Will democracy survive in 2024?

2024 is shaping up as a make-or-break year for democracy — both in the United States and around the world. 

It's the "biggest election year in history," Politico reported. More than 60 countries will hold elections "that look set to shake up political institutions and ramp up geopolitical tensions." Donald Trump's attempt to reclaim the White House from Joe Biden tops the list, of course, but many other countries face possibly destabilizing "incumbent oustings, raucous public protests and populist movements" this year. "We will know whether democracy lives or dies by the end of 2024," said Maria Ressa, the Nobel laureate for her investigative reporting in the Phillippines. 

"Democracy itself has rarely felt more vulnerable," Vox reported. Taiwan's electoral decisions could influence whether there is a war with China. The African National Congress could lose power for the first time in South Africa's post-apartheid era. Conservatives could lose power in the U.K., but Europe will probably continue to see the growth of far-right parties. Still, it's "extraordinary" that "billions of people around the world will have the opportunity to help choose their leaders."

That's the upside. The downside? "In the 21st century, romantic ideas of democracy are dying," Joe Mathews wrote in The San Francisco Chronicle. 2024 will be a test of democracy's resilience. "By year's end, earthlings may feel as though they've lived through one long global election."

What the commentators said

"2024 could be the year America fends off dictatorship, or invites it in," Benjamin Carter Hett argued at the Los Angeles Times. Donald Trump's vows to use a second presidential term as "retribution" for his grievances, his promise to "root out the communists" and his reported plans to invoke the Insurrection Act to send troops into American cities once he takes office make this year's election a stark choice. Surely Americans won't vote for a dictator, right? One problem: "Germans in the 1930s didn't think they were voting for a dictatorship, or another world war, or genocide."

"Hyperventilation about Donald Trump's supposedly authoritarian instincts" will dominate the American election, Joseph C. Sternberg acknowledged at The Wall Street Journal. But in the U.S. and in elections around the world, there's a bigger context: They'll represent "the first major attempts" to wrestle with the "political challenges of the post-pandemic era." It could be a bumpy ride. "Elections always have consequences, but 2024's elections may have more consequences than most."

"All in all, 2024 is not shaping up to be the year liberal democracy gets its groove back," Jonah Shepp wrote at New York. The good news is that American voters still have the "power to stop or significantly slow this runaway train" unleashed by Trump's election in 2016. It's no time to give into despair. That said: "Turning back the tide of authoritarian-friendly right-wing populism won't be easy."

What next?

It's easy to focus on American elections because the results will have ramifications around the world. Don't forget about what's going on in those countries, though. "Democracy will get a reckoning in Asia this year," Karishma Vaswani wrote at Bloomberg. Elections in Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Indonesia and Taiwan could have significant consequences. In Asia, as in the United States, there is reason for concern. "Many voters have become disenchanted with Western democracies in a post-Brexit, post-Trump world, and are actively looking for something else."

Stability is also at stake in the African elections, Deutsche Welle reported. Protests have already broken out ahead of Senegal's February elections, Ghana's government could shift to its opposition parties, and parliamentary majorities are expected to shrink in Madagascar, Algeria and Tunisia, "making it more difficult to govern and fomenting unrest." 

But if democracy's prospects seem to be shaky at the moment, Kat Duffy and Katie Harbath write at Foreign Affairs, 2024 also presents an opportunity. Advocates for democracy have their work out for them, it's true. But "if they get to work now, then 2024 may be remembered as the year when democracy rallied."