The pandemic caused an unprecedented rollback of democratic freedoms in 2020
Government-imposed lockdowns and other pandemic-control measures led to a huge rollback of civil liberties in 2020, causing downgrades across the majority of countries. Confronted by a new, deadly disease to which humans had no natural immunity, most people concluded that preventing a catastrophic loss of life justified some temporary loss of freedom. The ranking penalised countries that withdrew civil liberties, failed to allow proper scrutiny of emergency powers or denied freedom of expression—regardless of whether there was public support for government measures. In France for example, severe lockdowns and national curfews led to a small but significant decrease in its overall score and the country dropped into the “flawed democracy” category.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/02/02/global-democracy-has-a-very-bad-year
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