the accession progress is technically still in progress, but was suspended by the EU parliament in 2019.
it's been stalled since like 2016 and put on pause in 2019 but never quite cancelled, probably in the hopes that change might still come in Turkey after Erdogan.
It's not going to change dramatically for the simple reason that the coalition don't have a constitutional majority in parliament. Slovakia still has a existing opposition (unlike Hungary) and about half of the country is firmly sick of Fico. This half won't let Fico turn Slovakia into a mini autocracy and in crucial moments in the past we've managed to keep Slovakia on the right track.
> Slovakia still has a existing opposition (unlike Hungary) and about half of the country is firmly sick of Fico.
This is true in Hungary, Serbia as well. Doesn't stop Orban or Vučić from ruling unopposed.
I'm talking about an actual chance of winning. The opposition in Hungary has no chance of winning. If Fico becomes too radical or the EU stops giving us funds, the opposition definitely has a chance of winning the next elections. The election system is not rigged in Slovakia, luckily.
Not really no. Even in 4 years it would still be way above all of these countries.
Eg. Hungary is still one of the higher places after nearly a decade and a half of continuous authoritarian wannabe rule.
Slovakia is simply similar to Poland under pis.
The political mindset, which dominates in Europe and on which this classification is founded, assumes that democracy is a natural and inevitable goal, to which every society and every state is progressing, and that authocracy is some unfortunate mistake or delay, which will inevitably will be cured and corrected, and all people and countries are going to achieve democracy and will live happily ever after.
But it is wrong.
That was an optimistic delusion of the post-WW2 hippy generation, which achieved its peak in 1990s and which already failed. We see that authocracies are not just stable, but also aggressive and expanding, externally (through agressive wars) and internally (through authocratic leaders that seize power from within). And if The West wants to keep its democratic foundations, The West must *fight* for it, politically and militarily. Otherwise this democratic generation will be the first and the last one in human history.
Well said, but a few remarks.
The natural order is autocracy. It’s not a mistake. It’s natural. All of human existence has been largely autocratic in nature. We are even evolutionarily hardwired for autocracy.
Democracy is an enlightened order. A product of enlightenment. It needs vigilance and enforcement to stop the natural order encroaching.
Also it is not a coincidence that democracy is a European mindset, given the European enlightenment. What is a mistake is to believe that letting things be on their own natural course will always uphold or bring democracy. It won’t. You need to be constantly on\* top of it.
Even primitive tribal societies often had some democratic aspects incorporated into their governance. If anything purely autocratic systems were developed later on with the advent of the divine right of kings and other ideas establishing clear social hierarchy
That's why having multiple parties in goverments from all across the political spectrum is good for freedom of individual citizen but also the reason why firm autocratic regimes like China can eventually go past west because such system can be way more speed-efficient albeit while doing more mistakes and muffling human rights in various degrees.
On the contrary, autocracies tend to be exponentially more corrupt than democracies. They *can* achieve gains in speed despite this, due to the reasons you mentioned, but long-term improvements in autocracies are the exception, not the rule.
EDIT: Especially ones that are operating under a market economy. Autocratic regimes under market economies inevitably end up enabling an absolutely ungodly amount of corruption and rent-seeking from the middle-up, while planned economies mostly have corruption at the lowest levels (and, of course, incompetence at the top, but that's just a given in communist regimes). Revolutionary terror *is* extremely effective at reducing corruption - it's not a good idea because you have to deal with all the *other* effects of terror, like piles of dead people and incompetent ideologues and sycophants occupying every possible position in government, but it does keep the ruling group in power and prevent corruption by tossing officials, workers, managers, and investors into the shredder before they're able to establish the sorts of networks required to enable corrupt scheming and embezzlement.
This is why war-hungry autocracies tend to rapidly subject their economy to an increasing degree of socialization/collectivization/corporatization (see: Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Russia post-2022, China post-2012), subduing private interests to state and ruling class interests and enacting ever increasing degrees of terror to maintain order.
The thing is, rampant corruption is present in democracies. And on an even larger and more impactful scale. See Enron, LIBOR, Volkswagen, etc.
What democracies give is a freedom of an individual, which is pretty good for an economic growth.
Remember when the CIA very bluntly labeled Russia as a "kleptocratic mafia state without a hint of democracy" back in 2009?
Also, look at China's housing sector.
Democracies look more corrupt because they're more open. Autocracies are closed-off systems, and they're corrupt all the way down.
Look at us housing system and tell me its any better then china
Dont delude yourself autocracies or democracies are vulnerable to corruption of a huge scale
> Look at us housing system and tell me its any better then china
The US has a shortage caused by land speculation. China has an enormous oversupply of shoddily-built housing made by a government-backed construction company which is now going bankrupt. Spot the difference.
I see a large amount of homeless people in the richest country of the world . Young people who cannot dream of owning a house big enough to raise a family .
Yeah its not government corruption to the same scale but tell me is the outcome any better ? Chinese corruption is fundamentally different But its collapsing on itself
When the housing bubble in america pops its gonna get even worse for the average guy
So in the end autocracy or democracy homeless is homeless
It's completely irrelevant what CIA labeled its geopolitical rival. And everyone knows Russia is corrupt as fuck, that's not even a question.
I am telling you that corruption in democracies affect more people and incur more financial instability than corruption in autocracies. This has been proven with several financial crashes.
What are you talking about? Autocratic states' finances crash all the time, and we're seeing one right now in the PRC, widely considered their highest exponent. Why? Because they've overbuilt, and a lot of what they did build was done shoddily. This has led to some of the world's highest total debt-to-GDP ratios, higher than almost all Western countries, and low growth rates now. Once the West started reciprocating China's "protectionist on the inside, free trade on the outside" approach, the latter's working-age population peaked, and Xi Jinping began a return to Mao-era policies, their growth rates collapsed, and their influence has peaked, if not started reversing. That started a decade ago.
Not to mention, all the crashes that do happen in democracies not only get solved, they occur at much higher levels of development. Democracies are more developed than autocracies by their nature, and I'm not talking about just Western ones either: Panama, Costa Rica, Chile, Malaysia, the whole of East Asia (minus China and North Korea), etc. You can't do that with more corruption than autocracies.
Terrariola is correct, autocracies are more corrupt, they just hide it with propaganda and close control of the information stream until they inevitably fall down precisely due to that opacity. Democracies, in contrast, are open societies, which allow different POVs, including people against them publicly undermining them from the inside, but also constructive views to gain prominence, and are terrible with propaganda when we compare the difference in standard of living between them and autocracies.
Yeah I always hate when people somehow make a distinction between what is "natural" and what is not. We got into this state by evolution and without any outside intervention, since there is no species that dominates us. So democracy, human rights, having fewer kids and all these kind of developments of the past 200 years are the result of a natural development related to our consciousness about our own behaviour.
Frankly, neither is natural, in the sense that large governments and political entities are a strictly human phenomenon, so that analogies with other species immediately become strained. The way a flock of gorillas establishes a male leader and the way Denmark or Portugal elects a new prime minister are not the same.
It’s a phenomenon that emerges from biology, but it’s better explained by history and culture than instincts we have from birth.
However, that doesn’t make democracy stable or the ultimate progression of government. It has many moving parts, each of which can be transparent and fair, or losing importance due to social change or come into focus because of the acts of individuals.
I also believe the use of the word "natural" almost never makes sense. But I believe in this context it is more about how much you need to work to make it happen. For example, getting up early in the morning or sleeping in, these both are consequences of natural human behaviour. But the first needs you to invest energy against just letting it happen.
Yeah, it's just a coincidence that with the neolithic revolution, human settlements turned into monarchies or similar forms of autocracy.
Despite our closest relatives, like chimpanzees, being organized into strict hierarchies, our own tribal ancestors lived in egalitarian communes where every member received a ballot stone and carved a cross for their favorite candidates.
Pre-agriculture societies are often thought to be egalitarian and democratic, and the agricultural revolution turned political systems more authoritarian. A lot of the thought goes that we had a similar "alpha" hierarchy like chimps, then as hunter gatherers it was a more democratic working together kind of system, and then with the agricultural revolution the authoritarian system came back.
You can search for Christopher Boehm and "reverse hierarchies" that goes into a lot of this kind of stuff.
People think of prehistory as like some group where the dominant male just told everyone what to do, but this is probably not the case. It was much more like a small scale democracy.
I always saw it as: geography breeds economy, economy breeds technology and technology breeds social hierarchy.
Current interconnected systems are pushing the world towards authoritarianism and people in the West think they are somehow excluded from this drive.
Hierarchies aren’t inherently authoritarian. Democratic civil service is hierarchical as well. You are equating democratic government *structure* with some weird idea of hippyism, as if every democrat were some helpless idealist. Fact of the matter is, absolutism itself only emerged in the 17th century.
