image copyrightRod Searcey/Stanford University
Imagine that democracy advances in the world in waves that arrive at times and return after a fluctuation in the opposite direction. Now suppose that we could be facing one of those historical moments in which the current changes direction.
That is what Larry Diamond, a renowned American political sociologist from Stanford University who has investigated democracy around the planet for decades, proposes.
Diamond believes that this year, and especially on October 25, events occurred in Latin America and elsewhere that could mark the beginning of the end of the global "democratic recession" of the last two decades.
"It is not usual for these things to happen on the same day," says Diamond in an interview with BBC Mundo.
According to the expert, until now there have been three waves of democratization on the planet.
The first began with the revolutions in the United States and France in the 18th century and continued until the 1920s, when communism, fascism, and Nazism emerged.
The second wave began after World War II and weakened with events such as the military coups of the 1960s in South America.
And the third began in 1974, when a military and popular movement overthrew a long dictatorship in Portugal, until 2006.
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Diamond warns that it is still early to say with certainty that the democratic retreat that began then has ended, or that a new wave of global democratization is emerging.
But he points out that there are reasons to think that is possible.
The following is a summary of the telephone conversation with this senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies at Stanford, as well as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy, where he published a recent article on this topic:
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What is this about global "waves of democratization"?
This is a period in world history in which the number of transitions towards a democratic form of government substantially exceeds transitions in the opposite direction.
The most intangible aspect is the idea of momentum: a wave is a period in which democracy appears to be the destination. Its values expand, as does global support and trust in it. And people's aspirations, values and expectations move away from autocracy.
The third wave of democratization is considered to have given rise to the largest number of democracies in the world. What happened next?
According to my writings and analysis, the world entered a democratic recession around 2006. The number of countries that were democracies began to decline. Democracy practically stopped expanding and autocracy began to gain momentum.
From 2006 until relatively recently, we saw an increasing pace of democratic backsliding, as in the global south, then in Central and Eastern Europe, and finally in the US, democracies came under attack by elected leaders.
There were democratic collapses, such as military coups in West Africa. But more common has been a gradual strangulation of democratic checks and balances, democratic civil society and the rule of law.
There is a progressive transition from democracy to electoral autocracy, or what has been called a competitive authoritarian regime. This is what happened in Hungary, Türkiye, it almost happened in Poland, and Trump has tried to do the same thing in the US twice.
I think the line was crossed into competitive authoritarianism in India and Mexico, and Indonesia has gone a lot in that direction.
Thus, until very recently the net balance has been negative, moving away from democracy.
And now we see the real possibility that this pattern is changing.
In fact, in your article you argue that October 2026 could be seen in the future as the beginning of the end of that democratic recession. Because?
Because it is a date with a lot of meaning. On October 25 there were three very striking events. And it is not usual for these things to happen on the same day.
In Serbia, students who had courageously protested against the extreme corruption and growing autocracy of Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić that day achieved a stunning victory in the parliamentary elections with their list, which now has a majority and will form a government.
As happened with Viktor Orban in Hungary a few months earlier, the defeat was so resounding that Vučić was forced to quickly acknowledge it.
That same day, in Brazil was the second round of the presidential elections between President Lula da Silva and the right-wing populist Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is imprisoned for trying to overthrow democracy. And Lula, who had been left behind in the first round, also won by a very clear margin.
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I think Lula, his party and his movement, are somewhat complicated when it comes to commitment to fully democratic values and practices. But that meant the defeat of a clearly right-wing authoritarian populist option.
And, also that day, the leader of Venezuela's democratic opposition, María Corina Machado, managed to enter the country to mobilize and organize the people for a transition to democracy.
They were three very significant events.
Do you include the recent midterm elections in the US in this possible new trend?
Yes. Obviously, reversing the democratic recession would not be achieved in a single day.
I firmly believe that the US elections, in which Donald Trump received a forceful rebuke for his authoritarianism, corruption and violation of civil liberties and the rule of law, were a significant additional element both practical and symbolic of the possible end or reversal of the authoritarian wave in the world.
After all, the US remains the most influential democracy in the world.
Do you think the US is still "the indispensable nation" for democratization?
That was a Madeleine Albright term. I believe that the US is indispensable to the future of freedom in the world if we look at its size, its resources, and the proportion of total aid it allocates to democracy.
A lesson of the last ten years, since the emergence of Donald Trump on the electoral scene, is that the United States must face with a great dose of humility the challenge of revitalizing democracy globally and mobilizing allied countries to achieve a responsible world order that affirms the values of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
The world is tired of hearing that the US is "the indispensable nation," of American hypocrisy, and of not being able to trust the US to be true to its own founding values or to act with any respect for the international rule of law.
Without a doubt, Europe, Canada and many of our allies in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and elsewhere have lost a lot of faith, trust and respect in the US.
So we can't just go back to the table of global democratic dialogue and say, "Oh, we're sorry, that was just a little bump in the road; now we're back. And remember, the US is the indispensable nation."
We will have to somehow regain global trust and rebuild a democratic coalition that does not revolve around US dominance, but is more collaborative and horizontal.
It is interesting that two of the three events of October 25 that you point out as crucial occurred in Latin America. Could the region give a boost to democracy in the world?
Well, I could if I moved in that direction. I am not optimistic in the short term, with one caveat that I will mention later.
Let's be honest: What did Lula da Silva's government do to challenge Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's corrupt and scandalous decision to announce fictitious results of the July 28, 2024 elections?
