How democracy fared in 2011

Even before we were a month in, 2011 was an historic year. Principally because in a region of the world where governments shift through military coup or foreign intervention, dictators fell — and others tottered — thanks to local popular uprisings. Whatever the outcome of those events (and I have expressed my fears elsewhere, here) they remain a landmark worth observing. Whether or not the coming years are any good at all for them, 2011 was a great year for democrats in the Middle East. In the older democracies of the West, however, 2011 was more disconcerting.

If anyone doubts this, consider the following experiment. It is the beginning of any year other than this one over the last two decades. Someone tells you that the coming year will see the replacement of two democratically elected leaders in European countries. In any of those years — say 1996, 2000, 2005 — it would be surprising though not impossible. Perhaps a Junta had returned in Greece? Or a former Eastern bloc country had slipped disastrously backwards? Whichever countries you had identified as vulnerable, you would — as a democrat — at least console yourself that this disaster would bring a torrent of condemnation from the political capitals of Europe? But no, you are told. The situation is not nearly so rosy as that. Not only will two democratic leaders be deposed in the year ahead — they will be replaced by bureaucrats. And worse: no democratic leader in any position of power across Europe will express anything other than relief over this outcome. Until the year that just passed this thought-experiment would have seemed dystopian. Surely something had gone terribly wrong if such a wholesale failure of the democratic process had occurred in Europe? It would suggest that we had missed or ignored a growing failure within the democratic system of a whole continent.