When voters around the globe had their say in 2024, their message was often: "You're fired."
Some 70 countries that are home to half the world's population held elections last year, and in many incumbents were punished.
Voters tired of economic disruption and global instability rejected sitting governments — and sometimes turned to disruptive outsiders.
Mass protests erupted in Mozambique and Georgia, an election was annulled in Romania and martial law was attempted in South Korea.
Cas Mudde, a professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia who studies extremism and democracy, summed up 2024 in Prospect magazine as "a great year for the far right, a terrible year for incumbents and a troublesome year for democracy around the world".
In South Africa, high unemployment and inequality helped drive a dramatic loss of support for the African National Congress, which had governed for three decades since the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule.
Incumbents also were defeated in Senegal, Ghana and Botswana, where voters ousted the party that had been in power for 58 years since independence from Britain.
Namibia's ruling SWAPO party extended its 34 years in power in December — but only by a whisker. Uruguay's leftist opposition candidate, Yamandú Orsi, became the country's new president in a November runoff.
In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party lost its parliamentary majority in a shock election result in June after a decade of dominance.
Japanese politics entered a new era of uncertainty after Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's governing Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled almost without interruption since 1955, suffered a major loss in October amid voter anger at party financial scandals.
The UK's July election saw the right-of-centre Conservatives ousted after 14 years in office as the centre-left Labour Party swept to power, revealing support for the two big parties that have dominated British politics for a century shrank as voters turned to smaller parties, including the hard-right party Reform UK led by Nigel Farage.
Britain is not alone in seeing a rise for the right.
Elections in June for the parliament of the 27-nation European Union saw conservative populists and the far right rock ruling parties in France and Germany, the EU's biggest and most powerful members.
After elections in February, Pakistan elected Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, younger brother of three-time leader Nawaz Sharif.
Indonesia elected President Prabowo Subianto, son-in-law of the late dictator Suharto.
Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the world's longest-serving female leader, won a fourth successive term in a January election that opposition parties boycotted.
Months later, her 15-year rule came to a tumultuous end: After mass student-led protests in which hundreds were killed, Hasina was ousted in August and fled to India.
In Sri Lanka, voters also rejected a discredited old guard. Voters elected the Marxist Anura Kumara Dissanayake as president in September.
Covert meddling and online disinformation were growing concerns in 2024.
Meta said that last year it took down 20 election-related "covert influence operations around the world, including in the Middle East, Asia, Europe and the US.
In Romania, far-right candidate Călin Georgescu came from nowhere to win the first round of the presidential election in November, aided in part by a flood of TikTok videos promoting his campaign.
Moldova's pro-Western President Maia Sandu won a November runoff against her Moscow-friendly rival in an election seen as pivotal to the future of one of Europe's poorest nations.
Georgia has seen huge protests since an election in October was won by the pro-Moscow Georgian Dream party.
Possibly the year's most seismic result, Donald Trump's victory in November's US presidential election, has America's allies and opponents bracing for what the unpredictable "America-first" leader will do with his second term.
The writer is from AP