Ten days that could shake the world: democratic norms at stake in four pivotal elections

Brazil, Israel, Serbia and the US are holding elections within the space of 10 days. Will the authoritarian right cement its global gains, or can pro-democracy forces make a comeback?

Four elections on four continents within 10 days could profoundly reshape global politics, propelling the world further along its current authoritarian trajectory or marking a limited comeback for democratic norms.

In all four contests, basic democratic norms are at stake at a time when autocracy is advancing worldwide at an alarming rate. According to the Sweden-based V-Dem Institute, which uses multivariable assessment tools, the democratic freedoms enjoyed by the average global citizen are down to levels last seen in 1978 – long before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism in Europe.

The cluster of four pivotal elections could either halt that trend or reinforce it. In each contest, pro-democracy parties are in close races with current or aspiring autocrats. The outcomes in each case are likely to have spillover effects in their regions and beyond.

On Sunday, Brazil will hold runoff presidential elections with a candidate from the far right in the lead. If he wins, Flávio Bolsonaro is threatening to “change the constitution”, pardon his father for plotting a coup, and ease environmental restrictions, a critical issue for the Amazon rainforest.

On the same day, the semi-autocracy run by Aleksandar Vučić in Serbia for the past 12 years will face its stiffest challenge in the form of an unconventional student-led protest movement, fielding a slate of little-known academics and technocrats running on the simple slogan “Serbia or Mafia?”.

On Tuesday, it will be the turn of Benjamin Netanyahu to face his challengers at the polls. Israel’s leader for 19 of the past 30 years has overseen a prolonged period of democratic backsliding and spiralling human rights abuses. He is wanted by the international criminal court for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, and risk heightened legal jeopardy from an ongoing corruption trial at home if he loses. His far-right coalition is currently trailing an opposition block.

On 3 November, at the tail end of this potentially historic 10 days, Donald Trump’s imperial-style presidency is facing a rebuke from US voters in midterm elections, with at least one chamber of Congress, and possibly two, likely to fall to the Democrats. They will then however face an uphill task in seeking to rein in Trump’s excesses which have seen the US plummet down the V-Dem Institute’s Liberal Democracy Index.

By the time the US counts its votes on Tuesday, the world could look a markedly different place. Not only are the four looming contests bunched together, they are also interwoven. Trump’s Maga movement has given overt political support to Netanyahu, Vučić, and Bolsonaro. Israeli-built Pegasus spyware has been found in the phones of student and pro-democracy activists in Serbia. Bolsonaro is strongly pro-Israel and is promising to follow the US lead and move the Brazilian embassy to Jerusalem. The US has provided much of the ordnance for Netanyahu’s wars. Serbia is committed to spending $2bn on Israeli defence systems and in September, the two countries opened a joint plant making surveillance and attack factory.

Victory for the authoritarian right in one country will bolster counterparts in others, and conversely win for pro-democratic campaigners in each contest will give hope and encouragement to their allies around the world.

The four elections may be closely interlinked, but the struggle between authoritarianism and democracy takes on very different forms in each country. The odds are different in each case, as are the stakes, but they are all close races.

Brazil has enjoyed a democratic resurgence since Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office on the first day of 2023, defeating an attempt by his far right populist predecessor to overturn the October election result. According to V-Dem’s measures, it now has better democratic credentials than the UK, and far better than the US.

The loser in those elections four years ago, Jair Bolsonaro, an ex-soldier who served under Brazil’s 21-year military dictatorship and still admires it, was sentenced to 27 years in jail for trying to stage a coup to hold on to power. Now his son, Flávio, is seeking to follow in his footsteps, and goes into the second round of the election on Sunday with a small but significant lead over Lula.

The younger Bolsonaro has not only pledged to free his father, but also to punish members of the judiciary involved in his prosecution. If he wins, he will have a supportive rightwing majority in Congress to work with and has vowed to change the constitution and “re-democratise the country”. The term harks back to the transition from military rule in 1985, and for the Brazilian left, it has a chilling Orwellian ring coming from the mouth of an avowed admirer of prominent members of the junta.

Bolsonaro has campaign on hard-line law and order policies addressing the chronic issue of high crime. He argues for lowering the age of criminal responsibility to below 18, sending more teenagers to jail, and calling for judicial reforms, which his critics suggest he intends to mount an attack on the independence of the courts.

