2024 will be the most significant year in history for a global election.
Will democracy survive?
2024 will be the most significant year in history for a global election.
Will democracy survive?
1)
On 1 January, Future Perfect published its predictions for 2024. The projections range from how many poultry will be culled this year because of bird flu to which film will win the Oscar for Best Picture. (Oppenheimer - take it to the bank.)
But no subject was covered by more predictions than who will win some of the most critical elections worldwide this year.
2)
That's because 2024 will be the most significant election year in history. More than 60 countries, representing half the world's population - 4 billion people - will go to the polls in 2024 to vote in presidential, parliamentary and local elections.
These elections will range from the massive - India's multi-day general election (the world's largest) and Indonesia's presidential election, the world's most significant single-day vote - to tiny North Macedonia's presidential election.
3)
Elections in 2024 will include free and fair polls, such as Iceland's presidential election, which will be held in the world's third most democratic country, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Then, there are countries with less free elections, such as North Korea. (North Koreans have a choice when they go to the polls, just as my son has a choice between "cereal" and "cereal" for breakfast). In between will be most of the 2024 elections, including the US presidential election, where the popular vote winner has lost the election in two of the last six campaigns.
4)
The stakes in the 2024 democratic contests will be enormous - not just for the countries going to the polls but for the world.
Democracy on the ballot
Will Taiwan, which goes to the polls on 13 January, risk increasing the chances of war with China? Will the African National Congress, the party of Nelson Mandela, finally lose power in post-apartheid South Africa?
Will the European Parliament continue to see the rise of far-right parties? And if, as expected, Donald Trump and Joe Biden face off again in the US, will the results be any different from those in 2020?
5)
If you groaned when you read that, you're not alone. But the US is far from the only country where it feels like not just tax rates or foreign policy but also democracy will be on the ballot in 2024.
The first election of 2024, Bangladesh's general election on 7 January, won't even feature the main opposition party, which is boycotting the campaign, claiming the vote will be compromised. The year's two most significant elections, in India and Indonesia, will both be overshadowed by democratically elected leaders who have become increasingly autocratic in office.
According to International IDEA's Global State of Democracy report, half of all countries have seen a decline in at least one indicator of democracy over the past five years.
6)
Think of it as the paradox of democracy: while more people in 2024 will be exercising the most fundamental act of democracy - voting - democracy has rarely felt more vulnerable.
Nobel Peace Prize winner and investigative journalist Maria Ressa recently told Politico: "By the end of 2024, we will know whether democracy lives or dies."
But before we write democracy's epitaph, it's worth taking a moment to realise how extraordinary - and how recent - it is that billions of people worldwide will have the opportunity to help choose their leaders.
7)
Democracy in its infancy
According to many sources, the United States is the world's oldest continuous democracy, dating back more than 200 years.
This age makes it an outlier. According to Our World in Data, only about half of the world's countries are electoral democracies, meaning they hold meaningful, free and fair multi-party elections.
Of those countries, only ten have been democracies for 91 years or more, and twice as many countries have been democracies for 18 years or less.
8)
This means that many voters who will go to the polls in 2024 have spent at least some of their years under some form of autocracy, including countries like Indonesia, South Africa and Mexico, where even young adults can remember a time before democracy.
That's how recent the experience of widespread democracy is; according to Our World in Data, it wasn't until the 1990s that more countries were democracies of some kind than autocracies.
9)
Go back a little further, and you realise how recent any form of democratic rule is. In 1800, there were no true democracies, and less than 4 per cent of countries counted as "electoral autocracies" - that is, elections existed but were restricted in ways we would now recognise as unfree.
(Count the US among them. Although it has had elections since its founding, the American vote in 1800 was primarily restricted to white men with property, and it wasn't until after the civil rights revolution of the 1960s that the US could be considered a genuinely free democracy).
10)
Life has been nasty, brutish and short for most of human history, and humanity has spent most of its existence under some form of autocracy, whether emperor, king or dictator.
(And given that about half the countries in the world are autocracies of some kind, that's still the reality for billions of people).
11)
The idea that people have the right to choose their leaders is much newer than many realise. The idea itself is far from perfect, just as democracies themselves often fall far short of the ideal - and given the amount of democratic backsliding occurring today, both in new democracies like Indonesia and older ones like the US, they risk falling even further short in the future.
12)
But for all the justified hand-wringing about the ultimate fate of democracy in this record-breaking election year, it's worth taking a moment to appreciate just how far so much of the world has come.
It has taken decades, even centuries, of effort to achieve the level of democracy enjoyed by billions of people around the world. Now, we must preserve it - if we can.
2024 is the biggest global election year in history
Will democracy survive it?
The year of elections – Is 2024 democracy's most significant test ever?
More than two billion people across 50 countries are expected to go to the polls this year – here are 10 significant elections to watch.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/4/the-year-of-elections-is-2024-democracys-biggest-test-ever
The biggest electoral year in history: Will democracy survive 2024? | DW News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dMPcHd3rQ8&t=495s
2024 is the most significant electoral year in history, with people heading to the polls in dozens of countries. This is DW's preview of the most consequential elections of 2024 across Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas – and what they mean for the health and future of democracy. Correspondent Rosie Birchard speaks to DW experts on Taiwan, India, South Africa, Mexico, the EU and the US.
