2024 is an Election Year
Author: Hank Kune Issue: 2024-01-17
2024 is an Election Year
by Hank Kune
In many countries it will be an interesting year to think about the futures of democracies. From a traditional Western point of view, elections are a key feature of the democratic process, and approximately one fourth of the people on Earth live in countries with elections this year.
Or one half of the human population of our planet, depending on how people are counted – for example, including countries expected to announce elections this year, but haven’t set a date yet; or counting the entire population of the European Union, where 448 million people can vote for their European Parliament in June.
More or less complete lists of which countries are voting in which kind of election are available here: https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/01/02/top-global-elections-2024-india-russia-mexico-bangladesh-taiwan-venezuela-uk/#full-list and https://time.com/6550920/world-elections-2024/.
Either way, it’s a whole lot of people; between 2 and 4 billion people could be voting in (supra)national, regional and local elections in 2024. Some of these elections will take place in the world’s most populated countries – India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia, the European Union – all important geopolitical players. The UK and the Ukraine are expected to vote, as well as Mexico, South Africa, and both North and South Korea. There will be elections in 17 African nations and 18 countries in Asia. Taiwan has voted already. And people in the USA will be voting too.
More than 60 countries will hold elections of some kind. A number of these countries have very different kinds of democracies, while many of them would not call themselves ‘democracies’ at all.
Dozens of articles are available online describing this “ultimate election year,” and what all kinds of analysts believe is at stake. A lot of the articles argue that the future of democracy is up for grabs; some see this year as “a referendum on democracy.” The results of some of these elections, it is said, will have far-reaching effects. All of the elections have the possibility of effecting the quality of life at a local level in the countries where they are held.
One reference scale is a country’s “freedom and fairness score,” ranging from zero (least free and fair) to one (most free and fair), derived from Our World in Data’s free and fair elections index, which is in turn based on assessments by the Swedish think-tank V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy). For countries where information is available, scores range from 0.02 to 0.96.
But ‘free and fair’ is not the only way to see democracies.
Some people think that this year will be a crucial moment to think about ‘renewing democracies’. That every culture should develop its own form of governance. That there is no one-size-fits-all model to beg, borrow, or steal, or impose on others. That it’s a good year for a bigger conversation – a global dialogue about governance paradigms, and what good governance in the 2020’s could be.
It would be interesting to know what people in the 60 countries think is important about their elections. Between 2 and 4 billion people could be voting in 2024.
That doesn’t mean they are free to vote. That doesn’t mean they will vote. That doesn’t mean they want to vote (the ‘it doesn’t make a difference’ syndrome). That doesn’t mean they really understand them issues. That doesn’t mean they will consider all the consequences of who or what they vote for.
And so on.
That doesn’t mean that they should be left to their own devices.
That doesn’t mean they should be left out of a global conversation.
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