Traditionally stable European countries are seeing the rule of law deteriorate as voter turnout and democratic legitimacy decline worldwide, International IDEA said, highlighting concerns over France, the Netherlands and Spain.
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00:00Trust in participation in elections all over the world is declining for eight years in a row.
00:06Something that is also happening in Europe, as the Global State of Democracy Report states.
00:12For Europe, polarization in politics is one of the issues, says Sam van der Staak,
00:18the director of International Ideas Europe program.
00:21It's countries that have been in the news, but also a lot of countries that as an outsider you wouldn't suspect.
00:28Countries like Greece and Bulgaria and Spain and Portugal and the Netherlands and outside the EU the United Kingdom.
00:37They're still very healthy functioning democracies, but you see that in parts of the system things are cracking.
00:44And that's often because of the politics is really putting a lot of pressure on how democracy functions.
00:49There's more polarization, there's more pressure from political parties to say things need to change.
00:57And of course there's a lot of citizens that are dissatisfied by the way that democracy is delivering on their everyday concerns.
01:03But not everything is bad news in Europe.
01:06For van der Staak, the improvement in Central and Eastern European countries is closing the divide between old established democracies and newer ones,
01:14helping Europe come together.
01:16The State of Democracy Report identifies, however, two main causes to explain why politics loses credibility.
01:22We've seen it in countries like France, Spain, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, all across Europe there's been votes for the extremes
01:32that after the election stay out of power and people then wonder why go and vote at all.
01:37There's also the pressure from outside.
01:39So we see that there's forces such as Russia, but also other authoritarian powers
01:46that try to abuse this weakness that we're seeing to stir even more dissatisfaction.
01:53So there's a pressure from outside through disinformation, through cyber attacks on elections, through foreign funding.
02:00For van der Staak, elections worldwide are a source of concern with 10% lower participation than 15 years ago
02:08and with 20% of recent years elections where the losing candidate does not accept the outcome.
02:15Thank you very much.