A Deterioration of Democracy?: Corruption, Transparency, and Apathy in the Western World

Abstract

Arch Puddington, in his interview with the SAIS Review of International Affairs, expresses a firm belief in the power of interpretation. “An over emphasis on data,” he says, “can distort an analyst’s efforts to understand the true quality of freedom as thoroughly as can outright bias.” Freedom House’s annual reports on freedom have made data on democracy accessible for millions of people in the diplomatic, academic, and wider communities. These analyses have criticized governments throughout the Middle East, Africa, and Asia for anti-democratic and autocratic methods. However, Freedom House’s important work researching authoritarianism and democracy throughout the world should start to focus once again on its birthplace—the Western world. Freedom House, based in the United States (and largely funded by government agencies such as the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development), could be—and has been—accused of having Western biases. A quick look at Freedom in the World 2014 shows that the United States and Canada, as well as the majority of European nations, are classified as “free” right up to the Ukrainian border. 1 However, several countries in Europe—as Freedom House rightly notes—have suffered democratic backsliding. France, Switzerland, and Hungary have all passed laws or gone through social movements seeking to limit the rights of migrants and ethnic minorities. These occurrences, though noted in Freedom House’s analysis, do not seriously affect the calculations within. Hungary itself is an excellent example of where this analysis has masked the more sinister undertones within an open democracy. Hungary’s recent re-election of Viktor Orban—in an election widely seen as free and fair—can be seen as a backwards turn for Hungarian democracy. As a member of the right-wing, nationalist Fidesz party, Orban will likely have to make concessions to the far-right, anti-Semitic, and anti-Roma Jobbik party, which