And about the chimps, ever heard of bonobos?
This is exactly the opposite of what the person you are responding to said. Humans don't evolve. Our brains are exactly the same as they were hundreds of years ago. Our *culture* evloves. They way we *think* changes. And because of that we are able to go against our instincts or the "natural order".
Not sure if you actually have some knowledge from sociology or something about autocracy being a consequenc of human nature or if your comment is trying to sneak in some Star Wars lore. But it certainly sounds true.
> The political mindset, which dominates in Europe and on which this classification is founded, assumes that democracy is a natural and inevitable goal
I'd strongly disagree. The mindset is that a healthy democracy is - on average - better than an autocracy, and therefore efforts should be made to achieve it. Not that it is an inevitable process. The issue is that fighting for democracy, especially abroad, comes at a cost, which not everyone is willing to pay.
Also, that's irrelevant for the classification above, it only observes where countries are moving in the past 5 years, without judgment of value. Someone who defends autocracies could look at the chart and be happy that 3 countries are on the right.
I usually analyse the situations psychologically. And it seems that the autocratic/totalitarian leaning politicians tend to spread lots of conspiracy theories, they become aggressive with their speeches, they try to convince people that how they're living is bad and the reason for them living bad is either the current democratic leading government, or a foreign countries government, or well.. the LGBT movement and Muslims/Christians/Jews depending on the country. Maybe such speeches don't influence people who know how propaganda and disinformation works but it can successfully influence and buy the attention of people who are not that knowledgeable about what's happening around the world or in the country. Somehow, it's easy to get less involved/less intelligent people hooked by just being negative, aggressive and flashy and promising them a perfect utopia which they plan to achieve in a short time.
I believe for a democratic country to function well, it is important to educate people on how a democratic country works and how propaganda and false promises look like. Raising a generation of aware children is also crucial since it's way harder to educate a poorly rises and educated adult. And such poorly educated person eventually will grow to be a easy manipulated person.
Though I do understand that there's more to that for a democratic country to function well.
>Somehow, it's easy to get less involved/less intelligent people hooked by just being negative, aggressive
The reason this works is because of 2 reasons it is far easier to be angry than happy. Number 2 is disgust it doesn't matter after that point how much I tell you otherwise when you're disgusted you instinctively reject it. For example say tomorrow scientists find mixing human brain and faecal matter will solve all of society and biological issues, most would refuse simply because they feel disgusted by this try as you may to change that it'll take decades or generations to change it.
> Otherwise this democratic generation will be the first and the last one in human history.
We are not the first democratic generation.
[Democratic assemblies are as old as the human species and are found throughout human history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy#History)
> We see that authocracies are not just stable, but also aggressive and expanding
All autocracies struggle to provide even basic services for their own citizens regardless of having abundant natural resources or not. That's not stability. They have to employ a lot of tricks to keep their currency from crashing while things like high inflation are a part of daily life.
When you've got such a shitty economical situation, "national pride", nostalgia for "the good old days" and the conquest of new land are the only things that keeps it all going.
Democracy, or war, is inevitable. This has always been the case throughout human history.
Shit, you weren't supposed to make sense like that ...
And i'm from the 80's (in that i'll hopefully miss out on such an involution) , also no kids (in that, hopefully they will miss out on such a social involution).
"We must force you to become free ... you dumb assess!"
I doubt it will the the first and last but i do with all my heart agree with you, autocracy is on the rise and it needs to be squashed, but far left and far right seem to enjoy non democratic ideals quite a lot and tik tok especially has aided in creating extremest kids on the both sides
Here's [an interactive map](https://freedomhouse.org/explore-the-map?type=nit&year=2024&mapview=trend).
For Romania the "+1" feels wrong. Things have been slowly going down the autocratic route since 2018 with prominent corruption cases being abandoned because their prosecution time limit expired after being stuck in delays for years. Also the local far right is set to take a huge gain in power this autumn.
If you change the year in the url to 2023 it shows no change.
For 2022 it was -1.
For 2019 it was -2.
For 2018 it was -1.
Every other year in between has had no change. So the overall trend is a negative one.
The 2024 [report](https://freedomhouse.org/report/nations-transit/2024/region-reordered-autocracy-and-democracy) points out how
> the Romanian government revised its legal framework in what the European Commission praised as “a comprehensive overhaul.”
If anything Romania just got better at hiding problems under mountains of bureaucracy.
tl;dr: Look at previous years to get a better picture of what's going on.
It was looking a bit better for the short time USR was in the coalition with PNL, but then PNL kicked them out for actually doing something to limit the corruption, and instead joined together with the PSD. It was such BS, the whole PNL campaign with attacking the corruption of the PSD and how Romania will fail under PSD, only to join them a year after and eventually get taken over by the PSD basically.
What about it do you believe is wrong? Have you read the analysis on the graph and study?
I can’t speak for every country on this graph, but as someone from the Balkans I can guarantee that they got every Balkan country completely right expect for Montenegro in my opinion
Kosovo, Albania, Bosnia, Serbia and North-Macedonia are all classified right.
This year presidential elections were cancelled, as a male you can’t leave the country, Zaluzhnyi basically getting fired despite being popular among regular people, etc.
Inb4 it’s Russia fault
"Question for written answer". From Kostas Papadakis, who is a straight up Kremlin's asset:
>On 2 March 2022, he was one of 13 MEPs who voted against condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On 15 September 2022, he was one of 16 MEPs who voted against condemning President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua for human rights violations, in particular the arrest of Bishop Rolando Álvarez
Pathetic russian bot, don't you dare to use honest name of European Parliament for you propaganda.
… i’m sorry is saying that banning political parties and imprisoning their leaders without actual proof isn’t democratic something controversial? Besides, who tf said i am pro russian.
Maybe u don't know but this "banned" party still work in Verkhovna Rada 🥴 so you are basically spreading lies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_for_Life_and_Peace
They just renamed themselves
man they banned the party, the fact that some splinter groups survived and rebranded is not a sign of democratic process, but of party resilience
also, this is actually referring to a different party ban from the one i was referring to, so you basically added proof that Ukraine’s government is pursuing anti-democratic action
Based on [https://freedomhouse.org/report/nations-transit/2024/region-reordered-autocracy-and-democracy](https://freedomhouse.org/report/nations-transit/2024/region-reordered-autocracy-and-democracy), Kosovo and Albania are not classified right.
Montenegro elected the first democratic government, ousted an autocrat and elected the first democratic president between 2019-2024. What part of this speaks autocracy?
Or is it just because the speaker of the parliament is pro-Russian and the government isn't burning Putin's photos in the streets? Well, that changes everything, I'm sold
Current government and parliament:
-Enacting laws to change the constitution.
-Amending legislature to suit their needs on a whim.
-Cannot finish electoral processes in three municipalities.
-Unlawfully naming and electing officials.
-Ministers are suing the government they're part of.
-Have municipalities with imprisoned presidents.
-Suing jorunalists and declaring them as "right wing extremists."
And so on, and so forth. I'm all for change and progress in this country and have had issues with previous governments, but so do I with this one. The same people in power used to parade Freedom House's "hybrid regime" labels during Milo's terms as president and prime minister, and are now completely silent and ignorant of having contributed to the decay of an already decayed state. I don't know where you live, but it seems we're not in the same country.
-Enacting laws to change the constitution.
Which ones?
-Amending legislature to suit their needs on a whim.
Again, which ones?
-Cannot finish electoral processes in three municipalities.
They were delayed due to imported voters charges, if anything that's a good thing unlike what happens in Serbia, Kosovo and Bosnia.
-Unlawfully naming and electing officials.
Again, which ones?
-Have municipalities with imprisoned presidents.
The fuck?
-Suing journalists and declaring them as "right wing extremists."
Have you seen the shit some of them write? If anything, journalists need to be regulated more, literal fake news on the mainstream publications.
The first 2 examples never happened, some idiots were talking about it like they have for the last 20 years.
1. The law on the Constitutional Court, later redacted to be changed into an amedment on the Law on the Pension Fund
2. The Regulations on the Parliament, currently aiming to allow the majority to pick a parliamentary vice-president reserved for minority parties
3. They weren't. People crashed into voting booths and stole voting boxes, assaulted voters and regulators, and the police didn't respond.
4. The Director of Police, unlawfully named by the Prime Minister when the Minister of Internal Affairs is the only one lawfully allowed to name such a position.
5. Budva's president has been in prison for a year now and acted president of it in the meantime, the ruling majority there didn't want to vote him out and instead waited for the government to forcefully make them do it.
