The observation is sad: 72% of the world’s population today lives in non-democratic countries, dictatorships or electoral autocracies. Over the past decade, dictatorships have increased from 22 to 33, while democratic systems have fallen from 44 to 32. The number of failed democracies has also increased, a hybrid model that includes components of autocratic and democratic regimes, where there are failures in the application of principles and values, such as freedom of the press, independence between powers, police repression, threats of coups, integrity of the electoral system, among others.
This finding is based on research carried out by the Swedish V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg. Authoritarian escalation is a threat to the balance between nations. In recent times, the planet lives in fear of a new Cold War, which could be the trigger for a conflict of deadly proportions for humanity. China and Russia, together in the strategy of eliminating Western power, led by the United States, and against a backdrop of the tragedy that struck Ukraine, are pushing the planet towards the precipice. Last week we saw Vladimir Putin, Russia’s all-powerful leader, declare loud and clear: “If Europe wants war, we are ready.”
After all, what happens to democracies? Do they die? Do they watch, inert, as their base disappears? Have they not resisted the growing violence that invades the air of freedom? Would the struggle of power for power, without the light of ideologies and doctrines, be a return to our ancestral past?
These are crucial questions. Which have already deserved to be analyzed by political scientists. The famous work How Democracies Die, by professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, makes an important observation for understanding contemporary life. The main thesis of both authors is that systems are corrupted by the perversion of the legal process, meaning that legitimately elected governments subvert the means that brought them to power.
In Latin America, one only has to look at the military coups, in Brazil (1964), Argentina (1966), Chile (1973), Uruguay (1976) and the putschist movements that occur here and there, revealing the instability of representative institutions, the militarization of political life and the restriction of political freedom and expression.
Even the largest Western democracy, that of North America, has suffered threats following the election of Donald Trump and his anti-democratic sermons. There, we have never seen so much preaching against the pillars of democracy.
The crisis, as we know, is chronic and has lasted for a long time. And where are your roots? Norberto Bobbio, Italian sociologist and political scientist, in his classic work The Future of Democracy, raises the question: democracies have not fulfilled their commitments to communities.
Broken promises characterize a pluralistic society, with its different centers of power, with the domination of oligarchies which seek to preserve their traditions and, also, with the force of an invisible power, which acts clandestinely from the visible power, represented by the State. Just look at the expansion of gangs and organized crime, now present in virtually all Latin American countries. It is estimated that approximately 40% of homicides worldwide are linked to organized crime and gang violence, which are prevalent in the three Americas,
Political ignorance prevails. Bobbio is adamant that political apathy affects about half of those eligible to vote. It’s not much. In our Brazil, the vast majority of the electorate still vegetates in what is called “passive citizenship”.
The promises were not kept because of the obstacles and challenges imposed by a society that moved from a family economy to a market economy, that is to say a planned economy, which opened the era of “government of technicians”, and brought within its framework serious problems, such as unemployment, inflation, increasing inequalities, crazy competition, violence.
Democratic state performance is declining, and in many countries government systems are becoming ungovernable. Tensions between powers (in the case of Brazil) contribute to institutional instability. The interference of one power on another becomes constant, to the point of considering that legislative functions are absorbed by the judicial power, as is the case today in our region. Just look at the recent quarrel between the STF and the Federal Senate and their mutual accusations of invasion of power.
The STF even resembles a gigantic police station, judging vandals. The executive power, in turn, covers the legislative power, with its articulation to co-opt parliamentarians with the release of resources and other means of attraction, such as positions and spaces in the administrative structure.
In a thoughtful essay, professors and researchers Fernando Limongi and Angelina Figueiredo explain: “The organizational model of the Brazilian legislature is quite different from that of North America. Legislative work in Brazil is very centralized and anchored in party action.
The fact is that the exercise of governance is becoming more and more complex. The interests of the group and individuals take precedence over collective demands. The conquest of power, at all costs, is the objective that transforms politics into an arena of struggle. In this conflicting landscape, coups, insurrections, disruptive movements, anchored in barracks and weapons, are the new components that corrode the gaps and shortcomings of democracies, making the world more authoritarian.
Gaudêncio Torquato is a writer, journalist, professor emeritus at ECA-USP and political consultant
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