Democratic backsliding

Since c. 2010, the number of countries autocratizing (blue) has been higher than those democratizing (yellow).

Democratic backsliding is a slow change in a democratic government, changing it from a democracy to an autocracy where the use of political power is limited or becomes less likely to produce change. The process typically restricts the ability for the public to challenge politics, and it restricts participation in the process of choosing a government. Democratic decline involves a weakening of the important parts of a democratic government, such as the peaceful transition of power, or its free and fair elections. Democratic decline may also show as taking away the rights necessary to have a real democracy, like the freedom of expression. Democratic backsliding is the opposite of democratization.

Proposed causes of democratic backsliding include: economic inequality, culture wars, culturally conservative responses to changes in society, populist or personalist politics, and outside influence from great power politics. During a crisis, backsliding can occur if leaders make rules during states of emergency that are either greater than the severity of the crisis or remain in place after the situation gets better.

During the Cold War, democratic backsliding happened most often in coups, or the violent overthrowing of a government. Since the end of the Cold War, democratic backsliding happens most often when parties that attack democratic institutions are elected. During the third wave of democratization in the late twentieth century, new, weakly organized democracies were created; these have been the most likely to backslide. The third wave of autocratization has been ongoing since 2010. In 2010, the number of liberal democracies was at an all-time high.

Democratic backsliding occurs when important parts of democracy are threatened. Examples of democratic backsliding include:

Forms

Democratic backsliding can occur in several ways. Backsliding is often done by democratically elected leaders, who make small changes that weaken democracy slowly, rather than by big changes. As said by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, it is difficult to find a single specific moment at which a government is no longer democratic, given that the decline moves "slowly, in barely visible steps". Ozan Varol uses the phrase stealth authoritarianism to describe the practice of an authoritarian leader (or a potential authoritarian leader) using "seemingly legitimate legal mechanisms for anti-democratic ends ... concealing anti-democratic practices under the mask of law."

Together with Juan Linz (1996), Levitsky and Ziblatt developed and agreed upon their "litmus test", which has 4 signs of authoritarian behavior. These four signs are: rejection of (or weak commitment to) democratic rules, denial of the right of political opponents to exist, being okay with or encouraging violence, and readiness to take away civil liberties of opponents, including the media. Varol describes the misuse of libel laws, election laws, or "terrorism" laws as tools to target political opponents, and the use of democratic talking points as a distraction from anti-democratic practices, as ways stealth authoritarianism may show up.

In addition to these key signs coming from from the behavior of leaders, Samuel P. Huntington also describes culture as a main contributor to democratic backsliding. He argues that some cultures do not favor democracy, but that does not mean they would not allow democratization. Fabio Wolkenstein also warns that some steps taken to weaken democracy can move more power to one person in ways that may not be easily changed by the next election.

Promissory coups

In a promissory coup, an elected government is removed by coup leaders. Those leaders claim to defend democracy and promise to hold elections. They emphasize the temporary and necessary nature of their coup to have democracy in the future. This is unlike the coups that occurred during the Cold War. Political scientist Nancy Bermeo says that "The share of successful coups that falls into the promissory category has risen significantly, from 35 percent before 1990 to 85 percent afterward."

Examining 12 promissory coups in democratic states between 1990 and 2012, Bermeo found that "Few promissory coups were followed quickly by competitive elections, and fewer still [made] improved democracies."

Executive aggrandizement

In political science, executive aggrandizement is the increase of the leader's power beyond the "checks and balances" provided by the legislature and the judiciary, or by messing with the independence of the public service. Even a legitimately elected leader can hurt democracy by using the government to weaken his political opposition.

This process contains a series of changes by elected executives to the rules and the systems of the government, hurting the ability of the political opposition to challenge the government and hold it to account. The most important feature of executive aggrandizement is that the changes are made in legal ways, making it look like the elected official has a democratic mandate (the approval of voters to make such changes). Some examples of executive aggrandizement are the taking away of media freedom and the weakening of the rule of law (i.e., removing things holding back the government) such as when judicial independence is threatened.

Hitler gives a speech to the Reichstag in support of the Enabling Act. The change of the Weimar Republic into Nazi Germany is possibly the most well-known example of democratic backsliding.

Over time, there have been fewer active coups (a power-seeking individual, or small group, taking power through force and violently removing the current government). There has been a similar decline in self-coups, when an elected leader takes full power of a government in ways they are not supposed to. There has been an increase in executive aggrandizement. Political scientist Nancy Bermeo notes that executive aggrandizement occurs with time, through institutional changes made to seem legitimate by being through legal ways, such as referendums, or "existing courts or legislatures ... in cases where supporters of the executive gain majority control of such bodies." Bermeo notes that these methods mean that the executive aggrandizement "can be framed as having resulted from a democratic mandate." Executive aggrandizement is characterized by the presence of distress in axes of democracy, including accountability to other parts of government.

Incremental election subversion

This type of democratic backsliding entails undermining free and fair elections by, for example, blocking opposition from appearing in the media, preventing opposition candidates from running for office, and voter suppression. This form of backsliding typically takes place before Election Day, and it now tends to be done in a slower way that the makes the changes seem not important, making it tougher for watchdogs like the media to find and broadcast the building-up threat of all the mostly small, but serious misconducts. While the accumulation of power is more likely to start with this slower linear progression, it can happen faster as soon as voter power seems too divided or weakened to repair all the damage done to institutions.

Causes and characteristics

The V-Party Dataset demonstrated a greater statistical significance of democratic backsliding for parties that win elections with very high populism, high anti-pluralism, lack of commitment to the democratic process, and incitement or acceptance of political violence.

Populism

Pippa Norris of the Harvard Kennedy School and the University of Sydney argues that the two "twin forces" pose the biggest threat to Western liberal democracies: terrorist attacks which may occur randomly in the country and take away the feeling of security, "and the rise of populist-authoritarian forces, which feed parasitically upon these fears."

Notes

  1. ↑ Other names include autocratization, democratic decline, de-democratization, democratic erosion, democratic decay, democratic recession, democratic regression, and democratic deconsolidation.

References

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  2. ↑ Mudde, Cas and Kaltwasser, Cristóbal Rovira (2017) Populism: a Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. pp.86-96. ISBN 978-0-19-023487-4
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  27. 1 2 Wolkenstein, Fabio (May 11, 2022). "What is democratic backsliding?". Constellations. 30 (3): 261–275. doi:10.1111/1467-8675.12627. ISSN 1351-0487.
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