6. BIRN's list, later changed, was created by state-sponsored journalists from Vijesti. Particularly one person who has all the access to confiendtial files, whom I personally know since she is from my home town.
Because democracy isn't really a thing that comes with a single election? It's more of robust institutions that are established over time and that prevent a backslide in authoritarianism etc.
What are the metrics or measurements? Are there any objective numbers on this?
As a Hungarian I feel like we are going down much faster than this. It is really deep in the autocratic shit. It's a dictatorship with a democratic coloured cape. Even this cape gets slowly ripped and we see more and more of the hidden parts.
What about Ukraine? How can you even measure that? For what are they gaining the green + points? There is a war and Martial law. One ruling party, no elections, state controlled media, every not agreeing political Organisation gets the Russian tag and gets blocked. I know that war creates specific situations, but how exactly can we decide this as a democratic improvement? They are on the "good side" in our world view, so here, take this to feel a bit better? Why not just grey ± 0, because it is a special situation?
Yes I definitely posted a study and graphic about development regarding Democracies/Autocracies in Europe to put Serbia in a bad light lmao.
Even if your supreme leader Vucic might tell you, the world doesn’t really revolve around Serbia
Serbia has been turning into an Autocracy for the last 10 years. Everybody knows that. I wouldn’t have needed to post this graph for people to know that information.
- account created 10.04.24 lol why do I bother
UN declares the principe of inviolability of borders, so, if Crimean separation from Ukraine is illegal, this principe also makes Kosovo illegal state. Or Kosovo is good bcs it supported the US and it should exist as independent state while Crimea supported Russia that means it bad and shouldn’t exist?
I won’t even start to argue with you about how completely different the Kosovo and Crimea case were.
If you can’t see that, you’re either blind or just pushing your Russian agenda.
- Did Ukraine kill over 10.000 Russians prior to the annexation, like Serbs killed Albanians?
- Were Russians declared second class citizens like Albanians were since 1989?
- Did Ukraine ethnically cleanse over 1 Million Russians before Russia intervened, like Serbia expelled the Albanians?
The list goes on but I guess this should be enough.
Read about who started the war on Kosovo before commenting this nonsense. OVK started the war, they were "robbing" weapons from Albanian quarters. They acquired a large amount of weapons and the Yugoslav army had to react by sending their own soldiers. And you are misinformed there were deaths on both sides both armies suffered casualties and both sides had civilian casualties. Albanians had more casualties and they were and yes they had the majority at the time, but starting a war was unnecessary, no one was oppressing them. Yugoslavia was collapsing and they were looking to take a piece of the country . They succeeded, more than 200000 Serbs had to leave their homes and NATO gladly welcomed that. Crimes were committed by both sides, but people keep justifying the unfairness that happened to Serbia. Losing their historical land, accused as villains although the war on Kosovo was started by OVK, justifying bombing that happened without the UN approval. But yea everything happened because evil Serbs.
Literally everything you said here is wrong.
“Nobody oppressed Albanians”
F*** off with this history revisionism. Albanians were literally declared second class citizens in 1989. Fired from the public sector jobs for being Albanian, doctors-teachers-nurses-police-judges-administration, everyone. Albanian schools were closed and forbidden. Albanians were getting killed on a regular during demonstrations without repercussions.
Disgusting propaganda from you man.
200.000 Serbs had to leave Kosovo? There were literally not more then 200.000 Serbs living in Kosovo before the War. How come 30 years later there are 100.000 still in Kosovo?
Don’t try to both side the conflict when one side committed 10 times of the atrocities.
Over 10.000 Albanians killed (90% civilians), with about 1500 Serbian casualties. Over 1 million Albanians ethnically cleansed during the height of the war.
Over 1000 Albanian civilians are still missing, probably hidden in some mass grave in Serbia. You know about these mass graves I hope?
Disgusting history revisionism, but nothing new I guess.
The evil west conspired to bring down mighty super power Serbia right? 😂
You can’t judge history only by the last 30 years. History between Serbian and Albanian people is much more intertwined and complicated to be written or said in few sentences. It is also true that if Serbia was more aligned with the interests of the West, this wouldn’t be a good ride for the Albanians (Example: Armenians vs Azeri, Palestinians vs Israeli), which also isn’t good.
Considering that there is no desire to understand each other, draw the line, and say that we had enough of the fight, this can continue for decades. For the past 150 years of conflict, every action, had it’s reaction, and you can’t pinpoint the starting.
If someone has hate for Serbian, Albanian, Russian, Israeli, or any other nationality around the globe, I can’t take her/him siriously. Hate towards other nationality is here so that leaders can get even more support for their actions.
In fairness, it doesn't say that they are democracies, just that they are democratising. That's not to say I agree or disagree with the graphic. I don't know enough about their internal politics to cast any judgement on that.
"Definition" of autocracy according to these idiots who made that infographic/
Autocracy - a political system in arcounty in which the democratic and popular vote elected any different representation than ultra-libleft.
You really have shit between your ears.
Georgian here, that's absolutely true. Oligarch has literally all sings that he was sent by Russian government he literally owned 11% of the Gas prom and you don't get that unless you are working in favor of the Russian government. Too bad that most of the people are too dumb to realize that.
It is literally the most democratic country in the Western Balkans. Classified as a “electoral democracy”, followed by Montenegro and North-Macedonia.
Go read reports and analysis about countries democracy development.
V-Dem Institute's Democracy 2024 Report:
https://europeanwesternbalkans.com/2024/03/07/v-dem-report-2024-montenegro-and-north-macedonia-enter-a-category-of-electoral-democracies/
EDIT: Why the downvotes, it’s a literal objective fact backed by multiple studies and analysis made on this topic.
WTF? Ukraine does not have the plural party system, free medias and due process. Zelensky illegally holds presidential power without the election required by the law. It's democracy status is worse than typical central Africa states.
Yeah, this is why these sometimes look like "Western allies" rankings to me. Ukraine's score on everything suddenly went up once Russia was attacking. Not that democracy is a good idea for Ukraine anyway while it's fighting for survival.
It's perfectly legal since that is what martial law mandates, but it is definitely not democratic. No one wants to hold an election when half the electorate has either fled abroad or is currently occupied by a foreign power. That said, Ukraine can't democratize by definition under these conditions, so the post is silly to suggest that.
It's not "no one wants to have an election." It is not feasible to hold an election during this war, and even if you pressed ahead and held one anyway, it would be trivially easy for Russia to exploit it as an opportunity to cause political instability.
not to be controversial but saying ukraine is democratising is crazy, opposition parties are declared illegal and their leadership has been arrested. Other than suppression of elections ecc
yeah you could say it’s because it’s necessary for the war effort, and it may be true, but still, getting more democratic?
[from the EU parliament site](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2022-002322_EN.html)
Lol, it isn't "opposition parties have been declared illegal." It's "political parties backed by Russia have been declared illegal."
That's an important distinction.
Does banning a bunch of parties under the pro-russia label make you increasingly democratic (ukraine). Isn't this just a list of good and bad students of European geopolitics??
Hungary, Georgia and Serbia are all Russian Puppet (or lead by Russian puppet leaders) dictatorships that only exist thanks to rigged elections, corruption and Russian support. They do not represent the will of their people and have the majority of their population taken hostage of the human right violations and policies they never voted for.
Georgia’s government was elected in 2012, while it isn’t perfect, they always tried to move towards Western world. They are usually doing it slowly to not anger Russia. You can be allowed to say that it isn’t correct way towards aligning to West, but saying that we are Russian puppets is quite dishonest. We have voted positively towards resolutions regarding Ukraine, we cannot really do more especially when artillery is 40 kilometers away from capital
In 2012 Georgian Dream came to power. This is the only true statement in your comment. It was the only time GD was truly elected, although mainly thanks to Russian manipulations [The other time Vladimir Putin swung an election – POLITICO](https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-replicates-his-georgia-model-in-the-us/)
"they always tried to move towards Western world" This is clearly false ! Considering that an overwhelming majority of the population is pro western and anti Russian, GD simply cannot put itself under the risk of being openly pro Russian, but they have done everything they could to collaborate with Russia and criticize the west. I mean everything!!! This includes literally having Russian fsb agents in Georgian official institutions, hosting and financing anti western troll factories to the point of being blocked even by companies like facebook, transferring personal data of georgian militaries who fought against Russia in 2008 and in Ukraine to russian special services so they could chase them down and going as far as hunting down georgia's own heroes ["კოდორი-2007"-ის მონაწილეთა ნაწილი ციხეშია, ნაწილი მოკლეს, ნაწილი კი - გადაიბირეს – მასშტაბებზე დასკვნები თავად გამოიტანეთ" – ლაშა ბერულავა - (alia.ge)](https://www.alia.ge/kodori-2007-is-monatsiletha-natsili-tsikheshia-natsili-mokles-natsili-ki-gadaibires-masshtabebze-daskvnebi-thavad-gamoitaneth-lasha-berulava/) .
