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El Salvador's Bukele: The posterboy for popular authoritarianism
Here's one country where democracy is on the backslide, and the increasingly authoritarian leader could not be more popular. El Salvador's Nayib Bukele won the presidency at 37, as Latin America's youngest elected head of state, as an outspoken candidate on social media with an affinity for cryptocurrency.
In a wide-ranging interview on the state of global democracy in 2024, Stanford's Francis Fukuyama explains Bukele's crime-fighting appeal: "El Salvador legitimately elected Nayib Bukele as president, but he embarked on this massive effort to simply round up people that he thought were gang members and put them in prison, no trial, no, judicial process to find out whether they're actually guilty or not. And as a result, around 10% of the young men in the country are now sitting in prison. Uh, and it's been quite successful in reducing the level of gang violence in El Salvador by like 90%."
And Bukele's approval rating today stands at about 90%. It's just one example of a democratically elected leader pushing the boundaries of what his constitutional mandate allows.
Watch the GZERO World with Ian Bremmer episode: Divided we fall: Democracy at risk in the US
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
Francis Fukuyama: Americans should be very worried about failing democracy
The prospect of another Trump presidency can be hard to imagine. Still, before we even get there, we must confront the possibility of political violence in the months leading up to November 5.
With the US presidential election on November 5, many Americans are pondering what another four years of a Trump presidency could mean for the country and the world. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The months leading up to November 5 (and the period after the election but before the January 20 inauguration) could be the most consequential in modern history. That's according to Stanford political scientist Francis Fukuyama, who warns that the capacity for violence amongst Trump supporters is unprecedented.
"In a way, Trump is preparing for this moment when there's massive protests, and he's got a lot of supporters, many of them are armed. And I think that on January 6th, he showed that he was, you know, completely comfortable with calling on his friends to use violence to, you know, support his ends."
Watch the GZERO World with Ian Bremmer episode: Divided we fall: Democracy at risk in the US
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
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Divided we fall: Democracy at risk in the US
2024 is gearing up to be a pivotal year for global democracy, with elections testing authoritarian appeal, particularly in the United States.
2023 was a year of war, in Europe, of war in the Middle East, and beyond. So it's safe to say that the year to come will not be all honey and roses. But here's a prediction: Even if 2024 may not be a GOOD year, it WILL be the most consequential one for the future of democracy, both abroad and here in the United States.
Around the world, elections will test the limits of authoritarian appeal and the guardrails of democratic institutions. That includes right here in the United States. And this comes at a time when one-quarter of Americans believe that the FBI was behind the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. That’s right, one quarter. So, there’s not a lot of shared trust amongst Americans—or even shared agreement on basic facts—as we head toward November 5. The renowned Stanford political scientist Francis Fukuyama is here to discuss the global and domestic threats to democracy in 2024.
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
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Podcast: America vs itself: Political scientist Francis Fukuyama on the state of democracy
Listen: In this edition of the GZERO World podcast, Ian Bremmer speaks with Stanford’s Francis Fukuyama about the state of democracy worldwide and here in the US. 2024 will be a pivotal year for democracy, and nowhere more so than here at home. A quarter of Americans believe that the FBI was behind January 6. But as the late New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, “You’re entitled to your own opinions, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.” But today, in America, we cannot agree on basic facts. On this note, Fukuyama joins Bremmer to discuss the global and domestic threats to democracy.
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.
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Democracy is resilient - but so is authoritarianism around the world
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a happy Monday to you. Time for a Quick Take to kick off your week. I thought I would talk about the state of democracy.
Of course, over the course of the last 10 years, there's been so much discussion of the world becoming more illiberal, lower case that more people in the world are living under authoritarian regimes or mixed governments, hybrid governments than living under pure democracy. In part because authoritarian states are growing more powerful, in part because some democracies, including the United States, are watching their systems, their institutions erode and watching their political leaders become de-legitimized.
Is that now changing? Over the last few weeks, we've seen a United States midterm election that certainly did not appear to be a win for election deniers, and Donald Trump is doing worse than he has. But you also see demonstrations, major demonstrations, a lot of people that are angry on the streets in some of the most powerful authoritarian regimes around the world, Russia, Iran, and even China. I will say that all of those developments are welcome, but the importance that they have in terms of the political systems themselves are widely varied, and I wouldn't overstate them.
So starting with the authoritarian regimes, I think Russia is in very serious trouble, but I don't see a lot of instability internally at all. The trouble that Russia's in is that their military is being soundly defeated by a much smaller country with a lot of support from NATO and a lot of their people are going to be suffering economically very heavily, not just this year, but for the foreseeable future. The demonstrations in Russia have been very small, they've been sporadic, and they've largely been stopped. First round of demonstrations at the beginning when the war was announced, a couple thousand people arrested, most of them let go. Then a few hundred thousand people were called up on mobilization a few months ago. And you saw more demonstrations, another few thousand arrested, and all of them almost let go.
