Types of democracy

Here's how "The End of History and the Last Man," the 1992 best seller of political philosopher and Stanford University professor Francis Fukuyama, ends: "Perhaps this very prospect of centuries of boredom at the end of history will serve to get history started once again." Clearly, the engines of history restarted and have been working at warp speed in the past three decades.

Freedom House's latest 'Nations in Transit' report, published on Wednesday, strongly criticises Serbia, Montenegro and Hungary for falling democratic standards and classifies all three countries for the first time as 'hybrid regimes'.

Times like these test leaders. In a world full of fear and noise, a small group is called upon to take decisions that will determine the fate of their people. No one was elected on the basis of their program for dealing with a pandemic but their legacy will depend on how they handled this threat to all of us. Their decisions will either alleviate the damage or compound it.

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Aspiring authoritarian leaders and populist politicians are encouraged by divisive politics within mainstream political parties. They feel emboldened by blatant attacks on civil liberties by seasoned autocrats such as Russian President Vladimir Putin or Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. 

By the end of the 1980s, some believed that this system of governance, which engendered economic success and political stability, had won the day against any alternative. Communist and fascist authoritarianism were discredited. A mood of triumphalism set in, breeding complacency. But things look a lot less rosy for liberal democrats today.

However justified some people's claims may be, no democracy can function properly without some limits. These limits were abolished in Greece some time ago and this is extremely dangerous, especially for democracy itself.

Four out of the five categories that make up the average score deteriorated. Civil liberties: down. Political culture: down. Functioning of government: down. Electoral processes and pluralism: you guessed it.

The only category that registered an uptick was "political participation", reflecting "a rising tide of popular protest" that "shook regimes run by despots and democrats alike".

It has plenty of good reasons for doing so. Fidesz has not only dismantled democracy and the rule of law in Hungary, but also demonised the EU as a tyrannical institution that is supposedly robbing Europeans of their freedom.

The Orban Government must be urgently dismissed, both because changing the electoral system on the eve of elections violates the European standards, and because the adoption of these changes was made unilaterally, without consultation and debate, by the ruling party assuming responsibility, shows the text of the censure motion titled "The Orban Government / PNL [National Liberal Party] - the pr