What to make of 2024

Our pages have been full of suffering in 2024. War has raged on three continents: the world watched Gaza, Lebanon and Ukraine most closely, but the fighting in Sudan was the most deadly. Storms, tempests, floods and fires have ruined lives, and taken them. All the while, the rivalry between countries siding with China and the American-led Western alliance has deepened, even as America has chosen as president a man whose commitment to that alliance is in doubt.

At first sight, therefore, 2024 has amplified a growing sense that the multilateral order which emerged from the second world war is coming apart. Increasingly, governments act as if might is right. Autocrats flout the rules and the Western powers that preach them are accused of double standards.However, take a wider view, and 2024 holds a more hopeful message. It affirmed the resilience of capitalist democracies, including America’s. At the same time, it laid bare some of the weaknesses of autocracies, including China. There is no easy road back to the old order. But world wars happen when rising powers challenge those in decline. American strength not only sets an example; it also makes conflict less likely.

One measure of democratic resilience was how the year’s elections led to peaceful political change. In 2024, 76 countries containing over half the world’s population went to the ballot box, more than ever before. Not all elections are real—Russia’s and Venezuela’s were farcical. But as Britain showed, when it turfed out the Conservatives after 14 years and five prime ministers, many were a rebuke to incumbents.

Elections are a good way to avert bad outcomes. In India, in a raucous festival of democracy, the increasingly illiberal government of Narendra Modi had expected to enhance its dominance. Voters had other ideas. They wanted Mr Modi to focus less on Hindu nationalism and more on their standard of living, and they steered him into a coalition. In South Africa, the African National Congress lost its majority. Instead of rejecting the result—as many liberation movements have—it chose to govern with the reform-minded Democratic Alliance.

In America the year began amid warnings of election violence. Donald Trump’s clear victory meant America escaped that fate. That is a low bar, but Americans may now not face such perilous circumstances for many years—in which time its politics will evolve. The fact that so many African-Americans and Hispanics voted Republican suggests that the Democrats’ divisive and losing politics of identity has peaked.The enduring nature of America’s power was visible in the economy, too. Since 2020 it has grown at three times the pace of the rest of the g7. In 2024 the S&P 500 index rose by over 20%. In recent decades China’s economy has been catching up, but nominal gdp has fallen from about three-quarters the size of America’s at its peak in 2021 to two-thirds today.

This success is partly thanks to pandemic-inspired government spending. But the fundamental reason is the dynamism of the private sector. Along with America’s huge market, this is a magnet for capital and talent. No other economy is better placed to create and profit from revolutionary technologies like biotech, advanced materials and, especially, artificial intelligence, where its lead is astounding. Were it not for growing protectionism, America’s prospects would be even brighter.

Contrast all that with China. Its authoritarian model of economic management will have fewer admirers after 2024, when it became clear that the country’s slowdown is not just cyclical, but the product of its political system. President Xi Jinping has resisted a consumer stimulus, for fear of too much debt and because he sees consumerism as a distraction from the rivalry with America. Instead he instructs young people to “eat bitterness”. Rather than have his country’s disappointing economic performance on display, he has preferred to censor statistics—though flying blind leads to worse economic decisions.

The failings of authoritarianism have been even clearer in Russia. It now has the advantage over Ukraine on the battlefield, but its gains are slow and costly. At home inflation is mounting and resources that should have been invested in Russia’s future are being wasted on war. In a free society Vladimir Putin would have paid for his ruinous aggression. Even if the fighting stops in 2025, Russians seem stuck with him.

Attempts to change the world by force are hard to sustain, as Iran has affirmed. With Russia, it spent billions of dollars to keep Bashar al-Assad in power in Syria after an uprising was about to topple him in 2011. As Iran’s economy buckled and sentiment hardened against its foreign mischief-making, the mullahs in Tehran could no longer afford to prop up a dictator whose subjects had rejected him. The victory for people power in Syria came after Hamas and Hizbullah, both Iranian proxies, had been crippled by Israel.

Democracies have vulnerabilities, too. This is clearest in Europe, where the political centre is crumbling as governments fail to grapple with Russian aggression and their weakness in the industries of the future. If Europe fades, America will also suffer—though Mr Trump may not see it that way.

And many questions hang over Mr Trump. Iran’s retreat and the promise of a ceasefire in Gaza give him a chance to forge relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and even to find an accommodation with Iran. He could also oversee a peace that gives Ukraine a chance to escape Russia’s orbit. Yet risks abound. Markets have priced in Muskian deregulation and ai-propelled growth. If Mr Trump becomes mired in cronyism, or pursues mass deportation, persecutes his enemies and wages a trade war in earnest rather than for show, his presidency will do grave harm. Indeed, those risks were worrying enough for The Economist to endorse Kamala Harris. We still worry today.