The New Republic Daily
Report
05/31/11
The Great Democracy Meltdown: Why the World Is Becoming Less Free Joshua Kurlantzick
As the revolt that started this past winter in Tunisia
spread to Egypt, Libya, and beyond, dissidents the world over were looking to
the Middle East for inspiration. In China, online activists inspired by the Arab
Spring called for a “jasmine revolution.” In Singapore, one of the quietest
countries in the world, opposition members called for an “orchid evolution” in
the run-up to this month’s national elections. Perhaps as a result, those
watching from the West have been positively triumphalist in their predictions.
The Middle East uprisings could herald “the greatest advance for human rights
and freedom since the end of the cold war,” argued British Foreign Secretary
William Hague. Indeed, at no point since the end of the cold war—when Francis
Fukuyama penned his famous essay The End of History, positing that
liberal democracy was the ultimate destination for every country—has there been
so much optimism about the march of global freedom.
If only things were so simple. The truth is that the Arab Spring is something of a smokescreen for what is taking place in the world as a whole. Around the globe, it is democratic meltdowns, not democratic revolutions, that are now the norm. (And even countries like Egypt and Tunisia, while certainly freer today than they were a year ago, are hardly guaranteed to replace their autocrats with real democracies.) In its most recent annual survey, the monitoring group Freedom House found that global freedom plummeted for the fifth year in a row, the longest continuous decline in nearly 40 years. It pointed out that most authoritarian nations had become even more repressive, that the decline in freedom was most pronounced among the “middle ground” of nations—countries that have begun democratizing but are not solid and stable democracies—and that the number of electoral democracies currently stands at its lowest point since 1995. Meanwhile, another recent survey, compiled by Germany’s Bertelsmann Foundation, spoke of a “gradual qualitative erosion” of democracy and concluded that the number of “highly defective democracies”—democracies so flawed that they are close to being failed states, autocracies, or both—had doubled between 2006 and 2010.
Continue reading "The Great Democracy Meltdown: Why the World Is Becoming Less Free"
From Martha Stewart to Barry Bonds, How Celebrities’ Lies Are Threatening the U.S. Justice System Eric A. Posner
The Many Disgraces of TLC's Wildly Misleading ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’ Seyward Darby
05/31/11
The Great Democracy Meltdown: Why the World Is Becoming Less Free Joshua Kurlantzick
As the revolt that started this past winter in Tunisia
spread to Egypt, Libya, and beyond, dissidents the world over were looking to
the Middle East for inspiration. In China, online activists inspired by the Arab
Spring called for a “jasmine revolution.” In Singapore, one of the quietest
countries in the world, opposition members called for an “orchid evolution” in
the run-up to this month’s national elections. Perhaps as a result, those
watching from the West have been positively triumphalist in their predictions.
The Middle East uprisings could herald “the greatest advance for human rights
and freedom since the end of the cold war,” argued British Foreign Secretary
William Hague. Indeed, at no point since the end of the cold war—when Francis
Fukuyama penned his famous essay The End of History, positing that
liberal democracy was the ultimate destination for every country—has there been
so much optimism about the march of global freedom.If only things were so simple. The truth is that the Arab Spring is something of a smokescreen for what is taking place in the world as a whole. Around the globe, it is democratic meltdowns, not democratic revolutions, that are now the norm. (And even countries like Egypt and Tunisia, while certainly freer today than they were a year ago, are hardly guaranteed to replace their autocrats with real democracies.) In its most recent annual survey, the monitoring group Freedom House found that global freedom plummeted for the fifth year in a row, the longest continuous decline in nearly 40 years. It pointed out that most authoritarian nations had become even more repressive, that the decline in freedom was most pronounced among the “middle ground” of nations—countries that have begun democratizing but are not solid and stable democracies—and that the number of electoral democracies currently stands at its lowest point since 1995. Meanwhile, another recent survey, compiled by Germany’s Bertelsmann Foundation, spoke of a “gradual qualitative erosion” of democracy and concluded that the number of “highly defective democracies”—democracies so flawed that they are close to being failed states, autocracies, or both—had doubled between 2006 and 2010.
Continue reading "The Great Democracy Meltdown: Why the World Is Becoming Less Free"
From Martha Stewart to Barry Bonds, How Celebrities’ Lies Are Threatening the U.S. Justice System Eric A. Posner
The Many Disgraces of TLC's Wildly Misleading ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’ Seyward Darby
