The spread of illiberal politics across Central Europe and Eurasia has been eroding the region’s foundations and prospects for democracy, US-based Freedom House says in its latest annual Nations In Transit report, titled Confronting Illiberalism.
The report said 19 out of the 29 nations gauged got lower democracy scores, the sharpest decline in the project’s 23-year history, while for the second year in a row the number of consolidated authoritarian regimes was higher than that of consolidated democracies.
Like the majority of CIS nations, Tajikistan is listed among “Consolidated Authoritarian Regimes.” Only Ukraine and Moldova are listed among “Transitional Government or Hybrid Regimes” and Armenia is listed among “Semi-Consolidated Authoritarian Regimes.”
According to the report, Civil Society rating declined in Tajikistan from 6.50 to 6.75 due to the government’s continued harassment of and interference with public associations, and further repression directed at lawyers who take up politically sensitive cases and at LGBT people.
Independent Media rating reportedly declined from 6.50 to 6.75 due to the sustained pressure by the government, including new media registration requirements with the State Committee for National Security (SCNS).
Corruption rating declined from 6.75 to 7.00 due to evidence of pervasive nepotism and continued state capture by members of the political elite.
Local Democratic Governance rating declined from 6.00 to 6.25 due to the extension of centralized control over local governance through the appointment of the president’s son as mayor of the capital Dushanbe.
As a result, Tajikistan’s Democracy Score declined from 6.64 to 6.79.
The report notes that Tajikistan strengthened its authoritarian system in 2017. The ruling elite have reportedly strengthened their position, most clearly through constitutional changes made in 2016.
In Russia, the report says, President Vladimir Putin won reelection last month in a poll that lacked real competition. Putin’s only credible rival, anticorruption campaigner Aleksei Navalny, it says, was banned from running due to a conviction on trumped-up corruption charges.
But because of a lack of structural reforms and international sanctions for its annexing of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine, Russia is facing “economic decay,” the report says.
Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan present the region’s highest risk of sliding into authoritarianism, the report says.
“While the window for fundamental reforms may not have closed in Ukraine,” the report says, political resistance to anticorruption reforms, attacks on civil society, and the media have seen Ukraine’s democracy score declining for the first time since 2014.
In the other four countries, informal political and business leaders who control the system from the outside or from the fringes of accountable institutions “increasingly dominate their underdeveloped political systems,” he said.
Positive developments of the past year have reportedly been taking place in Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan continued “the modest thaw that began with the death of President Islam Karimov in August 2016, making small but noticeable improvements in the atmosphere for civil society and the media,” the report said.
Turkmenistan is singled out as the region’s worst performer. Decades of “authoritarian mismanagement, flagrant corruption, and overspending on megaprojects” have thrown Turkmenistan into a full-blown economic crisis, the report says.
