Half the World Has Elections in 2024 & Democracy Is at Stake

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, INTERNATIONAL HOST: Now, as the year comes to a close, we look ahead to 2024, which is set to bring a world of challenges from turmoil in the Middle East, a grueling battle in Ukraine to growing tensions over Taiwan. And on top of that, more than half the global population is heading to the polls in a groundbreaking year of elections. The most important of which will be in the United States, and that will likely be a Trump Biden rematch. Deputy editor of “The Economist,” Tom Standage, joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss the 10 trends to watch in 2024.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HARI SREENIVASAN, INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, thanks. Tom Standage, thanks so much for joining us. You write in “The World Ahead” in 2024 that it is a pivotal year for democracies. Why so?

TOM STANDAGE, DEPUTY EDITOR, THE ECONOMIST: Well, we think it’s the first time in human history where most people in the world, more than half of the global population, live in a country that will hold an election in 2024. So, it’s about 4.2 billion people. And the population of the world, as you know, is 8.1 billion. So, that means that more than half — most people in the world are living in a country that will have a national election in the coming year, and that’s never happened before. And so, you would say, well, that surely is a triumph for democracy, but I think it’s going to put a spotlight on the nature of democracy and the fact that there is more to democracy than voting that there’s, yes, sure, a great big quantity of voting happening, but there’s actually quantity and quality when it comes to democracy.

SREENIVASAN: You know, you have a quote in there that I want to pull out. It says, in theory, it should be a triumphant year for democracy in practice, it will be the opposite. Why?

STANDAGE: Well, because a lot of these democracies are extremely flawed. So, at “The Economist,” our sister company, the EIU, actually prepares something called a democracy index, and it gives every democracy around the world a score. And some countries are classed as full democracies. So, if I’m talking to you from London, and we’re going to have an election in Britain in 2024, and it seems very likely that the current government will be chucked out. Now, that’s, you know, one of the features of democracy that you should be able to vote to change the government or change the leadership. And if you go to the other end of the spectrum, we also know there’s going to be an election in Russia in 2024, and I could tell you what the result of that election is going to be right now. Vladimir Putin is going to be — he’s going to win. He’s going to continue to be president of Russia, and he wouldn’t be having that election at all unless he was sure that he could guarantee that outcome. So, that’s not a democracy. That is a sham. And then, you have lots of other countries in the middle that sort of are more or less authoritarian. And then, sort of right at the top, just below the full democracies, you get the flawed democracies. And I have to say that the two biggest democracies in the world, India and the United States, both of which are voting next year, are both classified as flawed democracies for one reason or another. So, it is still possible for the outcome to change the leadership of the country, but there are other problems with their democracies.

SREENIVASAN: Being here in the United States, I’ve got to ask, well, what is the definition of flawed or and why does the United States meet that of a flawed democracy?

STANDAGE: So, there’s no single definition. It’s a question of how many points you score on a range of metrics. But essentially, in the case of the U.S., there’s a few problems. There’s very clearly a sort of breakdown in trust in the whole democratic process, whether you’re on the left or the right, you think that the process is broken in one way or another. And then, there’s also things like, you know — I mean, as an outsider, it seems extraordinary that in America, politicians are allowed to draw the boundaries of their own elections. You have sort of partisan boundary commissions. And I mean, not in the whole of America, I think California has sort of gone back to the sort of situation you get in many other parts of the world. But essentially, that means that you can draw electoral boundaries that guarantee that your guy always wins. And what does that mean? The only way that you can lose in a situation like that is if you are primaried by someone more extreme from your own party. So, that is a recipe for polarization, which is exactly what we’ve seen in America. So — and then, that in turn leads to a breakdown in trust in the overall democratic process. So, that’s the kind of thing. I mean, to be fair, the — I think the U.S. scores seven and a bit out of 10 which is pretty good.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

STANDAGE: It’s only just a flawed democracy.

