In the last three decades, the number of democracies held steady or expanded every year from 1975 until 2007. Nothing like this continuous growth in democracy ever had been seen before in the history of the world. But then, around 2006, the expansion of freedom and democracy in the world came to a prolonged halt. Since then, there has been no net expansion in the number of electoral democracies, which has hovered around 60 percent of the world’s states. Moreover, the average level of political rights and civil liberties in the world has deteriorated slightly. Although the state of democracy is neither good nor really bad, the world has been in a mild but protracted democratic recession since 2006.

Beyond the stagnation or modest erosion of global levels of democracy and freedom, there have been several other causes for concern. One has been a significant and accelerating rate of democratic breakdown. Second, the quality or stability of democracy has been declining in some large and important emerging-market countries, like Turkey, Thailand, and Bangladesh. Third, authoritarianism has been deepening. And fourth, the established democracies have been performing rather poorly and seem to lack the will and self-confidence to promote democracy effectively abroad.

These and other questions were discussed.

Speaker: Dr Larry Diamond, Stanford University
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
Director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law

Comments by Jörg Faust, Head of Department, German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) (on leave - acting deputy director at DEval - German Institute for Development Evaluation)

Welcome and moderation: Stephan Klingebiel, Head of Department, German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE)