理解全球民主衰落

Understanding the Global Decline of Democracy

近年来,少数新兴民主国家的民主崩溃和民主恶化引发了人们对全球民主逆转的担忧。借助国际研究机构的统计数据可以看到,第三波民主化进程中少数国家的民主崩溃和全球性民主质量的下降属于一种正常范围内的回落。迄今为止并未出现全球性的民主逆转,暂时的民主回落没有改变国际社会民主深化发展的长期趋势。在全球性民主回落的背后,是新老民主国家共同遭遇国家治理的困境、西方民主的结构性问题以及来自其他政治模式的竞争。民主国家必须建立一套有效的政府制度,改进国家治理的质量,提高政府的回应型和责任性,以应对未来的挑战。

In recent years,the democratic breakdowns and deteriorations of several newly emerging democracies cause people to worry about global democratic reversal. According to the statistics of international research institutes,we can find out that the democratic breakdowns of a few countries in the third wave of democratization and the decline of democratic quality in global world is a kind of normal rollback. So far,it does not appear the global democratic reversal and the temporary rollback of democracy has not changed the trend of deepening of democracy in international community. Behind the global democratic decline are the dilemmas of state governance commonly faced by both new and old democracies,the structural problems of Western democracies and competition from other political models.Democratic countries must establish an effective system,improve the quality of state governance,and increase the responsibility and accountability of government,to meet the challenges in the future.