Elections persist, institutions function, but do they still truly limit power? In Madagascar, democracy continues to operate through electoral and institutional mechanisms. The question is whether these mechanisms retain their full capacity to constrain the exercise of power. Elections continue to be organized. Institutions function. Political parties exist. Media publish. Courts render decisions. Civil society remains active. This is precisely what makes the debate more complex than it appears. The question is not whether democracy still exists. It is whether it still fulfills its primary function: limiting power, protecting public freedoms, and guaranteeing credible political alternation. An external signal questioning a trajectory The V-Dem Institute's 2026 Democracy Report provides external perspective on this question. It classifies Madagascar among ten new countries identified as having entered an autocratization trajectory in 2025, with an episode beginning in 2022. The country is now classified among "electoral autocracies" and scores 0.19 on the liberal democracy index, compared to 0.36 on the electoral democracy index. This gap is not merely a statistical result. It reflects an essential difference between the existence of electoral mechanisms and the quality of guarantees surrounding them. In other words, a country can continue organizing elections while gradually seeing checks and balances, public freedoms, equality before the law, and institutions' capacity to control power exercise weaken. This is precisely the evolution the report invites us to observe. What does the V-Dem Institute actually measure? The Varieties of Democracy Institute (V-Dem) is a research program at the University of Gothenburg that measures democratic evolution using hundreds of institutional indicators. Its value lies not in simple country rankings. It primarily seeks to identify trajectories: are democratic institutions strengthening or weakening over time? In its 2026 edition, the report classifies Madagascar among countries undergoing autocratization and notably highlights degradation in election quality and civic space. These findings form the starting point for analysis presented here, confronting them with observable facts and work conducted by Diapason. This diagnosis must be read rigorously. The V-Dem Institute distributes neither political labels nor moral judgments. Its approach rests on observing hundreds of indicators tracked over time to identify institutional trajectories. Being classified among autocratizing countries does not mean a state has become a dictatorship or that all political competition has disappeared. It means a set of democratic mechanisms are degrading consistently enough to be detected by comparative methods. This distinction is essential. It invites moving beyond qualification debates to examine a more concrete reality: do institutions continue exercising their checks-and-balances function or are they becoming progressively less capable of limiting executive action? Observable facts must now answer this question. The five functions of democracy Democracy is not reduced to regular elections. It rests on several functions that together give meaning to institutions. Organizing credible elections Elections must allow citizens to freely choose their leaders within a framework recognized as fair by principal political actors. Protecting public freedoms Freedom of expression, assembly, association, and information constitute the minimal foundation of genuine democratic life. Limiting power Democracy must prevent excessive power concentration in the hands of a single actor, party, or interest group. Guaranteeing checks and balances Parliament, judiciary, media, civil society, and oversight institutions must act without excessive dependence on the executive. Enabling alternation Democracy remains vital when opposition can access power through elections without institutional blockage, intimidation, or structural imbalance. Diapason reading: when these five functions weaken, democracy does not necessarily disappear. It can continue existing formally while progressively losing its capacity to protect society against power concentration. When facts confirm indicators The first series of signals concerns the electoral process