The next four years could see a triple whammy of declining American interest in promoting democracy, the undermining of collective action by the world’s largest democratic power, and a deteriorating image for American democracy, says Nicolas Bouchet, a nonresident research fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. All this would be bad news for aspiring or threatened democracies around the world, he writes for The Washington Post.
It is not only organizations such as Freedom House that are ringing alarm bells about political freedoms eroding in many countries, he adds:
The U.S. National Intelligence Council says that democracy at the global level cannot be taken for granted and that the rising number of countries mixing democratic and autocratic features threatens international stability. Similarly, the World Economic Forum warns that growing government crackdowns on civil society can erode social, political and economic stability. Meanwhile, there are growing concerns about the state of politics in the United States and Europe — the mainstays of liberal democracy during the Cold War and of democracy promotion after it.
