By Andreas Bummel Democracy is under pressure across the world. According to the latest annual report by Freedom House, a United States-based non-partisan think-tank, the balance is shifting further “in favour of tyranny”. In the report’s assessment, 2020 was the 15th consecutive year of declining global freedom. This dire picture is confirmed by other studies. In the 2020 edition of its democracy index, The Economist Intelligence Unit recorded the worst state of global democracy since the index was first published in 2006. V-Dem, another leading research project, reported today that in 2020, autocratisation accelerated and “turned viral” across the world. V-Dem’s study points out that “the level of democracy enjoyed by the average global citizen” is down “to the levels around 1990”. Last year, its researchers concluded that for the first time since 2001, a majority of States were no longer under democratic rule. The COVID-19 crisis has been used by authoritarian governments to strengthen their grip on power and to stigmatise democracy as feeble. They not only attempt to crush opposition at home, but increasingly interfere beyond borders At the United Nations, representatives of authoritarian regimes sit on the Committee on Non-Governmental Organisations to undermine civil society participation, and on the Human Rights Council to prevent criticism of human rights abuses. On the Security Council, China and Russia are misusing their veto power to stop action against governments for gross human rights violations, Syria being the most infamous example. Sidestepping the dysfunctional Security Council, Liechtenstein and Qatar successfully led an initiative in the General Assembly to establish a UN investigation that has already collected massive evidence for war crimes and mass atrocities committed in Syria. Likewise, UN investigations of crimes committed in Venezuela and against the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar were pushed through by groups of States. Nonetheless, democracy has not been a prominent item on the international agenda for many years. The global trend of democratic backsliding and rising authoritarian influence makes it clear that a counter-strategy is urgent. In theory, democratic countries working together could muster substantial economic and political leverage. Yet when in 2020, in response to China’s increasing influence across the world, then-United States secretary of State Mike Pompeo entertained the idea of “a new alliance of democracies”, it received little attention. The credibility of the Trump administration had already reached a low point. The presidency of Donald Trump in the US was one of the worst expressions of anti-democratic and nationalist populism across the world. Trump’s “America First” ideology, his disregard of democracy, his attraction to autocratic rulers and his effort to overturn the results of the presidential election caused massive damage. The attack on the US Capitol on January 6 made the US system look weak and in considerable demise. Now a window of opportunity seems to be o
