arly Greek writers used the word ‘demos,’ the root word of democracy, to refer to ‘the people’ or ‘the many’ i.e. the disadvantaged and usually property-less masses. In this sense, democracy implied not political equality, but a favourable bias towards the poor. In the Greek city states, political participation was restricted to male citizens over the age of twenty. This excluded women, slaves and foreigners. It took more than two millennia for democracy to reincarnate in the modern West. Universal suffrage was not established in the United Kingdom until 1928, in the United States until 1960s and in Switzerland until 1971. Presently, democracy is a sought-after political dispensation throughout the globe, where nearly every country tries to justify its democratic credentials.

While the last century saw significant strides made in the consolidation of democracy, this century has been beset with new challenges. The most conspicuous aspect of the last two decades is the information technology revolution. The rapid flow of information and pervasive use of social media has immense penetration in society. For instance, there are 72.9 million social media users in Pakistan, a country where literacy rate is around 60 percent.

In an ideal world, social media should have contributed to strengthening democracy by liberalising information and consolidating debate and dialogue. However, demographic changes, urbanisation and the youth bulge have played an important role as stimulators of political conflict in the Global South generally and Pakistan particularly. This has also become a significant challenge for our parliamentary institutions.

Democracy has also suffered from hyper-nationalism, particularly in the shape of heightened religious or ethnic nationalism culminating in majoritarian states and societies which, more often than not, have asserted majoritarian and populist forays by threatening religious and ethnic minorities. Even constitutionally, secular countries have resorted to excessive use of religion in political sphere. This phenomenon has played out with full force in India and Pakistan. In the same vein, former president Donald Trump in the US was labelled as a white supremacist who electioneered with a manifesto of protecting rights of the white Americans only.

Recent times have witnessed proliferation of populism, a phenomenon that has promoted polarisation rather than genuine politicisation. Populists have been major beneficiaries of the technological revolution and increasing use of social media apps. Their appeal feeds on selective use of history and tunnel vision of reality by spreading it through low-cost, volunteered campaigns of outreach. Populism promotes rhetoric and hatred at the cost of debate, discussion and dialogue, which are essential democratic norms.

Global conflicts have badly affected economies and disrupted the supply chain structures which have caused unprecedented price hikes and inflationary pressures. At the same time, due to wealth capture by mega corporations, the wealth distribution has been affected badly where the number of billionaires is increasing. Meanwhile, the middle class is shrinking. An example of this is the military-industrial complex operative in the US democracy. The rising use of digital currency is also enabling non-state actors to operate globally, increase violence and mayhem, and shatter hopes of democratic values of tolerance, coexistence and meaningful dialogue.

The Time magazine wrote recently that “2024 is not just an election year. It’s perhaps the election year.” Nearly half (49 percent) of the world population from countries such as Taiwan, Russia, Ukraine, UK, India, Pakistan, Iran, Bangladesh, Indonesia, South Africa, Algeria, US and some other smaller states have gone through election cycles in the year 2024 but people’s faith in democracy has dwindled because fair elections and democratic values could not be sustained or promoted in many of these states.

The Western world—arguably, having the bragging rights to stable democracy—is also going through unprecedented challenges and is unable to project a leading example for others to follow. For instance, the Arab Spring was initially seen favourably by the Western powers as a democratic surge but soon it was realised that it threatened vested economic and political interests of powerful nations. A similar trend has recently been fully exposed during the Israel-Palestine war.

Recently, global diplomacy has orientated and drifted towards economic interests rather than considerations of political and democratic values and human rights. For instance, despite the fact that the Narendra Modi regime has consistently violated human rights in India and has created a repressive majoritarian religious state at the expense of Nehruvian secular plural India of the past, the United States has supported India diplomatically throughout this period. This, only because of US economic interests associated with India. Independent human rights watchdogs have pointed out and criticised human rights violations and exclusivism in India but Western governments have maintained an eerie silence.

To counter the populist wave, ideologically driven political parties have also, more often than not, resorted to populist overtures and initiatives. Populist decisions do not allow structural economic and administrative reforms, which actually are the need of the hour in a fast-changing world. Populist regimes carry out short term popular decisions but do not come forward for sustainable initiative, which may cause short term damage politically but contribute to solving national, regional and international crises in the long run.

Democracy is all about debate, discussion, dialogue and consensus building. Humans have been performing these tasks since forever. But these functions are now being vouchsafed to artificial intelligence. Yuval Noah Harari, a historian, argues: “The rise of unfathomable alien intelligence [AI] poses a threat to all humans, and poses a particular threat to democracy. If more and more decisions about people’s lives are made in a black box, so voters cannot understand and challenge them, democracy ceases to function.”

The article is based on the writer’s talk at a seminar on empowering the next generation to prevent the downslide of democracy. The seminar was held at the University of Sargodha by the Shaheed Bhutto Foundation on September 10, in connection with the International Day of Democracy.

The writer heads the History Department at University of Sargodha. He has worked as a research fellow at Royal Holloway College, University of London. He can be reached at abrar.zahoor@hotmail.com. His X handle: @AbrarZahoor1