SLIDES: Democratic Backsliding and Recession

DEMOCRACY

Introduction to Comparative Politics

  • Course: POG240
  • Lecture Number: 9
  • Topic: Democratic Backsliding and Recession, Autocracy

Democratic Backsliding

  • Defined as a state-led debilitation or elimination of the political institutions that help sustain an existing democracy.
    • Source: Bermeo
  • Involves the erosion of norms, institutions, and practices associated with modern democratic governance such as:
    • Participation
    • Competition
    • Accountability

The Third Wave: Stability or Stagnation?

  • Analysis by Diamond regarding the global status of democracies.
Figure 1: The Growth of Democracies in the World, 1974-2013
  • Graph depicting the percentages of both liberal and electoral democracies from 1974 to 2013, with peaks and declines noted in specific years.
    • Liberal Democracies: Peaks from 61% in 2013 to lows of approximately 29% in 1974.
    • Electoral Democracies: Fluctuations, which peaked at 41% in 2013, noting a decline from 57% in 1980.

Drivers of Recession

  • From Diamond:
    • Accelerating Rate: An increase in democratic breakdown.
    • Stability of Democracy: Decline observed in swing states.
    • Authoritarianism Deepening: Notable in larger countries.
    • Performance of Established Democracies: These are exhibiting poor results, which leads to loss of confidence among citizens.

Breakdown of Democracy (2000-2014)

Table: Breakdowns of Democracy
  • Notable Years and Countries with Types of Breakdown:
    • 2000, Fiji: Military coup
    • 2000, Russia: Executive degradation, violation of opposition rights
    • 2001, Central African Republic: Military rebellion, violence, human rights abuses
    • 2002, Guinea-Bissau: Executive degradation, violation of opposition rights
    • 2002, Nepal: Military coup (following year)
    • 2004, Venezuela: Rising political instability, monarchical coup
    • Further breakdowns listed through to 2014 including specifics for each case.

Democratic Decline Disaggregated

Figure 3: Political Rights, Civil Liberties, and Transparency/Rule of Law, 2013
  • A comparative figure depicting scores across different regions on political rights, civil liberties, and transparency, with notable declines visible across various areas, such as:
    • CEE (+Baltics)
    • LAC (Latin America and the Caribbean)
    • Asia
    • Africa

Mean Democracy Score for the World (2013)

Table: Summary of Mean Scores from Four Surveys
  • Compiled data from Freedom House, Polity IV, Economist Intelligence Unit, and Bertelsmann from 2000 to 2013 showing slight variations in democracy scores over time.
Notable Observations:
  • Scores mostly remain in the range of 0.53 to 0.70, re-scaled to the 0-1 interval across various indices.
  • Democratic Recession - A Myth? (Levitsky & Way): Exploration of misinterpretations around the notion of democratic regression.

Reasons for Misperceiving a Democratic Recession

  • From Levitsky & Way:
    • Mistaken conflation of authoritarian crisis/breakdown with democratization.
    • Assumed linear progression from democratic transition to consolidation.
    • The collapse of communism appeared to reinforce this view.
    • Post-2000 conditions fueled misperceptions, such as commodity booms, adaptations by autocrats, and relative decline of Western influence.
    • Excessive voluntarism observed in some analyses.

Democratic Breakdown: Classic Forms

  • Distinguished forms of democratic breakdown identified by Bermeo:
    • Military Coups
    • Executive Coups
    • Fraudulent Elections

Decline in Classic Military Coups

Figure 1: Coup Frequency in Democracies, 1950-2014
  • Trends shown in coup attempts and successful coups from 1950-2014 indicate a decline in both, highlighting sociopolitical shifts.

Decline in Classic Electoral Fraud

Figure 2: Vote-Fraud Allegations by Western Monitors in Post-1975 Democracies (1991-2012)
  • A graph detailing the percentage of elections that faced allegations of vote fraud over distinct time periods, indicating trends and frequencies in electoral integrity monitoring.

Contemporary Democratic Backsliding

  • New forms of backsliding listed under Bermeo:
    • Promissory Coups
    • Executive Aggrandizement
    • Strategic Electoral Manipulation

Does Backsliding Lead to Breakdown? (Brownlee & Miao)

Table: Democratic Breakdown and Democratic Backsliding (2000-2019)
  • Instances are broken down into those without prior episodes of backsliding and those that were preceded by periods of backsliding.
    • Noteworthy Cases of Breakdown Not Preceded by Backsliding: Includes countries like Bangladesh, Burundi, and Central African Republic.
    • Cases with Preceding Backsliding: Roughly eight cases, such as Venezuela and Turkey, indicating a correlation between prior regression and breakdown.

Economic Development and Democratic Breakdown

Figure: Correlation of Economic Development with Democratic Breakdown
  • Analysis presented on the relationship between GDP per capita and the mode of takeover in various countries (Turkey, Thailand, Maldives) highlighting the socioeconomic factors impacting democratic stability.

Outstanding Questions

  • From Bermeo:
    • What are the implications of new patterns in economic development?
    • How does the sequence of executive aggrandizement relate to multiparty competition?