This article was driven by the sense that questions of power and democratic voice are no longer abstract. The warning signs in UK public life are mounting: media power concentrated in a few hands and politics ever more vulnerable to unaccountable money; pressure on electoral safeguards, from voter access to the independence of bodies such as the Electoral Commission; and a growing willingness to curb protest while putting added strain on the rule of law and judicial independence. Here we set those warning signs against empirical findings of democratic decline and institutional erosion.
Democracy’s long slide
This is not a short-term setback but a deeper reversal. Based at the University of Gothenburg, the V-Dem Institute runs one of the world’s largest democracy research projects, tracking elections, civil liberties, media freedom, judicial independence and the rule of law across more than 200 countries and territories.
The figures are stark. There are now more autocracies than democracies in the world: 92 authoritarian regimes compared with 87 democratic ones. Around three quarters of the world’s population, about six billion people, live under autocratic rule, while only a small minority live in full liberal democracies. Democracy is no longer the dominant global system; it is becoming the exception.
The decline is accelerating
What makes this moment different is not only the scale of the decline but how widely it is spreading. V-Dem calls it a ‘third wave of autocratisation’: a reversal on the scale of the democratic gains of the late twentieth century but moving in the opposite direction. Today, 44 countries are becoming more autocratic while only 18 are becoming more democratic.
This wave is especially dangerous because it now reaches large and economically powerful states. When democratic backsliding spreads to influential economies, it can shift not only domestic politics but the wider balance of global power.
Hungary and the mechanics of decline
Hungary offers a clear example of how democratic decline works in practice. Drawing on reporting by James Bloodworth in Byline Times, the lesson is not a dramatic break with democracy but its methodical hollowing out through legal change, institutional control and media capture.
“The former Prime Minister did not destroy democracy outright, he re-engineered it into a system in which elections continue but meaningful political competition does not.”
James Bloodworth, Byline Times
V-Dem now classifies Hungary as an electoral autocracy rather than a flawed liberal democracy, pointing to long-term damage in media freedom, judicial independence, clean elections and institutional checks. During Viktor Orbán’s years in power, the state was reshaped so that losing office would not necessarily mean losing control.
The process was legalistic rather than dramatic: rules were rewritten, watchdog roles filled with loyalists, electoral arrangements repeatedly altered and public institutions reshaped to protect those in power. Media capture and crony capitalism completed what V-Dem describes as gradual institutional capture; a reminder that systems hollowed out slowly are far harder to rebuild than to win.
Britain’s drift
Hungary is an extreme case. The UK is not there yet. But V-Dem’s Democracy Report 2026 argues that Britain is no longer outside the same broader pattern. It identifies the UK as one of ten new countries showing signs of autocratisation in 2025: not a country that has suddenly collapsed but one that has begun to drift in the wrong direction.
That matters because this is how democracies are often weakened now: not by tanks in the streets but by the slow wearing away of safeguards. V-Dem points to weakening in freedom of expression, the media environment, limits on executive power and the wider quality of liberal democracy. Elections still take place but the conditions that make them truly fair and corrective can weaken year by year.
“Freedom of Expression, a core aspect of democracy, shows the most drastic global decline, and is the most common target among autocratising leaders over the past 25 years.”
Staffan I Lindberg V-Dem
Transparency International (TI) reinforces the picture. In its 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index, the UK scored 70 out of 100 and ranked 20th in the world; its lowest score since 2012. TI points to the influence of big money in politics, repeated scandals, weak enforcement and the UK’s role as a hub for illicit or “dirty” money moving through property, company structures and weak anti-money-laundering controls.
“Unless we act decisively to tackle the corrupting influence of big money in politics and strengthen anti-corruption frameworks, these concerns will become the new normal.”
Daniel Bruce, Transparency International UK.
None of this means the UK is becoming an autocracy like Hungary. But it does suggest a gradual weakening of standards, safeguards and trust. Britain is no longer outside the story of democratic decline; it is part of it.
When the West loses credibility
Western democracies long saw themselves as democracy’s anchor: the states that set the standard and defended the rules. V-Dem’s findings suggest that claim now carries less weight. The West remains influential but it is less credible.
The consequences are not confined to national politics. When large states move away from accountable government, institutions become harder to trust, alliances more fragile and diplomacy less rooted in rules than in leverage. As democratic norms weaken, international cooperation becomes more selective, more transactional and less capable of restraint.
The costs are not abstract. At home, autocratisation narrows dissent and weakens civil society. Abroad, it raises the risk of miscalculation just as the world faces crises: climate breakdown, displacement, economic shocks and war that cannot be managed by raw power alone. A world governed less by shared rules and more by force is a more dangerous one.
The most unsettling conclusion of the Democracy Report 2026 is this: democratic decline is no longer a distant problem. It is accelerating inside established democracies. Whether Britain can still call itself a full democracy will depend not on its history but on its willingness to defend democratic standards now.
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