Democracy falls in majority of countries worldwide

4 comments

1. Bot farms from foreign adversaries sowing the seeds of discontent in all political discourse has led us here. Add to that poisonous social media algorithms that heighten anger and division.

   Dismantling democracy with propaganda was their aim and they have succeeded.

   Democracy is collaborative. Angry, divided people don’t collaborate.

   Also wouldn’t be surprised if many politicians globally are compromised and blackmailed. We already know many are bought.

2. > Casas-Zamora attributed the global fall in media freedom to a combination of heavy-handed interventions on the part of governments, pandemic legacies and “the very negative impact of disinformation.”

   > “Some of [this] is real disinformation and some of which is used as a pretext by governments to clamp down on press freedoms,” he said.

   And some governments, like Israel, that spread disinformation and censor good journalism

3. There has been a dramatic accumulation of wealth and power at the top 1% versus the bottom 99%. You’ll find that power imbalances tend to corrupt democratic processes. If food and shelter prices hit a tipping point then you get current Nepal, Arab spring etc

   The most common-sense explanation points to the economic system that leads to such conditions as the culprit.

4. Yep. Pluralistic liberal democracy is HARD and takes a pretty constant intentional effort to preserve it, because anti-democratic states perceive it (somewhat rightly) as a threat, and democracies without coherent external threats tend to focus on internal power distribution rather than preserving institutional norms. Israel is one of the frequently misleading states as it has had more anti-democratic backsliding than most would predict given its wealth and education levels, but I’d argue that if you treat Israel and Palestine as one state in a civil war, the authoritarian slide makes sense and fits a model of anti-democratic norm erosion.

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