What’s in an election?

The Z Factor

In an age when kings, queens and dictators were rife, an election was seen as an act of revolutionary freedom. Not anymore.

Over the last century, elected regimes have proliferated around the world. In 1924, less than 30 per cent of the world’s countries had an electoral system of any kind. Today, that number is almost 85 per cent.

And yet, there’s a sense of farcicality about some of it. This year, a whopping 53 countrieswill go to the polls. Almost a third of them are objectively authoritarian, including Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and North Korea (which blithely calls itself the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea).

It’s a telling demonstration of how the concepts of “elections” and “democracy” have evolved. A century ago, dictators frowned upon elections altogether, seeing them as exercises in treachery and disorder. Authoritarian leaders like Hitler and Mussolini came to power and dispensed of with elections, disbanded parliaments, and subjugated the courts. Others, in places like Pakistan, overthrew elected governments and executed their leaders.

But today, autocrats see much use for the trappings of democracy. The veneer of an election helps lend legitimacy to their rule and -- perhaps just as importantly -- the legitimacy to denounce political dissidents as troublemakers or terrorists. To that end, many countries hold rigged or unfree elections by making the election authority a handmaiden, monopolising political funding and using ‘dark money’, muzzling or buying off the press, imprisoning political rivals, and brandishing the power of law in their hands as well as street power to intimidate dissenters into silence. The idea is to deny voters the opportunity to make a free and informed choice by overwhelming them with partisan propaganda and preventing opposition leaders from campaigning freely.

Meanwhile, instead of disbanding parliaments, elected autocrats maintain the figment of parliamentary democracy and still get their way by simply suspending opposition lawmakers and passing laws without debate. Courts and judges are subordinated through both fear and favour. Military leaders, on the other hand, rule through puppet prime ministers who are thrown out of office when they turn difficult to handle.

These qualitative changes in the functioning of democracies are already being reflected in the data. For generations, the world’s nations got more democratic. But since 2012, more countries have been tending autocratic than democratic, according to Sweden’s V-Dem Institute. In 2022, V-Dem said that as many as 40 countries became more autocratic; only 14 became more democratic than they were.

The tradition of a half-baked, farcical election without the full slate of democratic rights is altogether more sinister, because it allows autocratic leaders to chip away at democracy without the voters even realising it. A military coup or an overthrow of the democratic government is easy to spot and, therefore, easier to mobilise against. Coup leaders are routinely placed on global sanctions lists and pressed to concede democratic reform (even if success is not guaranteed). But when autocrats retain the veneer of an unfree and unfair election, democracy disappears gradually. Much like the melting snow, one never knows what’s happening until it’s all gone.

For that reason, as with any form of cancer, the gradual disappearance of democracy can only be prevented if it is spotted early. The question that voters must ask themselves is not whether they are getting to vote. Instead, they must ask whether they are getting to hear enough bad news about their country (sadly important, because most autocrats suppress bad news). They must also check if they are able to question the president or prime minister, protest on the streets, and rely on the courts to rule against the government.

The narrow definition of a democracy as a place where elections are held was useful when the world was transitioning out of monarchy and colonialism. It is outdated and unhelpful today. Today, it lends cover to aspiring autocrats and demagogues in what were previously vibrant democracies.