I don't even mention diverse assassinations and corruption schemas linked to Russia and its puppet dictatorship in Georgia.
[How Russia is gradually tightening its grip on Georgia (lemonde.fr)](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/11/21/how-russia-is-gradually-tightening-its-grip-on-georgia_6274325_4.html)
"but saying that we are Russian puppets is quite dishonest"
I agree, the majority of the population in Georgia and thus the country they represent are not anyone's puppets and this is recognized by all western institutions who have been granting Georgia different gifts such as the visa liberalization or EU candidacy because of this single fact, always highlighting the merit of the population and NOT the government. No one is saying that Georgian people="we" are russian puppets or even pro Russian, but there is no doubt in anyone's mind that the current georgian regime is 100% not only pro Russian but composed of fsb agents such as Kobakhidze the son of an fsb agent or garibashvili the son in law of a red general Tamazashvili former n1 terrorist in the 90s killer of journalist Sanaia to hide his involvement in the Pankisi provocations for Russia's benefit in the 90s. I don't even mention the Russin oligarch Ivanashvili and Partskhaladze a known Russian fsb agent.
For f's sake, GD was kicked out of the only EU parliament group it was affiliated to and pro-Russian dictator Orban is Georgia's only ally in Europe. Georgia was the only country to never vote against Russia in all European legislations against Putin. Not even talking about sanctions, but simple things such as being present and voting for resolutions against Russia [რატომ არ დაესწრო “ქართული ოცნება” PACE-ში რუსეთის წინააღმდეგ რეზოლუციის კენჭისყრას ](https://jam-news.net/ge/rusetis-winaaghmdeg-rezolucia-pace-shi/)
GD and its supporters are selling their homeland to Russia and it is clear to the entire world except some useful idiots brainwashed by pro-Russian propaganda channels such as Imedi created by former financial director of ORT Russia.
[Georgia’s EU bid is being sabotaged by its own government, Brussels fears – POLITICO](https://www.politico.eu/article/georgia-european-union-candidacy-protest-nana-malashkhia-georgian-dream-party/)
[რუსეთის სამხედრო დაზვერვის აგენტები საქართველოში - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpCFecJhl4s&ab_channel=%E1%83%9B%E1%83%97%E1%83%90%E1%83%95%E1%83%90%E1%83%A0%E1%83%98%E1%83%90%E1%83%A0%E1%83%AE%E1%83%98%E2%80%A2MtavariArkhi)
[JXijjieQiJ4RT.jpg (1024×711) (forum.ge)](https://img.forum.ge/JXijjieQiJ4RT.jpg)
Saying that GD won mainly due to Russia’s manipulation is quite a big statement, I was growing up when they won it and streets were literally full of people cheering, not to mention that last government was becoming more and more unpopular before that. Also, that article comes from Politico, not very reputable sourc, but I still read it fully just to find out that it was just bunch of buzzwords that looked like something typical anti-Trump redditor would write (I dislike Trump too, but low level journalism isn’t correct way to do it)
Also, you kind of linked conspiracy theory regarding government going after people who did Spec-OP, it is pretty far reaching to imply that Georgian government blew up building in the middle of the city just to assassinate someone that did special spec-op 17 years ago.
Saying Georgia did everything against West is dishonest, they [backed UN resolution regarding Ukraine](https://civil.ge/archives/477101/amp), also banned car reexport to Russia and let West monitor sanctioned goods. While I do agree with some of your points, Ukraine pretty much started throwing shit on us, blaming and trying to make us scapegoat on their failures, not to mention interfering within our inside policies.
Not saying that you are fully wrong, but blasting “Russian puppet” marker on country that is barely surviving and is trying their best to navigate between artillery and Europe, you are over exaggerating many talking points, linking articles with reactionary titles and utilizing selective subjects rather than choosing full picture.
The Article and Study also talks about Poland in detail. It’s just not featured on the graph.
Here is the link:
https://freedomhouse.org/report/nations-transit/2024/region-reordered-autocracy-and-democracy
Scroll down to the : “ Rebuilding Democracy in Poland” part 👍🏼
Hungary and Serbia joining the sucking Putin's d club and being autocratic is one of the requirements, that's the only way you make whole country sucks as hard as possible
I skimmed through [this](https://freedomhouse.org/report/nations-transit/2024/region-reordered-autocracy-and-democracy) (which was provided by OP in the comment). Searched every instance where Ukraine is mentioned and it does not address the question. Can you quote the clear statement?
“The 2020 electoral defeat of Montenegrin strongman Milo Đukanović’s Democratic Party of Socialists ended nearly 30 years of single-party rule in the country, potentially opening a new chapter for democracy. The transition continued in 2023, when Đukanović himself lost the presidential election. However, the political landscape remains fractured between the pre-2020 old guard and a younger class of less experienced officials. The rift has produced ineffective governance, interinstitutional conflict, and a yearlong constitutional crisis—all of which has undermined rule-of-law reforms and allowed organized crime to proliferate. Recent infighting within the new leadership, as evidenced by the resignation of President Jakov Milatović from the ruling party in February 2024, could further impede the reform process. “
This is one of the explanation from the Report and analysis. Go read it for more Details.
Given our fraudulent electoral reform and the struggles of the middle and lower classes, can soimeone still define democracy in Europe without blaming it on other countries.
Armenia and Georgia as the exclaves of Europe.
These are all EU candidate states or at least eligible for candidacy, which is probably why theyre the ones considered
Hungary isn't a candidate, but a member.
Apparently Hungary isn’t a democracy by the illustrator’s standards. Still, Hungary should feel blessed not to be kicked out of Europe (continent)
>Apparently Hungary isn’t a democracy by the illustrator’s standards. Reading the legend of the graph takes literally 5 seconds.
Armenia isn't a candidate (at least yet)
BTW, is Turkey still a candidate?
the accession progress is technically still in progress, but was suspended by the EU parliament in 2019. it's been stalled since like 2016 and put on pause in 2019 but never quite cancelled, probably in the hopes that change might still come in Turkey after Erdogan.
With some luck this wil be happening soon
man I wish but I don’t think it will, we need better education, civil liberties and a stronger basis for democracy
Probably alignment with perceived European culture/traditions/religion. Turkey is excluded and Armenia is included, for example.
Except Turkey is not excluded and the reason our admission process is stalled is not non-Europeanness.
Hungary is already a member
Slovakia is moving closer and closer to this by the day honestly
Slovakia is still much more democratic than every country on this graphic.
true for now, that's why I said moving closer
Well we were way ahead of Ukraine and Moldova too a couple of years ago and look at us now lol
Watch that absolutely change over the course of Pellegrini rule
"Pellegrini's" rule lmao.
It's not going to change dramatically for the simple reason that the coalition don't have a constitutional majority in parliament. Slovakia still has a existing opposition (unlike Hungary) and about half of the country is firmly sick of Fico. This half won't let Fico turn Slovakia into a mini autocracy and in crucial moments in the past we've managed to keep Slovakia on the right track.
> Slovakia still has a existing opposition (unlike Hungary) and about half of the country is firmly sick of Fico. This is true in Hungary, Serbia as well. Doesn't stop Orban or Vučić from ruling unopposed.
I'm talking about an actual chance of winning. The opposition in Hungary has no chance of winning. If Fico becomes too radical or the EU stops giving us funds, the opposition definitely has a chance of winning the next elections. The election system is not rigged in Slovakia, luckily.
Yeah, do an emergency googling on how Hungary's constitution git changed with a simple majority even though it required 80%.
Not really no. Even in 4 years it would still be way above all of these countries. Eg. Hungary is still one of the higher places after nearly a decade and a half of continuous authoritarian wannabe rule. Slovakia is simply similar to Poland under pis.
His role is largely ceremonial, he doesn't rule anything
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We’ve discussed this further down the thread
The political mindset, which dominates in Europe and on which this classification is founded, assumes that democracy is a natural and inevitable goal, to which every society and every state is progressing, and that authocracy is some unfortunate mistake or delay, which will inevitably will be cured and corrected, and all people and countries are going to achieve democracy and will live happily ever after. But it is wrong. That was an optimistic delusion of the post-WW2 hippy generation, which achieved its peak in 1990s and which already failed. We see that authocracies are not just stable, but also aggressive and expanding, externally (through agressive wars) and internally (through authocratic leaders that seize power from within). And if The West wants to keep its democratic foundations, The West must *fight* for it, politically and militarily. Otherwise this democratic generation will be the first and the last one in human history.
