Not all democracies are good; some are bad.

February 28, 2022March 2, 2022

Not all democracies are good; some are bad.

A version of this article was originally published in Greek newspaper Kathimerini on 27 February 2022.

According to the latest annual report by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the state of democracy in the world deteriorated last year. The report assesses 167 countries based on 60 unique indicators subdivided into five broad themes: electoral process and political pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, democratic political culture, and civil liberties. According to the report, only 64 countries in the world today have “some form of democracy” and less than half of the world’s population (45.7%) lives in them. Of the 64 countries, only 21 are classified as “full” liberal democracies and these account for 6.4% of the world’s population. And if we isolate the top ten democracies in the world according to the report, we find that the percentage of people lucky enough to live in one of them is dishearteningly small – just 1.2% of the world’s population.

February 27, 2022February 27, 2022

Δεν είναι όλες οι δημοκρατίες το ίδιο καλές

Δημοσιεύτηκε στην Καθημερινής της Κυριακής, 27 Φεβρουαρίου 2022

Η κατάσταση της δημοκρατίας στον κόσμο έγινε χειρότερη πέρυσι, σύμφωνα με τη νέα ετήσια έκθεση του Economist Intelligence Unit. Η έκθεση αξιολογεί 167 χώρες με βάση 60 επιμέρους δείκτες μοιρασμένους σε πέντε μεγάλες θεματικές ενότητες: εκλογική διαδικασία και πλουραλισμός, λειτουργία της κυβέρνησης, πολιτική συμμετοχή, δημοκρατική κουλτούρα και πολιτικές ελευθερίες. Σύμφωνα με την έκθεση, μόνο 64 χώρες στον κόσμο έχουν σήμερα «κάποιου είδους δημοκρατία», σε αυτές δε ζει ποσοστό λιγότερο από το μισό του παγκόσμιου πληθυσμού (45,7%). Από τις 64, μόλις 21 χαρακτηρίζονται ως «πλήρεις» δημοκρατίες και αυτές συγκεντρώνουν το 6,4% του παγκόσμιου πληθυσμού. Αν δε απομονώσουμε τις δέκα καλύτερες δημοκρατίες στον κόσμο σύμφωνα με την παραπάνω έκθεση, διαπιστώνουμε ότι το ποσοστό όσων έχουν την τύχη να ζουν σε μία από αυτές είναι αποκαρδιωτικά μικρό—μόλις το 1,2% του παγκόσμιου πληθυσμού!

February 6, 2022February 6, 2022

Populism in power: A scholarly comic

Simple as this comic story might be, it is based on many years of research and writing on the topic of populism, including books, academic and non-academic articles, various infographics, a TED-Ed video, and much more. The comic is scholarly since most of its dialogues are exact quotes by real populist leaders. Alecos, my collaborating cartoonist, and I hope you are going to enjoy it.

February 5, 2022March 11, 2022

I, the People

When I was still a full-time academic, I wrote an article titled “Populists in Power,” which was published in the Journal of Democracy in April 2019. At around the same time, my book entitled Populism and Liberal Democracy: A Comparative and Theoretical Analysis also came out by Oxford UP. In both works, I painstakingly analyzed in comparative perspective the most important cases of populist parties/leaders that have enjoyed power in their respective countries. Those countries are, in order of chronological appearance of the populist forces, Argentina, Italy, Venezuela, Hungary, Greece, and the United States. Based on that academic analysis, and aided by a fantastic cartoonist, I decided to condense everything in a very short comic story, combining fictional and real characters. As you will notice (but also see References below), most of the dialogues are direct quotations from speeches or other public utterances by well-known populist leaders. If you enjoyed this blog, you may also want to browse through this slide show.

February 5, 2022February 6, 2022

What happens when populism wins power?

Many people think that, when in power, populism is a “corrective” to democracy. This view is theoretically naive at best and empirically fictitious at worst. Just look at the most important real-life cases of ruling populism and you have a most clear answer to this blog’s title question: When populists win power, liberal democracies turn into illiberal ones; some even turn into real autocracies. Here below are six cartoons depicting, in chronological and historical order, the important cases of populist rule in Argentina, Italy, Venezuela, Hungary, Greece, and the United States under Donald Trump. All six cases have been analyzed and explained in separate chapters in my book Populism and Liberal Democracy: A Comparative and Theoretical Analysis (OUP, 2019). As of the cartoons below, these are part of a little comic story I wrote in collaboration with cartoonist Alecos Papadatos, which you can find—and probably enjoy—here and, as a slide show, here.