How democracy could become one of the pandemic’s lasting victims New research suggests the world has become increasingly autocratic since the start of the Covid-19 crisis.
Donald Trump and Melania meet Narendra Modi, India s prime minister, in February 2020. Last year, faced with the global spread of Covid-19, many political leaders enacted emergency powers to help tackle the pandemic. In some cases, however, these powers also expanded their personal reach while silencing their critics and disregarding human rights. In Hungary, a “coronavirus bill” was passed that gave the populist prime minister Viktor Orbán near-limitless power to rule by decree. In Kenya, authorities excessively enforced curfews, leading to widespread police brutality and reported deaths. In South Africa, protests erupted after soldiers entered a man’s home and beat him to death under suspicion that he purchased alcohol, which was illegal under lockdown rules.
In the late-1970s, Daniel H. Levine concluded that “
Venezuelans have achieved one of the few stable competitive political orders in Latin America”. But democracy cannot be taken for granted: on December 6, 2020, and after a major political decay, Venezuelan authoritarian ruler, Nicolás Maduro, held a parliamentary election that has been considered fraudulent by several countries.
Venezuelan political decay has evolved at an astonishing pace. When Hugo Chavez -a former military, and an authoritarian and populist leader- was elected president in December 1998, according to V-Dem, Venezuela was a functionally democratic country. Despite a growing political crisis resulting from economic decline, conditions assured free and fair presidential elections.