Year 1 (out of 11) complete: 0 out of 30 Western democracies have become non-democratic. The closest continues to be Croatia, which received a score of 6.50 for the fourth year in a row, and Hungary, which rose from 6.64 to 6.72. Ten more years remain until this bet concludes.

A majority here is a very high bar. Assuming 15/30 is the cut off, you could have France, the US, every former communist country on the list, Sweden, Italy, and Austria all going full fash, and still this would resolve 'no'. Yes, there are some dark trends, but some countries here are pretty much guaranteed 'nos' in my view: Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, all of whom have very weak far-rights and approx. 0 fash in parliament (and in the UK's case, probably a long period of extremely dull centrist politics coming after Lab win the next election.)

Excellent! I was about to offer Alyssa a market, but this is better than the one I would've made.

And props to @AlyssaVance for taking a Yes position.

A great example of how well thought out rules are entirely too complex as you are trying to do too much. Why bother writing up such complex rules for a market where the answer is obviously No? (<1% odds of this happening)

I agree it's very unlikely, but given there appears to be disagreement about this, I thought making a market would get me some sweet, sweet, trading and referral bonuses, which it has. I recommend you bid it down to 1% to spark a bidding war and increase engagement further.

The use of "Western" for non-western countries is silly.

https://freedomhouse.org/country/andorra

Andorra: Country Profile

Access Freedom House reports on Andorra, see recent news and perspectives, and learn about our work in the country.

@AaronKreider I have intentionally excluded microstates

@chrisjbillington How about Cyprus?

@AaronKreider several former Yugoslavia countries are also missing

@AaronKreider Not "Western" under the definition I'm using. I'll happily agree my definition of "Western" is arbitrary, but one must draw a line somewhere.

Same market, lower bar for backsliding:

Will 20% or more of Western democracies cease to be de facto democratic by 2034?

50% chance. Capturing the chance of democratic backsliding, but with a significantly lower bar than a majority. Exact same resolution criteria as @chrisjbillington’s market, but resolves YES if in any release of The Economist Democracy Index up to and including the 2033 release (likely to be publis…

Fascist countries tend to exercise control over the media and do hold ritualistic elections (the ruling party gets a supermajority that makes DC look like a competitive jurisdiction). So I'm partly betting that The Economist Democracy Index, if published in a fascist state, will characterize that state as democratic.

More seriously, betting "No" because it will not happen. Countries wiggle along the continuum between fascism and democracy, but the ones we're talking about are wayyyy over on the democratic side. Fascism took root due to a coincidence of many one-off factors, like the introduction of radio, mass unemployment, a well-armed and (by today's standards) quite young population with direct combat experience, much more powerful clergy and aristocrats who tended to support the right and (incorrectly) believed that they could co-opt the fascists, and the imminent threat of a global socialist revolution.

• Radio placed a huge premium on politicians who were charismatic, but now we're pretty used to this as a society, and parties know they need to nominate someone who speaks well and looks good. The first parties to adapt to the new pace of campaigning were the newest parties with the least baggage, i.e. the fascists, but many of their techniques were adopted by others, too. (For example, one of Hitler's campaign tactics was to use aircraft, so he could deliver speeches in different cities on the same day. Within two decades, LBJ was doing this for his Senate campaign, and of course by now it's just a default). There are new media today, which could lead new parties to win quickly; perhaps short-form video will create a new movement. But Facebook doesn't like fascism and argued that they only allowed Trump to post because he was already a public figure so his postings had news value. And TikTok is out, too; CCP doesn't want the US to go fascist, so fascism is not going to go big on TikTok.

• Unemployment in Germany hit 24% in 1932. Unemployment could rise to that level in rich, democratic countries, depending on the path of AI, but government is a larger share of GDP than it used to be, and redistribution is more politically popular.

