By NICHOLAS RICCARDI
In November, the world’s most powerful democracy elected as its next president a man who schemed to overturn its last presidential election. A month later, South Koreans swarmed their legislature to block their president’s attempt to impose martial law.
The contrast sums up a year that tested democracy on all sides.
Incumbent parties and leaders were battered in elections that covered 60% of the world’s population, a sign of widespread discontent in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. It also was a sign of democracy working well, as it continued its core function of giving citizens the opportunity to replace the people who govern them.
That made 2024 a year in which the state of democracy is both a glass half full and half empty.
From Asia to Africa to the Americas, it produced examples of democracy working and citizens standing up against attempted coups or authoritarians. At the same time, some of the new regimes ushered in are taking a distinctly authoritarian tack. And the year ends with fresh turmoil in three prominent democracies, Canada, France and Germany.
Crossroads for democracy in the US
Donald Trump ended his last term trying to overturn his loss to President Joe Biden and rallying an angry crowd of supporters, some of whom then stormed the U.S. Capitol in a violent attempt to block Congress from certifying Biden’s victory. It was a shocking end to the U.S.’s long tradition of peacefully transferring power from one president to the next.
Nonetheless, voters in November agreed to give Trump another term in the White House, even as he increasingly embraced authoritarian leaders and promised to seek retribution against those who defended democracy in 2020.
Voters didn’t heed warnings about Trump’s threat to democracy and were driven more by frustration at inflation and a surge in migration during Biden’s term.
That, of course, is democracy in action: Voters can choose to throw out an incumbent party even if the establishment warns that it’s dangerous. Indeed, the glass half full position on Trump is that his win was entirely democratic.
Trump’s 2016 victory was due to a quirk in the country’s 18th century Constitution that awards the presidency not based on a majority of the popular vote, but to whoever wins a majority of state-based Electoral College votes.
But in 2024, Trump won both the popular and Electoral College votes. He also expanded his margins among Latino and Black voters. He won with high turnout, debunking a long-held myth that U.S. conservatives struggle when many people vote. That belief has driven Republican attempts to make it tougher to cast a ballot.
Authoritarians gaining across the globe
The quiet period after the election is to some extent an illusion. Had Trump lost, he and his allies were poised to contest a victory by his Democratic opponent, so it’s not as if anti-democratic tendencies were erased by his win.
Trump’s victory helped trigger turmoil in Canada, where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government was rocked this week by the resignation of his prominent finance minister over disagreements on handling Trump’s threatened tariffs. And Germany’s government collapsed ahead of elections next year, sparking turmoil in Europe’s largest economy less than two weeks after a similar political meltdown in France.
The returning U.S. president is part of a wave of new leaders who have gained ground in Western countries, some of whom analysts warn are anti-democratic, even if popularly elected, because they seek to dismantle the system of checks and balances that has made it possible for voters to replace them or halt potentially dangerous policies.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a major Trump booster, is an icon of this movement after he revamped his country’s judiciary, legislative maps and media to make it almost impossible for the opposition to win. Two years ago, European Union lawmakers declared that Orban had transformed his country from a democracy into “a hybrid regime of electoral autocracy.”
Analysts warn that Slovakia’s leftist, pro-Russian prime minister Robert Fico is headed in that direction. Conservative populist parties also gained ground in the European Union Parliamentary elections in June.
Trump also highlights another worrying trend for democracy — a surge in violence around elections.
The billionaire candidate, controversial for his own rhetoric urging violence on protesters or migrants, was the target of two assassination attempts.
According to Washington, D.C.-based Freedom House, 26 of the year’s 62 elections across the world featured violence, including attacks on local candidates in Mexico and South Africa and violence at polling places in Chad. Slovakia’s Fico was targeted, as well.
That comes as there is a notable dip in enthusiasm for democracy. A Pew poll of 24 countries released earlier this year found widespread dissatisfaction with democracy worldwide, with a median of 59% of voters concerned about how it is working in their country amid economic concerns and a sense of alienation from political elites.
Some wins for democracy in a year of setbacks
Still, there is a clear silver lining for democracy.
The same Pew poll that found its appeal slipping also found that it remains by far the preferred system of government worldwide. And people turned out to demonstrate that, during elections and in protest of anti-democratic moves.
South Korea was not the only foiled attempt to disband democracy. In Bolivia in June, the military tried to replace President Luis Arce, with armored vehicles ramming through the doors of the government palace. But the troops retreated after Arce named a new commander who ordered them back.
In Bangladesh, protests over limits on who can work for the government expanded into public frustration with the 15-year reign of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, toppling her regime and forcing her to flee the country.
In Senegal, the country’s president tried to delay its March election but was overruled by the nation’s top court, and voters replaced him with a largely-unknown opposition leader who had just been freed from prison. In Botswana and South Africa, parties that had ruled for decades stepped aside or shared power without incident after losing elections.
Democracy isn’t static. Its health always depends on the next election. The fall of Germany’s government and possible collapse of Canada’s could just be democracy in action, giving voters a chance to elect new leaders. Or they could usher in more authoritarian regimes.
More will be revealed about how democracy did over the last year as its election results play out in 2025 and the years to come.
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