A sequence of four pivotal elections over the past two weeks in disparate regions of the world has inflicted significant setbacks on authoritarian leaders, and inspired renewed faith that democracy is more resilient than had been feared.The elections in Brazil, Serbia, Israel and the US were held in widely varying circumstances with unique factors, but each showed the power of grassroots activism to produce surprises that pushed back against would-be autocrats and could perhaps begin to reverse a worldwide drift towards authoritarianism.In Brazil, a surge in turnout in the second round of presidential elections on 25 October, fuelled by grassroots activism and the canny use of social media, stopped a far-right authoritarian movement consolidating its grip on the country, three weeks after it won control of Congress and established a strong lead in the contest for the presidency.On the same day, thousands of miles away in Serbia, a grassroots movement led by students inflicted a shock defeat on a regime which had entrenched its hold on power over the preceding 14 years with a relentless violation of democratic norms. The margin of victory was sufficient to dispel any thoughts the outgoing leader Aleksandar Vučić may have had of trying to annul the result by force.Serbians celebrate the victory of the Student List at Slavija Square in Belgrade.
Photograph: Đorđe Kojadinović/ReutersElections two days later in Israel were far less clearcut. Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister who has dominated Israeli politics over the past three decades, lost his majority in a rebuke to his attempts to politicise state security agencies and infringe the independence of the press and judiciary.The mainstream Jewish opposition parties seeking to oust Netanyahu are keen to restore those democratic norms, but more than 10 days after the election it is unclear how far they are prepared to go in cooperating with Arab Israeli parties in order to form a government.The surge in support for these parties, boosted by a doubling in turnout of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, was the greatest surprise of the elections.
Netanyahu is, however, seeking to delegitimise their success with claims – unsupported by evidence – of foreign funding and vote buying, while Jewish opposition leaders remain reluctant to collaboration across Israel’s ethnic divide.Young Israelis hold placards calling for the formation of a Jewish-Arab government during a demonstration in Jerusalem on Thursday. Photograph: Debbie Hill/UPI/ShutterstockThe trajectory in all three is bound to be affected by the outcome of the fourth election in this 10-day sequence.
The sheer scale of the Democrats’ triumph in US congressional elections on Tuesday, winning clear majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate, flipping states along the way that had been Republican for generations, will profoundly change the course of the last two years of Donald Trump’s presidency.Trump is weakened by the decisiveness of the riposte and the instant divisions it has sown in the Republican party, but the new Democratic majorities now face an uphill task in restoring the nation’s democratic health after the president and his Maga movement have had two years to turn federal agencies into political tools.The outcome in US in particular weakens the extent that one illiberal government can promote others around the world.BrazilLuiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s remarkable comeback victory against Flávio Bolsonaro in the second round of the Brazilian presidential election, after a stinging loss in the first, won him an unprecedented fourth term with nearly 52% of the vote.Miguel Lago, a prominent Brazilian political scientist, argued that the result was not primarily about Lula, who had shown the limits of his personal appeal in the first round. “The second round was about Brazilian society saying no to the far right,” he said. “It was a decentralised movement all around the country, and it was not a victory of the left. This was a victory for democracy, in my opinion.”Flávio Bolsonaro arrives at the Miami-Opa Locka airport in Florida.
He has fled to Miami, where he continues to insist on his credentials as the leader of Brazil. Photograph: Marta Lavandier/APIf he had won, Bolsonaro made clear his priority was to free his father, Jair, from prison, where he was serving 27 years for trying to stage a coup to hold on to power four years ago.
The Bolsonaros then planned to take revenge on the judiciary and press ahead with the building of an extreme rightwing authoritarian state.A second Bolsonaro presidency would have been even more powerful than the first, with a solid, loyal majority in Congress. “A far-right government, but an extremely powerful far-right government,” Lago said.Like his father, Flávio refused to accept the outcome of the election, but unlike the elder Bolsonaro, he did not attempt to reverse the result by force. Instead, he fled to Miami, where he has continued to insist on his credentials as a national leader.With one Bolsonaro in exile and the other in prison, Lula has some breathing room – but not much – in the face of a hostile Congress and an array of state governors loyal to the defeated regime.
But the immediate threat to Brazil’s democratic institutions has passed, for now.SerbiaNot even the students who held the Vučić regime to account with two years of demonstrations quite expected how emphatically their mobilisation of protest would translate into votes on 25 October.The improvised list of professors, farmers and other political amateurs won 140 of the 250 seats in the national assembly. Vučić’s Serbian Progressive party (SNS) was a distant second with 103.The margin of the Student List’s victory in Serbia is believed to have been sufficient to dissuade the outgoing leader Aleksandar Vučić from trying to annul the result by force.