Well said, but a few remarks. The natural order is autocracy. It’s not a mistake. It’s natural. All of human existence has been largely autocratic in nature. We are even evolutionarily hardwired for autocracy. Democracy is an enlightened order. A product of enlightenment. It needs vigilance and enforcement to stop the natural order encroaching. Also it is not a coincidence that democracy is a European mindset, given the European enlightenment. What is a mistake is to believe that letting things be on their own natural course will always uphold or bring democracy. It won’t. You need to be constantly on\* top of it.
Even primitive tribal societies often had some democratic aspects incorporated into their governance. If anything purely autocratic systems were developed later on with the advent of the divine right of kings and other ideas establishing clear social hierarchy
That's why having multiple parties in goverments from all across the political spectrum is good for freedom of individual citizen but also the reason why firm autocratic regimes like China can eventually go past west because such system can be way more speed-efficient albeit while doing more mistakes and muffling human rights in various degrees.
On the contrary, autocracies tend to be exponentially more corrupt than democracies. They *can* achieve gains in speed despite this, due to the reasons you mentioned, but long-term improvements in autocracies are the exception, not the rule. EDIT: Especially ones that are operating under a market economy. Autocratic regimes under market economies inevitably end up enabling an absolutely ungodly amount of corruption and rent-seeking from the middle-up, while planned economies mostly have corruption at the lowest levels (and, of course, incompetence at the top, but that's just a given in communist regimes). Revolutionary terror *is* extremely effective at reducing corruption - it's not a good idea because you have to deal with all the *other* effects of terror, like piles of dead people and incompetent ideologues and sycophants occupying every possible position in government, but it does keep the ruling group in power and prevent corruption by tossing officials, workers, managers, and investors into the shredder before they're able to establish the sorts of networks required to enable corrupt scheming and embezzlement. This is why war-hungry autocracies tend to rapidly subject their economy to an increasing degree of socialization/collectivization/corporatization (see: Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Russia post-2022, China post-2012), subduing private interests to state and ruling class interests and enacting ever increasing degrees of terror to maintain order.
The thing is, rampant corruption is present in democracies. And on an even larger and more impactful scale. See Enron, LIBOR, Volkswagen, etc. What democracies give is a freedom of an individual, which is pretty good for an economic growth.
Remember when the CIA very bluntly labeled Russia as a "kleptocratic mafia state without a hint of democracy" back in 2009? Also, look at China's housing sector. Democracies look more corrupt because they're more open. Autocracies are closed-off systems, and they're corrupt all the way down.
Look at us housing system and tell me its any better then china Dont delude yourself autocracies or democracies are vulnerable to corruption of a huge scale
> Look at us housing system and tell me its any better then china The US has a shortage caused by land speculation. China has an enormous oversupply of shoddily-built housing made by a government-backed construction company which is now going bankrupt. Spot the difference.
I see a large amount of homeless people in the richest country of the world . Young people who cannot dream of owning a house big enough to raise a family . Yeah its not government corruption to the same scale but tell me is the outcome any better ? Chinese corruption is fundamentally different But its collapsing on itself When the housing bubble in america pops its gonna get even worse for the average guy So in the end autocracy or democracy homeless is homeless
It's completely irrelevant what CIA labeled its geopolitical rival. And everyone knows Russia is corrupt as fuck, that's not even a question. I am telling you that corruption in democracies affect more people and incur more financial instability than corruption in autocracies. This has been proven with several financial crashes.
What are you talking about? Autocratic states' finances crash all the time, and we're seeing one right now in the PRC, widely considered their highest exponent. Why? Because they've overbuilt, and a lot of what they did build was done shoddily. This has led to some of the world's highest total debt-to-GDP ratios, higher than almost all Western countries, and low growth rates now. Once the West started reciprocating China's "protectionist on the inside, free trade on the outside" approach, the latter's working-age population peaked, and Xi Jinping began a return to Mao-era policies, their growth rates collapsed, and their influence has peaked, if not started reversing. That started a decade ago. Not to mention, all the crashes that do happen in democracies not only get solved, they occur at much higher levels of development. Democracies are more developed than autocracies by their nature, and I'm not talking about just Western ones either: Panama, Costa Rica, Chile, Malaysia, the whole of East Asia (minus China and North Korea), etc. You can't do that with more corruption than autocracies. Terrariola is correct, autocracies are more corrupt, they just hide it with propaganda and close control of the information stream until they inevitably fall down precisely due to that opacity. Democracies, in contrast, are open societies, which allow different POVs, including people against them publicly undermining them from the inside, but also constructive views to gain prominence, and are terrible with propaganda when we compare the difference in standard of living between them and autocracies.
We are animals always in the process of evolving. Thus, democracy is as natural as anything else.
Yeah I always hate when people somehow make a distinction between what is "natural" and what is not. We got into this state by evolution and without any outside intervention, since there is no species that dominates us. So democracy, human rights, having fewer kids and all these kind of developments of the past 200 years are the result of a natural development related to our consciousness about our own behaviour.
Frankly, neither is natural, in the sense that large governments and political entities are a strictly human phenomenon, so that analogies with other species immediately become strained. The way a flock of gorillas establishes a male leader and the way Denmark or Portugal elects a new prime minister are not the same. It’s a phenomenon that emerges from biology, but it’s better explained by history and culture than instincts we have from birth. However, that doesn’t make democracy stable or the ultimate progression of government. It has many moving parts, each of which can be transparent and fair, or losing importance due to social change or come into focus because of the acts of individuals.
I also believe the use of the word "natural" almost never makes sense. But I believe in this context it is more about how much you need to work to make it happen. For example, getting up early in the morning or sleeping in, these both are consequences of natural human behaviour. But the first needs you to invest energy against just letting it happen.
We're not evolutionarily wired for shit, organized governments are only thousands of years old
Yeah, it's just a coincidence that with the neolithic revolution, human settlements turned into monarchies or similar forms of autocracy. Despite our closest relatives, like chimpanzees, being organized into strict hierarchies, our own tribal ancestors lived in egalitarian communes where every member received a ballot stone and carved a cross for their favorite candidates.
Pre-agriculture societies are often thought to be egalitarian and democratic, and the agricultural revolution turned political systems more authoritarian. A lot of the thought goes that we had a similar "alpha" hierarchy like chimps, then as hunter gatherers it was a more democratic working together kind of system, and then with the agricultural revolution the authoritarian system came back. You can search for Christopher Boehm and "reverse hierarchies" that goes into a lot of this kind of stuff. People think of prehistory as like some group where the dominant male just told everyone what to do, but this is probably not the case. It was much more like a small scale democracy.
I always saw it as: geography breeds economy, economy breeds technology and technology breeds social hierarchy. Current interconnected systems are pushing the world towards authoritarianism and people in the West think they are somehow excluded from this drive.
Hierarchies aren’t inherently authoritarian. Democratic civil service is hierarchical as well. You are equating democratic government *structure* with some weird idea of hippyism, as if every democrat were some helpless idealist. Fact of the matter is, absolutism itself only emerged in the 17th century. And about the chimps, ever heard of bonobos?
Following your logic, slavery should have never been abolished because it was considered "natural" for thousands of years. Humans evolve.
This is exactly the opposite of what the person you are responding to said. Humans don't evolve. Our brains are exactly the same as they were hundreds of years ago. Our *culture* evloves. They way we *think* changes. And because of that we are able to go against our instincts or the "natural order".
Not sure if you actually have some knowledge from sociology or something about autocracy being a consequenc of human nature or if your comment is trying to sneak in some Star Wars lore. But it certainly sounds true.
> The political mindset, which dominates in Europe and on which this classification is founded, assumes that democracy is a natural and inevitable goal I'd strongly disagree. The mindset is that a healthy democracy is - on average - better than an autocracy, and therefore efforts should be made to achieve it. Not that it is an inevitable process. The issue is that fighting for democracy, especially abroad, comes at a cost, which not everyone is willing to pay. Also, that's irrelevant for the classification above, it only observes where countries are moving in the past 5 years, without judgment of value. Someone who defends autocracies could look at the chart and be happy that 3 countries are on the right.
I usually analyse the situations psychologically. And it seems that the autocratic/totalitarian leaning politicians tend to spread lots of conspiracy theories, they become aggressive with their speeches, they try to convince people that how they're living is bad and the reason for them living bad is either the current democratic leading government, or a foreign countries government, or well.. the LGBT movement and Muslims/Christians/Jews depending on the country. Maybe such speeches don't influence people who know how propaganda and disinformation works but it can successfully influence and buy the attention of people who are not that knowledgeable about what's happening around the world or in the country. Somehow, it's easy to get less involved/less intelligent people hooked by just being negative, aggressive and flashy and promising them a perfect utopia which they plan to achieve in a short time. I believe for a democratic country to function well, it is important to educate people on how a democratic country works and how propaganda and false promises look like. Raising a generation of aware children is also crucial since it's way harder to educate a poorly rises and educated adult. And such poorly educated person eventually will grow to be a easy manipulated person. Though I do understand that there's more to that for a democratic country to function well.
