Democracy hangs by a thread. Who is going to save it?

2024 was billed as the year that would define democracy. From India's grand, colourful, marathon election to the protests on the streets of Tbilisi in defence of Georgia's post-Soviet, corruption-beleaguered tiny republic, the defence of personal freedoms and the rule of law has been global.

Yet despite the resurgence of those demanding better and more from their leaders, support for those who wish to tinker with democracy's bedrock principles is also rising.

In India, despite a resurgence of the coalition of opposition parties led by the Indian National Congress, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's nationalist, Hindu clarion call saw him hold onto office despite having few policies to earn his return to power.

Across the European continent, populist, nativist candidates are, if not already in power, increasingly inching closer to it. With immigration as their lightning rod, they strike up relationships with leaders ofnations whose people many of their supporters rally against.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni tried to normalise relations with Syria in the years before the fall of the Assad regime, even while Syrian refugees seeking safety in Europe have become part of a debate driving political divisions across the continent. At the same time, Meloni has conjured a relationship with Modi that, even if just superficial, redefines the political alliances across the world that seem to be growing from unusual roots.

Merchants of the status quo, such as France's President Emmanuel Macron, have seen their power and legitimacy disintegrate under their desperate clutches to build foundations on tidal currents they can no longer predict. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's ruling coalition collapsed in November, and Scholz has now lost a vote of confidence in parliament, putting the country on course for snap elections in February, certain to be fiercely contested among an increasingly fragmented collection of parties. The UK elections saw Keir Starmer take power in a landslide victory in July, yet already he is more unpopular in some polling than the man he replaced, Rishi Sunak.

At the same time, the weight of Russia's conflict with Europe has reached its way into Romania's disputed elections and will continue to shape the European response to the war in Ukraine.

Many would say this populist, anti-democratic centrifugal force is powered by events in the US. Donald Trump's reelection as president has and will continue to ripple through the world's most pressing global issues for 2025.

The war in Ukraine, the way Israel either ends or extends its campaigns to kill Hamas and Hezbollah leadership across the Middle East, and the peace deals that these conflicts may or may not generate — all will be viewed through a lens of US domestic politics.

2024 was supposed to define democracy. Instead, it gave some a sense of what our world might look like if the pursuit of these collective freedoms and protections were abandoned altogether.