part to one of the great paradoxes of democracy: authoritarian leaders who came to power through elections and, once there, systematically boycotted the institutions until their capacity to control the Executive Branch was neutralized. There is no lack of names in any continent: Nicolás Maduro, Daniel Ortega, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Nayib Bukele, Viktor Orban, Modi.

Today, adds the V-Dem report, there are 42 countries in the process of autocratization; 20 years ago there were 11. On the other hand, in 2003, 35 countries had begun a process of democratization; today there are only 18.

“The Age of Conflict”, the report on democratic quality in 2024 by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), reveals a similar global scenario, identifies 2015 as the most democratic year of the century and adds a warning about how difficult it will be to reverse autocratization. “Non-democratic regimes are becoming increasingly entrenched and hybrid regimes are finding it increasingly difficult to democratize,” it diagnoses.

Not all reports share the partial conclusions. V-Dem, a report by dozens of experts on the study of 60 global indices, for example, gives Latin America one of its highest marks: thanks to Brazil’s institutional recovery, it says, the region is one of those that has regained democratizing momentum.

The EIU report, however, warns that Latin America “is experiencing its eighth consecutive year of democratic decline; 16 of 24 countries fell [Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, among others]”.

On the other hand, International IDEA’s annual report applies a more neutral diagnosis. “Most of the countries in the Americas continue to perform at a medium level”.

3. THE TIPPING POINT

When looking for reasons for this new authoritarian upsurge that the world’s major democracies failed to anticipate, the Freedom House report lists two on which most specialists agree. “Failed elections and armed conflict are the key factors fueling this 18th consecutive year of democratic decline,” it explains.

This year, in a kind of “electoral world”, more than half of the global population will vote in regional or general elections and dozens of countries will choose their new heads of state or government. Ironically, however, suffrage can be as much a vehicle for democratic consolidation as for authoritarian survival, especially if the vote is rigged.

The Russian organization Golos studied the elections in which, two weeks ago, Putin won his fifth term in office, and concluded that 22 of the 76 million votes he received were part of a plot to increase the Russian president’s electoral strength.

“All authoritarian leaders want to say that they won the election overwhelmingly and they don’t care much anymore about being seen as dirty. They only care about saying how many people voted for them. That has a terrifying effect on the population,” explains Javier Corrales, a professor at Amherst College who specializes in authoritarian regimes, especially Maduro’s, in a conversation with La Nacion.

Elections, according to Corrales, also give these leaders “a democratic facade that makes it difficult to corner them.”

“Within the most entrenched democracies, there are illiberal forces that tend to legitimize these hybrid dictators. That is why today, democracies are unable to put countries in the process of autocratization back on track,” he adds. If Putin gave a lecture on how elections can extend the life of authoritarianisms, other autocrats are not far behind. Ortega imprisoned any politician who even thought of running for president. Erdogan did something similar with his main rivals. And Maduro has been doing just that… for a decade now.

“Maduro gambled on persecuting and dividing the opposition, which is a central tactic of autocrats. But the opposition primaries last October [in which Corina Machado swept] surprised him. He thought he was going to have elections like those of 2018, with the opposition fragmented. And then, in the referendum for the Essequibo [in December], Chavismo did not manage to mobilize even its people. That is why, for next July’s presidential elections, it launched itself into repression,” says Corrales.

If the opposition resists and presents candidates, the academic believes that the elections could be a democratic turning point, as was the case with the elections in Guatemala last year, in which Bernardo Arévalo surprised with his triumph.

4. CONTAGION EFFECT OR COMPARISON EFFECT?

In the formula for the survival of autocracies there is also a “comparison effect”.

“Most democracies today have problems satisfying their citizens. Autocrats present themselves as effective alternatives to that deficit in democracies,” Thomas Carothers, co-director of the Carnegie Endowment’s Democracy, Conflict and Governance Program, tells the Nation.

A Pew Research Center study conducted last year in 23 countries and released last year accurately describes the phenomenon. Fifty-nine percent of respondents said they were dissatisfied with how democracy works. In autocracies, the same may be true, but dissent and criticism are suppressed in any form, making it difficult to gauge the true mood of their citizens.

That is the case in China and Russia, two of the world’s top 10 economies and two of the three most militarily powerful countries today. Their leaders, Xi and Putin, are also respected and even admired by dozens of authoritarian or democratic leaders, mostly from the Global South. That leads some specialists to speculate on the possibility of a “contagion effect” of the authoritarian trend in the world.

“There is some copying, especially in some ideas, and also we are at a time when autocrats are more confident and assertive, but the local context is what matters. What Modi does is not the same as what Erdogan does, for example,” says Carothers.

5. A MORE DANGEROUS WORLD

For Carothers, more disturbing than the contagion effect of autocracies is their addiction to conflict. “Authoritarian leaders are more inclined to conflict than democratic ones because of their nationalism and their need to feed their narratives. The more autocracies there are, the more dangerous the world becomes,” he warns.

Not all democracies are peaceful. But evidence of autocrats in conflict is mounting. China’s threats to Taiwan have been multiplying for a few years now, Maduro is on a war footing with Guyana, Putin invaded Ukraine, Erdogan wages a years-long battle against the Kurds, Modi fuels warlike tension with China.

“The incidence and scale of war is much greater among hybrid and authoritarian regimes,” adds the EIU 2024 report.

A review by the Council for Foreign Relations’ Global Conflict Monitor confirms one and the other. Of the 28 conflicts that today burden the world, 27 involve at least one state with an authoritarian bias; the remaining one (drug violence in Mexico) involves a country in the process of autocratization.

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Inés Capdevilla, is Editorial Secretary of the newspaper La Nación, Argentina.

This article was originally published in La Nación, with whose authorization we reproduce it. Publication in other media may only be made with the express authorization of La Nación.