The interesting thing is that there were almost a million Russians that got out of the country when they announced that mobilization and the Russians kept the borders open. Why would they do that? Well, in part because a lot of those people are not so happy about the Russian regime, and I assume the Russian government was just as happy to see them out of the country, but there's really not a lot of instability politically inside Russia.
So Russia as a country's losing power, they're becoming much less influential on the global stage. Putin is getting humiliated and angry, but there's no proximate threat to the authoritarian regime. And Putin were removed, it's not like Russia's going to become a democracy. It would be run by another kleptocracy of military and national security elites that also hate the West. This is not Khodorkovsky suddenly coming back from his exile or Nemtsov coming back from the dead.
In the case of Iran, that's the one place that I would say has the greatest possibility of regime change. Though the most likely kind of regime change if it occurred would be for the theocrats to be forced out by the Revolutionary Guard Corp, the IGRC. And if that were to happen, there would be some liberalization of religious and social norms, absolutely. But it would still very much be an authoritarian state, kind of between Pakistan and North Korea, as opposed to an open democracy. Now, I mean, there's a tail possibility that the people are effective in rising up and they're able to overthrow the entire regime. That would be an enormously bloody thing, but it would ultimately be fantastic for the Iranian people. I wouldn't be betting on that outcome right now, even though I think we'd all like to see it.
And then there's China, and in the case of China, there's really no political instability. The demonstrations that were talked about widely in the West were very small in China, and there's been zero repeat of them despite the fact that there's still quite a bit of lockdown and quarantine going on across China, and that's because the ability of the Chinese government to assert control to fully surveil their population and to threaten and arrest anyone that is seen to fall afoul of that is incredibly high.
And the general support level for Xi Jinping in the Communist Party, given the economic capabilities they've displayed over the past years is also relatively high. You put those things together, and surely there are a lot of Chinese, especially in places like Shanghai, that are educated, wealthier, that would love to see more liberties for Chinese citizens. But the idea that the Chinese government is not long for this system, I think, is a canard. That's not going to happen.
So I'm very cautious about overstating the fact that there are people that are courageous, that are willing to express their anger at very deeply repressive and not always particularly well run regimes. But that doesn't mean that democracy suddenly is on the agenda for any of them, frankly.
I'm more optimistic about the United States, but in part that's because I've been more optimistic about the United States. Back in 2020, even in the heat of January 6th, my view was that the likelihood of a successful coup was zero. And the reason for that is because no one from the military would support it. No one from the judiciary would support it. And even when Trump called his own party supporters in charge of elections in states like Georgia and Arizona said, find me some votes, they didn't. And the reason they didn't is because it was against the law, and they weren't prepared to do that.
Now, of course, that's also why you got a majority of Republican legislators in the House on the evening of January 6th voting against certification of the election because they recognized there was no chance of a coup, so they didn't feel like they had a big enough problem they needed to deal with. Even after the events that day, they were focusing more on their jobs. Now, if the midterm elections in the US had returned a large number or even a small number of election deniers that could directly oversee key elections in states, in swing states, as governors and secretary of state, then I couldn't have said that 2024 would have no chance of a coup. Democracy would have been, even if it's only a low risk, in a more existential danger. That's no longer true. They all lost. Trump's also much weaker than he has been historically. I don't have confidence that Trump can't get a second nomination, but certainly it's looking more challenging.
A lot of people are going to be running against him. Even someone like Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina who pledged that she would not run if Trump was running. Trump's now running. She's now thinking about it. Why? Because Trump looks vulnerable. And so as a consequence, everyone's stepping up to take a shot. It's true. A lot of people aren't willing to name his name when they're criticizing him. It's more oblique. But after January 6th, Kevin McCarthy was heading right down to Mar-a-Lago to stand with him and show his loyalty. He's not doing that this time around.
So for all of those reasons, I think that democracy is not particularly threatened existentially. It's not as weak as a lot of people have been presuming for very different reasons on the left and on the right. But nonetheless, I think ultimately the resilience American system remains very high. Unfortunately, the entrenchedness of authoritarian systems around the world that have been gaining over the past years also remains very high.
That's it for now. Talk to you all real soon.
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Can there be capitalism without freedom? No, says Iván Duque
Should the US still try to engage with countries run by regimes antithetical to its own?
