Elections are never enough to maintain a healthy democracy - even, as it turns out, in a venerable democracy like the US. They can increase accountability and empower citizens, or they can intensify nationalist hysteria, alienate embattled minorities, and legitimise dictators.
In post-Soviet Eurasia, most elections have negatively impacted democratic impulses. Between 2018-2020, Armenia and Belarus showed us change comes not from elections, but from protests against them. Yet western experts, state department planners, and international organisations persist in their focus on elections as the linchpin of a successful democracy. Samuel Huntington’s “two turnover test,” – or two changes of power as a result of elections - is one example of the western emphasis on the centrality of elections to democratic success. Freedom House declares that “free and fair elections are a foundational component of political freedom.” But what do we see when we compare a “free” country (the US) to a “partly free” country (Georgia), as defined by Freedom House? In what ways is the electoral process a defining feature of freedom? As a US citizen and a student of Georgia, I was surprised to find similarities between a 200 year old “success” story (the US) with a 30 year-old “semi-success” story (Georgia).
Michael Mann in his book The Dark Side of Democracy(2004), reminded us that elections can generate the worst type of illiberalism. David van Reybrouck in his Against Elections: The Case for Democracy (2018), is even more skeptical. He characterises the west’s inflated assessment of elections as “electoral fundamentalism.” The recent 2020 elections in the US and Georgia suggest Mann and Reybrouck are right to question our assumptions about elections as democratic turning points.
