2010 Essays

A Grim Report on Democracy

Mitchell, Lincoln A.

This week Freedom House released its annual Freedom in the World report. This in depth report is particularly useful because it makes comparisons over time and identifies trends in democracy and freedom both globally and within different regions. The central findings of the report, that "Global freedom suffered its fifth consecutive year of decline in 2010" and "(T)he increasing truculence of the world's most powerful authoritarian regimes has coincided with a growing inability or unwillingness on the part of the world's democracies to meet the authoritarian challenge, with important consequences for the state of global freedom," are grim. The report goes on to detail the decline of democracy and freedom throughout the world.