Borders: Between democracies and non-democracies

The contrast between democracies and autocracies is certainly nothing new. In The Histories by Herodotus, Otanes defends isonomy (equality before the law), Megabizus the oligarchy, Darius the monarchy – and Darius wins, with an argument that supporters of authoritarian regimes have been repeating for 2,500 years: the rule of a single person is swifter, more consistent and more secretive, whilst confusion and demagogues prevail in popular assemblies. In the dialogue between Xerxes and the exiled Spartan Demaratus, the latter asserts that the Greeks have no ruler but have the law, and they fear it more than the Persians fear their king. In the form we recognise today – ‘democracies versus autocracies’ as the framework of international politics – this contrast emerged in the 1930s, with the opposition between liberal democracies and fascist and Nazi regimes, and was cemented in the discourse of the Four Freedoms by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in January 1941 and in the rhetoric of the ‘arsenal of democracy’. Today, however, the dividing line is more complex. New technologies, economic uncertainties and cross-bloc alliances are shifting the dividing line into uncharted territory.

According to international rankings such as those of Freedom House, over the last two decades the proportion of the globe governed by democracies has fallen from around 60 per cent to just over 40 per cent. This slow trend now risks accelerating. This is because the world is no longer divided into defined blocs, but into competing models of power everywhere. What matters is necessity. As Mario Draghi said: ‘There are dictators we need’.

But another factor at play is the discrepancy between the pace dictated by cyberspace, AI and digitalisation and that (which now seems anachronistic) of parliaments. In the days of the Greek polis, a shard of pottery (ostrakon) was used to banish politicians from the city; now the aim is to transform citizens into digital identities and governments into platforms. Ursula von der Leyen said as much in her first speech to the European Union. Something is missing. Have parliaments been taken into account in this transformation?

In countries such as Turkey, India, Saudi Arabia, China and Russia, what is lacking is dissent; on the other hand, where freedom is lacking, stability and tranquillity prevail. How is this contrast experienced? How is it fuelled by fake news? Authoritarian systems are pragmatic, swift and effective; democracies are legitimate, but slow, bogged down in bureaucracy and riddled with cracks that seem increasingly impossible to repair.