The problem, however, is that freedom has been constricting or eroding in many parts of the world since around

1999, and in particularly since 2005. And we can observe, beginning around 2006, some decline in the level of freedom in the world. And a kind of topping off or peaking of the expansion of democrcy as a system of government in the world. Since 2005, I estimate that the number of democracies in the world has slowly reduced from 120 to 116. That's not a dramatic drop but it is a decline. There's been no significant gain in the number of democracies in the world. For the past seven years we've had, seven consecutive years now of declining freedom scores. Not only the six noted here but the most recent year 2012 Freedom House doc, documented this again. And a significant erosion of democracy in Africa in particular. Where at one point, there were as many as 24 electoral democracies among the 48 states of sub-Saharan Africa. And now it would be difficult to count more than about 17. We can draw concern, as well, from the fact. That the rate of democratic breakdown seems to have been accelerating since 1999. During this 12 or 13 year period, the percentage of democracies breaking down in this period has been nearly twice the pace of the preceding 12 years. 26 of the breakdowns or reversals of democracy that have occured in the 3rd wave have occured just since 1999. And some of them have taken place in very strategic, and important states such as Pakistan in October of 1999, Russia and Venezuela two critical oil states. In the period around or shortly after 2000. Nigeria in the early 2000 and briefly for a period of time Thailand and Bangladesh, and then very sadly Kenya with the violence surrounding the 2007 elections. Here we see for a period of time from 1991 through 2011, the ratio of gains in freedom every year to declines in freedom. And we can see that in each of these years, beginning with 2006, the percentage of countries or the propor,

the number of countries improving in their level of freedom has been exceeded. By the number of countries declining in their level of freedom. when the ratio is one, it means that the two are a parody. When the ratio is above one, for example in 2005 more than two and a half times as many countries gained in freedom. According to the judgement of Freedom House has declined in freedom. In 1998 the percentage was three times as many gainers as losers, in 1991 two and a half times. And in almost every year between 1991 and 2005, the percentage of countries gaining in their freedom exceeded often quite dramatically the percentage declining in their level of freedom. Beginning in 2007 this shifted sharply in reverse. And in 2007 almost three times as many countries lost freedom as gained freedom. And for the years 2007 through 2011, more than twice as many countries declined in freedom as improved their freedom scores. In 2012, the balance was still in favor of countries declining in freedom as opposed to those gaining in freedom. So we have that fact that is somewhat sobering. Here we see the breakdowns of democracy those that have occurred, then a subsequent return to democracy. about 16.5% of all the democracies that existed in this period and another 26 where there was a breakdown of democracy and then no renewal of democracy. And we can see here that some countries have had, if we go back to the previous slide, we can see that some countries have had more than one breakdown of democracy. Turkey had a breakdown in 1980. A renewal in 1983. Ghana, a breakdown in 1981, a renewal in 2000. Nigeria had a breakdown in 1983 and a return to democracy in 1999. But unfortunately, because of massive electoral fraud. Nigeria had a subsequent breakdown of democracy in 2003. Simply, there wasn't a coup, military or civilian, but electoral fraud was so great, we could no longer describe the system in place as a democracy. And there are a couple of sobering facts here. [INAUDIBLE] One is the sheer number of

democracies. So during the entire, now, nearly 40 year period of the third wave of democracy, 54 democracies have broken down. And this is almost a third, nearly 32%. Of all the democracies that have existed during this period. And secondly, we see that in some countries, there have been multiple attempts at democracy and in each case, democracy has failed. With many countries now, 26, about half of the total number of breakdowns being countries that have not returned to democracy. And of course in 2012. We also have Mali as another instance of the breakdown of democracy. So this is continuing. If we look at three periods of time during this long Block, from 1974, the beginning of the third wave, until the end of 2011. We see that during the first sort of 12 year period, 1974 to 85, 16% of all the democracies that existed in that period suffered a breakdown. This decline from 1986 to 1998, to less than 12%. And then 1999 to 2011, it em, it rose again to nearly 20%. So we see the rate of breakdown of democracy nearly doubling in this last roughly 12-13 year period. That is a disturbing sign. And we see quite a significant, as I said nearly 32% of all the democracies that have existed in this period have declined. Why are democracies vulnerable? This is one of the major questions we will explore in this course. But one of the things that I will introduce now, as an argument. Is that when freedom is not extensive, and when democracy is extremely illiberal, when the rule of law is weak and corruption is rampant, democracy is more vulnerable. Here is a slide in which, again, we track the trends in terms of freedom. The average score in political rights and civil liberties in sub-Saharan Africa over the nearly 40 year period of the third wave. And we can see the average freedom scores declined a bit, up to around the mid 1980s slowly improved. But the big improvement was around 1991. And then a slight downward trend in the

