"Resisting Backsliding: Opposition Strategies against the Erosion of Democracy" by Laura Gamboa

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

This Author Meets Critics panel brings together five comparative scholars to discuss Laura Gamboa's book "Resisting Backsliding: Opposition Strategies Against the Erosion of Democracy" (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

In the past two decades, several democracies have slipped into democratic recession. In new and old democracies executives with hegemonic aspirations have used and abused institutions and institutional reform to undermine checks and balances, hinder free and fair elections, political rights, and civil liberties. Democratic backsliding has become the biggest threat to the institutionalization and quality of democratic regimes since the Third Wave of democracy (V-Dem Institute 2022). What can be done to counter this wave?

"Resisting Backsliding" contributes to answer that question. In it, Gamboa examines the conditions under which democratically elected presidents, who try to undermine democracy succeed or fail. To do so, she focuses on the opposition. Because the erosion of democracy happens gradually, the opposition has many opportunities to fight back. The strategies it uses and the goals it uses them for, she argues, are critical to understanding why some presidents successfully undermine democracy but others not.

Using comparative historical analysis with the case of Hugo Chávez (1999-2013) in Venezuela and Alvaro Uribe (2002-10) in Colombia, Gamboa shows that when the opposition uses extra-institutional strategies in order to oust the incumbent, it loses legitimacy domestically and abroad, providing the executive with “legitimate” reasons to remove opposition leaders from office, prosecute or jail them and enabling the head of government to push for more aggressive anti-democratic reforms that, weakened, the opposition cannot stop. On the contrary, if the opposition uses institutional strategies to stop specific reforms, it protects its legitimacy domestically and abroad. This combination of tactics and goals, enables the opposition to keep some presence in the legislature and slow down the cooptation of courts and oversight agencies, thus reducing the likelihood that the executive will have the institutional control needed to pass more aggressive anti-democratic reforms.

To analyze this argument, this panel gathers five comparative scholars with diverse regional expertise, who study regime and regime change and are currently working on democratic backsliding and opposition strategies against autocratization. They will discuss the book through different theoretical, methodological, and regional lenses, in order to assess its contributions and consider future directions of research on backsliding and opposition tactics against the erosion of democracy. Rachel Beatty Riedl (Cornell) will chair the panel and assess the book’s argument in relation to her expertise on institutions, authoritarianism, and democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa. Elvin Ong (NUS) will analyze the book’s contributions with a focus on opposition strategies in authoritarian regimes in Southeast Asia. Murat Somer (Koç) will evaluate the book’s argument in relation to his work on opposition strategies to counter polarization and his expertise in the Middle East, particularly Turkey. Monika Nalepa (Chicago) will discuss the book’s contributions in relation to her work on public support for covert autocrats in Eastern Europe. Susan Stokes (Chicago) will analyze the book’s key contributions in light of current scholarly efforts to better measure and understand democratic backsliding, as well as Latin America’s broader literature on regime and regime change.

Sub Unit

• Division 44: Democracy and Autocracy

Chair

• Rachel Beatty Riedl Cornell University

Presenters

• Laura Gamboa University of Notre Dame

• Monika Nalepa University of Chicago

• Jiayun Elvin Ong National University of Singapore

• Murat Somer Ozyegin University Istanbul

• Susan C. Stokes University of Chicago