Facing Up to the Democratic Recession

Facing Up to the Democratic Recession Larry Diamond (bio) The year 2014 marked the fortieth anniversary of Portugal’s Revolution of the Carnations, which inaugurated what Samuel P. Huntington dubbed the “third wave” of global democratization. Any assessment of the state of global democracy today must begin by recognizing—even marveling at—the durability of this historic transformation. When the third wave began in 1974, only about 30 percent of the world’s independent states met the criteria of electoral democracy—a system in which citizens, through universal suffrage, can choose and replace their leaders in regular, free, fair, and meaningful elections.1 At that time, there were only about 46 democracies in…