Interview with Prof. Gidon Rahat, Head of the Department of Political Science at the University of Jerusalem
In the past, democracy has been replaced with dictatorship by means of coups (or other type of violence). Now the same is being achieved gradually after legitimate democratic elections. They change the legislation or seek to restrict public organisations, the media, inconvenient private investors and businesses, subjugate the judiciary, the army and the police. They seek to circumvent electoral rules in such a way as to make a given politician and his party inviolable. The process began about 20 years ago, when in many places around the world democracy began to collapse slowly from the inside. The disturbing consequences of such actions are already beginning to come to fruition in some countries.
Many countries, such as Hungary and Turkey, which twenty years ago met the definition of “democratic”, are now changing their appearance.