SREENIVASAN: Now, you are also a publication that says that this election coming in the United States is incredibly important. It’s one of the most — if not the most crucial, that our future is on the line, that we have heard that over and over again from 2016 to 2012, 2020. So, what’s different about it this time, you think?

STANDAGE: Well, a few things. I think last time Donald Trump was president, he tried to do various things and a lot of the things he tried to do, he was prevented from doing. And this time around, he seems to be planning to ensure that he can make more of the changes. He wants to, you know, politicize the sort of executive, the — things like the Department of Justice. He wants to chuck out everybody and replace them with his own people who can then prosecute his enemies and that sort of thing. So, that’s very concerning. And also, he’s making noises about how, you know, at the end of the term, if he wins again, he might want to stay on for a bit longer. I think there’s a word for that where you get to stay in power for as long as you like. And I seem to remember that you weren’t terribly keen on that arrangement in the 18th century. But anyway, so there’s that. But I think the other big difference is that the world now is sort of much more aware of the global implications of a second Trump presidency. If Americans want to vote for Donald Trump in America, that’s fine. That’s, of course, up to them, and it’s their democratic choice. But the global implications would potentially be huge. He’s talking about pulling out of NATO. Obviously, he wants to pull the plug on support for Ukraine. We don’t know what he’d do over Taiwan.

SREENIVASAN: I wonder what the consequence is of reelecting a president that was discontent with the results last time and actively tried to overturn those results. If he was to get back in power, what does that signal, I guess, to the world about us, the grand experiment that is democracy?

STANDAGE: Yes, exactly. It’s — I mean, America is — it’s not a great advertisement for democracy right now, and it would be an even worse one if you have an election denier who comes back in, says that maybe we don’t need elections anymore in the future. And the other weird thing about it was that, you know, the 2020 election, it was the — you know, he’s cast doubt on the — you know, the big lie is that he really won the presidential election. But miraculously, the cheating only he claims happened for the presidential election. And all of the — you know, the Senate seats and the House of Representatives seats, that — all of that worked fine. I mean, it seems very implausible that the meddling only happens in one part of the ticket when, you know, people are voting on the same piece of paper. So, yes, the whole thing is deeply implausible. And you know, it’s — it would just send a very odd message to people around the world to whom America is trying to preach the virtues of democracy. But America doesn’t preach the virtues of democracy quite as much as it used to. The place where democracy really needs defending right now is Ukraine. And it’s pretty clear that, you know, Republicans don’t want to be continuing to support Ukraine financially and militarily in the way that it has been. And that’s very perilous, not just for Ukraine, but for, you know, a European democracy that is in grave danger.

SREENIVASAN: I wonder, since you mentioned Ukraine, right now, one of the central premises for President Biden is that we need to support democracies such as Ukraine with arms. We need to support the democracy that is Israel with our support in the Israel-Gaza conflict, right? And I wonder as these tensions keep getting strained further and further and as the public might evolve their thinking about what they’re willing to stomach, what does that do to that sort of underlying principle that seems to be the binding factor here, which is that we need to support democracies?

STANDAGE: Yes, exactly. And I think there is — you know, America has gone through isolationist periods in the past and seems to be going into one now. I think what I’d say, particularly with regard to Ukraine, because that seems to be where there is more resistance to continued funding, and we know that the Republicans historically have beef with Ukraine and with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in particular. But just being completely sort of, you know, looking at an accountant’s view of this, this is an incredible deal for the United States to basically wear down the military of one of your biggest geopolitical rivals without having to put American servicemen and women in the line of fire and, you know, at very low cost, because, in effect, the subsidies that you give to Ukraine are going straight in a large — for a large part of it, it’s going straight to your own arms companies. So, it’s subsidies, it’s creating jobs at home in America, and it’s wearing down the Russian military at very — this is an incredible deal. So, even if you don’t care at all about democracy but you do care about, you know, America’s continuing, you know, military supremacy over other powers, then I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to continue to support Ukraine. So, yes, it’s a mystery to me. And yes, I realize that there are concerns about border security and so forth, but you can have both, right? I mean, this is a great deal and America should be continuing to support Ukraine just for that reason, for its own self-interest.

