2024 will be the first year in the history of democracies that 4.2 billion citizens represent the total population of the countries in which elections will be held, out of a total world population of 8.2 billion. Romania will mark this premiere for the first time with four different types of elections to be organized during 2024. It is clear that the model of democracy will be put to a serious test, and we cannot predict how this test will pass.

If we exclude those who do not have the right to vote in the countries where the elections will be held, then approximately 2 billion citizens from more than 70 countries will go to the polls.

In an optimistic scenario, 2024 could be the year of victory for democracy in many countries, reversing the current trend of de-democratization around the world. However, the main fear is that in fact 2024 will be a new milestone in terms of the upward course of dedemocratization.

Elections will be held in 76 countries, but only 43 of them are democratic in the true sense of the word. Of these 43, 27 are members of the European Union, where elections to the European Parliament will be held. If these elections are excluded, democratic elections will be held in only 16 democracies, the most important of which are the United States and Great Britain. Half of the planet will vote, but in reality democratic elections will be held in only 16 countries (except EU countries). These numbers speak for themselves.

The most important election will be the US election. How the two wars will continue – in Ukraine and in Gaza – will largely depend on their outcome. The position of the president on the part of the Democrats is well known. However, we do not know how both wars will play out if Donald Trump is re-elected as he was in 2016. All signs point to a return to isolationism in this case, doubled by several attempts to assert the uniqueness of the United States. 2024 is the year when a new NATO Secretary General will be elected. The question of how he will cooperate with the future US president remains open. It is possible that Donald Trump will not be allowed to run, in which case Nikki Haley is the most likely successor. She would be the first female president of the United States. We don’t know much about Ms. Haley’s stance on global issues—in any case, the Republican Party is authoritarianly dominated by Donald Trump’s followers, and no Republican president can budge from the line Trump has set or risk losing the majority on his side. In other words, it doesn’t even matter if Trump is president or not if you vote for the Republican nominee. However, Haley has the advantage of not defying the Democratic establishment the way Trump did after losing the 2020 election.

Regardless of the outcome of the US election, the 2024 polls will be dominated by predictable results. In the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin probably will not even formally have a counter-candidate: all those who wanted to take part in this election race were disqualified from the very beginning or are in prison. This will be the first presidential election in the Russian Federation organized after the 2020 constitutional amendment, thanks to which Vladimir Putin received an unlimited number of mandates. There will be elections in Belarus as well – Lukashenko will definitely win, the only problem is not to exceed the percentage of 100% registered in the electoral rolls.

In Asia, simultaneous elections will be held in India, Indonesia and Bangladesh. Free presidential and parliamentary elections will be held in Indonesia. Anies Baswedan and Prabowo Subianto will compete for the state’s top job, but incumbent President John Widodo wants to continue ruling from the shadows, ineligible to run for office after two terms. Elections in Bangladesh will be held on January 7, 2024. In this case, the situation is more complicated. Parliamentary elections will be held between the Grand Alliance formed around the Bangladesh People’s League party, which has been led by current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina since 1981, and the opposition, mainly the Bangladesh National Party, which is accused of having links to radical Islamists. in groups . In India, Narendra Modi will have no emotions, but the prime minister is known for his illiberal attitudes, dismantling of the rule of law, corruption of democratic institutions and repression of the Muslim minority. Thus, these three Asian countries will have almost 1 billion citizens voting, but none of them meet the standards to be considered a consolidated democracy that guarantees the freedom of voting and the impartiality of the authorities in the electoral process.

There will be more elections in Africa, but the vast majority of them will confirm corrupt and illiberal leaders in power. Many African countries have experienced coups or civil wars in recent years, and the problem of democracy and free elections in this region of the world is far from being resolved. In Rwanda, Paul Kagame will run for a fifth term, as will Vladimir Putin – it is clear that the former rebel, who was part of the guerrillas who invaded Rwanda in 1990, will remain president. Undoubtedly, the most interesting elections will be in South Africa. The African National Congress (ANC), which has been in power for nearly 30 years since holding the first free elections since the end of apartheid, will for the first time find itself unable to form a majority at its level. own The NAC has been in steady decline since 2019, falling from 58% in 2019 to 41% in the latest polls in 2023. Of the 26.8 million eligible citizens, 11.2 are between the ages of 18 and 39 – for this generation, the beginning of democracy in the South. Africa and the guardian figure of Nelson Mandela no longer matter. There is no opposition to the CNA that is ready to take power through a vote – the Multiparty Charter, an alliance formed by 8 parties, will not have more than 38% according to the polls, but will be a very important opposition force in the next parliament. The NAC has become disillusioned with corrupt leaders, rising unemployment and crime, and the percentage of those who say they are satisfied with the current direction in which South Africa is heading has steadily declined.

In South America, populist leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador will not run again, as this is the first race between two women, Claudia Scheinbaum and Hostil Gálvez. Sheinbaum has the first chance, backed by the ruling Morena party, which supported Obrador and was president of that party from 2015 to 2017.

Decisive elections for the future of global democracy will be held in Taiwan on January 13, 2024. Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Lai Ching-te will face Hou Yu of the Nationalist Party of China (KMT). . Current President Tsai Ing-wen of the People’s Republic of China has taken a more independent stance toward Chinese PR, leading to a strained relationship between Beijing and Taipei. Opinion polls point to Lai as the favorite, but Howe has been steadily rising. Another candidate to look out for is Ko Wen-je of the new party, the Taiwan People’s Party. Ko started very well in the polls, but after the peak he started to fall, currently sitting in third place. Hou and Co. agree in criticizing the policy of the People’s Republic of China on relations with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. Lai will run alongside Hsiao Bi-him, who will become vice president if Lai is successful. Xiao is the ambassador de facto Taiwan to Washington, starting in 2020. For Xi Jinping, it doesn’t matter whether Hou or Ko will lead Taiwan for the next four years, what matters is that the NDP is no longer in power. But even if Lai wins the election race, the PDP will no longer have a majority in parliament and will find it very difficult to implement its political agenda. Relations between the United States and the Republic of China, the stability of Southeast Asia, the future of Taiwan as a subject de facto independent – it all depends on the results of the elections in Taiwan.

Elections to the new European Parliament will also take place in Europe, in all 27 member states. These elections will be free, but they will certainly mark the rise of populist parties. It is more than likely that the grand coalition between populists, socialists and progressive liberals will continue in various forms after 2024, but in many member states the presence of populist parties in power will make it difficult to implement plans for further European integration. The European Union will have to make a decisive choice regarding the observance of democratic standards and human rights, given that the current system, based in many areas on unanimity, allows some illiberal democracies, such as Hungary, to carry out unacceptable reforms agreed by all other states.

In this context, the importance of the US election is vital. The new US president will first have to conduct a very realistic analysis of why the Biden administration’s promise to reverse anti-democratic trends has not made significant progress. The project of the Alliance of Democracies, very well thought out in theory, failed to convince when it began to be revived and put into practice. All this happened in the conditions in which Joe Biden distinguished himself during his mandate with his unshakable trust in democracy. Anti-democratic forces are simply the majority at the global level, after much optimism in the early 1990s about the spread of the democratic model. Perhaps the American political system will no longer be able to produce a leader with democratic convictions on the level of Joe Biden, not only in 2024, but also in the following decades – even if he is re-elected. The big bet of 2024 is to create the conditions for the emergence of leaders with democratic convictions _ Read the rest of the article at Contributors.ro