This is a nitpick that doesn’t really affect the overall message of the post (which I upvoted), but:
The Economist’s Democracy Index shows a sharp decline over the last decade:
That chart has a cut y-axis; the decline looks much less sharp in a graph that shows the full range:
This box from Wikipedia also suggests that the overall average going from 5.55 to 5.3 isn’t that significant, as the whole scale is used and everything between 4 and 6 is considered to be within the same category of regime:
Hans Rosling: