IDEA: Serbia among ten world countries with highest democracy fall

NEWS 22.11.202116:09 0 komentara
Skupstina grada, skupština, parlament, Skupština srbije
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More than half of the world's democracies have fallen behind in the past decade, and Serbia is one among ten countries with the biggest decline in democracy, according to a report by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Support (IDEA).

For five years, the number of countries moving towards authoritarianism has been approximately three times higher than those moving in the democratic direction.

The absolute number of democracies is decreasing, and from 2020, Serbia, Mali and the Ivory Coast are no longer democracies, according to the report „State of Democracy in the World 2021“.

The countries that have declined the most (measured in terms of the average across all 16 subattributes of democracy and that were democracies at the start of the decline) in the past ten years are Turkey, Nicaragua, Serbia, Poland and Brazil (see Figure 5 for full list).

„This report emphasises the democratic collapse in Serbia because, after serious problems with the 2020 elections, it can no longer be considered a democracy. That calls into question the future of Serbia’s membership in the European Union,“ Adam Bodnar, dean of the Faculty of Law at the Polish University of Social Sciences and Humanities, said in the preface to the report on Europe.

The report recalls that for the first time in 20 years, Serbia is no longer in the category of democracies but of hybrid regimes.

„Serbia, which has been falling behind since 2013, has finally become a hybrid regime in 2020. During that period, the ruling Serbian Progressive Party restricted and discredited civil society and imposed restrictions on media freedom,“; the report states.

In a document on democracy in Europe, IDEA states that the quality of democracies has stagnated or declined over the past two years, not least due to the pandemic crisis.

„In the Western Balkans and other Eastern European countries, long-standing weaknesses in these new democracies have been further exacerbated by the pandemic,“ the report said.

It added that the legitimacy of many ruling elites in the region was undermined by their efforts to gain an unequal electoral advantage during the pandemic over the political opposition and efforts to weaken the media’s integrity further.

The report has added that the pandemic in the countries of the Western Balkans, Eastern Europe and the Caucasus has destroyed the foundations of democracy, including fair elections, freedom of association and expression, and government control.

Freedom of expression and the media were threatened even before the pandemic, and during the pandemic, it further declined, not only in authoritarian regimes.

‘Dangerous practices’ ranged from the non-cooperative attitude of state officials towards journalists to harassment and threats to the media.

Several countries, including Serbia, have used the alleged danger of misinformation about the pandemic to stifle freedom of speech further.

Authorities in Serbia have also tried to limit access to information and journalists’ contacts with health workers, silence critics, and prevent pandemic reporting.

The pandemic was also a big test for free elections, and intensified online campaigns also increased the importance of misinformation, foreign interference and data misuse.

Deep political divisions characterised the electoral environment in Serbia in 2020, boycotts of Parliament and elections and social polarisation, with a ‘dangerous fusion’ of state and party resources and the use of pandemic communication to obtain electoral benefits.

Due to the boycott of the Parliament before the pandemic, and then the boycott of the parliamentary elections, because the opposition parties demanded the postponement of the elections until equal and fair conditions were provided, Serbia recorded a significant drop in the criteria of clean elections, freedom of expression and efficient Parliament.

Serbia’s Parliament, the report added, did not exercise proactive and substantial oversight of the executive.

Violence against women and domestic violence increased during the pandemic, and Serbia is in the group of countries where the number of women seeking help increased the most.

The report added that more than half of the world’s democracies had declined in at least one aspect of democracy in the past ten years.

The countries that recorded the most significant decline since 2010, measured by all 16 criteria of democracy assessed in this report, are Serbia, Poland, Slovenia, Hungary, Turkey, Nicaragua and Brazil.

„The number of countries in which democracy is declining has never been higher than in the last decade. Because many of these countries are large, they represent more than 30 percent of the world’s population. Now 70 percent of the world’s population lives either in undemocratic regimes or in countries with declining democracies. „The percentage of the world’s population living in strong democracies is only 9 percent,“ the report said.

The hybrid regimes with the highest criteria according to which a five-year democratic decline was recorded in 2020 are Ivory Coast, Guinea, Serbia, Tanzania, Turkey and Zambia.

There are three hybrid regimes in Europe (Serbia, Russia and Turkey), two authoritarian regimes (Azerbaijan and Belarus) and 39 democracies.

The report specifically points to the deterioration of democracy in EU members Hungary, Poland and Slovenia, where the pandemic has „exacerbated diseases accumulated over the past decade“.

„The pandemic teaches us that we need not only a vaccine against COVID-19, but a vaccination against undemocratic tendencies in some parts of Europe, because the virus of authoritarianism can easily spread,“ the report said.

 

 

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