For former Colombian President Iván Duque, the democratic consensus in the Western Hemisphere means that "there's no space for autocracies or for dictatorships." That means not imposing democracy on everyone but defending democratic values everywhere, he tells Ian Bremmer in a GZERO World interview.
Meanwhile, capitalism is coming under pressure — including from authoritarian regimes like China, which is selling its own brand of state-led capitalism as opposed to the free-market capitalism prevalent in democracies.
Duque pushes back against the notion that there can truly be capitalism where people can't choose their leaders. His preferred solution is "conscious capitalism," which creates value but also seeks to close social gaps.
A woman holds a sign at a rally supporting Ukraine on Sudbury Common in the US state of Massachusetts.
Is the war in Ukraine a fight for democracy itself?
Just three days after Russian rockets began raining down on his country, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned the world that Vladimir Putin’s invasion was the “beginning of a war … against democracy.”
The message quickly caught on.
French President Emmanuel Macron says the war has called democracy into question “before our very eyes.” US President Joe Biden has since called it a “new battle for freedom.” US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has even said that Ukrainians are fighting not only for their own democracy but for America’s as well.
Well, are they right? Is Ukraine on the frontlines of a global battle to preserve self-rule, human rights, and respect for the rule of law both at home and abroad?
Here are two ways to look at the question. Let’s start with the “yes” side of it:
Ukraine is a democracy that is quite literally fighting for its life. Pre-war Ukraine was by no means a perfect democracy. But if the country is overrun by Russia, it will be stripped of its sovereignty entirely and turned into a puppet state of Putin’s dictatorship. Remember, this war came about in part because Ukraine wanted to join the EU and NATO, the world’s two most powerful groupings of democracies. Putin invaded to stop that.
Ukraine’s opponent is a global supporter (and exporter) of illiberalism. Over the past decade, Russia has gone to great lengths to amplify underlying problems in the world’s democracies — its 2016 US election meddling was merely one example — and has emerged as a beacon to illiberal forces around the globe. A good comeuppance in Ukraine, combined with strong sanctions on the Russian economy, might well temper the Kremlin’s ability to keep playing that game.
If Russia prevails, it would send a signal to other strongmen looking to crush troublesome democracies along their borders: give it a shot. If any country is worried about this, it’s US ally Taiwan. The self-governing island lives under the perpetual threat of forcible annexation by mainland China, which – as Putin did with Ukraine – denies its legitimacy as an independent country.
We can learn something from Ukrainian nationalism. The sight of millions of citizens of Ukraine – both ethnic Russians and ethnic Ukrainians – fighting shoulder to shoulder against an invading force is a stirring counterpoint to the increasingly tribal ethnic, racial, and political identities that are hobbling the world’s established democracies these days.
Lastly, authoritarian #1 has chosen its side of the conflict. Surely it’s no coincidence that the world’s most powerful authoritarian country, China, is firmly in Russia’s corner in this fight, is it?
Ok fair, enough. What about the opposing arguments?
The teams aren’t so neatly divided. Yes, the world’s most populous dictatorship, China, is in Russia’s corner, but the most populous democracy, India, has refused to criticize Putin as well. Other large democracies like Brazil and South Africa, as well as smaller ones like Hungary, an EU and NATO member itself, have hedged their bets here too. Outside of North America and Europe, dozens of developed democracies have in fact opted not to impose sanctions against Russia over its invasion.
Does consistency matter? If the world’s democracies are committed to protecting rule of law and human rights, it’s fair to ask whether Washington and Brussels can still do more to stop the much larger and more destructive war in Yemen, which was launched not by an adversary of the US, but by a strategic ally, Saudi Arabia. If not, how credible is their commitment to democracy – and the values that underpin it – as such?
Ukraine’s struggle is a small part of a much larger story. For 16 consecutive years now, the world’s democracies have been deteriorating, according to Freedom House, a watchdog. Around the globe, popular dissatisfaction with poorly functioning democratic systems has opened the way for illiberal leaders to take power, eroding democracies from within. Well over half of those polled in the world’s leading democracies say they aren’t satisfied with their political system. And between 2019 and 2021, more than 2 billion people saw their societies become less free.
If Ukraine holds off Russia, that would certainly prevent an additional 40 million people from joining their ranks. But would it help reverse the broader erosion of democracy globally? That may be a problem that’s much closer to home.
What do you think of these arguments? Is Ukraine’s fate tied to the fate of democracy writ large? Let us know here, and we’ll happily publish a selection of the best thoughts we get.
Is democracy a charade?
After a long day at the Autocracy Summit, Putin and pals unwind with a parlor game — but guess who shows up to ruin the laughs?
Watch more PUPPET REGIME!
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