Photograph: Aleksandar Jovicic/NurPhoto/ShutterstockThe devastating transformation of street power into political power is an earthquake that has been felt around the Balkans and beyond.Slobodan Markovich, a political science professor at Belgrade University, said the student protest movement of the past two years had had a “snowball effect”.“Students went to almost every single household, and people began believing that a change was possible,” he said, arguing that belief drew in those who had not previously voted, so very few people had anticipated the size of the anti-regime wave.There are reports that Vučić had contemplating a coup if the result had been closer, something his party has denied. But even if true, it is questionable he could have had relied on the police to crush the opposition.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I think there was a huge dissatisfaction among ordinary police officers, and the government had intel that demonstrated that,” Markovich said. “Half an hour after Vučić conceded defeat, the police basically withdrew and in many places they hugged the opposition.”The new parliamentary majority is said to be the brainiest in the world, if measured by doctorates per head.
It will need all its resources to remake the state after such a long period of atrophy under one-party rule.IsraelThe result of Israel’s election on 27 October also counted as a win for democracy and its norms, but it comes with a lot of caveats. The coalition led by Netanyahu was reduced from 68 to 53 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, but the mainstream Jewish opposition bloc only won 48.The big winners were the Arab Israeli Joint List coalition and the Ra’am party, which won 11 and eight seats respectively, almost doubling the overall representation of Palestinians in the Knesset, and making themselves a force that can no longer be ignored.The Zionist opposition bloc, led by the retired general Gadi Eisenkot, has tried its hardest, however, showing great reluctance to enter into a pact that would turn the anti-Netanyahu majority into a government.
The uneasy standoff reveals the limits of democratic gains at the election.Gadi Eisenkot secured endorsements on Thursday from a majority of lawmakers to try to form a government but the standoff continues. Photograph: Paulina Patimer/JNA/Zuma Press Wire/Shutterstock“The Arab citizens of Israel are the most democratic people in the region.
For years they’ve been the strongest supporters of civil liberties and minority rights,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, an American-Israeli political analyst.“[The opposition bloc] looks at this [Netanyahu] government as one that wants to turn Israel into an autocratic theocracy. And they fear that it will limit their individual liberties made through hard-won battles over the years for things like gender equality, LGBT, separation of religion and state.
Those are things that Israeli Jews think of as democracy.”Scheindlin said that definition did not encompass the routine violation of Palestinian rights. “They miss out the occupation … That’s not just a stain, it is a fundamental contradiction to anything to do with democratic practice or institutions.”In an attempt to block off any chance of an arrangement between the Eisenkot bloc and the Arab Israeli parties, Netanyahu has sought to delegitimise the latter by launching an inquiry into how they won so many votes, hinting at illegal Qatari funding.The effort, based on no evidence, has been denounced as an “attempted coup” by some of the Israeli media. Even if it fails, and Eisenkot manages to assemble a minority government, perhaps with Ra’am inside and the Joint List supporting from outside, there are limits to the steps such a coalition could take to refurbish Israeli democracy.It would seek to repeal some of the legislation passed limiting the independence of the judiciary.
It would fire some police chiefs, and perhaps confront the violent settlers of illegal settlers on the West Bank. But the occupation would remain in place, as would the army’s direct control of nearly 70% of Gaza.United StatesDonald Trump told the US electorate to vote as if he was on the ballot on Tuesday, and they did just that.
The resulting giant blue sweep mirrored his deep unpopularity. Democrats now have comfortable control of both chambers of Congress, having won big in states that had not elected Democrats in decades.The vote was driven primarily by domestic economic issues, including the unaffordability of life that the president had dismissed as a “hoax”.
The imperial presidency Trump has established was not at the top of voters’ concerns, but it will have to be confronted by the incoming Democratic Congress, if it wants to achieve anything.An activist holds up a sign that reads ‘Lame Duck Dictator’ in front of the White House on Thursday. Photograph: Douliery Olivier/ABACA/ShutterstockThe incoming majority is significant but not the two-thirds required to overturn a presidential veto or the 60 Senate votes required to defeat a filibuster.
The Democrats could block legislation pushed by the White House, but they cannot count on passing any laws of their own.They can try to withhold funding, but the Trump White House has a cavalier approach to Congress’s supposed power of the purse. The new majority can hold inquiries, open investigations and subpoena officials to appear before its committee, but those subpoenas can equally be ignored.Democrats are also likely to find it is as hard as their counterparts in Hungary, Poland and soon Serbia to depoliticise the state apparatus after a period of illiberal rule.“Through executive orders, flouting of the courts, Department of Justice lawsuits and threats, unilateral tariffs, an undeclared war with Iran, and public humiliation of targeted opponents, Trump has acted like an American pharaoh, often ignoring his own Republican Congress,” said Steven Hill, the author of 10 Steps to Repair American Democracy.“While the Democrats’ job is clearly to reverse and unwind as much of the past two-year nightmare as possible, in truth it may not be so easy to do.”