Shades of autocracy

Sep 13, 2024 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Kaieteur News – Fareed Zakaria had distinguished between liberal and illiberal democracies by emphasizing that not all democracies guarantee individual freedoms and the rule of law. A liberal democracy is one where free and fair elections are held alongside a strong respect for constitutional limits on government power, individual rights, and the rule of law. It balances majority rule with protections for minority rights and ensures checks and balances through independent institutions, such as a judiciary and free press, that uphold civil liberties.

In contrast, an illiberal democracy may hold elections but lacks these critical protections. In such systems, elected leaders may concentrate power, erode checks and balances, suppress dissent, and undermine the rule of law, often using populism to justify their actions. Zakaria warns that illiberal democracies can lead to authoritarianism, as democratic processes are subverted without safeguarding personal freedoms or respecting the independence of institutions critical to democratic governance.

The notion that democracy can be perverted into illiberalism reveals the fragile nature of popular rule—democracy’s most seductive promise becomes its most dangerous flaw. Elections alone are no guarantee of freedom or justice. They are merely a mechanism, not an end in themselves. Fareed Zakaria’s observation of the rise of illiberal democracies warns us of a deeply unsettling truth: a government elected freely and fairly can drift into autocracy without ever shedding the democratic veneer. The ballot box offers legitimacy, but what comes after—the concentration of power, the erosion of civil liberties, the dismantling of independent institutions—determines whether democracy survives in more than name.

Under Vladimir Putin, Russia holds elections, but political opposition is suppressed, media is controlled, and civil liberties are restricted, making it a prime example of an illiberal democracy. Consider also, Hungary under Viktor Orbán or Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Both leaders rose to power through free elections, their mandates unquestioned.

Yet, once in office, each systematically dismantled the very institutions designed to protect the people from governmental overreach. Courts became tools of the regime, the press was muzzled, opposition voices were stifled. These governments never abandoned elections, and that is their greatest sleight of hand. By adhering to the ritual of democratic processes, they maintained a façade of legitimacy, all the while consolidating autocratic control. The people, lulled into complacency by the spectacle of voting, watched their freedoms quietly erode.

It therefore is entirely possible for a government to be elected through democratic means and still exhibit tendencies that lean towards autocracy without crossing the threshold into full authoritarianism. This occurs when elected leaders begin to erode the very principles that uphold democratic governance—such as the rule of law, separation of powers, and protection of civil liberties—while maintaining the outward appearance of democratic legitimacy. These “shades of autocracy” manifest in subtle but significant ways: consolidating executive power, undermining independent institutions, restricting press freedoms, attacking media houses, criticisms of judges, attacks on NGO’s, intolerance to dissent and and stifling political opposition. However, because elections continue to be held and a semblance of democratic processes is preserved, such governments avoid being formally classified as autocratic, even as they drift further from the ideals of liberal democracy.

The idea that democracy can exist with shades of autocracy is not just plausible; it is a reality that many nations have experienced. Therefore, the recent thesis proposed by Professor Bertrand Ramcharan that Guyana finds itself precariously balanced between democracy and autocracy—speaks to the subtleties with which authoritarianism can infiltrate democratic systems.

Ramcharan need not remind us that autocracy rarely arrives with the fanfare of tanks rolling down Main Street or overt declarations of dictatorship. More often, it seeps in through legal measures that appear justified, public campaigns that stir distrust against perceived enemies, and the gradual erosion of institutional independence.

Ramcharan points to Guyana’s recent official inquisitions into the tax status of NGOs, alongside calls for laws to regulate these civil organizations, as suggesting one such shade of autocracy. What he meant was that while the language of regulation is benign, perhaps even necessary in some cases, but when it is used to harass, intimidate, and vilify NGOs, it can become a weapon of control.

Shades of autocracy usually involved a shift from supporting civil society to suppressing it, from encouraging dissenting voices to silencing them. Cracks in the democratic facade that, left unchecked, can become gaping breaches. Equally telling can be the practice of overreach in the admonition of judges. In any healthy democracy, the judiciary acts as a counterweight to executive power, ensuring that the rule of law prevails. And while it is not undemocratic to criticize judgements, when judges face stern public rebuke from the highest levels of government, there is a danger of overreach. This, too, can be transformed into a shade of autocracy.

While Ramcharan was not suggesting that Guyana had leaped off the precipice into the realm of authoritarianism, he certainly was warning about such dangers. While we can dispute whether the actions cited by Ramcharan constitute a descent into shades of autocracy, we should not summarily dismiss such a possibility. After all, was a previous government not once labelled by its critics as an ‘elected dictatorship’?

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

• autocracy, critical, Independent, judiciary, Peeping Tom