last few years. The important thing to do, however, is to disaggregate the freedom scores and now not just into the two categories of political rights and civil liberties. But to just aggregate a bit more broadly and I've done it here into three categories. Political and electoral rights. Transparency and the rule of law. And civil liberties. And what we see here is if we standardize these scores from 0 to 100 or 0 to one. of all these African countries, on these three dimensions. Of the rights to compete and contest, in free and fair elections. Political and Electoral rights. Civil liberties in terms of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom or the press. And association and so on. Individual freedom and protection of the person. And third, transparency and the rule of law in terms of judicial independence, control of corruption, things like this. Sub-Saharan African countries on average rank much worse on transparency in the rule of law than they do on civil liberties or on control of or on political rights. And indeed there's been a significant deterioration on the measure of transparency and the rule of law. Well, the other two measures might have deteriorated slightly, but in recent years have done a little better. So, this is an indication that probably the biggest problem and challenge for the democracies of sub-Saharan Africa is the rule of law. Which ranks well below civil liberties and political rights in terms of their overall score for sub-Saharran Africa. Another thing worth noting is that we do see that rights tend to decline in advance of a break down of democracy. So we've tracked here, democratic break downs and the pattern of political rights and civil liberty in the years before the break down. And we can see that beginining about three years before the break down, these democracies go on a downward path in terms of the quality of political rights in particular. And therefore we can begin to anticipate problems in terms of democratic stability by how countries are doing in the quality

of democracy. And it does indeed appear to be the case that there's a relationship between the quality of democracy and the stability of democracy. And where the quality of democracy becomes shaky and uncertain elections become more violent. And less consensual. the rules of the game become frayed. political parties become more polarized and corrupt. These are all idnications of democracy becoming more vulnerable. There are other worrisome trends to note in conclusion. That may not even signify a recession of democracy, not to mention a reverse wave of democracy, but certainly underscores some of the vulnerability that democracy finds its itself in now. This vulnerability includes the authoritarian backlash against civil society. With many autocratic states increasingly tightening their rules to make legitimate, peaceful civil society activity, to bring about democratic change and the whole government accountable. Now illegitimate, even trying to characterize it as unpatriotic and putting the great, intimidating shadow of state prosecution over these peaceful and democratic activities. A second worriseome trend is the fiscale disarray in Europe and some of the other established democracies like the United States. The danger that they are in, in terms of their fiscal health as a result of mounting debt and some of the difficulties of putting their fiscal house in order and becoming more fiscally responsible and sustainable. And that has implications for how desire these models will be to em-, emulate by other countries in the world. Democracy is in danger, however, I would argue, by way of summary. As a result of these five factors. And when you have these factors, they seem to be strong indicators of potential trouble, instability, vunerability for democracy. First of all, a weak rule of law in which there's extensive corruption and abuse of power. Abuse of individual rights. Impunity for the state and non state

actors violating those rights. And a climate of violence and criminality. A lack of respect for the law that the state is too weak, too corrupt, too ineffective to reign in. There's a very strong relationship between the strength of the rule of law and of the state. More generally to enforce it and the stability and resiliance of democracy. Second, executive abuse of power where we find in place elected leaders, presidents and prime ministers, who are overrunning the constraints of the constitution, do not have and observe the spirit of democracy. But are trying to overawe the parliament, the judiciary and civil society. And to make of the constitution whatever they wish, that's a very dangerous thing which can provoke a reaction against executive power. And even the demise of democracy or pave the way for[UNKNOWN] a self coup against democracy. Then there's the intensity of ethnic and religious divisions and the potential for poorly managed identity divisions to polarize the political system and make it unable to function. This relates to the problem where the vulnerability of weak and ineffective political insitutions. Parties, poli-, parliaments, systems of horizontal accountability, which we'll be speaking about in a later lecture. But where representative and rule of law institutions cannot do their job to aggregate and represent citizen interest to hold government accountable to enforce the rule of law. Democracy is vulnerable to overthrow and many of the people might overthrow it are the people who would wished for a more inclusive and representative government. And finally there's a strong relationship, particularly in the early years when legitimacy is weak. Between the performance of government, and the sustainability of the system of government. So, where there's poverty, there's inequality, there's injustice. It is reinforced and encouraged by a prevailing climate of bad, abusive, corrupt governments. This is very dangerous for democracy. Democracy requires reasonably good and just governance to over time improve

human well being and reduce inequality. And maybe enable government to be more responsible to those in whose name it is governing and with whose agency it is exercising power. And so having good government that is not corrupt, that is responsible to the law and the public will and can be held accountable by it. Is a very important condition for effective sustainable social and economic development. And for building up the legitimacy that sustains democracy. Because in the end, the most important factor, in sustaining democracy, is, legitimacy.