Freedom House: Spread of autocracy in Europe and Eurasia
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This year’s edition, Nations in Transit 2021: The Antidemocratic Turn, highlights the extent to which countries like Hungary and Poland, which helped lead the broader transition toward democracy in the 1990s, are showing signs of deepening autocratization.
These are not anomalies, but part of a systemic shift toward authoritarianism in Europe and Eurasia that could have global implications. Antidemocratic leaders are learning from one another how to consolidate power and suppress political dissent while avoiding penalties from international institutions.The overall strength of democracy in the region has declined for 17 consecutive years, according to Nations in Transit, and the number of countries classified as democracies has sunk to its lowest point since the report was first launched in 1995.
The leaders who have turned toward antidemocratic forms of governance follow similar strategies: Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Hungary pioneered a model for repressing independent media that has since spread to Poland and Serbia, the ruling parties of Hungary and Poland are both escalating attacks on the LGBT+ community as well as ethnic and religious minority groups, and all are attempting to weaken the rule of law through attacks on judicial independence.
Poland and Hungary stand out for their unparalleled democratic deterioration over the past decade, but the majority of countries evaluated in Nations in Transit are currently worse off than they were 10 years ago.
“The spread of autocracy in Europe and Eurasia has far-reaching implications, not just for the region, but also for the world,†said Michael J. Abramowitz, president of Freedom House.
“Democratically elected leaders are turning away from democracy and creating their own warped realities to consolidate and retain power. Through their successes so far, these antidemocratic regimes are setting an example and fueling the rise of authoritarianism in neighboring countries. Left unchecked, they have the potential to undermine democracy and legitimize the abuse of power in Europe and beyond.â€
In Russia and Belarus, which the report categorizes as consolidated authoritarian regimes, repression intensified considerably over the past year.
The violent crackdown on prodemocracy protesters in Belarus, the Kremlin’s attempted murder of anticorruption activist and opposition leader Aleksey Navalny, and the Russian military’s recent show of force along the borders of Ukraine demonstrate the lengths to which these regimes are willing to go to stay in power.
Nations in Transit has documented not only the spread of authoritarianism in Europe and Eurasia, but also a decade of struggling efforts at democratic reform.
Armenia, which had previously recorded the largest improvement ever measured in the report, has regressed for the first time since the Velvet Revolution, while Kyrgyzstan, which had previously made progress toward democratic governance, returned to strongman rule in 2020.
“The decline of democracy in Europe and Eurasia is deeply troubling, especially in the context of 15 consecutive years of democratic deterioration at the global level,†said Zselyke Csaky, research director for Europe and Eurasia at Freedom House.
Authoritarianism is not a purely national problem, but one that can spread to infect entire regions and even continents.
"European democracies and civil society groups must coordinate in support of prodemocracy movements in countries where authoritarianism is gaining ground. Change must come from within, but to give these efforts a chance and stem the antidemocratic tide, European democracies and their partners must take the field, set an example, and overcome the lie that autocracy is a viable alternative to democracy.â€
Nations in Transit 2021 assesses the state of democratic governance in 29 countries from Central Europe to Central Asia. The country scores pertain to conditions and developments between January and December 2020.
There are fewer democracies in Europe and Eurasia than at any point in the 26-year history of Nations in Transit. Of the 29 countries assessed, 10 were rated as democracies, 10 as hybrid regimes, and nine as authoritarian regimes. No countries changed categories this year.
The average democracy score for the region has declined every year since 2005—17 years in a row. Eighteen countries’ democracy scores declined this year, only six countries’ scores improved, and five countries experienced no net change. The spread of authoritarianism continues to outpace democratic progress by a wide margin.
The largest declines occurred in Poland (-0.36), which suffered the second-largest single-year drop ever recorded, and in Hungary (-0.25). Both countries’ democracy scores are the lowest they have ever been during the 17-year period of overall decline.
The most common regime type in Eurasia remains “consolidated authoritarian.†Armenia is the only semiconsolidated authoritarian regime in Eurasia, while Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine are the only hybrid/transitional regimes in this subregion. There are no democracies in Eurasia.
The most common regime type in the Balkans continues to be “hybrid/transitional.†The only exception is Croatia, which is considered a semiconsolidated democracy.
Despite having suffered the steepest decline over the past decade, Central Europe remains the best-performing subregion; its most common regime type is “consolidated democracy.†Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania are the only semiconsolidated democracies in Central and Eastern Europe; Hungary is the only hybrid/transitional regime.
Although each electoral breakthrough is unique, two interrelated factors may best explain how voters in hybrid or backsliding regimes have been able to “break the collective action problem and deliver change through elections,†as Tena Prelec and Jovana Marović put it.
First, these voters are angry. The recent electoral upsets occurred against a backdrop of corruption scandals and other abuses of power that revealed the ugly venality of the existing leadership.
Kosovo, Montenegro, Moldova, and Slovakia perform far worse on Nations in Transit’s Corruption ratings than they do on any other indicator.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is the sole exception, although that is partly because some of its other ratings are also quite low. A 2020 incident in which authorities awarded a contract for the importation of medical ventilators to a fruit-farming company underscores that corruption is by no means checked in the country.
Stories of official wrongdoing have outraged voters and driven them to support anticorruption crusaders, including Slovakia’s victorious OĽaNO party, which ran on the slogan “Together against the mafia,†or Moldova’s newly elected president, Maia Sandu, whose slogan declared, “It’s time for good people.â€
Second, citizens are casting ballots in large enough numbers to thwart incumbents’ efforts at intimidation and manipulation. In Kosovo, turnout was up 3.4 percentage points in 2019 and 7.7 in 2021, relative to the parliamentary elections in 2017. Turnout soared past 60 percent in Slovakia for the first time since 2002.
Records were shattered in Montenegro, where nearly 77 percent of registered voters participated in last year’s elections, and among the diaspora in Moldova, which accounted for 15 percent of the votes cast in the first round of the 2020 presidential poll.
These figures are especially striking in light of COVID-19, which contributed to historically low voter participation in nearby Croatia, North Macedonia, and Romania.
The pandemic also trimmed turnout in Bosnia’s municipal elections, but only by a modest 1 to 2 percent.
There were also instances of pushback against the authoritarian reach and influence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the EU. In the Czech Republic, President Miloš Zeman has long advocated for closer ties, but a weariness of the CCP was growing more evident in public discourse in 2020.
Meanwhile, governments in Romania, Lithuania, Croatia, and Slovenia have banned Chinese companies or suspended public tenders due to concerns about transparency and national security.
And in 2021, amid a culmination of concerns over “dividing Europe,†the three Baltic countries, Romania, Bulgaria, and Slovenia conspicuously scaled back their presence at the latest summit of the 17+1 platform on cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European governments, rejecting the CCP’s ongoing attempts to expand its global presence through multilateral institutions. ■