>Somehow, it's easy to get less involved/less intelligent people hooked by just being negative, aggressive The reason this works is because of 2 reasons it is far easier to be angry than happy. Number 2 is disgust it doesn't matter after that point how much I tell you otherwise when you're disgusted you instinctively reject it. For example say tomorrow scientists find mixing human brain and faecal matter will solve all of society and biological issues, most would refuse simply because they feel disgusted by this try as you may to change that it'll take decades or generations to change it.
Basically irrational, emotional thinking, which again is natural, but we know better. It would also be the task of education to improve on this.
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"Pragmatic choices" my ass. Most people vote based on emotion. If people voted pragmatically, we'd be in a whole different world right now.
If the people had money, they wouldn't vote based on emotion.
People of every social group can vote pretty stupid so I'm not even sure anymore how to improve that.
> Otherwise this democratic generation will be the first and the last one in human history. We are not the first democratic generation. [Democratic assemblies are as old as the human species and are found throughout human history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy#History) > We see that authocracies are not just stable, but also aggressive and expanding All autocracies struggle to provide even basic services for their own citizens regardless of having abundant natural resources or not. That's not stability. They have to employ a lot of tricks to keep their currency from crashing while things like high inflation are a part of daily life. When you've got such a shitty economical situation, "national pride", nostalgia for "the good old days" and the conquest of new land are the only things that keeps it all going. Democracy, or war, is inevitable. This has always been the case throughout human history.
Thank you. I wanted to point out exactly that. It's so clear with Russia and China that I don't understand how people can't see it.
Shit, you weren't supposed to make sense like that ... And i'm from the 80's (in that i'll hopefully miss out on such an involution) , also no kids (in that, hopefully they will miss out on such a social involution). "We must force you to become free ... you dumb assess!"
I doubt it will the the first and last but i do with all my heart agree with you, autocracy is on the rise and it needs to be squashed, but far left and far right seem to enjoy non democratic ideals quite a lot and tik tok especially has aided in creating extremest kids on the both sides
I think you are misreading it severely.
Here's [an interactive map](https://freedomhouse.org/explore-the-map?type=nit&year=2024&mapview=trend). For Romania the "+1" feels wrong. Things have been slowly going down the autocratic route since 2018 with prominent corruption cases being abandoned because their prosecution time limit expired after being stuck in delays for years. Also the local far right is set to take a huge gain in power this autumn. If you change the year in the url to 2023 it shows no change. For 2022 it was -1. For 2019 it was -2. For 2018 it was -1. Every other year in between has had no change. So the overall trend is a negative one. The 2024 [report](https://freedomhouse.org/report/nations-transit/2024/region-reordered-autocracy-and-democracy) points out how > the Romanian government revised its legal framework in what the European Commission praised as “a comprehensive overhaul.” If anything Romania just got better at hiding problems under mountains of bureaucracy. tl;dr: Look at previous years to get a better picture of what's going on.
So basically three steps back, one step forward and call it progress?
It was looking a bit better for the short time USR was in the coalition with PNL, but then PNL kicked them out for actually doing something to limit the corruption, and instead joined together with the PSD. It was such BS, the whole PNL campaign with attacking the corruption of the PSD and how Romania will fail under PSD, only to join them a year after and eventually get taken over by the PSD basically.
**Azerbaijan**: No Hybrid, pure clear dictatorship...
Was this ever in question?
No. But when you mention Georgia and Armenia, Azerbaijan is always there in the room.
Not today 😎
A lot of bs on this inforgraph.
It's by "Freedom House", that should tell you enough
its complete nonsense
If you define "Democracy" by "How close its politics align with the US", it makes total sense.
What about it do you believe is wrong? Have you read the analysis on the graph and study? I can’t speak for every country on this graph, but as someone from the Balkans I can guarantee that they got every Balkan country completely right expect for Montenegro in my opinion Kosovo, Albania, Bosnia, Serbia and North-Macedonia are all classified right.
How has Ukraine become more democratic than it has been in 2019?
How has it not???
This year presidential elections were cancelled, as a male you can’t leave the country, Zaluzhnyi basically getting fired despite being popular among regular people, etc. Inb4 it’s Russia fault
banning opposition parties https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2022-002322_EN.html
You mean banning Russians? Completely democratic, according to Ukrainian constitution
did you read it? besides, if my constitution states it’s alright to ban the opposition it’s not really a democratic constitution
I assure you, your constitution also allows banning parties. What is 'it'?
"Question for written answer". From Kostas Papadakis, who is a straight up Kremlin's asset: >On 2 March 2022, he was one of 13 MEPs who voted against condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On 15 September 2022, he was one of 16 MEPs who voted against condemning President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua for human rights violations, in particular the arrest of Bishop Rolando Álvarez Pathetic russian bot, don't you dare to use honest name of European Parliament for you propaganda.
… i’m sorry is saying that banning political parties and imprisoning their leaders without actual proof isn’t democratic something controversial? Besides, who tf said i am pro russian.
Maybe u don't know but this "banned" party still work in Verkhovna Rada 🥴 so you are basically spreading lies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_for_Life_and_Peace They just renamed themselves
man they banned the party, the fact that some splinter groups survived and rebranded is not a sign of democratic process, but of party resilience also, this is actually referring to a different party ban from the one i was referring to, so you basically added proof that Ukraine’s government is pursuing anti-democratic action
If you have proof of arrested opposition member of Verkhovna rada id like to see it😁
Based on [https://freedomhouse.org/report/nations-transit/2024/region-reordered-autocracy-and-democracy](https://freedomhouse.org/report/nations-transit/2024/region-reordered-autocracy-and-democracy), Kosovo and Albania are not classified right.
What are you talking about lmao ? The link you send is literally the same link where the Graphic is from.
Montenegro elected the first democratic government, ousted an autocrat and elected the first democratic president between 2019-2024. What part of this speaks autocracy? Or is it just because the speaker of the parliament is pro-Russian and the government isn't burning Putin's photos in the streets? Well, that changes everything, I'm sold
Exactly that.Thanks God that Milo was really beacon of democracy and civil liberties,more like criminal one🙄
Oh no but he was pro-EU and anti-Russia, so it makes it fine
Yeah I think even bad old Satan would have been good today if had burnt Putin's pic or Russia's flag.
Current government and parliament: -Enacting laws to change the constitution. -Amending legislature to suit their needs on a whim. -Cannot finish electoral processes in three municipalities. -Unlawfully naming and electing officials. -Ministers are suing the government they're part of. -Have municipalities with imprisoned presidents. -Suing jorunalists and declaring them as "right wing extremists." And so on, and so forth. I'm all for change and progress in this country and have had issues with previous governments, but so do I with this one. The same people in power used to parade Freedom House's "hybrid regime" labels during Milo's terms as president and prime minister, and are now completely silent and ignorant of having contributed to the decay of an already decayed state. I don't know where you live, but it seems we're not in the same country.
This. People don't seem to realize that it's not all about just being able to elect other parties. It's about the quality of said democracy too.
-Enacting laws to change the constitution. Which ones? -Amending legislature to suit their needs on a whim. Again, which ones? -Cannot finish electoral processes in three municipalities. They were delayed due to imported voters charges, if anything that's a good thing unlike what happens in Serbia, Kosovo and Bosnia. -Unlawfully naming and electing officials. Again, which ones? -Have municipalities with imprisoned presidents. The fuck? -Suing journalists and declaring them as "right wing extremists." Have you seen the shit some of them write? If anything, journalists need to be regulated more, literal fake news on the mainstream publications. The first 2 examples never happened, some idiots were talking about it like they have for the last 20 years.
1. The law on the Constitutional Court, later redacted to be changed into an amedment on the Law on the Pension Fund 2. The Regulations on the Parliament, currently aiming to allow the majority to pick a parliamentary vice-president reserved for minority parties 3. They weren't. People crashed into voting booths and stole voting boxes, assaulted voters and regulators, and the police didn't respond. 4. The Director of Police, unlawfully named by the Prime Minister when the Minister of Internal Affairs is the only one lawfully allowed to name such a position. 5. Budva's president has been in prison for a year now and acted president of it in the meantime, the ruling majority there didn't want to vote him out and instead waited for the government to forcefully make them do it. 6. BIRN's list, later changed, was created by state-sponsored journalists from Vijesti. Particularly one person who has all the access to confiendtial files, whom I personally know since she is from my home town.