Over his 12 years as president, Aleksandar Vučić has steadily corroded the pillars of Serbia’s democracy. He and his allies have taken over almost all the country’s broadcast channels, with the result that he is the overwhelming presence on the nation’s television screens over the course of the current election campaign. The future of the last two independent news channels is now in doubt, as they were bought during the campaign by a Portuguese investor with links to the ousted Hungarian regime of Viktor Orbán.

The ruling Serbian Progressive party (SNS) has turned ministries and other state institutions into political tools to the extent that, in the words of Raša Nedeljkov, the programme director of the Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability, “the line between the state and the parties is almost deleted”.

Until now, the opposition parties seeking to curb Vučić have been weak and divided, but Serbian politics was transformed two years ago by the collapse of a concrete canopy on a crowd of people at a railway station in Novi Sad, killing 16 people. The tragedy crystallised a deep reservoir of disillusion across the country, and produced a student-led mass movement which has survived state intimidation since then, and is now fielding a full list of candidates against the SNS.

The candidates, like the students who nominated them, disagree among themselves on key political issues but they demonstrate a purist adherence to direct democracy. Decisions are taken by large plenum meetings, and no one has been allowed to emerge as an identifiable leader.

To win on Sunday, the students will have to break the mould of Serbian politics, and in particular, Vučić’s hold on his loyal base in the countryside. If they come close, there is a risk of unrest and violence. The SNS has a record of paying bands of thugs to disrupt opposition rallies, and those gangs may appear at polling sites if Vučić feels threatened. The students too have vowed to take to the streets to defend the victory they expect on Sunday.

Israeli democracy has always been partial. Palestinians in the occupied territories do not have the vote or many other rights, while Israeli settlers next door to them are treated as full citizens and provide vital backing for Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition government. That government however will be fighting for its survival in Tuesday’s parliamentary elections.

Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are about a fifth of the population but are consistently under-represented in the Knesset. They turn out to vote in smaller numbers than Israeli Jews, with many viewing participation as pointless in a system which systematically excludes them. The main opposition bloc challenging Netanyahu is ruling out a coalition with Arab parties, even if it means the difference between a clearcut victory and an uncertain deadlock, once Knesset seats have been assigned.

Netanyahu has been Israel’s leader on and off for most of the past three decades, but in the nearly four years of his current term, in coalition with extreme settler-backed parties, he has mounted an offensive on Israeli democratic norms, seeking to limit the independence of the judiciary in the name of “reform”, putting pressure on the independent press, and politicising the police, army and internal security service, Shin Bet.

The opposition bloc, led by former general Gadi Eisenkot, shares much of Netanyahu’s outlook when it comes to Palestine, largely supporting the war in Gaza and refusing to countenance a two-state solution. But it is determined to expunge the corruption of his government and its autocratic excesses. It is expected to win more seats than the government coalition in Tuesday’s election, but fall short of a clear majority. For that they may have to forge an understanding with Israel’s long ignored Palestinian minority.

No western country in modern times has “undemocratised” itself as rapidly as the US in less than two years of Donald Trump’s second term in office. With a Congress dominated by loyal Republicans and a mostly acquiescent supreme court, he has forged an imperial presidency, frequently governing by executive order decrees, and turning state institutions into political tools – including organs of internal security, such as the justice department and the FBI – which have been weaponised against political opponents, independent prosecutors and journalists.

Administration policy, domestic and foreign, has been used to generate self-enrichment opportunities for Trump’s family and friends.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been vastly expanded with lightly trained but heavily armed recruits, and deployed across the country, trampling the civil rights of anyone, predominantly Latinos, suspected of being an illegal immigrant.

With the president’s approval ratings at record lows, the Democrats have a good chance of winning a majority in the House of Representatives and the slimmer possibility of winning the Senate too.

Even if they gain control of both chambers, however, there are limits on how far they can go to rein the authoritarian excesses of the Trump presidency. He can be expected to use his veto freely, and Democrats will not have the votes required to overturn it, or to defeat a Republican filibuster in the Senate.

In theory, Congress has the power of the purse and could try to make funding for government departments and agencies conditional on reforms. A Democratic majority would also use its control over committees to open several investigations into corruption and other wrongdoing, issuing subpoenas to government officials.

On both counts, though, the Trump administration could simply choose to ignore Congress and refuse to cooperate. The most immediate outcome of a Democratic win is therefore likely to be prolonged constitutional crisis before there is any recovery in democratic norms.