the threat to democracy

Vladimir Putin has made changes to the constitution, thereby ensuring that he can serve as president for life. And Donald Trump is on his way back as a presidential candidate. These are two examples of the increased authoritarian threat we see in the world right now.

– Trump is a unique example, it is very unusual for leaders to come back after a loss, says Martin Kragh, researcher at the Foreign Policy Institute.

For a few years now, various measurements have shown that democracy’s position in the world has declined, Kragh says, and goes on to say that it grew and strengthened after 1945 in several waves.

– Only after the Second World War when Nazi Germany collapsed and in any case Western Europe gained freedom, then in the 70s when former colonies broke away and established democracy. The Berlin Wall fell and the Iron Curtain fell, so Eastern Europe was democratized.

“Putin is a pioneer”

– Putin is a pioneer in some respects. He came to power with promises to establish stability and order. He said from the very beginning that his goal was not primarily to create a strong democracy, but to promise the other, which is also important of course – stability and order. The only problem is that the longer he strengthened his power and sat in power, the more this order came to consist in the fact that it is he himself who is simply only supposed to rule and dictate, says Russia expert Martin Kragh in Nyhetsmorgon.

That it turns out exactly like this is nothing unusual. Already the Greek philosopher Plato warned precisely that if a democracy enters a crisis, it is very easy for it to be taken over by a strong leader.

Could there be a demand in some countries for more authoritarian rule?

– It is difficult to speculate whether it is exactly what people are asking for. It can be part of the promise that leaders make. At least initially and there may be some appeal in that. Not least when people feel that their own societies are going through long-term phases of crisis, instability, economic and political uncertainty and polarization. Then of course there may be a demand for a leader who says that they should “clean up this swamp and fix all your problems”. The problem is that they very rarely fix the problem. Authoritarian leaders tend to exacerbate problems rather than solve them.

Is democracy fragile right now?

– Yes, I would absolutely say that it is. To reverse this trend, we can really only start with ourselves in our own communities and try to reflect on how we can counter polarization. How we can strengthen our democratic processes. It is possible that many of us in our generation have taken democracy for granted. We need to think about how we can strengthen our democracies in the West to avoid the same kind of pitfalls that other countries have fallen into.