What Stops Democratic Erosion? The Role of Institutions of Accountability

• In Event: Panel I on Democratic Backsliding/Erosion

Abstract

Worldwide, democracy is experiencing a new recession. Unlike in past periods of global democratic reversal, however, democracies today often do not break down abruptly. Rather, they are eroded gradually as the pillars of democratic competition, such as political freedoms, civil society, free press and rule of law are slowly undermined. While gradual change is pernicious because it can be hard to detect and react to for voters, parties, media and private companies, a slow process of democratic breakdown might also provide more opportunities for organizing against and resisting democratic erosion.

How has democratic erosion been contained and resisted in practice? In this paper, we identify all 13 cases of substantial democratic erosion that stopped before democratic breakdown in the time period between 1900 to 2018 and study how erosion was stopped. Based on the experience of the set of countries that experienced some important decline in the quality of democratic institutions but yet were able to stop the declining trend, we generate insights about why some democracies prove more resilient to this gradual form of autocratization. We identify such moments of gradual decline in the quality of democratic institutions using the V-Dem Electoral Democracy Index and the concept of “autocratization episodes” (Lührmann and Lindberg 2019), which can be thought of as periods of democratic recession. To our knowledge, this is the first effort to systematically study all cases of democratic erosion that did not result in democratic breakdown. Studying these, we identify how institutions of accountability - in particular elections - help democracies maintain stability and survive periods of crisis, and draw lessons for fighting autocratization elsewhere.

Authors

• Melis G. Laebens, Nuffield College

• Anna Luehrmann, University of Gothenburg