Representation

The first half of the election super-cycle year in Europe has been marked by diverse attempts to reshape the electoral playing field. Moldova introduced overseas postal voting, while the United Kingdom expanded diaspora voting rights. Latvia criminalized the use of election-related deep fakes in an effort to mitigate the impacts of disinformation. At the same time, however, governments are struggling to balance inclusion and security in the face of Russia’s continuing war of aggression in Ukraine. In Moldova, the Court ruled that a ban on pro-Russian Shor Party members was unconstitutional, but draft legislation in Ukraine proposed indefinite restrictions on members of banned parties with links to Russia.

There were 14 national elections in Europe in the first half of the year. Voter turnout was particularly notable in Croatia’s parliamentary elections, where it increased to 62.3 per cent, up from 46.9 per cent in the 2020 elections. In the countries that held parliamentary elections, average female representation declined slightly from 37.7 per cent to 35.0 per cent while North Macedonia and Iceland elected women presidents. Roughly half of the elections to date have resulted in a transfer of power.

Elections were also held across the 27 EU member states for representatives of the European Parliament.

Rights

Over the past six months, European countries’ performance in Rights has been notably dynamic, with especially significant developments in Social Group Equality and Gender Equality.

Immigration has prompted varying responses, revealing the continuing struggles to effectively deal with the political, economic and social repercussions. Italy approved the transfer of asylum seekers to detention centers in Albania, while France made it easier to deport individuals who are deemed a threat to public order. At the same time, the Supreme Court in Italy ruled that sending sea migrants back to Libya is illegal, and in Spain, returns of migrant children to Morocco in 2021 were also ruled illegal. Germany passed breakthrough legislation in this regard, with new laws to attract skilled labour and to reform citizenship rules, reducing the time to obtain citizenship and allowing dual citizenship.

Meanwhile, Sweden's amendments to the Police Act, granting police special powers to search for weapons and dangerous objects, have raised ethnic profiling concerns. Also in Sweden, masked men attacked an anti-fascist political meeting, while in Ireland, hostility toward asylum seekers increased, including through arson attacks. At the regional level, the European Court of Human Rights upheld a racial profiling complaint by a Swiss citizen.

Gender equality has also been in the limelight. The Istanbul Convention entered into force in Latvia, and subsequent amendments to the criminal law introduced harsher penalties for domestic violence. France enshrined the right to abortion in its Constitution and Denmark extended the period during which abortions are permitted. Gender identity laws were liberalized in places like Czechia, Germany and Sweden, which facilitated legal gender changes. Greece legalized same-sex marriage, while Czechia recognized same-sex 'partnerships.'

In contrast, in Russia, police raided and shut down private events and LGBTQIA+ bars and clubs to enforce the Russian Supreme Court’s ban on the ‘International LGBT Movement’, an organization that does not exist, on grounds of ‘extremism.’ In Georgia, the ruling party introduced draft amendments that would significantly curtail LGBTQIA+ rights. 

Rule of Law

The balance of power between branches of government in countries across Europe has been contested over the past six months. In  Croatia, President Zoran Milanović defied the Constitutional Court’s ban on his candidacy for Prime Minister, and in Türkiye, May Day celebrations were banned despite a court ruling that such a ban is unconstitutional. 

Tests of Judicial independence have also occurred in Moldova, where half of the judges on the Chisinau Court of Appeals opted to resign rather than face an examination of their personal finances. Slovakia closed its Special Prosecutor’s Office after penal code reform, dismantling checks and balances and weakening the judiciary.

Courts are still facilitating accountability, though. Vienna’s Criminal Court found former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz guilty of providing false statements to a parliamentary inquiry into alleged corruption in his first term in government. Governments in Norway and Poland have introduced legislation aimed at protecting judicial independence, particularly to ensure impartial judicial appointments and defend judges from abusive disciplinary practices. In Spain, the government and opposition parties reached an agreement to renew the judicial service commission, ending a five-year stalemate.

One of the most shocking events took place in Slovakia, where Prime Minister Robert Fico was critically injured in a shooting in May, raising concerns about the polarization of politics. Political violence in Russia and Serbia has become less discrete and more severe, undermining judicial processes and taking aim at opposition leaders. On the other hand, reforms in Bosnia and Herzegovina targeting organized crime, terrorism and money laundering were among the key advances that led the EU to agree to open accession negotiations in March.

