
Estonia

Estonia is a high-performing democracy and has been a democracy since it gained independence from the Soviet Union (USSR) in 1991. The country's successful transition to democracy was powered by an active civil society, which provided a radical reformist core to the new political elite, committed to strong rule of law institutions. Digitalization is also regarded as one of the main factors in the country's post-communist success. Today, Estonia has an advanced digital economy, a high level of human development and performs on par with northern and western Europe on the Fundamental Rights, Representative Government, Checks on Government and Impartial Administration attributes of the Global State of Democracy Indices (GSoDI). This performance has also remained stable in the past five years. The Absence of Corruption and Predictable Enforcement sub-attributes are particularly strong, even though corruption in the political elite is not unprecedented. However, the country's digitalized public sector allows for transparent and efficient governance in general, and corruption perception is low in society. This separates Estonia from the rest of the sub-region, where Impartial Administration has been a major challenge to democracy. However, Estonia performs at the mid-range in Electoral Participation, despite being the first country to introduce internet voting in general elections.
Estonian society is characterized by a newly arising value cleavage. Major Estonian parties did not differ greatly from each other on the conservative-liberal nexus for decades. However, stronger polarization has appeared recently. As in the rest of Europe, the populist radical right is gaining influence, due to the rise of cultural divides. Issues such as 'family values' and immigration are increasingly salient. Another important social divide in Estonia is of an ethnic nature: Estonia has a large Russian-speaking minority (around 25 per cent of the population), and democratization in Estonia was strongly ethnicized because of the country’s prior lack of independence and the repressed national identity during Nazi and Soviet occupations. During the transition, Estonia introduced assertive naturalization policies to assimilate the Russian-speaking minority. However, this led to deep political and economic inequalities, such as unequal electoral participation and residential segregation between Estonians and the Russian-speaking minority. There is also contestation when it comes to political memory: while many Estonians consider the period under the USSR as occupation, many of the Russian-speaking minority regard the events after WWII as a liberation of the country. Despite these factors, ethnic relations are not politicized, with Estonian conservative parties attracting a sizeable part of Russian-speaking voters. This plays a role in defusing ethnic-based mobilization.
Estonia is unlikely to experience democratic backsliding or breakdown in the years to come. The country's performance in the Civil Liberties sub-attribute should be closely monitored, however, in light of recent changes in the political landscape. If the trend of rising populism continues in Estonia, it could foreshadow ideologically driven violations of certain democratic norms, such as limitations on reproductive rights and on freedoms of the LGBTQIA+ community. Another sub-attribute to monitor is Clean Elections. Given the increasingly tense relations between Estonia and Russia, Estonian elections might once again be a target for foreign interference. However, Estonia's digital democracy has thus far proved resilient against previous attempts to subvert it.
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