The Odds Favor Democracy

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Emma Varvaloucas: A study covering 22 countries over almost 30 years contains something that might surprise you about democracy. Also this week, a new blood test might change a key moment in pregnancy, big wins for voting rights in more than one state, and Sweden is making a move that might just cause the kids to crash out.

Welcome to the What Could Go Right? Progress Report, where we dive into some of the good news that probably all of us missed because it was buried under the barrage of bad news. Hey, if you’re new here, I’m Emma Varvaloucas, and I’m the executive director of the Progress Network. Let’s get into it.

First up, if you’re a longtime fan of the podcast, you might have noticed that we’ve been on the democracy beat in recent years.

There’ve been some happy surprises, like in Poland, Brazil, and… Oh, crap. I know I said I wouldn’t mention Hungary again, but really quick, Hungary, where would-be authoritarians such as Jair Bolsonaro or Viktor Orbán were voted out of office. These examples are good news in and of themselves, but of course, we are a US-based show, so we’re especially interested in them because, well, I don’t think an explanation is really needed, but on the off chance you’re joining us fresh out of a three-year Tibetan Buddhist retreat, you might wanna get your meditation cushion back out, because democracy in the US is backsliding faster than Leonardo DiCaprio sprinting away from a 26th birthday party. If you know, you know.

That’s according to the independent research institute V-Dem. The V in their name stands for varieties, and this is going to be shocking, but they look at governments around the world and measure, wait for it, varieties of democracy. According to them, US democracy is currently in a much faster deterioration process than any other democracy in modern times.

Tell us something we didn’t know. The US is far from the only nation struggling through an anti-democratic period. The world as a whole is actually going through a wave of autocratization. So while the Polish, Brazilian, and Hungarian outcomes have been welcome and motivating, I wasn’t sure if they were also anomalies.

Good news. Turns out they are the rule, not the exception. In the Journal of Democracy, Javier Corrales and Susan Stokes present their study of 27 instances of democratic erosion across 22 countries and going all the way back to 1999. In the case of democracy versus eroders everywhere, the odds are decisively in democracy’s favor.

The study says, “In 20 instances, leaders left office and did so without completing a transition to authoritarianism.” They also add, “Of these 20, 15 were replaced by leaders who either stopped the backsliding or delivered a clear U-turn towards re-democratization.” Totally unrelated sidebar, are you registered to vote?

Anyway, of the countries featured in the study, only two places became fully autocratic, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

So, what is the recipe for getting an aspiring autocrat to give up their power? Corrales and Stokes lists four ways that this happens. The first is elections. Elections may feel like weak sauce while watching democracy corrode in real time, but despite what the cynics may say, elections are the most critical lever to pull against autocrats, even when the game is rigged in their favor.

For examples, the authors cite Poland in 2023, Brazil in 2022, as well as Zambia in 2021, Botswana in 2019. I imagine I don’t need to specify which year. But elections only work in the fight against authoritarianism if people actually turn out to vote. A big, huge, often record-breaking turnout is key. For example, in 2016, Bolivia’s Evo Morales lost a national referendum that would have let him run for an additional term.

Then he ran for re-election anyway, eventually leading to his forced resignation and self-exile from the country. Another totally unrelated sidebar, are you registered to vote?

The next big factor in the fight against autocracy is term limits. Kinda boring, I know, but also good to know that they work. The study mentions six instances, including in Moldova and Ecuador, in which term limits thwarted authoritarian ambitions.

What was even more interesting to me is that when rulers tried to change the laws around term limits, it often backfires. For example, in 2016, Bolivia’s Evo Morales had to resign and go into exile after trying to run for re-election despite being past his term limit. Across the world, the public is very wary of leaders who mess with term limits, which is definitely a comfort to those worried about this:

Steve Bannon: He’s gonna get a third term. Trump is gonna be president in ‘28.

Varvaloucas: The third and fourth methods to successfully unseat an autocrat are less common. There’s party removal, where a leader is removed from power by their own party. That seems far-fetched, but it actually does happen.

And the last is, yep, you guessed it. Protests. But protesting an authoritarian-ish regime can come with its own set of problems. Protests are important in autocratizing environments because they’re a mechanism for overcoming a climate of fear, but they also give leaders an opening to crack down and consolidate power. So the authors say that they seldom lead directly to a leader’s removal, although they are a contributing factor in many cases.

One last interesting finding from the study: impeachment isn’t usually all that effective. Of course, just because a country successfully dethrones an authoritarian wannabe doesn’t guarantee a happy ending. Unfortunately, democratic damage lingers even when the ruler is ousted. For example, a decade after Morales’ exit, Bolivia is in crisis, and the man himself is back in politics.

