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Around the world, the advance of freedom hinges on "swing states." And they're swinging in the wrong direction.

Pictures of Egyptian army chief and presidential candidate Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who overthrew former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi in 2013, on a computer screen. (Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters)

While the worlds attention has been riveted on Ukraine and what move an emboldened Vladimir Putin will make next, diverse threats to democracy have intensified on other fronts as well. The story is not new. According to Freedom House, 2013 was the eighth consecutive year in which more countries experienced declines in political rights or civil liberties than improvements. Since 2005, democracy has ceased its decades-long expansion, leveling off at about 60 percent of all independent states. And since the military coup in Pakistan in 1999, the rate of democratic breakdowns has accelerated, with about one in every five democracies failing.

The downfall of several Arab autocracies in 2011 seemed to augur a new burst of democratic progress, but that progress has not materialized. While Tunisia has emerged as the first Arab democracy in 40 years, Egypt is more repressive now than at any time in the last decade of Hosni Mubaraks rule. Since the end of 2010, more Arab countries have regressed in freedom and political pluralism than have advanced.

The democratic recession were witnessing has been particularly visible in big swing statesthe non-Western countries with the largest populations and economies. Since the late 1990s, democracy has broken down in Russia, Nigeria, Venezuela, the Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand, and Kenya. The Philippines is the one relative bright spot in the group today, with a democratically elected president, Benigno Aquino, committed to serious governance reforms. Russia has become not just a venal and despotic state, but a neo-imperial menace to its neighbors as well. Nigeria has reverted back to tragic levels of political kleptocracy and fraud, feeding political polarization, ethnic resentment, citizen alienation, and an increasingly virulent Islamic terrorist movement in the north. The grip of Bolivarian socialism has weakened in Venezuela as governance has deteriorated, violence has exploded, and the opposition has unified behind a liberal challenger first to Hugo Chvez and then to his designated successor. But it will be a pyrrhic victory for democrats if the Chavista regime falls and social order collapses alongside it.

In January, democracy in Bangladesh suffered a major setback when the principal opposition party boycotted parliamentary elections after the ruling party abandoned neutral arrangements for electoral administration, and trust between the two parties collapsed. While Freedom House judges that democracy has returned to Pakistan, Kenya, and Thailand, these governments are so illiberal and corrupt that it is difficult to say what exactly they are.

In Thailand, enmity between the yellow shirt urban, middle-class backers of the monarchy and the red shirt partisans of populist former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has paralyzed the government and increasingly veered toward violence. Instability has been a chronic issue since the military ousted Thaksin in 2006, suspending the country indefinitely between resilient majority support for Thaksins party and the yellow-shirt camps continuing control of key levers of the deep state. Since November, more than 20 people have been killed and over 700 injured in fevered street confrontations between the two camps. And the worst may be yet to come. In January, one Red Shirt militant vowed, I want there to be lots of violence to put an end to all this. Its time to clean the country, to get rid of the elite, all of them. As in Nigeria, renewed military intervention wont solve the countrys problems. Yet if things continue to degenerate, the military is waiting in the wings.

During his 11 years in power, Turkeys domineering prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has managed to politically neutralize the military and the independent press, along with many other countervailing forces in politics and society. Those who hoped his authoritarian drift might be slowed by local elections in late March were severely disappointed, as his Justice and Development Party (AKP) won a convincing victory across Turkeys municipalities. Erdogans victory speech that night was anything but magnanimous. He threatened those who had exposed the mounting corruption of his government (and reportedly his own family), assured his supporters that we are the owners of this country, and portrayed his victory as a full Ottoman slap to all his opponents.

As Erdogan prepares to run either for prime minister or president (if he can amend the constitution to enhance the latters powers), Turkey is in deepening trouble. Journalists fear to report the truth, and with good reason; more of them are jailed in Turkey than in any other country. Businesses fear to support opposition parties, judges fear to rule against the ruler, and the AKPlong hailed in the West for its success in reconciling Islam and democracyis increasingly looking like an old-fashioned hegemon bent on securing its dominance. With every passing day, Turkey looks more like the fake democracy of Malaysia than any real democracy in Europe. Meanwhile, Malaysia failed to record the democratic breakthrough many expected in 2013. Even though the opposition, led by Anwar Ibrahim, won a clear majority of the vote in general elections, brazen gerrymandering and over-representation of ruling-party strongholds nullified the preference of most Malaysians.

The rest is here:
Democracy's Deepening Recession