Do Elections Still Serve Democracy?

At the end of 2024, described by many analysts as an exceptional and decisive year for democracy around the world (e.g. Staffan Lindberg), it is time for the first assessments. The outcomes of the 2024 elections will have a tremendous impact on how global crises (such as climate change or the conflicts in Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East) will be dealt with in the near future. Never before have so many voters turned out to vote, which is good news. Supposedly testifying to the health of democracy worldwide, in 2024, 4.2 billion citizens of 65 countries took part in elections, including in eight of the most populous countries: India (1.4 billion inhabitants), the European Union and its parliamentary elections (357 million eligible voters), Indonesia (278.8 million inhabitants), Pakistan (243 million), Brazil (217 million) and the United States (341 million inhabitants). The steady success of elections (both presidential and legislative) is illustrated in the graph, showing a steady upward historical trend since 1800.

Elections seem to be doing well from a quantitative point of view, but on closer inspection, many analysts point that this unprecedented number of elections has been accompanied by democratic backsliding and an overall decline in the quality of electoral processes (see the map below). Worryingly, critics remark that there is a tendency for elections to be used to legitimise elected representatives who have little respect for democratic values and practices, or, worse, to empower or confirm illiberal leaders who are openly anti-democratic in the first place, as in Hungary, Israel and many other countries. Of course, these assessments are subject to criticism and debate. But it is well-known that authoritarian governments frequently revert to token elections in order to demonstrate their control over society and intimidate opponents. Elections do not always strengthen the rule of law. Think about President Putin’s continuous re-election that follows years of squashing dissent including the imprisonment and assassination of political opponents. In more established democracies too, illiberal forces are seeking to win or cement majorities by discriminating against minorities, instrumentalising the media, and capitalising on the growing distrust of elites and democratic institutions more generally. The influence that Hungary’ President Viktor Orbán can have on newly elected President Trump worries many analysts. The link between elections, the rule of law, and the defense of democracy thus needs to be probed further.

Geostrategic tensions and democratic backsliding

The disconnect between electoral logics and their democratic finality is intimately tied to the changing power balance between different branches of governments, their relation to the media, and the power of private lobbies, as observed since the beginning of the 21st century. The United Nations has issued warnings in the face of the weakening of the rule of law, rising threats to human rights coming from governments in the wake of post-9/11 anti-terrorist legislations giving sweeping powers to unchecked executive branches, and the rise of an anti-democratic front promoting a new anti-liberal world order (OHCHR).

While human rights and democracy identified with party pluralism are a bone of contention for some members of the P5, like Russia or China, elections, however, are not. Most governments anywhere in the world now find interest in elections; the latter give the appearance of choice to voters and offer public legitimacy to governments, even to the most autocratic ones. Nearly three quarters of today’s world population lives in autocracies (Reuters), including “electoral autocracies” that account for half of the countries in the world (VDEM/OHCHR). And yet, despite the apparent incompatibility between authoritarian regimes and elections (Ghandi and Lust-Okar), only three  countries in the world never  hold national elections (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Brunei). Elections have thus become quasi-universal and are not the apanage of democratic regimes. This process started well before the end of the Cold War. Already in the mid-twentieth century, European empires organised and rigged elections for representation in consultative assemblies. In colonial and postcolonial authoritarian settings, elections may serve as an institutional tool to legitimise rulers or to co-opt elites and share spoils with Western concessionary companies turned multinationals in the extractive sector. Elections may indeed serve as a convenient way of distributing the benefits of high office among members of the elite, and conversely to identify support bases or potential opponents (Ghandi and Lust-Okar). Many autocrats have thus become masters in the art of “stage-managing” elections using their control over state resources and the seemingly illimited means of coercion at their disposal (p. 407). Open interference during elections days such as ballot-boxing mostly becomes unnecessary in such contexts but may still serve as a means of last resort (p. 412). Empirical evidence has shown that autocracies with elections, while potentially facing punctual instability, are more durable than those without them (Geddes 1999).

Are the elections rendered meaningless? Of course not, and protecting elections is, in the words of Tony Banbury, President and CEO of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, which provides technical assistance for elections in more than 145 countries, essential as “all these elections that are taking place in 2024 are going to be confronting some version of attacks against democracy, attacks against electoral integrity”. Even when the electoral outcome is manipulated, international pressure can exert itself on autocrats by putting the light on deception and stir contention and public calls for accountability inside the country. But how can we define the defence of elections, and the democratic quality of debates leading up to voting?

