Shifting Regime Legitimation Strategies and the Deterioration of Democracy

• In Event: Censorship, Dissent and Legitimation under Autocracy

Abstract

Governments—be they democratic or autocratic—regularly make claims to justify why they have the right to rule. Their legitimation strategies may focus on rational-legal, procedural or illiberal claims (based a particular ideological narrative and/or the uniqueness of the leader). We hypothesize that governments’ increased reliance on illiberal claims is an important precursor of a substantial deterioration of democratic quality, manifested in weaker horizontal checks and balances and diminishing civil liberties. Using new expert-coded measures of regime legitimation strategies for 143 countries from the Varieties of Democracy dataset, we examine the direction of the relationship and test it using random effects within-between models. The results confirm that shifts towards illiberal legitimacy claims are indeed a serious warning signal for a country’s subsequent democratic recession. With our findings, we contribute to the current debate about the global wave of “autocratization” processes.

Authors

• Christian von Soest, German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA)

• Lennart Joe Brunkert, Leuphana University Lüneburg