RIP democracy
Duterte drove a knife into Philippine democracy. Will Marcos Jr. deliver the final blow? (Photo: The Atlantic)
In 1789, a mob of angry Parisians tore down the gates of the ancient fortress known as the Bastille in the pursuit of liberty and what we now know as modern democracy. Perhaps they didn’t know it at the time, but that event became the catalyst of a revolution that would change the way societies around the world govern themselves.
The French Revolution was shaped with a pattern of violence. At least 40,000 were sentenced to death by guillotine, including Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. While there is no official count, it’s said that most of those deaths were from the clergy and aristocrats, those who lived most comfortably in the old class system. These deaths signaled the end of the age of monarchs and the Church, and the rebirth of an ideology centered around a rule by the people.
The newly-formed American government served as the model for the reformation. Today, a mere 200 years after these events, the majority of countries are governed democratically—although some studies show that we may be slipping back into the age of kings without even realizing it.
Democracy in decline
It doesn’t matter how you measure it—whether it’s in the big changes, such as the number of countries that are still democratic, and how many people are living in them, or the small changes, such as the civil liberties people are—and aren’t—allowed. Democracy is falling, and it’s happening all around the world.
The number of democracies has gone down in the past 10 years. (Source: Our World in Data)
Fewer countries are democratic now. There were 97 electoral democracies in 2012, and in 2021, that number has fallen to 89. Liberal democracies have also declined from 42 in 2012 to 34 in 2021.
Fewer people live in democracies now as well. From 3.9 billion in 2017, the number has fallen to 2.3 billion in 2021. According to Regimes of the World, people in countries like India (with a population of 1.4 billion), Turkey, and Venezuela are losing their democratic rights, accounting for the steep decline.
The number of people living in autocratic countries have gone up, while those living in democratic countries have gone down. (Source: Our World in Data)
Lastly, as populist leaders and groups are on the rise, more and more countries are autocratizing. In 2021, 30 countries were autocratizing, and since 2011, the number of countries that have become less democratic has continuously gone up. In 2021, 2.9 billion people live in countries that are becoming less democratic, putting the number at an all-time high.
History repeating itself
This isn’t the first time this has happened. Humans have a habit of reverting to autocracies after and during times of crisis and turmoil—like in the 1930s, after the Great Depression, and again in the 60s and 70s, at the height of counterculture protests and civil rights movements.
Do the 70s ring any bells? That’s right, Martial Law was declared in the Philippines in 1972. Coincidentally, we elected another Marcos into the Presidential seat—on the year that marks the 50th anniversary of Martial Law.
But our declining democracy began even before Ferdinand Marcos Jr. became president. Former President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration was hostile towards academics who taught “subversive” materials, political opponents who called out his atrocities, and journalists who reported anything less than the truth that they accepted.
Considering all of this on top of countless corruption scandals and the thousands who died at the hands of his drug war, Duterte’s regime is what most scholars have called a classic electoral autocracy, where democratic institutions slide towards authoritarian methods due to systemic violations. In fact, since the start of Duterte’s term, Freedom House has given abysmal scores to the Philippines on their Global Freedom Scale which is based on political rights and civil liberties, continuously going down from 63 in 2017 to 55 in 2022.
And just after the end of that administration, we elected Marcos Jr., whose father was a dictator and whose mother is most known for her lavish lifestyle. It doesn’t bode well for Philippine democracy.
But, as Our World in Data optimistically points out, we have always been able to reverse autocratization. After prolonged periods of rising authoritarianism, people gain more democratic rights than ever before. In the face of abuse and the stifling of civil liberties throughout history, people all over the world have overturned the tides of autocracy by fighting for their right to govern themselves democratically.
In fact, in the Philippines, we gave it a name: People Power. We’ve done it before, and if push comes to shove, I and many others have faith that we’ll do it again.