The major democracies have been suffering from a lack of public interest in electoral debates and poor voter turnout in elections. The United States and Western Europe, which had made post-war promises of prosperity that guaranteed the middle classes a better future through involvement in politics at the national level, are often no longer in a position to issue credible promises to change life for voters through their ballots. So much depends from how other powers will act in the era of global inter-connectedness. Therefore, over the last 40 years, globalisation has been associated by many parties with the erosion of social safeguards at the national level, and the promotion of soft norms at the multinational level, leaving citizens disenchanted with globalisation: blaming globalisation, which is itself often treated as a blackbox by political leaders, has often been used to hide their failures at the national level. Accordingly, a global narrative has developed in the US or the EU according to which the democratic system is no longer able to protect citizens against the insecurities of today’s world. “By and large, people are unhappy with their governments, much more unhappy with their governments than they were 10 or 20, 30, 40 years ago”, says Harvard University Professor Steve Levitsky .

Relatedly, far-right parties are thriving in Europe and around the world: although they do not aim at restoring protection offered by welfare states in Europe or elsewhere, they promise to stop the opening of borders, a visible sign of globalisation. The vote for Brexit, and the large campaign of disinformation that preceded it, was a good illustration of such an orchestrated attack on the integrity of elections, which has hardly resulted in a better future for most of British voters. Since the 2010s, the electorate’s vote in favour of parties that openly criticise human rights when associated with the protection of LGBTQ+ rights of women’s right has become uninhibited. This rise has resulted in the transfer of power at the ballot box to leaders or parties with openly antidemocratic leanings. In India, this trend toward authoritarianism has not been stopped by elections. In Europe, Hungary, Poland, Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Great Britain and the Netherlands, to name but a few countries with a democratic tradition, have all recently experienced the victory of far-right parties in regional or legislative elections, elections after elections. The entry of far-right parties in the EU Parliament is an uncanny consequence of the process of EU integration itself: the EU’s deeper and wider integration of European nations is criticised by populists, and it gives new opportunities of voice to these very critics, while leaving the EU unable to defend itself, with the exception of a few actions (in the form of temporary freezes to the disbursement of EU cohesion funds, for instance) undertaken by the Commission, which often come too late, and amount to too little. Additionally, increasing polarisation, fuelled by extremist rhetoric and hate-speech, has torn apart civil societies and dehumanised political leaders in public debates. Elections have served as a stepping stone for illiberal parties vying for power, mobilising emotions by staging cultural wars and promoting national identity.

The frail link between elections and democracy

The first quarter of this century has thus seen a deterioration of indicators measuring both the quality of democracy and of elections. Even if one shall take the construction of indicators on such matters with great care, the measured “quality” of democracy enjoyed by the average global citizen in 2022 has returned to the levels of 1986 according to UN organisations (OHCHR, citing a report by the V-Dem Institute). According to Anchor Change, only 38% of elections in 2024 will be completely free. The results of a study by The Economist on democracy (Democracy Index from the Economist’s Intelligence Unit) show that the “quality” of electoral processes around the world has deteriorated over the last twenty years. The map opposite uses a sample of 56 countries (among the 65 that voted in 2024) illustrating that 43% of countries saw the “quality” of the process decline between 2006 and 2020, while only 25% saw it improve. The map shows also the political regime of the 56 countries in 2006 and 2020, using Lührmann, Tannenberg and  Lindberg’s classification in four regimes: closed autocracy,electoral autocracy, electoral democracy, and liberal democracy. It is worth noting that of the 24 countries that saw their electoral rating decline, almost 59% are home to dictatorial or authoritarian regimes, in which elections are not free. There is therefore a hypothetical link between the failure to respect the conditions of electoral processes and the trend towards less and less democratic regimes.

Criteria measuring the “quality” of elections vary. Those used in the map are based on the category “electoral process and pluralism” of the Democracy Index and include: fairness, equity and respect of basic rules; the security of voters; the application of the same rules for all participants; low influence of foreign forces; and the plurality of political parties. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), the authority of the public authorities in any given state can only be based on the will of the people expressed through genuine, free and fair elections, held periodically by universal, equal and secret suffrage. Elections enable citizens to express their will freely and to exercise their right to participate in public affairs. This right is codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in several treaties, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (OHCHR).