• Europe's median age was 29 in 1950 and 43 in 2020. If your movement grows through street fighting, demonstrations, and big rallies, it's not going to succeed in a rapidly-aging country. Many Germans had been somewhat haphazardly demobilized after the war, and Weimar started doing gun buybacks and other forms of gun control a bit too late, i.e. after the far-right and far-left paramilitaries had already formed and decided they'd prefer to keep their guns. The year after the First World War ended, Freikorps troops were invading the Baltic. (The modern equivalent might be an American unit staying behind in Afghanistan and operating as local warlords.)

• As Francis Fukuyama once pointed out, right-authoritarianism means a coalition of powerful elite interest groups, usually some combination of military, clergy, big business, and aristocrats. Left-authoritarianism means that all of these groups get co-opted by one big political movement. Big companies do not seem especially anxious to burnish their far-right bonafides right now. And of these groups, big business remains powerful but the rest are much weaker than they used to be. (Sure, the evangelical vote matters in the US, but it's far more decentralized than early 20th century faiths. And faith is more heterogeneous today; if most of your friends share your religion, it's probably a pretty marginal religion that doesn't have a big impact on elections.)

• We must not underestimate what a shock the fall of the Tsar and the creation of the USSR was. To non-communists, this looked like the end of the world, since Russia was historically so reactionary and since other countries had also faced, but defeated, violent communist revolutionaries. Russia had invaded Poland soon after the communists took over, and was explicitly committed to global communist revolution. This made the median voter a lot more sympathetic to violent far-right movements that promised to keep communism out.

Fascism cannot be understood except in the context of those specific circumstances. These ideological undercurrents are a lot older, as are the human traits they tap into, but the existence of fascism was a creation of its time. And that existence did not last especially long; if a movement prides itself on might-is-right, it can't afford to... lose. Defeating fascism is an important part of right-leaning America's self-image today; Republican politicians do make analogies to Nazi Germany, and in those analogies the Nazis are not the good guys.

(I also take issue with 1) the post's argument that Stalinism is a less potent political force than fascism today—are you more likely to get in trouble at work for saying something nice about Stalin or something nice about fascism? If you're sympathetic to evil dictators, which one is safer to be a fan of? and 2) I take issue with the idea that hostility towards minority groups separates fascism and Stalinism, inasmuch as Stalin did, in fact, bear some responsibility for famines that disproportionately harmed Ukrainian and Kazakh minorities, and also for the Katyn Massacre of Poles.)

To the extent that this bet does pay off, it will be a bet on paranoid LARPing about long-since-ended political struggles, instead of some clear and compelling evidence that a dead and discredited ideology somehow came back to life, inverted its position in the status hierarchy, managed to capture all elected institutions, and also took over soft-power institutions like big business, and non-democratic-by-design institutions like the administrative state and the Supreme Court. It calls for a great deal of talent, ambition, and organization on the part of today's fascists, and there are too many other things talented and ambitious people can do that actually have a clear shot at succeeding.

We should worry about much more boring and depressing political problems, like gerontocracy, the proliferation of veto power, a lack of state capacity to accomplish useful goals, and constant bureaucratic creep. The right fear isn't Hitler but Brezhnev, and the risk in politics is that nothing exciting will happen at a time when decisive action is what's called for.

I'm pretty confident this is true, with some caveats:

• 2034 is probably too ambitious. imo this growing wave of authoritarianism is about 10-20 years younger in non-English speaking parts of Europe. War would probably be a prerequisite for this timeline

• The Economist Democracy Index appears to be pretty lenient on some countries (like the US) that have been found by other organizations to be failed democracies or non-democratic regimes

• And it's likely that such an index will be compromised as dictatorships evolve

• It's probable that some, if not many, of those democracies will instead fall into other forms of (non-)government

Even with those caveats, I'm highly confident in the long term truth of the trend and think this market is underpriced.

Thanks! I agree with this as a statement of my views, and have bet "yes".

I think the existence of a democracy index is heavily dependent on the resolution criteria being met.

@AlexbGoode also there is at least a 20% chance that there are no humans in 2034 according to manifold. How does the market resolve if humans stop existing before 2034?

@AlexbGoode yes, how would it be able to resolve?

I am impressed with the effort you put into the resolution criteria.