Applied analysis

The article “The Long Arm of Authoritarianism” by Yana Gorokhovskaia and Isabel Linzer
is about transnational repression in authoritarian countries. The majority of incidents of
transnational repression are committed by authoritarian governments on the territory of other
authoritarian states. The reason for aiding and abetting the other authoritarian state in the
field of political repression may be tightening economic and political relations between them.

According to the literature reviewed in the class, an authoritarian system is any state in which
those who hold power in the government are not formally responsible in their exercise of
power to the broad citizenry of the state.

Autocratic governments cooperate in enacting transnational repression as they embrace the

same anti-democratic illiberal values that those in power cannot be criticized by society,
human rights and freedoms are not respected in autocracies.

In this article is also said, that democratic countries have invested resources in building
physical and legal walls against immigrants which is unacceptable, because democracies can
and should punish those responsible for transnational repression by applying
sanctions, withholding security assistance, and prosecuting those
responsible for domestic acts of transnational repression and also apply other coercive
measures against them.

Speaking about the second article – “To what extent is democracy in decline worldwide?” by
Svend-Erik Skaaning we can say that he’s talking about how democracy remains under threat
from external enemies. This article says that the world has never been more democratic than
it was in the 2010s and that now we can see a slight democratic recession. From some
perspectives, it is assumed that the global state of democracy has deteriorated significantly
since 1974 and 1989.

But we should always keep in mind that whether we pay attention to the relative or absolute
numbers of units used in the analysis, can greatly affect the observed trend. Even if the
percentage of democracies decreases, the number of people living in democratic states may
increase due to population changes.
To conclude we can say that statements about the decline of democracy must be based on a
conscious discussion of tendencies, taking into consideration different points of view.