Thinking Democratically: A Comprehensive Approach to Countering and Preventing Shrinking Space
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2.2. Creating an uneven playing field<br />
A second tactic for restricting democratic space is the creation of an uneven playing field for political<br />
participation <strong>and</strong> contestation, thereby limiting the inclusiveness of elec<strong>to</strong>ral <strong>and</strong> policy-making<br />
processes, <strong>and</strong> greatly reducing the representativeness of the government. While the openness <strong>and</strong><br />
degree of a level political playing field is hard <strong>to</strong> capture in quantitative indica<strong>to</strong>rs, the figures below<br />
on the freedom of political parties <strong>and</strong> cleanliness of elections provide some insight in<strong>to</strong> the dynamics<br />
in different countries over time. Most tellingly, the figure shows that generally there have been only<br />
limited improvements in the freedom of political parties, despite improvements in Guatemala,<br />
Georgia <strong>and</strong> Kenya from 2011 <strong>to</strong> 2017, followed by deteriorations in all cases after 2017. Kenya,<br />
Zimbabwe <strong>and</strong> Honduras suffer from the least transparent <strong>and</strong> fair elections out of the case studies<br />
analysed in this report, while improvements are observed in El Salvador <strong>and</strong> Guatemala. It is clear<br />
that this indica<strong>to</strong>r is very volatile over time, showing the ease at which authoritarian governments<br />
resort <strong>to</strong> elec<strong>to</strong>ral interference for restricting democratic space. The case of El Salvador is telling in<br />
this regard, as a rapid decline can be observed in the last year – a period not covered by the graph<br />
below yet – with the president using the military <strong>to</strong> force the parliament in<strong>to</strong> approving a loan <strong>to</strong> pay<br />
for security equipment. 47<br />
47<br />
Agren, D. (2020): Nayib Bukele's military stunt raises alarming memories in El Salvador. The Guardian. Available here.<br />
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