Participation

In Participation, there was only one positive development in Latvia, where legislative changes require NGOs to indicate the nature of their operations to government authorities. The changes are designed to help authorities identify areas of vulnerability in civil society, as well as to dissolve inactive NGOs which can be used as ‘shell organizations’ for money laundering or terrorist financing.

In Cyprus, the office of anti-racism NGO Kisa was attacked with an improvised explosive device, destroying windows, computers and archives. Kisa criticized Cypriot authorities for undermining the organization’s legitimacy, including by removing Kisa from the register of associations in 2020, and failing to investigate previous threats against the organization and its staff.

A worrying pattern is emerging in Eastern Europe, where Russia’s crackdown on civil society intensified and people mobilizing against Georgia’s ‘foreign agents’ bill were harassed and attacked.

Representation

The primary trend in Representation in the first half of 2024 was the contestation of the bounds of the electoral field. Judiciaries and law enforcement bodies in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Thailand restricted the ability of opposition political parties to operate around key national elections. In Thailand, the Constitutional Court foreshadowed its plans to dissolve the main opposition Move Forward Party on grounds it had insulted the monarchy, and in India and Pakistan opposition leaders faced prosecutions that their supporters argued were intended to keep them off the ballot. However, the picture is not uniformly negative – India’s Supreme Court also struck down an electoral financing regime that overwhelmingly favoured the ruling Bhartiya Janat Party (BJP), as well as took steps to ensure a level playing field for opposition leaders during the Lok Sabha elections.

What is relevant for regional democracy is the extent to which efforts to change the rules of the game, limit the ability of the opposition to organize, and weaponize administrative practices like party registration are normalized or rejected internationally and domestically.

Elections

In the first half of the 2024 election Supercycle year, 10 national elections were held across Asia and the Pacific. These included four parliamentary elections and six general elections. Additionally, Cambodia and Thailand held indirect senate elections. The average voter turnout across the ten elections was 66.73 per cent. In the countries that held parliamentary and general elections, average female representation in parliament declined from 16.31 to 15.66 per cent. In Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina secured her fourth consecutive term as prime minister in an election widely boycotted by the opposition – only to be removed following massive student-led protests in August 2024. Only in Bhutan did elections result in real incumbent turnover. In Taiwan, the Democratic Progressive Party retained the presidency, but the opposition Kuomintang gained a majority in the Legislative Yuan.

Rights

There were a significantly higher number of events concerning Rights in Asia and the Pacific in the first half of 2024 than events in other categories. Modest progress in gender rights and equality was observed in Kazakhstan, where domestic violence was criminalized, and Japan, where a court approved a gender change without surgery for the first time. In June, Thailand became the first country in Southeast Asia to legalize same-sex marriage. These advances come on the heels of similar steps forward across the region in 2023.

But Rights elsewhere are generally being further restricted: in India and Malaysia governments followed a trend seen elsewhere of restricting or otherwise complicating the road to citizenship. Countries as varied as Australia, Pakistan, New Zealand, Kyrgyzstan and Sri Lanka saw reductions in Freedom of Expression and the Press. Notably, the drivers of these declines differ: New Zealand’s media crisis comes from a lack of sustainable funding models in the country, while Kyrgyzstan’s is a top-down attack on critical journalism that is part of a broader effort to weaken the country’s press and civil society. This last trend speaks to the overlapping crises – financial, political, and cultural – that continue to threaten freedom of expression, and civil liberties more broadly, across the region. It is important not to overstate the advances in LGBTQIA+ and women’s rights in Asia and the Pacific: legal advances do not automatically translate into everyday practice, public values and attitudes can lag behind national legislation and case law, and even genuine advances can provoke reactionary political backlash.

Rule of Law

Trends in the Rule of Law were mixed in the region. Southeast Asia saw the highest number of events coded under this category, with key developments impacting Judicial Independence and Absence of Corruption. Controversial court rulings in Indonesia and Malaysia seen as undermining judicial independence and skewing future election playing fields are of considerable note. Non-democratic countries in the region have attacked corruption – both real and imagined – in order to preserve regime stability. Vietnam was perhaps the most well-known case, but even the ostensibly graft-free Singapore charged a minister with corruption charges and began sentencing in the largest corruption trial in the nation’s history.

