Was 2024 the Peak of Democracy?

By: M. Gilchrist

2024 was a groundbreaking year for global democracy, as it was the largest election year in history. With 2 billion voters amongst 60 countries approximately a quarter of the world’s population. People from the US to India have exercised their democratic right.

Although 2024 could be seen as a celebration of the democratic form of rule, it was also widely viewed as the twilight of democracy; in many democratic countries people chose populist leaders such as: Donald Trump, Narendra Modi and Geert Wilders. All these leaders have attempted to overrule previous democratic elections and express admiration for autocrats such as: Vladmir Putin and Xi Jinping.

The biggest question facing the world’s democratic state is can their democratic systems hold up to modern challenges including social media eco chambers that spread unnuanced, unverified, unbelievably biased news. Trying to convince people that the election has been stolen as was the case in the United States of America, which is arguably the world’s most important democratic symbol, in 2020 election which Donald Trump has still refused to acknowledge as a victory for Joe Biden and 62% of US citizens believe was fraudulent. How can democratic institutions survive in a digital panopticon where people believe what they wish and prefer to live in an iron cage of fallacies instead of accepting the verified truth as presented by the institutions that are constitutionally responsible to uphold it?

Is the reelection of Donald Trump in 2024, despite the January the 6th 2021 riots, the democratic declaration that rejects democracy in favor of autocracy? Do the people of the modern world have the courage to trust democratic decisions in a world full of uncertainties? Only time will tell.

But it is important not to forget the last lesson of 2024. The lesson of Syria and the end of Bashar Al-Assad’s tyrannical dictatorship. That without democracy the transfer of power from one regime to the next will always be drenched in the blood of citizens.