SREENIVASAN: You know, in the magazine, you point out how in Africa right now, there have been nine regime changes in the past three years. What is going on with the shift where people might be in some ways OK with military strongmen?

STANDAGE: Yes. So, there’s quite a worrying load of polling coming from South Africa where people are very upset with the way their democracy is going, that they’ve had the ANC in power ever since democracy was introduced, the multiracial democracy and yet, they have, you know, big, big problems. There’s lots of unemployment. The power grid doesn’t work and so forth. So, this may be — it seems very likely to be the first election at which the ANC gets less than 50 percent of the vote. And what’s astonishing is that the polling shows that people are less concerned about preserving the democracy. Really, they want order and they want jobs. And I think it was something like 70 percent of South African voters said that they would accept a strong man showing up and ruling. And even if that was undemocratic, as long as they sort of, you know, fix the economy and got jobs going again. I mean, people really are at the end of their tether on this. And actually, you see the same, you know, you — not quite to the same extent, but you do see people saying, well, actually, democracy is all fine and good, but, you know, what we really care about is this issue or that issue, and it is very often economic stability or jobs or whatever. So, I think there’s a danger for those of us who live in democracies that we sort of take it for granted. And we think that things would be OK if we had a more authoritarian leader, as long as they could make other things work well.

SREENIVASAN: Do you see any bright spots in terms of democracy looking out of 2024?

STANDAGE: I have to say I see very few bright spots altogether looking at 2024. This is a world of increasing disorder. It’s a world where they’re increasing the sort of zones of impunity, where nobody in particular is in charge. You’ve got Iran’s proxies causing trouble across the Middle East. You have this short war between Azerbaijan and Armenia in Russia’s backyard. Then you’ve got the whole situation in the Sahel. You can now walk from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, 6,000 kilometers, just passing through countries that have had a coup since 2020. So, the world seems to be preparing for a situation where there’s more conflict in future, rather than less, the unipolar moment where America was the sole superpower has definitely passed. And there are now, you know, many, many great powers, large powers sort of vying for influence. And then, the middle powers, this makes the middle powers, the sort of swing powers, like Saudi Arabia and Iran and Turkey, gives them a lot more clout as well. And so, there’s just a general kind of feeling that if you want to do something, like invade your neighbor, now’s a good time. And, you know, Venezuela is talking about invading Guyana. I mean, there does seem to be a sort of move towards much greater disorder and much more conflict, and I’m afraid that’s extremely depressing. So, I’ve looked for bright spots in 2024, but I’m afraid I really isn’t a lot to celebrate.

SREENIVASAN: Is there a new cold war if there were to be this sort of multi powers and multipoles? I mean, is there a cold war now brewing between China and the United States? And what does that look like going forward?

STANDAGE: Yes. No, absolutely. There is a cold war. So, if you then — yes, you’ve got a multipolar world, but as a sort of higher level of abstraction, you’ve essentially got a China led bloc, which does include Russia, and then you’ve got a western — you know, American led bloc. You’ve got countries trying not to take sides in the middle, like India most obviously, but, you know, other countries too who sort of want to be friends with both sides. Vietnam is doing a great job of, you know, playing both sides. Southeast Asia is generally trying to be friends with China, or at least not enemies, but also be friends with America. So, yes, it is very much a Cold War vibe. The big difference though, between this and the original Cold War, is that there was no trade to speak of between the West and the Soviet Union during the original Cold War, and there is an enormous amount of trade and economic linkage between China and the West. And, you know, just think of your iPhone again. It’s assembled in China and it has components from actually all over Asia. But, you know, this is a very different situation because supply chains are so dependent on China. And so, this is why we hear a lot about decoupling and de risking and companies trying to move their supply chains and their factories out of China. It’s actually incredibly difficult because even if you move your assembly to — and this is what Apple is doing with iPhones, it’s assembling some of them in India now, and it’s moved some other manufacturing to Vietnam. But the fact is an awful lot of the components and materials are still coming from China. So, if there were to be a war over Taiwan, and there were to be sanctions imposed, then I’m not sure that, you know, trying to build things in Vietnam or India would help because I don’t think you’d be able to get any components out of China.

