Posted by The Law School
4 June 2025In March 2025 the HRDF, the Centre for Political Thought, the Centre for European Studies and the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies convened a interdisciplinary workshop to reflect on the significance of elections for democracy. This workshop was part of series of research events in collaboration with the Observatory of Representation.
During 2024, apparently 1.7 billion people participated in elections in something like 80 countries across the world. If we include in the list a number of other significant general elections taking place in the Autumn of 2023 (Poland, Argentina, New Zealand, the Netherlands), and in February 2025 (Germany), this has certainly been a Long Year of Elections.
Elections are often considered to be the kernel of democracy: no democracy without free elections. But, as the former president of Chile, Michelle Bachelet, has written in a recent article, the general feeling after this long year of election may well be “that democracy is more threatened than ever”. This is not just because some of these elections have taken place in authoritarian regimes, where elections are rituals for state and government self-legitimation; but also for the sense of disenchantment that increasing numbers of citizens in established constitutional democracies have with the power of elections, or the way in which electoral democracy seems incapable of providing and maintaining a functioning representative system, the rule of law, and a fair society. On the contrary, in some cases, elections seem to encourage democratic backsliding. This workshop on The Long Year of Elections was an opportunity to provide information and analysis of some of the many elections across the world; to discuss general geo-political electoral trends; and to examine the role of elections in different kinds of political regimes, questioning the very relationship between elections and democracy, or the way in which elections can also have an effect beyond their political boundaries.