Number of Democracies Worldwide Drops, Study Finds

The post-Cold War era suffered its worst setbacks in 1993 as the number of democracies worldwide plummeted to the lowest level since 1976, according to a survey released Thursday by a leading human rights monitoring group.

The number of people living in repressive societies increased by more than half a billion, according to the survey by Freedom House. Of the world’s 190 countries, the total judged to be “not free” jumped from 38 to 55, the largest increase in the history of the annual survey, which dates back more than two decades.

“This year’s findings are most worrisome,” Betty Bao Lord, Freedom House chairwoman, said at a news conference here. “The period of rapid democratic expansion appears to have ended.”

Freedom House is a nonpartisan human rights monitoring group founded by Eleanor Roosevelt and Wendell Willkie in 1941 to combat isolationism at home and anti-democratic forces abroad. Its surveys are a barometer of democratic progress globally, and its findings have often been factored into U.S. aid and foreign policy decisions.

Even among democracies, the survey found that increasing numbers of citizens are being denied fundamental political rights and civil liberties, according to Executive Director Adrian Karatnycky. He cited countries ranging from the former Soviet republics and several African states to Japan and Italy, where growing corruption and erosion of democratic structures jeopardized citizens’ rights and liberties.

“Fully one-seventh of the world’s people have registered major erosions in their level of political rights and civil liberties. The trends mark a reversal of the post-Communist renaissance of freer societies and democratic possibility,” Karatnycky said.

The survey assigns numerical values to countries based on several criteria. Countries are then ranked in one of three categories: free, partly free or not free.

Based on performance this year, 63 countries were “partly free” and 72 were “free.” Only 19% of the world’s inhabitants now live in free countries. Many of the setbacks followed democratic transitions that were reversed or crushed.

The survey indicates that setbacks occurred even in many of the 55 “not free” countries. For example, the worst-rated states, typified by nearly total absence of civil liberties and rights, increased from the “dirty dozen” last year to the “terrible 20” this year, Lord said.

A major factor in the decline is a lack of support from democratic nations, the report charged.

“The spread of ethnic repression has been fueled by the failure of democratic nations to promote a new international system based on democracy, free markets and respect for human rights,” Karatnycky said.

Freedom House also expressed growing concern about Russia’s progress after its parliamentary election Sunday. The country’s “high level of support for the neo-fascist leader Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky and its widening involvement in a number of ethnic conflicts on its periphery sent ominous signs about the future path of the giant Eurasian state,” the survey warned.