Thinking Democratically: A Comprehensive Approach to Countering and Preventing Shrinking Space

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