Democracy Could Have Fared Worse in 2024
Political developments in South Korea, Mexico and India all offered evidence of the tenacity of constitutional governance.
A bright spot for democracy.
Photographer: Han Myung-Gu/Getty Images
In historical terms, 2024 was not a banner year for democracy around the world. But considering the deterioration of constitutional self-government over the last decade, 2024 was substantially better than expected. National elections went off reasonably well in India and Mexico, both bellwethers of democratic progress. An ill-fated attempt to declare martial law in South Korea was met with robust and rapid resistance from democratically elected lawmakers. Perhaps most important, not only from a parochial American perspective but from a global standpoint, the US presidential election yielded a clear winner, thus avoiding the dangers of Donald Trump fueling a movement to deny the outcome.
To be clear, in all these elections, a reasonable person might prefer that the other side had won. In plenty of countries, from Tunisia to Belarus to Iran, unfree elections took place in their various permutations. And it is hardly a recommendation for US democracy, or for Trump, that only his victory precluded a significant challenge to democratic legitimacy. But the point of this analysis is to assess outcomes, not to pick winners. From that perspective, things this year could have gone much worse.