The two main indices of democracy worldwide are those of The Economist and of Freedom House. The Israeli right claims that the country’s ranking in these indices has been stable for many years now. In reality, both indices place Israel in the third rank of democracies, i.e., democratic states overall, but in which democracy is flawed. Ostensibly, there is no shame in this ranking, which has recently come to include US President Donald Trump’s America.

On Oct. 3, right-wing affiliated Yisrael HaYom newspaper published a report that Israel’s democratic ranking has stabilized further and even improved. As a result, it seems that claims among the left that the most basic characteristics of democracy have deteriorated under the current right-wing government have no leg to stand on.

However, the big difference in the perspective of Israel’s right-wing government and that of the country’s liberals is that the former takes pride in our relative status, whereas the latter focuses on our absolute standing. The former sees Israeli democracy as stable, while the latter believes that this stability is only relative and that in the absolute, it is being gnawed away. The liberals explain that the only reason we succeed in maintaining our relative position in the rankings is that other countries have also deteriorated over the last few years — among them Turkey, Hungary, Poland and the United States — while semi-democratic states have shifted to the status of authoritarian regimes. This makes it possible for us to avoid dropping through the ranks of relative democracy.

In hindsight, Francis Fukuyama was mistaken in his 1989 claim that we were witnessing “the end of history.” In many ways, the 1990s became little more than a fleeting dream. The end of the Cold War, the establishment of democratic regimes beyond the Iron Curtain, the resolution of conflicts in various places around the world — from South Africa to Northern Ireland — the Oslo Accord between Israel and the Palestinians and the peace agreement between Israel and Jordan, all of that was little more than a brief historical interlude. More and more countries came to prefer “strong men” as leaders over governments rooted in the rights of the individual and collectives that make up society, in compromise, understanding and in heeding the will of the public, and of course, in regular regime change. Similarly, undemocratic regimes such as in Russia and China, which originally showed signs of liberalization and openness, began moving backward. Meanwhile, it seemed as if the public had made peace with this trend and even seemed to prefer it. People came to believe that this was the best way to ensure law, order and national pride, even if it came at the expense of freedom of expression, freedom of association and freedom of movement.