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Voters all over sure seem to be unhappy in our 2024 "year of democracy," when over half the world's population is invited to one form or another of suffrage. The recent days' turbulence comes from two very different places—India and the European Union—suggesting a pattern that might offer some lessons for the United States, too.
In India, the world's largest democracy, it was announced last week that voters had denied Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) the parliamentary majority it had won in 2014 and 2019. He took just 240 of 543 seats, and just over a third of the vote, and must now go seeking coalition partners or (in an unlikely event) risk losing power.
In the European Union, whose combined population of 450 million is now about a third of India's, voters shocked elites by giving major boosts to far-right parties in key countries in last weekend's elections for the European Parliament (which controls considerable budgets and wields much power over the bloc's various institutions).
This was especially sharp in France and Germany, the EU's largest countries. And it caused French President Emanuel Macron—in an unnecessarily sporting gesture that would never happen in most countries—to call a snap election for the national parliament, effectively bringing down the government. Marine Le Pen's anti-immigration National Rally party, which easily won the French portion of the EU vote, may be able to deny Macron's pro-European centrist party control of France's parliament, forcing him to share power.
All this comes just days after South African voters delivered a stinging rebuke to the African National Congress, the party of the late—and still-revered—Nelson Mandela, which had ruled non-stop for the 30 years, since the fall of the apartheid regime. Although the ANC is trying—as Modi will—to form a coalition, its loss of a majority for the first time is a landmark moment.
It also comes three weeks before voters in Britain seem ready to hand the ruling Conservatives a defenestration such as has rarely been seen in this cradle of parliamentary democracy: polls suggest a 20-plus percent margin for Labour, whose leader, ex-prosecutor Sir Keir Starmer, can hardly believe his luck at the international mood.
On one level, the mood indeed seems universal. Perhaps it is digital ubiquity that gives us all too much information, and taps into humans' natural inclination to grouse—whether it's people in the West fearing decline or people in the developing world tired of waiting for their turn, or just everywhere liberals and traditional people are at each other's throats.
On another level, of course, each case is distinct—wildly different societies, at different levels of economic development, with different levers and drivers and players.
In Modi's case, the election was a clear personal message to a leader who is taking the country in an autocratic direction, concentrating more power than ever in the executive in a country of 1.4 billion other people. He is charismatic but polarizing, and he has risked great upheaval by pursuing a Hindu-first policy, alienating about 20 percent of the population.
In South Africa, the appeal of Mandela, 25 years after he left office, was simply overtaken by a record of corruption, mediocrity and incompetence from his successors. The country is not governed horribly, but also far from well, and the party was ripe for punishment and had stuck around too long.
In Britain, the Conservatives are similarly guilty of both misrule and superannuation. In power since 2010, they have brought unwanted austerity, a steep decline in living standards, a calamitous exit from the European Union and a parade of strikingly farcical leaders (one of whom will be forever remembered for credible comparisons to a lettuce).
In the European Union and especially in France, the rise of the far right is clearly related to a central, major concern: massive immigration, especially from the Middle East and Africa. Immigration has transformed capitals all over the continent and sparked a populist pushback not unlike the cultural war that simmers in the U.S. between the working class and the elites.
The EU is, after all, a project of the elites. It's been useful in preventing Europe from sparking any more world wars, and it has created not only economies of scale but a specific combined economy whose scale briefly (before Brexit) eclipsed America's.
Yet in recent decades, as all restrictions were removed on the movement of goods and people, the wealthier countries especially began fearing for their national character. This was exacerbated by immigration from outside the EU, especially since the major wave that followed the chaos of the Arab Spring. Islamic terrorist attacks in Belgium, Spain, France, Germany, and elsewhere have contributed to the witches' brew. The issue is worst in France, where fuzzy official estimates say immigrants are a tenth of the population, but people will swear it's double—not just Le Pen supporters.
The elites have long argued that countries like Germany, France, and Italy will benefit from immigration because their labor force is dwindling and immigrants are hardworking. Critics say this overlooks wage suppression, job competition in many sectors, the spread of economic inequality, welfare dependency, and strain on social services.
Mainly, though, it is the fear of the illiberal immigrants not adopting so-called European values—and the more you call the people who share such fears racist, the more they flock to the likes of Le Pen. Indeed, this is the reason why last month the Netherlands formed a coalition dominated by the anti-immigrant firebrand Geert Wilders.
On the surface, this would appear to be the main parallel to America: the concerns over immigration, in the U.S. case from Latin America, are real and explosive. Former President Donald Trump obviously both understands and stokes this—and President Joe Biden's move in recent weeks to enact severe measures at the border suggests that finally so does he—perhaps too late.
But there is another lesson for America in this grand year of democracy, and it comes from Mexico, the country whose leaky border is the source of all the immigration angst. It seems to be an exception to the throw-the-bums-out mood—but read on.
Mexico had its ANC moment in 2000, when voters finally threw out the Institutional Revolutionary Party after seven decades in power that. featured corruption, inequality, and authoritarianism. But on June 2, voters handed the now-ruling party, Morena, and its coalition, an even more massive majority than before.
They did this even though it's rushing to enact reforms that would undermine the country's hard-won democracy. They want to dismantle independent oversight bodies and regulators, to appoint supreme court judges and key stakeholders by popular vote, to hand massive powers to the army, and more—which has created a crisis with investors.
Democrats are warning Americans that Trump is an authoritarian-in-waiting—which is fair enough, since the former president has telegraphed that quite honestly. The lesson offered by Mexico is that it cannot be assumed that enough voters care. It may not be wrong to message this, but it must be done well—and in cognizance of the fact that alone it's not enough. Liberal democracy—the version that is more than a dictatorship of the majority—is not necessarily all that popular.
How to make Americans care, then? They may want to look at some of the cautionary tales.
One came in March with the farcical Russian procedure that many media outlets, to their disgrace, presented as having reaffirmed the dictator Vladimir Putin as president. More fakery is planned in three weeks, on June 28, for the presidency of the terrorist-sponsoring theocracy running Iran. Some of the voting this year is fake.
In the U.S., at least in November 2024, it will be very real. But the thing to keep in mind is this: Democracy really can die in darkness.
Dan Perry is the former Cairo-based Middle East editor and London-based Europe/Africa editor of the Associated Press. Follow him at danperry.substack.com.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
