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2016年全球民主指数
The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index 2016Revenge of the “deplorables”The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index provides a snapshot of the state of democracyworldwide for 165 independent states and two territories. This covers almost the entire populationof the world and the vast majority of the world’s states (microstates are excluded). The DemocracyIndex is based on five categories: electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioningof government; political participation; and political culture. Based on their scores on a range ofindicators within these categories, each country is then itself classified as one of four types ofregime: “full democracy”; “flawed democracy”; “hybrid regime”; and “authoritarian regime”. A fullmethodology and explanations can be found in the Appendix.This is the ninth edition of the Democracy Index. It records how global democracy fared in2016. The title of this year’s report refers to the popular revolt in 2016 against political elites whoare perceived by many to be out of touch and failing to represent the interests of ordinary people(“political elites” refers primarily to governments, legislatures, state institutions and politicalparties, though it also encompasses the media, expert bodies and international organisations). Itwas a revolt that was foretold in recent editions of the Democracy Index, which have focused on thegrowing disconnect between political elites and the people that is particularly evident in the world’smost mature democracies. The UK’s vote in June 2016 to leave the EU (Brexit) and the election ofDonald Trump as US president in November 2016 sent shock waves around the globe. Both were anexpression of deep popular dissatisfaction with the status quo and of a hankering for change.A triumph of democracy or a threat to it? This was the question posed by the dramatic politicalevents of 2016. The answer from many was unequivocally negative. The Brexit vote and the electionof Mr Trump were for many liberals nothing more than outbursts of primal emotions and visceralexpressions of narrow-minded nationalism. Countless commentaries following the shock resultsblamed popular ignorance and xenophobia forthe Brexit and Trump results and implied thatthose who voted for these outcomes were atbest political illiterates who had been dupedby “post-truth politics” or, at worst, bigots andxenophobes in thrall to demagogues.The intensity of the reaction to the Brexitand Trump victories is commensurate withthe magnitude of the shock to the politicalsystem that they represent and the strength of feeling on both sides of the political divide. A strongattachment to the post-war, liberal, democratic order makes it difficult for those on the losing sideto come to terms with what happened in 2016. However, such a powerful rebuke to the political class“You could put half of Trump’s supportersinto what I call the basket of deplorables.Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic,xenophobic, Islamophobic—you nameit….Now, some of these folks, they areirredeemable, but thankfully they arenot America.” Hillary Clinton, September9th 2016.The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index 2016Revenge of the “deplorables”2 © The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2017demands a wide-ranging investigation of its causes. In recent decades, political elites have becomeunused to having their worldview challenged and have largely assumed that the values representedby the liberal democratic consensus are shared by the vast majority of the electorate. The events of2016 have proven that this is definitely not the case in the UK or the US and the populist advanceelsewhere suggests that it is probably not true for many other democracies in Europe.Shock at the results and fear of the changes that they denote may help to explain the reluctanceof some opponents of Brexit and Trump to examine fully why they lost the political argument. Insteadof seeking to understand the causes of the popular backlash against the political establishment,some have instead sought to delegitimise the Brexit and Trump outcomes by disparaging the valuesof those who supported them. Even when they acknowledge that Brexit and Trump supporters hadlegitimate reasons to be unhappy with the status quo, some commentators suggest that their viewsand/or their choices are illegitimate. This negative interpretation of the seminal political events of2016 fails to see anything encouraging in the increased political engagement and participation ofordinary people.The two votes captured the contradictions besetting contemporary democracy. They weresymptomatic of the problems of 21st-century representative democracy and, at the same time, of thepositive potential for overcoming them by increasing popular political participation. Insofar as theyengaged and mobilised normally quiescent or absentee voters—and the UK referendum campaignwas especially successful in this regard—the votes were a vindication of democracy. In their differentways, both events expressed a desire, often inchoate, for more democracy, or at least somethingbetter than what has been on offer in recent decades. The same can be said to a great degree of theincreasing support in Europe for populist or insurgent political parties which are challenging themainstream parties that have ruled since 1945. Of course, one referendum campaign or one populistvictory at the polls does not change anything in and of itself. Popular engagement and participationneed to be sustained to make a substantive difference to the quality of democracy. Populist victoriesmay raise expectations of change that end up being dashed (the recent experience of Greece is acase in point), demoralising those who voted for it and encouraging more popular cynicism with thefunctioning of democracy.The predominant response among political elites to the events of 2016 has been to rue thepopular backlash against the democratic order and to interpret it as a threat to the future of liberaldemocracy. Some have even questioned whether ordinary people should be trusted to make decisionsabout important matters such as the UK’s membership of the EU. Yet the popular backlash againstthe established order can also be seen as a consequence, not a cause, of the failings of contemporarydemocracy. We explore the various factors that led to the 2016 backlash in the section entitled Theroots of the contemporary crisis of democracy
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