State of the world 2022: defiance in the face of autocratization

Abstract

This article presents the state of democracy in the world in 2022 using the most recent Varieties of Democracy dataset (V13). There are four main findings. First, the level of democracy enjoyed by the average global citizen is down to 1986-levels and 72% of the world’s population live in autocracies. Second, the third wave of autocratization reaches a new height with 42 countries autocratizing. By contrast, only 14 countries are democratizing. Third, between 1992 and 2022, autocracies increased their share of the global economy and now account for 46% of world GDP when measured by purchasing power parity. Fourth, defying the global wave of autocratization, eight countries not only stopped but also reversed autocratization in the last 10 years, which we define as democratic U-turns. We find five elements that seem important across the identified cases: executive constraints, mass mobilization, alternation in power, unified opposition coalescing with civil society, and international democracy support. We analyze different combinations of these factors and discuss how they could be critical in stopping and reversing contemporary autocratization. This first analysis suggests that in-depth, comparative case studies of these eight cases and their counterfactuals would be an important area of future research.