But the shift to the digital world and the growing role of social media have shaken up the habits and beliefs associated with contemporary political life. Social networks enable candidates to communicate directly with their voters, bypassing the traditional media that used to act as a filter. The agora has been replaced by social networks ruled by the hidden influences of algorithms, where people, while enjoying greater freedom of expression, get trapped into echo chambers with limited access to reliable information. The rational ideal of open exchange in a shared public space is replaced by a landscape of closed, cluttered communities based on emotional bonds and shared narratives of besiegement. This is accompanied by a growing amnesia about the evils of oppressive governments lead by masculinist authoritarian leaders as a shared legacy of the twentieth century. The spread of disinformation, including deepfakes, generated by malicious (foreign) governments or by plotters has been further undermining electoral processes.

Considering these trends, it is not surprising that confidence in democratic elections and their effectiveness has plummeted in recent decades. Elections are getting more and more contested and electoral results are regularly disputed in courts in a trend toward the “judicialisation of elections”, as we have witnessed in various US elections. One can go back to the Bush-Gore dispute dispute settled by a US constitutional court that already signalled its political orientation and to the attacks (both physical and judicial) during the Trump-Biden presidential election of 2020. The percentage of American voters who no longer have confidence in their electoral system, for instance, has exploded in recent years. This lack of trust in elections is in line with a more general loss of confidence in political elites and dissatisfaction with politics in general. Critics fear that once elected to power, illiberal leaders implement policies that systematically erode democratic safeguards and consolidate their power base by bending the rules of the game, including the way elections are run, through gerrymandering and new electoral laws. The EU parliament, in various reports, as well as academics have shown how the Hungarian leading party has prestacked elections by staffing electoral commissions with party members, reverting to technological surveillance, controlling, defunding or curtailing the press, slandering or jailing political opponents, eroding judicial safeguards and bodies, promoting opaque campaign financing clampdowns on civil society and NGOS, among other human rights violations.

Are elections, therefore, foundational for democracy? According to Jon Elster and Arnaud Le Pillouer, the answer is yes, because “any electoral process is immediately analysed as democratic, and because democracy is supposed to be exclusively elective”. Today, however, several factors are putting this assumption to question as elections are not of and in themselves an intrinsic guarantee of democracy. On the one hand, non-elected entities pursuing private interests (such as multinational companies) are exerting increasing influence throughout the world, while non-elected entities in charge of guarding democracies against populist extremists (typically, constitutional and central banks) may fall pray to tactics of court-packing, as seen in the cases of Hungary, Poland, and now the United States. On the other hand, elections are called into question, including on the left, for their lack of effectiveness, equity and legitimising power. Alexander Guerrero, for instance, goes as far as claiming that the electoral mechanisms lies at the heart of democracy’s difficulties. In his view, democracies have failed as accountability mechanisms because they mostly “provide powerful short-term incentives, leading elected politicians to downplay long-term catastrophic concerns” that require the establishment of continuous mechanisms of participatory democracy to check governments and open the debate to new voices beyond electoral sequences. Otherwise, representative democracies will consistently silence some voices, such as  those of young voters, as younger generations are consistently underrepresented in governments and parliaments except when they are utilised by emerging fringe parties which lack any trained politician.

What cure?

What can be done then to restore the faith in electoral practice? From a technical point of view, there are the classic avenues of controls at polling stations, the introduction of digital voting, and the dispatch of international auditors. Going further, some analysts, such as the aforementioned Alexander Guerrero,  have suggested introducing lottocracy, where elected representatives are selected, as in Ancient Greece, not through voting but through lottery. Others still, mostly on the left, have suggested new forms of democracy based on participative – often local and communal – social practices that bypass elections altogether and thus, ultimately, contribute to undermining their legitimacy. More fundamentally, providing economic and social security to citizens will prove crucial to the future of democracy, since the issue of inequality is, paradoxically, a key factor in the current rise to power of illiberal and authoritarian regimes promoting inequality programmatically.

Finally, elections that allow citizens to choose between different futures are a necessary but non-sufficient condition for democracy. The right to vote and be elected in genuine elections is intrinsically linked to and depends on a wide range of many human rights (OHCHR). This is why well-functioning elections epitomise good governance and constitute a pillar of sound democracies. Elections indeed constitute a litmus test for democracy as, for to be free and fair, they depend on several of its key building blocks such as freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, independence of courts, effective parliaments, as well as a vibrant public space and civil society.