Democracy is in global decline

What's this about?

People disagree about whether democracy (rule by the people) is losing strength around the world.

The answer depends on the time and place we study.

What supporters say

• Several trusted groups report that democracy has grown weaker in recent years.
• Elections and people's rights face more pressure, including less free news and less fair votes.
• More countries now move toward rule by one strong leader than toward more people power.
• Scores that combine voting, rights, public voice, and good rule have fallen lately.

What critics say

• Democratic decline does not happen in every place, and some countries still improve.
• Democracy has grown across much of the world over many years, which makes a lasting world-wide drop less clear.

How to read this

The number of points on each side does not show who is right; strong proof matters more than a long list.

The bottom line

The evidence shows a broad weakening of democracy in recent years.

Still, the long view and country differences make a permanent world-wide fall unclear; both sides have points, but recent evidence leans toward decline.

The claim that democracy is in global decline is supported for the recent period, but only with important qualifications. Evidence points to widespread weakening across several democratic measures, while the longer historical picture and differences between countries make a simple, permanent worldwide slide harder to establish.

The case for

Several major democracy-monitoring organizations report deterioration in recent years, despite using different definitions and methods. V-Dem says autocratization continued through 2023, with more countries moving in that direction than toward greater democracy. Freedom House recorded an 18th consecutive year of declining global freedom in 2023, citing flawed elections, armed conflict, repression and growing executive power. Together, these independent assessments point to a broad recent downturn rather than a result produced by one index alone 12 (see Figure 1).

The pressure affects core democratic institutions, not simply which parties or leaders are in office. The areas showing strain include civil liberties, media freedom, limits on executive power, electoral procedures, political participation, public trust and the effectiveness of government. International IDEA found that 47% of countries declined on at least one measure of democratic performance in 2023, compared with 30% that improved. It also reported growing pressure on elections and their legitimacy 3 (see Figure 2).

A further indicator points in the same direction. The Economist Intelligence Unit reported falls in its global democracy score in both 2023 and 2024 4. That index combines elections, civil liberties, political participation and government performance, so its results are consistent with a multidimensional decline. But because it relies partly on expert judgments and combines several measures, it is less useful for determining the precise size of the change.

The convergence among these monitoring projects makes the recent trend difficult to dismiss. Their measures overlap, but are not identical, so agreement suggests that democratic stress is widespread across countries and institutions rather than an artifact of a single measurement system.

The case against

The word “global” can overstate what the evidence shows. Democracy is more widespread today than it was in previous centuries, and studies of recent backsliding still describe the longer historical trend as one of major democratic expansion. A short-term decline does not necessarily reverse that broader development 5 (see Figure 3).

The recent pattern is also far from uniform. International IDEA found that 30% of countries improved on at least one democratic measure in 2023. Country counts and population totals can also tell different stories: a fall in the number of democratic countries does not automatically show how many people have moved out of democratic rule. No single, consistent dataset currently combines democratic quality, the number of democratic countries and the population living under democracy across the entire period.

Measurement choices add further uncertainty. Some democratic qualities cannot be observed directly, so projects such as V-Dem estimate them from expert assessments. Composite indexes may therefore agree on the direction of change while differing over its scale. The available evidence is also concentrated in institutional reports, and unresolved concerns about how independent some sources are mean their agreement should not be treated as completely separate confirmation.

Finally, recent backsliding does not necessarily mean permanent authoritarian rule. Elections still provide opportunities for peaceful changes in government and democratic renewal. Democratic institutions and public commitments to democracy may also retain the capacity to resist authoritarian pressure.

The bottom line

The evidence favours a qualified version of the claim: democratic quality has recently deteriorated across many countries and several important dimensions. Support for that recent trend is stronger than the evidence against it.

But confidence is low rather than high for the broader statement that democracy is in continuous, uniform global decline. The exact scale depends on how democracy is defined, whether countries or populations are counted, and how recent changes are compared with the long-term expansion of democracy. The clearest conclusion is that democratic institutions are under widespread recent pressure—not that democracy is declining everywhere, permanently, or by a precisely known amount.