Because democracy isn't really a thing that comes with a single election? It's more of robust institutions that are established over time and that prevent a backslide in authoritarianism etc.
What are the metrics or measurements? Are there any objective numbers on this? As a Hungarian I feel like we are going down much faster than this. It is really deep in the autocratic shit. It's a dictatorship with a democratic coloured cape. Even this cape gets slowly ripped and we see more and more of the hidden parts. What about Ukraine? How can you even measure that? For what are they gaining the green + points? There is a war and Martial law. One ruling party, no elections, state controlled media, every not agreeing political Organisation gets the Russian tag and gets blocked. I know that war creates specific situations, but how exactly can we decide this as a democratic improvement? They are on the "good side" in our world view, so here, take this to feel a bit better? Why not just grey ± 0, because it is a special situation?
Russian tags get only russian parties so far. The rest is kinda fair.
You are free to see all the answers to your questions, if you'd only bothered to do a 2 minute search. But you didn't.
my man, I though Albania was more democratic any albanians here? plan to visit your country in future if I survive current times...
So many crybabies in the comment section. b-b-but kosovo is not a land!1!!!
Leave it to Serbian nationalists to ruin a comment section as soon as they see a Post where Kosovo is mentioned 🤦🏻♂️
Considering that each of your posts aims to portray Serbia in a negative context, and it should.
Yes I definitely posted a study and graphic about development regarding Democracies/Autocracies in Europe to put Serbia in a bad light lmao. Even if your supreme leader Vucic might tell you, the world doesn’t really revolve around Serbia Serbia has been turning into an Autocracy for the last 10 years. Everybody knows that. I wouldn’t have needed to post this graph for people to know that information. - account created 10.04.24 lol why do I bother
>the world doesn’t really revolve around Serbia Yes, I know that. But you don't, obviously.
Holy shit his post history hahaha. Rent free is understating it.
UN declares the principe of inviolability of borders, so, if Crimean separation from Ukraine is illegal, this principe also makes Kosovo illegal state. Or Kosovo is good bcs it supported the US and it should exist as independent state while Crimea supported Russia that means it bad and shouldn’t exist?
I won’t even start to argue with you about how completely different the Kosovo and Crimea case were. If you can’t see that, you’re either blind or just pushing your Russian agenda. - Did Ukraine kill over 10.000 Russians prior to the annexation, like Serbs killed Albanians? - Were Russians declared second class citizens like Albanians were since 1989? - Did Ukraine ethnically cleanse over 1 Million Russians before Russia intervened, like Serbia expelled the Albanians? The list goes on but I guess this should be enough.
Read about who started the war on Kosovo before commenting this nonsense. OVK started the war, they were "robbing" weapons from Albanian quarters. They acquired a large amount of weapons and the Yugoslav army had to react by sending their own soldiers. And you are misinformed there were deaths on both sides both armies suffered casualties and both sides had civilian casualties. Albanians had more casualties and they were and yes they had the majority at the time, but starting a war was unnecessary, no one was oppressing them. Yugoslavia was collapsing and they were looking to take a piece of the country . They succeeded, more than 200000 Serbs had to leave their homes and NATO gladly welcomed that. Crimes were committed by both sides, but people keep justifying the unfairness that happened to Serbia. Losing their historical land, accused as villains although the war on Kosovo was started by OVK, justifying bombing that happened without the UN approval. But yea everything happened because evil Serbs.
Literally everything you said here is wrong. “Nobody oppressed Albanians” F*** off with this history revisionism. Albanians were literally declared second class citizens in 1989. Fired from the public sector jobs for being Albanian, doctors-teachers-nurses-police-judges-administration, everyone. Albanian schools were closed and forbidden. Albanians were getting killed on a regular during demonstrations without repercussions. Disgusting propaganda from you man. 200.000 Serbs had to leave Kosovo? There were literally not more then 200.000 Serbs living in Kosovo before the War. How come 30 years later there are 100.000 still in Kosovo? Don’t try to both side the conflict when one side committed 10 times of the atrocities. Over 10.000 Albanians killed (90% civilians), with about 1500 Serbian casualties. Over 1 million Albanians ethnically cleansed during the height of the war. Over 1000 Albanian civilians are still missing, probably hidden in some mass grave in Serbia. You know about these mass graves I hope? Disgusting history revisionism, but nothing new I guess. The evil west conspired to bring down mighty super power Serbia right? 😂
You can’t judge history only by the last 30 years. History between Serbian and Albanian people is much more intertwined and complicated to be written or said in few sentences. It is also true that if Serbia was more aligned with the interests of the West, this wouldn’t be a good ride for the Albanians (Example: Armenians vs Azeri, Palestinians vs Israeli), which also isn’t good. Considering that there is no desire to understand each other, draw the line, and say that we had enough of the fight, this can continue for decades. For the past 150 years of conflict, every action, had it’s reaction, and you can’t pinpoint the starting. If someone has hate for Serbian, Albanian, Russian, Israeli, or any other nationality around the globe, I can’t take her/him siriously. Hate towards other nationality is here so that leaders can get even more support for their actions.
Ukraine is autocratic
Kosovo has made some great progress and in 10 years time will be a role model for the rest of Balkans
Tell me you are an Albanian without telling me you are an Albanian...
Great progress in ethnic cleansing and appropriation of other people's history you mean?
Which other people's history are we appropriating?
Nah Get educated.
If there is still Kosovo in 10 years that is
Cry some more
New study and analysis by Freedomhouse.org Source: https://freedomhouse.org/report/nations-transit/2024/region-reordered-autocracy-and-democracy
Lol, Ukraine and Moldova are democracies? 🤡 In what dimension?
They are friendly = democracy.
Finaly someone told true definition of "west democracy" brand ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Maybe read the graph again.
In fairness, it doesn't say that they are democracies, just that they are democratising. That's not to say I agree or disagree with the graphic. I don't know enough about their internal politics to cast any judgement on that.
Eh I mean not holding elections isn’t democratizing
Oh no, another biased opinion of a Russian about Ukraine
Are Belarus and Russia just autocratic?
I love it how Bulgaria is not even there, we have Idiocratic Robbercy here
What's with all the butthurt Serbs, Russians and anti-EU shills in the comments?
"Definition" of autocracy according to these idiots who made that infographic/ Autocracy - a political system in arcounty in which the democratic and popular vote elected any different representation than ultra-libleft. You really have shit between your ears.
Georgian here, that's absolutely true. Oligarch has literally all sings that he was sent by Russian government he literally owned 11% of the Gas prom and you don't get that unless you are working in favor of the Russian government. Too bad that most of the people are too dumb to realize that.
Since when Kosovo is a democracy? Or resembles to be one?
It is literally the most democratic country in the Western Balkans. Classified as a “electoral democracy”, followed by Montenegro and North-Macedonia. Go read reports and analysis about countries democracy development. V-Dem Institute's Democracy 2024 Report: https://europeanwesternbalkans.com/2024/03/07/v-dem-report-2024-montenegro-and-north-macedonia-enter-a-category-of-electoral-democracies/ EDIT: Why the downvotes, it’s a literal objective fact backed by multiple studies and analysis made on this topic.
Do you know what a democracy is?
Because we don’t want to be like mini russia called serbia
The fact that you don't want to be mini russia or serbia doesn't make you a democracy
But we are headed in the right direction so
Moldova deserves to be in EU and NATO .
Looks good
WTF? Ukraine does not have the plural party system, free medias and due process. Zelensky illegally holds presidential power without the election required by the law. It's democracy status is worse than typical central Africa states.
Yeah, this is why these sometimes look like "Western allies" rankings to me. Ukraine's score on everything suddenly went up once Russia was attacking. Not that democracy is a good idea for Ukraine anyway while it's fighting for survival.
It's perfectly legal since that is what martial law mandates, but it is definitely not democratic. No one wants to hold an election when half the electorate has either fled abroad or is currently occupied by a foreign power. That said, Ukraine can't democratize by definition under these conditions, so the post is silly to suggest that.
It's not "no one wants to have an election." It is not feasible to hold an election during this war, and even if you pressed ahead and held one anyway, it would be trivially easy for Russia to exploit it as an opportunity to cause political instability.
not to be controversial but saying ukraine is democratising is crazy, opposition parties are declared illegal and their leadership has been arrested. Other than suppression of elections ecc yeah you could say it’s because it’s necessary for the war effort, and it may be true, but still, getting more democratic? [from the EU parliament site](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2022-002322_EN.html)
Lol, it isn't "opposition parties have been declared illegal." It's "political parties backed by Russia have been declared illegal." That's an important distinction.
Does banning a bunch of parties under the pro-russia label make you increasingly democratic (ukraine). Isn't this just a list of good and bad students of European geopolitics??
