Democracy has long seemed the best route to ensuring both peace and prosperity — the only way to govern a civilised society.
But 2024 looks set to challenge that cosy assumption. Over the course of this year, almost half of the world’s population will head to the polls, as at least 64 countries, as marked here on our map, hold parliamentary and presidential elections — the largest number of elections in human history.
In some nations, ballots will arouse deep domestic tensions, hingeing perhaps on the economy, divisive social issues or immigration.
In others, voters will have to decide who they trust best to steer their nation to counteract threats posed by belligerent neighbours.
In Taiwan this weekend, voters will go to the polls intent on protecting their democracy and freedom while not provoking China into a blockade — or even an invasion — to retake an island that China sees as its own.
Yesterday, just 48 hours before the polls opened, China warned the Taiwanese of the ‘extreme danger’ of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, which is likely to hold on to power, and expressed its hope that voters ‘will make the right choice at this crossroads of cross-Strait relations’.
Putin (pictured in Khabarovsk, Russia on January 11) is expected to win the 2024 election
Despite a recent return to form on stage, Joe Biden’s future in the White House is less clear
Thousands of miles to the West, meanwhile, Ukraine remains under martial law — which in theory prohibits the presidential elections due this year, although some U.S. Republicans are demanding they go ahead (see box).
However, it is other voters who will most likely decide Kyiv’s fate. Putin is a shoo-in for re-election when Russia goes to the polls in mid-March, meaning the war will doubtless continue — in turn affecting support for President Volodymyr Zelensky as disillusionment with his leadership grows internally.
However, Putin may be feeling nervous about the fate of his most fervent backers among other world leaders as their voters go to the polls. Last year’s victory by the wildcard candidate in the Argentinian presidential elections, Javier Milei, was a blow to the ‘BRICS’ alliance.
The group, led by Russia and China, is a global economic bloc set up with the intention of replacing American-created institutions such as the World Bank as key players in the world economy.
Milei’s decision to withdraw Argentina from BRICS marked the first defection from the anti-Western group. And now in South Africa, another BRICS member, the African National Congress (ANC), risks falling out of power for the first time since the end of apartheid in 1994.
The nation, mired in corruption scandals and a 30 per cent unemployment rate, is losing its faith in the ‘status quo’ party and turning away from Left-wing ideology.
In Europe, national elections and the European Parliament ballot in June may offer comfort to Putin — as will the likely re-run in November between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
America has long been seen as the model for a constitutional, state-protecting ‘government of the people, by the people and for the people’. But the mud-slinging battle between these two geriatrics is potentially dangerous.
When the sitting president compares his opponent to ‘Hitler’ and the former president denounces his successor as the ‘head of a crime family’, they run a risk of igniting civil conflict even worse than the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.
Herbert Kickl (pictured 2019) is the likely candidate in the Austrian elections, which could see new leadership block sanctions against Russia
The war with Russia will remain top of the agenda in Ukraine for some time (pictured: President Zelensky after a meeting with the Lithuanian President in Vilnius, January 10, 2024)
And personal antagonism is not the only issue. Huge swathes of American society are polarised over many social issues, while a post-pandemic precarious economic boom starkly recalls the era just before the 1929 Great Crash, which ushered in the Great Depression and the rise of the dictators in Europe.
Trump, with the strength of his Right-wing convictions, offers some degree of stability to Americans, but a victory for him means closer ties between the U.S. and Russia — and is bad news for Ukraine.
The Depression shunted Germany into the hands of the Nazis and in another worrying echo of the past, the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition can’t be ruled out. There have been widespread street protests, and disillusionment with immigration and environmental policies is growing.
The success of the hard-Right Alternative for Germany (AFD) in local elections suggests that the party is gaining significant traction and may even win the next election (where it would be part of a coalition). Once, an Austrian general election would have excited about as much interest in the UK as the opening of a supermarket. But the question of who will rule in Vienna could influence neighbouring Germany, given their common language and close ties, as well as affecting how the EU operates in Brussels — and, again, the war in Ukraine.
The front-runner in the Austrian opinion polls, the Right-wing Freedom Party, has a long history of flirting with Putin. If it heads a new Austrian government, it could add its vote in the EU to Hungary and Slovakia’s blockage of military backing for Ukraine.
Overall, then, 2024 looks set to test Winston Churchill’s observation that ‘democracy is the worst form of government — except for all those other forms that have been tried’.
Some alarming results should be expected — but we must remember that a genuine choice is infinitely preferable to the dictatorships that prevail in China, Russia, North Korea and beyond.
- Mark Almond is director of the Crisis Research Institute, Oxford
