The Foreign Service Journal, April 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | APRIL 2020 17 decade ago, its ranking was on par with the United Kingdom and Switzerland. Twenty-five of 41 established democ- racies in the world have seen net losses in democracy since 2006, according to the report. “The most common areas of decline,” writes the report’s author, Freedom House Finds Global Democracy on Wane D emocracy is under assault around the world, according to Freedom House’s “Freedom in the World 2020” report, released on March 4. “This year’s report is deeply concern- ing, in that it finds that we are in the 14th year of a global recession in democracy,” says Freedom House president Michael Abramowitz. “Almost twice as many countries declined in their scores this year as improved, and those declines aren’t just happening in places that you expect, like China or Russia, but also in established democracies.” Over the past few years, the United States’ democracy ranking has fallen several points, to 52nd on the list of 195 nations and 15 territories, according to the report. With a democracy score of just 86 out of 100, the United States falls behind Slovakia and Mauritius but just ahead of Argentina and Croatia. A I’m confident we can handle it here. I’m confident we’ll handle it better than any nation in the world. Contemporary Quote —Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in response to a question about whether the United States could have as successful a response as China without imposing on people’s civil liberties, during an interview with CNBC, March 6.