A Big Year for Asian Elections, but Not Necessarily for Democracy

Joshua Kurlantzick is senior fellow for Southeast Asia and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Media outlets and other organizations touted 2024 as the “year of elections” worldwide, noting people heading to the polls in nearly one hundred countries this year. They included Asian countries that are among the most populous in the world, including Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Japan, and Pakistan. 

But despite all the voting, 2024 was not exactly the year of democracy. Elections were held in a number of autocratic or semi-autocratic countries, where it seemed like this year might actually lead to greater freedoms. Instead, in Bangladesh and Pakistan, autocratic leaders used cheating, detentions of politicians, and other means of making votes unfair to claim another term in office. 

What were some of the outcomes of Asia’s major elections?

Following Pakistan’s February election, many supporters of the popular politician Imran Khan, who was jailed before the vote, believed his party had still won a big enough victory to reduce the army’s long-standing dominance. (Khan had been in jail since last year on a range of charges, some of which were ultimately overturned, but now Pakistan’s antiterrorism court has issued an arrest warrant for him—and that court’s sentences tend to be harsh.) Pakistan today is essentially a military state, and has become much more authoritarian than it was several years ago. Yet at the same time, protests over army rule and how Khan was treated continue to roil Pakistan, to the point that the military recently was given permission to shoot on sight supposed pro-Khan protestors.

In Bangladesh, years of growing authoritarianism, cronyism, and an underperforming economy under long-ruling former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League party led the opposition to not even compete in the 2024 election, feeling that the vote structure would be so biased. (In the summer, a series of protests erupted against Hasina, eventually forcing her to flee, and ushering in a caretaker government that is trying to reform Bangladesh and set the stage for truly free and fair new elections.) 

In other cases, elections were relatively free on election day, but ruling parties had put in place structures that made it difficult for the opposition to triumph. In India’s parliamentary election, for instance, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the most votes overall—although less than in the prior election, and it lost a parliamentary majority—because the BJP had created a tilted playing field over the years. The party intimidated many press outlets that would have covered its flaws, curtailed freedom of association, and harshly demonized Muslims to stoke preelection tensions. 

In Indonesia, one of the main presidential candidates, Prabowo Subianto, who in the 1990s was widely accused of massive rights abuses while serving in the military, made a deal with incumbent president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo that made it difficult for anyone to beat Prabowo. The two politicians agreed to have Jokowi’s son run on Prabowo’s ticket as his vice presidential candidate, even though Jokowi’s son has no governing experience and was too young by Indonesian law to be vice president. No matter: the top Indonesian court, led by Jokowi’s brother-in-law, changed the rules so that Jokowi’s son could run for vice president. Jokowi, a massively popular politician, threw his support to Prabowo, and Prabowo handily won the election. 

What were other democratic harbingers aside from elections?

Even in countries in Asia that did not hold elections in 2024, the political situation often became more repressive. In Thailand, the country’s top court, generally opposed to democratic reform, banned the Move Forward party in August, a progressive party that had won the most seats in the country’s parliamentary elections the year before but was unable to form a majority. Move Forward had dared to call for some reform of the kingdom’s draconian lèse-majesté laws, which impose harsh punishments on anyone who says anything negative about the monarch. These laws are hated by many Thais and not consistent with a constitutional monarchy, which Thailand claims to be. (It is not, actually: The king wields enormous economic and political power from behind the scenes.) 

Meanwhile, Cambodia, which was once something between an autocracy and democracy, has degenerated into a full-on autocracy. Former Prime Minister Hun Sen has passed on political dominance to his son, current Prime Minister Hun Manet. While Hun Manet has made a few comments about needing to clean up corruption and improve Cambodia, he generally rules with the same cronyism and authoritarianism that his father did. 

Even in South Korea, considered one of the strongest and most stable democracies in Asia and the Pacific, democracy seemed in trouble. South Korean Prime Minister Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law and banned all political activities in December. The move was extraordinary for a mature democracy, and one that harkened back to South Korea’s years of dictatorship. Although Yoon lifted martial law shortly after declaring it in the face of protests, it marked an unexpected challenge for South Korean democracy that could spur months of uncertainty.

Were there any signs of health for democracy in the region? 

Taiwan held a free and fair election in January. It had substantial turnout—more than 70 percent of eligible voters—and despite the harsh campaigning by all the major parties, election day was peaceful, and the incumbent Democratic Progressive Party won another term in the presidency.    

Free elections portended significant change in other countries too. In Sri Lanka, a free and fair election led to a shocking presidential and parliamentary victory by the National People’s Power, a strongly left-leaning party that could dramatically reshape Sri Lanka’s economy and some of its historic cronyism. That has the potential to improve governance and break some of the links between big business and certain politicians. 

In Japan, a free and fair election saw the powerful Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has ruled the country for most of the past seventy years, lose its majority in parliament in a shocking blow to the most dominant political party in any developed democracy. Japan is now engaged in parliamentary jockeying to build a coalition. Overall, the result suggests restiveness among the Japanese public and the possibility that, next time, an empowered opposition to the LDP could win a majority, shattering decades of Japanese political norms. 

So, as in Sri Lanka, the Japanese voters signaled that, even when there are sometimes reasons to be cynical about a “year of elections,” at times the voters do come through and remind politicians worldwide that they can have their say—and force major policy changes as well.

This work represents the views and opinions solely of the author. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy