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

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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 47 Agren, D. (2020): Nayib Bukele's military stunt raises alarming memories in El Salvador. The Guardian. Available here. 20
All scoring runs from 0 to 1, with 1 representing the highest achievement. Source: International IDEA, Global State of Democracy Indices. The Free Political Party indicator focuses on the extent parties are free to form, campaign and run for elections. Available here. All scoring runs from 0 to 1, with 1 representing the highest achievement. Source: International IDEA, Global State of Democracy Indices. The Free Political Party indicator focuses on the extent parties are free to form, campaign and run for elections. Available here. 21
Page 1 and 2: Agence Française de Coopération M
Page 3 and 4: TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables an
Page 5 and 6: Executive Summary ‘Shrinking civi
Page 7 and 8: A third finding is that space is be
Page 9 and 10: This trend has been heightened by t
Page 11 and 12: 2. Strategies for closing democrati
Page 13 and 14: 2.1 Closing civic space There is an
Page 15 and 16: or specific voices that are deemed
Page 17 and 18: laundering has been translated into
Page 19: Smear-campaigns and the strategic u
Page 23 and 24: to enforce political party complian
Page 25 and 26: Campaign finance and money in polit
Page 27 and 28: While most countries’ constitutio
Page 29 and 30: unpunished. These included people l
Page 31 and 32: 3. Main Actors The picture that eme
Page 33 and 34: an evolving trend in Indonesia and
Page 35 and 36: Emblematic civil society successes
Page 37 and 38: 3.3 Other non-state actors: busines
Page 39 and 40: 3.5 International donors Internatio
Page 41 and 42: 4. Conclusion While the 7 case stud
Page 43 and 44: The case studies show that the atta
Page 45 and 46: Instead, people resort to less conv
Page 47 and 48: Civil society was much stronger in
Page 49 and 50: 2. Respond with a multi-level whole
Page 51 and 52: 4. Global coordination and politica
Page 53 and 54: petitions; awareness creation; stre
Page 55 and 56: 6.4 Georgia In Georgia, civic space
Page 57 and 58: This leads to a complete lack of re
Page 59 and 60: Poland LGBTQI people have suffered

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

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