By Ramesh Thakur at Brownstone dot org.

If the keening of pessimists is to be believed, this paper is written in the midst of the darkling dusk of an authoritarian age. Studies of the fate of democracy around the world—the countries that can be classified as democratic according to various criteria and the expansion and contraction in their numbers over time—has become a mini cottage industry in the academic and think tank worlds.

In theory, setbacks and curtailments can come from either or both conservative and liberal sides of the ideological political divide, often reflecting their differences in how best to reconcile the tension between the liberal and democratic components of the aggregative concept of 'liberal democracy.' Majoritarian excesses can ride roughshod over the liberal protections for individuals against the state and society as collective entities, while unbalanced liberal emphases can ignore majority policy preferences.

This was seen in the clash between the individual-centric civil libertarians and the collective focus of public health during the Covid years. Political polarisation in the age of falling confidence in the mainstream media and the amplifying potential of social media has exacerbated the pathologies of shifting perceptions of the other side as not merely people with a different point of view but as immoral and a threat to the system.

As the world's most populous democracy by far, more than four times bigger than the US as the second most populous albeit the world's most important democracy, India occupies a place of special significance in the global comparison of the measures of democracy and their rise and fall over time. Not too many would have rated its prospects highly against the apparently unfavourable correlates of poverty and illiteracy at independence in 1947, yet it has survived as a recognisably functioning democracy. Conversely, the UK, known as the mother of parliamentary democracy with Westminster as the mother parliament, seems to be backsliding on its democratic credentials. Concerns about the health of democracy in both India and the UK exist alongside worries about its status in several other countries.

I. Measuring the Health of Democracy

My interest in democracy has spanned my entire professional life. My very first academic article, exactly fifty years ago, was on 'The Fate of India's Parliamentary Democracy' (Pacific Affairs, Summer 1976). This was a reaction to the declaration of an emergency by Prime Minister (PM) Indira Gandhi in 1975. It was followed by the more reflective 'Liberalism, Democracy and Development: Philosophical Dilemmas in Third World Politics' (Political Studies (September 1982). As someone who grew up in India; voted as a national in elections in Australia, Canada and New Zealand; with advanced degrees in political science; lived for periods of my life in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the US; and participated in discussions on the topic with real-world examples with colleagues in the United Nations, I have a particular appreciation of the role of electoral systems in mediating popular voting preferences into political outcomes.

When I last looked at the democracy ratings five years ago, the Economist Intelligence Unit classified India as a 'flawed' democracy; Freedom House called it only 'partly free,' and the Gothenburg-based V-Dem described it as an 'electoral autocracy.' That's quite a dishonourable trifecta from three reputable international democracy ratings agencies. The disparate indexes have their individual flaws and strengths, but they do provide a latitudinal snapshot of almost all countries at any given time, permit a longitudinal analysis of trendlines in any given country, and are a useful externally validated prop for civil-society advocates in countries of concern that are trying to improve standards of governance within the framework of inclusive democratic citizenship.

That said, as a cross-country comparison, any classifica...