On November 19, 2021, more than a year after the 2020 presidential elections, news broke that Ronna McDaniel finally admitted for the first time in public that Biden beat Trump. This fact alone should be enough to not be surprised that the United States has recently been added to an annual list of "backsliding" democracies for the first time...

_{source: YouTube}

A Stockholm-based think tank, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), listed the United States for the first time in their annual report on the state of global democracy, as a "backsliding democracy." The report warned that not only the U.S., but the entire world is becoming more authoritarian, with the number of countries moving in the direction of authoritarianism is three times the number moving towards democracy. The International IDEA has tracked roughly 160 countries over the course of 50 years, and ranks them as democracies (including backsliding, eroding and fragile democracies), hybrid, and authoritarian regimes, based on a number of democratic indicators. Among them are the peaceful transfer of power and accepting the outcome of fair elections; needless to say that Trump failed to score on those points. The report literally says that "a historic turning point came in 2020-21 when former president Donald Trump questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election results in the United States," and it points to a "decline in the quality of freedom of association and assembly during the summer of protests in 2020."

The organisation’s secretary general, Kevin Casas-Zamora, said: "The visible deterioration of democracy in the United States, as seen in the increasing tendency to contest credible election results, the efforts to suppress participation (in elections), and the runaway polarisation ... is one of the most concerning developments."
_{source: The Guardian}

Although the International IDEA specifically mentions the Trump years as a period of acceleration towards more authoritarianism it has to be said that this is a development that's been going on for much longer; the U.S., like many other western countries, seized to be a representative democracy decades ago. Policy-making is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of of affluent citizens, as shown in a 2014 Cambridge University study:

Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.
_{source: Cambridge University Press}

The pandemic is also mentioned as a significant factor for the global move towards authoritarianism, with some countries delaying or cancelling elections altogether, and taking measures that were not directly, or not exclusively aimed at preventing the virus spreading. This should be the most obvious cause for autocratization; especially if you regularly read my posts you should already know that the powers that be will never waste a good crisis, and will always use a crisis to further increase their power over we, the people. The Wikipedia page on democratic backsliding lists another cause for autocratization that is prevalent and growing around the world and in America in particular; economic inequality and social discontent. And we can add rampant polarization, populism, and personalism as well. Altogether the news of America being listed as a backsliding democracy is bad news, very bad news, but it shouldn't be all that surprising. Unfortunately.

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