Also visible are instances of official impunity in response to perceived security challenges. Sri Lankan authorities received international criticism for an anti-drug operation that caught up tens of thousands in a network of ill-treatment, alleged torture and arbitrary arrest. Although of a completely different scope and kind, the issue afflicted even high-performing democracies like Australia, where a long-running trial of a whistleblower ended in a conviction before any of the war crimes he exposed had so much as been brought to trial. However, the case continues to garner significant legal expert debate and public attention and may be far from fully settled.

Participation

Only a handful of events were coded under Participation and its factors in the first six months of 2024. One involved increased voter turnout in the 2024 Solomon Islands general election, and the remainder involved restrictions on civil society that were also coded under Rights and discussed above. Revisiting this measure at the end of the year will be key given the significant number of elections in the region scheduled for the latter half of 2024.

Representation

In the first half of 2024, political parties across Central and South America faced significant new restrictions. This pattern was especially apparent in Guatemala, where a judge, in an act of overreach and contravening electoral law, ordered the suspension of the newly elected president’s Semilla Party. This ruling led to the party’s exclusion from Congress leadership. In Paraguay, the expulsion from Congress of an opposition senator accused of influence peddling, was condemned by critics as motivated by her denunciation of corruption and nepotism within the ruling party. In Venezuela, the opposition alliance faced numerous hurdles in registering a candidate. Electoral authorities were partial towards incumbent President Maduro, declaring his victory despite a lack of transparency and refused to publish electoral records to substantiate the alleged results.

Rights

Restrictions on Freedom of Expression and Freedom of the Press have been particularly worrying in Central and South America in the first half of the year. In Nicaragua, the government banned artists’ political expression in concerts, while in Mexico, data leaks and breaches of privacy laws have prompted concerns regarding journalists’ safety. Meanwhile, the new government in Argentina ordered the closure of the country’s national news agency, accusing it of being a propaganda tool for Peronism.

At the same time, some measures supporting inclusion have been introduced, positively impacting Social Group Equality in Uruguay, Brazil and Canada. Specifically, a special residency program will open a way to regularize thousands of undocumented migrants in Uruguay. Meanwhile in Brazil, official acknowledgement of and an apology for human rights violations committed during the military dictatorship will initiate a process for the analysis of reparations and land restitution. Further, a Canadian Supreme Court ruling on the collective rights of Indigenous Peoples has been hailed as a recognition of Indigenous self-government by the Vuntut Gwitch’in First Nation.

Rule of Law

In several countries, elites have selectively enforced the law for their own ends. This phenomenon has impacted the National Board of Justice in Peru and in Venezuela, where burdensome and selective requirements for out of country voting registration that are not grounded in legislation have exacerbated uncertainty about how laws are applied in the country. This adds to the concerns created by the sudden closure of the Venezuela office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

In North America, the United States Supreme Court’s rulings on presidential immunity, disqualification from holding public office, racial gerrymandering and gun control have had a detrimental effect on Predictable Enforcement and on public perceptions of judicial independence.

However, efforts to ensure accountability for former leaders in Honduras, Panama and the United States have had positive impacts, including on Absence of Corruption.

Regarding Personal Integrity and Security, Ecuador’s characterization of gang violence as an ‘internal armed conflict’ has enabled the government to make use of emergency powers and temporarily suspend certain rights. Insecurity has also been rife in Mexico, where the recent elections were marred by dozens of killings of candidates, aspiring candidates and politicians.

Participation

So far, the 2024 election supercycle has seen five countries in the region heading to the polls: El Salvador, Panama, Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Venezuela. The average voter turnout was 59.91 per cent. Average female representation in legislatures (lower or single house) in El Salvador, Panama, Dominican Republic and Mexico increased from 32 to 35 per cent, and the Mexican election returned the country’s first ever woman president. Only the Panamanian elections resulted in party turnover. The 2024 elections so far seem to have curbed the trend of opposition victories in Latin America that had characterized elections in the region in the past years. However, the re-election of Bukele in El Salvador was highly controversial. Although popular support for his continuity as President was overwhelming, his candidacy violated the constitution and was only possible due to a controversial ruling of the Constitutional Court, which is packed with allied justices. As mentioned, the results of the Venezuelan elections have lacked transparency and credibility.