Democratic Erosion in Comparative Contexts: Evidence from Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, and Pakistan

Abstract

This article examines the state of democracy in the comparative contexts of Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, and Pakistan. Employing Larry Diamond’s regime categorization, the article identifies specific characteristics of the systems of governance in these countries and investigates their democratic conditions. This article makes two arguments using data from Freedom House and World Justice Project (WJP) and triangulating them with scholarly studies on relevant contexts. First, all four countries have suffered from a democracy deficit for an extended period and continue to face the same predicament. Second, there has been a disturbing trend of erosion in their democratic qualities during the 2010–2020 period. The article concludes that none of these countries is a politically closed authoritarian system. Nor is any of them a liberal democracy. Instead, all these countries bear the hallmarks of hybrid regimes, except Indonesia that turned out to be an electoral democracy.