Who is killing democracy?

Democratic erosion is defined as a decline in democratic quality manifested by a statistically significant decline in at least one aspect of democracy. Democratic backsliding, defined as the sustained and deliberate subversion of basic democratic tenets by political actors and governments, is on the verge of becoming a new type of pandemic. In the largest and wealthiest non-Western countries, there is an increasing incidence of - democratic breakdowns, democratic backsliding or stagnation and poor performance of new democracies according to various measures of good governance and rule of law. The absolute number of democracies has been decreasing since 2015. The number of democratically regressive countries has never been greater than in the last decade. In fact, 70% of the world's population now lives in either non-democratic regimes or democratically regressive countries. Only 9 % of the world's population lives in high-performing democracies.