Brazil could have joined the US in leading an OAS attempt to condemn that and demand a transition to democracy. But the truth is that he didn't do much.
We need Brazil. Mexico is an authoritarian regime again. Brazil is the only country, other than the US, that could lead a resurgence of democracy in the hemisphere. And I don't think that is Lula's priority, nor the way he sees the region.
Look at the advances of right-wing leaders like Milei in Argentina, Kast in Chile, Fujimori in Peru or De la Espriella in Colombia, who based his electoral campaign on one of the region's fiercest autocrats, Nayib Bukele of El Salvador. Which of them is going to lead an effort to revitalize democracy in America, let alone globally?
The caveat is this, and it is a ray of hope: there is a very good possibility that there will be a transition to democracy in Venezuela in the next 18 months, let's say, where parts of the Constitution are rewritten, the Judiciary and the electoral court are reformed, and free, fair and inclusive national elections are held - in which María Corina Machado could run - under agreed rules.
If that were to happen, it would have very clear global implications.
Because?
Because in the last two decades, since the Orange Revolution in Ukraine—and except for the Revolution of Dignity about a decade later that revived democracy in that country—no authoritarian regime has made a transition to democracy. Bangladesh may be close, but it is not yet a full democracy.
So a transition to democracy in Venezuela, after a generation of extremely authoritarian rule, could have exciting and stimulating implications for the rest of the world.
But we still do not know when or how the next elections will be held in Venezuela, nor what will happen in Brazil with a Congress more inclined to the right and opposed to Lula, nor how far the deep political polarization will go in several American countries, including the US. Isn't it too early to think that anti-democratic trends have been reversed?
Everything you said is correct, except for something I would like to point out.
Yes, it is too early to say that this moment truly represents the end of the global democratic recession or wave of retreat, and the beginning of a new wave of democratic progress in the world.
Maybe we will look back and see this year and that day, October 25, as the beginning of all that. But it is too early to know right now, just as no one could have known on April 25, 1974, that the Carnation Revolution that overthrew a dictatorship in Portugal was going to unleash a global wave of democracy.
But the caveat is that I am very optimistic about the US. I think Trump has been so corrupt, so incompetent, so abusive of the democratic order and the rule of law, so incapable of keeping his promises to the American people, and so hypocritical in presenting himself to the electorate, that I think his MAGA movement is now in its death throes.
This will take some time to resolve. But I don't think we'll see another MAGA president in the US.
And I believe that, despite his new attempts to concentrate and abuse power, he will fail and in 2028 there will be a change towards a much more reformist president committed to democracy in the United States.
Why do you say that Mexico returned to an autocratic regime, when many Mexicans would think otherwise and support President Claudia Sheinbaum?
First, I would say that many Mexicans think like I do: that the country has stopped being an authentic democracy.
The test of whether a country is a democracy is not whether the president has popular support. Following that logic, El Salvador would be a very democratic country right now, because Bukele is a very popular leader. But he is also an extremely authoritarian leader. So popularity alone is not an indicator of democracy.
Let's look at what has happened under the mandate of the now hegemonic ruling Morena party: the rule of law has been eclipsed, the space for genuine political opposition has been reduced, and control of the Judiciary has been taken through the pseudo-democratic mechanism of electing the country's judges.
The Supreme Court and the Electoral Tribunal are no longer independent. Morena, as a ruling party, has developed that type of hegemonic mentality of control of independent institutions and state bureaucracy that the PRI had before the transition to democracy.
If it looks like an autocracy and acts like an autocracy, it must be called an autocracy, even if it still retains some electoral and pluralist elements.
This year we saw historic records—or decades-long records, at least—in electoral participation in the runoffs in Brazil and Colombia, in the midterm elections in the US, or in the elections in Serbia. Could this also be seen as part of a global resurgence of democracy?
It's a complicated question. In the years before the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, there was also a very high voter turnout. In circumstances of extreme political polarization, when the stakes are high and it seems existential for the country, participation increases. Now, if it increases in defense of democracy it is a very positive thing.
I think that was an important factor for what happened in Hungary, Serbia, the US and in Brazil: there was a huge increase in participation. Much of that came from people who wanted to defend democracy and return to normality and the rule of law, as well as seeking economic improvements and reforms.
But increased turnout alone can also signal serious polarization, a double-edged sword.
In principle, we certainly want greater electoral participation, but we must be careful how it is interpreted.
How important are the upcoming elections in different European countries, such as Spain, France, Italy and Poland, for the future of world democracy?
They are very, very important. And I believe that the most important of all will be those of France, a very influential country in the European Union and in the French-speaking countries of the world.
If an illiberal right-wing populist like Marine Le Pen, who has been so explicitly anti-immigrant and so sympathetic to Putin, were to come to power in France, it would challenge the drive for global democracy, democratic norms, stability and the democratic commitment of the European Union.
But we have to see how they would govern. We were very concerned about Giorgia Meloni before she became Italian Prime Minister, so this could mean similarly with respect to Ukraine, confronting Putin and European unity. And he hasn't done so bad. It has not been the disaster that some predicted; was very positive in supporting Ukraine.
Marine Le Pen is not that, but we have to wait and see the results, how they govern when they come to power, what kind of coalition they form.
The challenge of the populist right in Europe still has a lot of dynamism. And there is still much discontent over the failure of the democratic political class – the centrist parties, both left and right – to respond to the needs of those who are struggling.
So this story is not over.
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