The International Liberal Foundations of Autocratization

• In Event: Regime Type and International Cooperation

Abstract

Democracy is under attack from both within and outside. Since 2016, the number of countries moving towards authoritarianism is approximately three times as high as the number moving towards democracy. At the same time, many democracies are experiencing significant democratic erosion. Seventy percent of the global population now lives either in non-democratic regimes or in democratically backsliding countries. Features once thought to be beacons of healthy democracy—such as elections—are now used to undermine genuine representation. The January 6, 2020 insurrection, in which an armed mob stormed the U.S. Capitol to overturn a presidential election—with support from the president himself—was a hallmark moment for the U.S., showing how democratic systems can be used to weaken democracy. Similar trends are playing out across the West. The effects are both widespread and deep, as democratic retreat rolls back the sizable social and economic benefits that come with genuine political representation. What explains these worrisome trends? A growing body of research examines the causes of authoritarian stabilization, on the one hand, and democratic erosion on the other hand. But even though those processes have developed in parallel, research explored them in isolation and focused mainly on their domestic drivers.

We argue that recent waves of authoritarian stabilization and democratic erosion are not only inherently linked, but are both facilitated and mutually strengthened by countries’ approach to integration into the Liberal International Order. The LIO has turned against itself both by providing opportunities for autocrats in non-democratic regimes to consolidate authoritarianism and incentives to aspiring autocrats in democratic regimes to disengage with the principles and rules of the Order to promote the spread of non-democratic behavior and institutions for their own political gain. To test the empirical implications of our theoretical argument, we use data on autocratization in democracies and electoral autocracies around the world from 1970 to 2021, and analyze how participation in international organizations and integration into the liberal international economy have provided opportunities for aspiring autocrats in liberal and electoral democracies and autocracies to pursue strategies of executive aggrandizement. Our focus on the international liberal foundations of threats to democracy offers new insights to the study of democratic decline, which has mainly focused on domestic explanations. Our analysis also offers a unified framework that brings together two trends—democratic erosion and authoritarian consolidation—that have been analyzed in isolation but that are intrinsically linked and mutually reinforcing. This framework allows us to generate new insights into the polarizing debate regarding whether globalization and democracy can be compatible.

Authors

• Emilie Marie Hafner-Burton, University of California, San Diego

• Christina J. Schneider, University of California, San Diego