SREENIVASAN: And Taiwan is one of those places with an election this year.

STANDAGE: It is. And so, it’s one of the two big elections that, you know, we think are most consequential next year are Taiwan at the beginning of the year and the U.S. at the end of the year. And in Taiwan, there are essentially three candidates, and the two opposition candidates who look like they might have got together, which would have been bad news for the incumbent from the DPP, the ruling party right now, they haven’t been able to get together. So, it does mean that the DPP candidate, William Lai, seems likely to win. And he is more of an independence leaning candidate, whereas the other two say, no, we should be friends with China and so on. So, whatever happens, it really is going to set the mood, not just across the Taiwan Strait but more importantly on, on U.S. China relations, because if I’m Xi Jinping and William Lai does win and does sort of make a slightly more, pro-independence noises as he is want to do, then, of course, the first thing I want to do is essentially see what would happen if I do something provocative across the Taiwan Strait. You know, is America the overstretched superpower? Hasn’t it got too much on its plate with Ukraine and Gaza, and, you know, trouble in the Red Sea and all this sort of thing? So, the first thing I’m going to want to do is not just see how Taiwan responds, but see how America responds. And I’m not saying there’s going to be an invasion of Taiwan in 2024. That does — you know, that seems incredibly unlikely. But essentially, this going to set, you know, the broader framework for U.S. China relations, the outcome of that election. So, it’s worth watching very closely.

SREENIVASAN: So, you end your list on a positive note, and let’s end our conversation there, too, about possible unifying moments in 2024. Where do you see that happening?

STANDAGE: Well, there’s a few, but I’m afraid I’m a bit skeptical about most of them. So, one of them is the Olympics. And the Olympics can be — even for a jaded old cynic like me, can be, you know, surprisingly moving to see, you know, all of the best people at a particular sport, you know, facing off and you kind of think, actually, this really cool. But the 2024 Olympics are likely to be overshadowed by arguments about, you know, what about the athletes from Russia and Belarus? And are they allowed to compete? And do they — you know, compete under a neutral flag that doesn’t represent their country? But everyone knows that it does and it’s all a bit silly. And also, Vladimir Putin says he wants to have his own version of the games called the Friendship Games, which is for Russia and its friends. So, that whole thing seems to become a political football already, as it often does. And then there’s the possibility of Americans returning to the moon in 2024. There’s supposed to be this this mission blasting off in November. It may get — November ’24, it may get pushed into ’25, but they’re not going to land on the moon. The idea is that they go around the moon. And this should be, you know, extremely inspiring. Surely, it’s going to include the first black man, the first woman and the first non-American to leave Earth orbit. And so, surely that’s a cause for celebration. And to some extent it is, but I think, again, this likely to be overshadowed by the sort of political messaging around this. This very reminiscent of the Cold War. And this very reminiscent of the warm up missions that were done before Apollo 11 and the landing in 1969. And so, I think, you know, this once again may look like America flexing its technological muscles and saying, look, you know, we’re the best at this. And in the same way that we’re the best at going to the moon, we’re superior in other ways too. So, I think it’s actually going to be very reminiscent of the Cold War as we are in now another Cold War. So, I’m afraid that the chances of that leading to, you know, in theory, you’re going to have like four members of the human race in one place, you know, and looking back at the earth and seeing absolutely everybody else. And that’s, you know, people find, you know, pictures of the Earth, the pale blue dots, it’s all — it could all be very moving, but I suspect that’s going to be politically charged as well.

SREENIVASAN: All right. Deputy editor of “The Economist,” Tom Standage, thanks so much for joining us.

STANDAGE: Thank you.