Defending Democracy in a Volatile Environment
By Owolola Adebola
Democracy has never been a finished project. It is a living arrangement, built and rebuilt in every generation by citizens who insist that power must answer to the people rather than the other way around. Today, that arrangement is under strain in ways that are both familiar and new.
From established democracies grappling with polarisation and disinformation to younger democracies contending with weak institutions and the temptations of strongman rule, the volatility of our political environment has become a defining feature of the age.
Defending democracy under these conditions requires more than nostalgia for old norms; it demands clear-eyed vigilance, institutional renewal, and a citizenry willing to do the unglamorous work of holding power accountable.
The Nature of the Volatility
The instability confronting democratic governance today is not a single crisis but a convergence of several. Economic anxiety, driven by inflation, unemployment, and widening inequality, has eroded public trust in the ability of elected leaders to deliver a decent life.
Technological disruption, particularly the rise of social media and artificial intelligence, has transformed how citizens receive information, making it easier than ever to manufacture doubt, deepen division, and spread falsehoods at a scale no previous generation of propagandists could have imagined.
Meanwhile, a global resurgence of authoritarian-leaning politics has normalized attacks on the judiciary, the press, and electoral institutions in places once considered stable.
In many parts of the world, including several African nations, these pressures compound long-standing structural weaknesses: fragile electoral commissions, politicized security forces, and judiciaries that have not fully shaken off executive interference.
The result is a democratic landscape where formal elections continue to occur, but the substance of democratic accountability is increasingly hollowed out. Scholars have described this phenomenon as “democratic backsliding,” a gradual erosion that often happens through legal and constitutional means rather than dramatic coups, making it harder to detect and resist until significant damage has already been done.
Of course,if democracy is to survive volatility, its institutions must be strengthened rather than merely praised in speeches.
An independent judiciary remains one of the most critical safeguards against executive overreach.
Courts that can rule against the government of the day, without fear of retaliation, provide a check that no amount of public sentiment can substitute for. Similarly, electoral bodies must be insulated from partisan capture, adequately funded, and staffed by professionals whose careers do not depend on pleasing whichever party currently holds power.
Law enforcement agencies occupy a particularly delicate position in this equation. Police and security services are meant to protect the constitutional order and the citizens within it, not to serve as instruments of political intimidation. Where officers act with professionalism, restraint, and respect for civil liberties, they reinforce public confidence in the state. Where they are deployed to suppress legitimate dissent or protect incumbents from accountability, they accelerate the very instability democracy is meant to prevent.
Recognizing and elevating honorable conduct within these institutions, while insisting on reform where it is lacking, is not a peripheral concern but central to democratic resilience.
A free press deserves equal attention. Journalists who investigate corruption, scrutinize government spending, and give voice to marginalized communities perform a function that no other institution can replace. When journalists are harassed, sued into silence, or physically threatened, the public loses its ability to know what its government is actually doing. Defending democracy therefore means defending the conditions under which journalism can function without fear.
Who does not know that,institutions alone cannot save democracy if citizens abdicate their own responsibilities?. Voting remains the most basic democratic act, but it is far from the only one. Civic participation between elections, through town halls, advocacy groups, community organizing, and sustained pressure on elected officials, is what keeps representatives accountable in the long stretches between campaign seasons. Apathy is not a neutral position; it is an invitation for those with narrower interests to fill the vacuum.
Today, media literacy has become an equally urgent civic skill. As disinformation spreads faster than fact-checkers can respond, citizens must learn to interrogate the sources of the information they consume, to recognize manipulation techniques, and to resist the emotional pull of content designed to provoke outrage rather than inform judgment. This is not merely an individual responsibility; it calls for investment in public education systems that teach critical thinking as a core civic competency, not an afterthought.
Equally important is the willingness of citizens to defend democratic norms even when doing so is politically inconvenient. It is easy to criticize an opposing party for undermining institutions; it is harder, and more necessary, to hold one’s own preferred leaders to the same standard. Democracies erode fastest when partisans excuse in their own camp what they condemn in their rivals.
The digital environment deserves particular attention because it has changed the speed and scale at which democratic erosion can occur. Coordinated disinformation campaigns, whether driven by domestic political actors or foreign interference, exploit the openness that democracies pride themselves on. Artificial intelligence has made it possible to generate convincing fake images, audio, and video, threatening to undermine the shared factual basis that democratic deliberation depends on.
Responding to this challenge requires collaboration between technology platforms, regulators, and civil society.
In a way, platforms must take greater responsibility for the content that spreads through their systems, without becoming arbiters of truth in ways that themselves threaten free expression. Regulators must craft rules that curb manipulation without criminalizing legitimate dissent. Civil society organizations, including independent journalists and fact-checking bodies, play an indispensable role in providing the public with reliable counter-narratives before falsehoods take root.
Perhaps the most important shift required is a move from reactive defense to proactive resilience. Too often, democratic institutions and citizens alike respond only after a crisis has already exposed a vulnerability: after an election has been contested, after a journalist has been jailed, after a court has been packed with loyalists. Resilience means anticipating these threats and building safeguards before they are tested.
This includes constitutional reforms that close loopholes exploited by those seeking to entrench power, term limits that are genuinely enforced rather than casually amended, and campaign finance rules that limit the ability of narrow interests to dominate political discourse. It includes investment in civic education from an early age, so that respect for democratic norms becomes part of a society’s cultural fabric rather than a fragile elite consensus. It includes regional and international cooperation, where democracies support one another through election observation, technical assistance, and diplomatic pressure against backsliding neighbours.
In summary, democracy was never meant to defend itself. It survives only through the deliberate, ongoing effort of institutions willing to check power and citizens willing to demand accountability.
The volatility of the present moment, marked by economic strain, technological disruption, and a global drift toward authoritarian temptation, is a test of whether that effort can be sustained.
There is no single reform or single election that will settle the matter permanently. What is required instead is a culture of vigilance: courts that rule without fear, journalists who report without intimidation, security agencies that protect rather than repress, and citizens who refuse to trade the hard work of self-government for the false comfort of a strongman’s promises.
In a volatile environment, democracy’s defense is not a one-time battle but a daily discipline, and it is a discipline every generation must choose to practice anew.
OWOLOLA Adebola, is the spokesperson of Nigeria Democratic Congress ( NDC) Ondo State Chapter,writes in from Akure.