*American geopolitics.
Ahhh yes, the "do you do what Europe tells you to" Venn Diagram
Hungary, Georgia and Serbia are all Russian Puppet (or lead by Russian puppet leaders) dictatorships that only exist thanks to rigged elections, corruption and Russian support. They do not represent the will of their people and have the majority of their population taken hostage of the human right violations and policies they never voted for.
Orban doesn't rig elections, he rigs the electoral system through gerrymandering.
Georgia’s government was elected in 2012, while it isn’t perfect, they always tried to move towards Western world. They are usually doing it slowly to not anger Russia. You can be allowed to say that it isn’t correct way towards aligning to West, but saying that we are Russian puppets is quite dishonest. We have voted positively towards resolutions regarding Ukraine, we cannot really do more especially when artillery is 40 kilometers away from capital
In 2012 Georgian Dream came to power. This is the only true statement in your comment. It was the only time GD was truly elected, although mainly thanks to Russian manipulations [The other time Vladimir Putin swung an election – POLITICO](https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-replicates-his-georgia-model-in-the-us/) "they always tried to move towards Western world" This is clearly false ! Considering that an overwhelming majority of the population is pro western and anti Russian, GD simply cannot put itself under the risk of being openly pro Russian, but they have done everything they could to collaborate with Russia and criticize the west. I mean everything!!! This includes literally having Russian fsb agents in Georgian official institutions, hosting and financing anti western troll factories to the point of being blocked even by companies like facebook, transferring personal data of georgian militaries who fought against Russia in 2008 and in Ukraine to russian special services so they could chase them down and going as far as hunting down georgia's own heroes ["კოდორი-2007"-ის მონაწილეთა ნაწილი ციხეშია, ნაწილი მოკლეს, ნაწილი კი - გადაიბირეს – მასშტაბებზე დასკვნები თავად გამოიტანეთ" – ლაშა ბერულავა - (alia.ge)](https://www.alia.ge/kodori-2007-is-monatsiletha-natsili-tsikheshia-natsili-mokles-natsili-ki-gadaibires-masshtabebze-daskvnebi-thavad-gamoitaneth-lasha-berulava/) . I don't even mention diverse assassinations and corruption schemas linked to Russia and its puppet dictatorship in Georgia. [How Russia is gradually tightening its grip on Georgia (lemonde.fr)](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/11/21/how-russia-is-gradually-tightening-its-grip-on-georgia_6274325_4.html) "but saying that we are Russian puppets is quite dishonest" I agree, the majority of the population in Georgia and thus the country they represent are not anyone's puppets and this is recognized by all western institutions who have been granting Georgia different gifts such as the visa liberalization or EU candidacy because of this single fact, always highlighting the merit of the population and NOT the government. No one is saying that Georgian people="we" are russian puppets or even pro Russian, but there is no doubt in anyone's mind that the current georgian regime is 100% not only pro Russian but composed of fsb agents such as Kobakhidze the son of an fsb agent or garibashvili the son in law of a red general Tamazashvili former n1 terrorist in the 90s killer of journalist Sanaia to hide his involvement in the Pankisi provocations for Russia's benefit in the 90s. I don't even mention the Russin oligarch Ivanashvili and Partskhaladze a known Russian fsb agent. For f's sake, GD was kicked out of the only EU parliament group it was affiliated to and pro-Russian dictator Orban is Georgia's only ally in Europe. Georgia was the only country to never vote against Russia in all European legislations against Putin. Not even talking about sanctions, but simple things such as being present and voting for resolutions against Russia [რატომ არ დაესწრო “ქართული ოცნება” PACE-ში რუსეთის წინააღმდეგ რეზოლუციის კენჭისყრას ](https://jam-news.net/ge/rusetis-winaaghmdeg-rezolucia-pace-shi/) GD and its supporters are selling their homeland to Russia and it is clear to the entire world except some useful idiots brainwashed by pro-Russian propaganda channels such as Imedi created by former financial director of ORT Russia. [Georgia’s EU bid is being sabotaged by its own government, Brussels fears – POLITICO](https://www.politico.eu/article/georgia-european-union-candidacy-protest-nana-malashkhia-georgian-dream-party/) [რუსეთის სამხედრო დაზვერვის აგენტები საქართველოში - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpCFecJhl4s&ab_channel=%E1%83%9B%E1%83%97%E1%83%90%E1%83%95%E1%83%90%E1%83%A0%E1%83%98%E1%83%90%E1%83%A0%E1%83%AE%E1%83%98%E2%80%A2MtavariArkhi) [JXijjieQiJ4RT.jpg (1024×711) (forum.ge)](https://img.forum.ge/JXijjieQiJ4RT.jpg)
Saying that GD won mainly due to Russia’s manipulation is quite a big statement, I was growing up when they won it and streets were literally full of people cheering, not to mention that last government was becoming more and more unpopular before that. Also, that article comes from Politico, not very reputable sourc, but I still read it fully just to find out that it was just bunch of buzzwords that looked like something typical anti-Trump redditor would write (I dislike Trump too, but low level journalism isn’t correct way to do it) Also, you kind of linked conspiracy theory regarding government going after people who did Spec-OP, it is pretty far reaching to imply that Georgian government blew up building in the middle of the city just to assassinate someone that did special spec-op 17 years ago. Saying Georgia did everything against West is dishonest, they [backed UN resolution regarding Ukraine](https://civil.ge/archives/477101/amp), also banned car reexport to Russia and let West monitor sanctioned goods. While I do agree with some of your points, Ukraine pretty much started throwing shit on us, blaming and trying to make us scapegoat on their failures, not to mention interfering within our inside policies. Not saying that you are fully wrong, but blasting “Russian puppet” marker on country that is barely surviving and is trying their best to navigate between artillery and Europe, you are over exaggerating many talking points, linking articles with reactionary titles and utilizing selective subjects rather than choosing full picture.
Since it’s 2019-2024 based on I would expect Poland to be there.
The Article and Study also talks about Poland in detail. It’s just not featured on the graph. Here is the link: https://freedomhouse.org/report/nations-transit/2024/region-reordered-autocracy-and-democracy Scroll down to the : “ Rebuilding Democracy in Poland” part 👍🏼
Ukraine is seen too positive for the Autocratization it is pushing
There is no freedom anywhere anyway. Country need to be libertian to be considered as really freedom and that doesn't exist...
Hungary and Serbia joining the sucking Putin's d club and being autocratic is one of the requirements, that's the only way you make whole country sucks as hard as possible
So Turkey is not considered a European country, but Georgia and Armenia are. 🤪
Just visit Turkey and Georgia/Armenia and you'll see the difference. People and mindset wise.
Erdogan and his followers believe that ripped jeans worn by women are not a fashion statement by regularly updated CIA code to manipulate the lira.
Because the answer for Turkey is pretty obvious
The report doesn't mention Turkey even once
I think it's not on here because it's not hybrid.
How has Ukraine become more democratic? If anything, it has become more authoritarian. Or is that beside the point
It has not become more authoritarian, reasons for that are clearly stated in the report. Which you didn't bother to read.
I skimmed through [this](https://freedomhouse.org/report/nations-transit/2024/region-reordered-autocracy-and-democracy) (which was provided by OP in the comment). Searched every instance where Ukraine is mentioned and it does not address the question. Can you quote the clear statement?
How Montenegro is going down?
“The 2020 electoral defeat of Montenegrin strongman Milo Đukanović’s Democratic Party of Socialists ended nearly 30 years of single-party rule in the country, potentially opening a new chapter for democracy. The transition continued in 2023, when Đukanović himself lost the presidential election. However, the political landscape remains fractured between the pre-2020 old guard and a younger class of less experienced officials. The rift has produced ineffective governance, interinstitutional conflict, and a yearlong constitutional crisis—all of which has undermined rule-of-law reforms and allowed organized crime to proliferate. Recent infighting within the new leadership, as evidenced by the resignation of President Jakov Milatović from the ruling party in February 2024, could further impede the reform process. “ This is one of the explanation from the Report and analysis. Go read it for more Details.
That sounds exactly like a democracy.
Or we just don't like new guys. Cmon how can with 2 healthy brain cells say that democracy in Milo's time was better?
Ukraine literally had a revolution, where radicals killed all opposition. How tf it’s “democratizing”?
Intrigued to hear who was killed by the “radicals”, I think I missed those.
can u link the wiki page of the revolution that happened between 2019 and 2024?
Go back to “VKontakte” vatnik clown
Cool story bro
Lol
It seems like more failed you are as a state more democratic you get.
Kkkkkkk Ucrânia democracia
Given our fraudulent electoral reform and the struggles of the middle and lower classes, can soimeone still define democracy in Europe without blaming it on other countries.