Getting rid of an autocrat is another chapter of the democratic erosion story, not the end of it. But still, it can be done. And in fact, it happens more often than not. Which reminds me, are you registered to vote?

Before we get into our shorter stories, here are some numbers that will make you smile. Three times, that’s the increase in parental leave taken by American fathers since 2019.

90%, the share of countries that now have laws protecting the rights of people with disabilities. Four, the number of U.S. states that prohibit pistols easily converted into machine guns, part of a growing trend. Seven, the number of U.S. states that have adopted balcony solar, with dozens more considering it.

If you don’t know what balcony solar is, imagine solar panels that you can just go pick up at, like, a Walmart, bring them home, plug them in, hang them on your balcony, and you have power.

And 70, years the black-lored waxbill was lost to science before posing for its first-ever photos. That’s a bird, in case there’s any confusion.

And here are our quick hits for today. First up, a new blood test for pregnant women can find thousands of genetic conditions. This would limit the need for invasive screening. Scientists say it’s safer and equally as accurate as more invasive tests, although its reliability is yet to be confirmed. The test was featured at this year’s European Society for Human Genetics conference in Sweden.

So how does the test work? Well, during pregnancy, apparently microscopic pieces of the fetus’s DNA can be detected in the mother’s blood. By sequencing that DNA, scientists have been able to find a whole bunch of different genetic conditions, such as cystic fibrosis, which usually requires something like amniocentesis to be confirmed.

If you’ve never been pregnant, FYI, that involves getting poked with a long, thin needle, and there is a small risk associated with the procedure. The new test would avoid that whole ordeal.

It’s called the NIFS test, and no, not because it’s so nifty. That’s short for noninvasive fetal sequencing. One of the scientists who developed it, Dr. Christopher Whelan of MIT and Harvard—I guess one wasn’t enough, just kidding, it’s an institute that’s across both—says that a lot of women refuse more invasive tests because of things like cost and danger to the fetus. He hopes NIFS can offer a more accessible health screening.

Next up, I bet this story will make Bernie Sanders even happier than watching a billionaire’s mega yacht get towed for expired tags.

Okay, maybe not that happy, but it is good news. Remember a few years ago when everyone freaked out about the Bern saying this?

Bernie Sanders: I think the right to vote is inherent to our democracy. Yes, even for terrible people.

Varvaloucas: The terrible people bit got the allegedly non-terrible people pretty riled up, but it looks like at least some people agreed with the heart of the argument because a whole bunch of states are making progress on voting rights for those with criminal records.

Let’s start with Maryland. Democratic Governor Wes Moore recently signed legislation that automatically registers citizens to vote after they’ve completed their felony sentence. Missouri has also passed legislation that allows citizens to vote after finishing their felony parole or probation, though that bill has yet to be signed by Republican Governor Mike Kehoe.

In 2024, the advocacy group The Sentencing Project says that there were about four million people in the US who couldn’t vote because of a felony conviction, and those voting bans go back to the Jim Crow era. The total number of people disenfranchised, believe it or not, has actually dropped 31% since 2016, but it is still much higher than it was in the 1970s or 1990s.

So while there’s still a lot of work to do, laws like the ones being passed in Maryland and Missouri are a big step in the right direction and part of a trend. 11 states have changed their policies since 2020, helping to tamp this number down. Plus, we’ve also been sending fewer people to jail, shrinking the prison population overall, thanks to a long-term decline in crime rates.

Yes, I know Trump and Kash Patel keep telling us that that’s all due to their leadership, and I just hate to burst their bubble, but that’s actually been the case since the late 1990s.

Last up, Sweden becomes the latest country to ban smartphones in schools. Presumably also dumb phones. The move comes in response to data showing a decline in literacy amongst Swedish students. Ooh, I am weirdly glad that that’s not just the Americans. Not good news for society, but it is nice to have company, I guess.

It wasn’t too long ago that classrooms around the world were clamoring to incorporate screens and technology. But in the last few years, people have been questioning whether screens are actually hurting kids’ ability to learn, so much so that more than half the planet has now banned phones in the classroom, hoping that the kids are gonna be all right.

That includes more than 20 states in the US and counting, which is probably a good thing because I know that if I had a phone while I was in high school, I would’ve been too busy looking at custom-built dioramas of Middle Earth to pay attention to algebra. And that was probably too intimate of a look into my social media habits.

And that’s all for this week’s Progress Report. I hope these stories remind you that there’s so much good going on in the world, so it’s important to shift our focus away from all of the bad. If you got some value from this episode, send it to someone who’s a little too into the potato UFO story, and make sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel, follow us on your preferred podcast platform, and leave us a review.

If you’d like more of these stories delivered right to your inbox, sign up for our newsletter. The link is in the description. Got a good news story that we should cover next week? Let us know in the comments. Thanks for watching, and see you next week on the Progress Report.