Democratic backsliding refers to the state-led debilitation or elimination of political institutions that sustain an existing democracy. It's a complex process that can lead to either outright democratic breakdown or a serious weakening of democratic institutions. Understanding democratic backsliding involves analyzing the concrete actions and techniques that transform a regime.

Understanding Democratic Backsliding: An Overview

Scholars have long focused on why democracies fail, but less on how they fail. Democratic backsliding forces us to examine the specific choices that change regimes. The term, rooted in its historical use to denote a "willful turning away from an ideal," signifies a departure from democratic norms.

Backsliding can vary in speed and outcome. Rapid, radical changes across many institutions often lead to outright authoritarianism. More gradual changes, affecting a circumscribed set of institutions, are less likely to result in full regime change, often yielding political systems that are ambiguously democratic or "hybrid."

Shifting Dynamics of Democratic Backsliding

The nature of democratic backsliding has changed significantly since the Cold War era. Some of the most overt forms have become less common, while more subtle and vexing forms are on the rise. Ironically, these new forms are often legitimated through the very institutions democracy promoters have prioritized.

Declining Forms of Backsliding

Historically, certain types of democratic backsliding were prevalent but have since decreased in frequency:

Classic Coups d’État: These are illegal attempts by military or state elites to oust a sitting executive. The probability of democracies being targeted by any coup, and especially successful ones, has dramatically declined since the 1960s, reaching a thirty-year low after 1995.
Executive Coups (Autogolpes): Also known as "self-coups," these involve a freely elected chief executive suspending the constitution to amass power in one swift move. Common during and after the Cold War (e.g., Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, Alberto Fujimori in Peru), their number has plummeted since 2000.
Blatant Election-Day Vote Fraud: While electoral malpractice hasn't disappeared, open fraud on election day has reportedly decreased. International election monitors note that cheating has become "more subtle" and "blatant manipulation on election day seems less and less common." This shift is attributed to factors like normative change, election monitoring, and parallel vote tabulation.

Persistent and Rising Challenges: New Forms of Erosion

Despite the decline in some blatant forms, other varieties of democratic backsliding either persist or are becoming more common. These often present more complex challenges for detection and response.

Promissory Coups: A Deceptive Threat

Promissory coups are a persistent form of backsliding where the ouster of an elected government is framed as a defense of democratic legality. Coupmakers publicly promise to hold elections and restore democracy quickly. Unlike Cold War coups, which were often open-ended, contemporary coupmakers emphasize the temporary nature of their intervention.

Increasing Frequency: The share of successful coups falling into this category has risen significantly, from 35% before 1990 to 85% afterward.
Dismal Outcomes: Analysis of successful promissory coups between 1990 and 2012 shows a dismal picture. Few led quickly to competitive elections, and even fewer paved the way for improved democracies. Examples include Haiti (1991), Honduras (2009), Madagascar (2009), Mali (2012), and Fiji (2006).
Coupmaker Victories: Elections following promissory coups are often surprisingly favorable to the coup's backers. Fully half of acceptable post-coup elections were won by the perpetrators or their favored candidates (e.g., Yahya Jammeh in Gambia, Porfirio Lobo in Honduras, Frank Bainimarama in Fiji).
Elusive Improvement: Even when coup opponents win post-coup elections (e.g., Lesotho, Niger, Pakistan, Thailand), substantial improvements in political and civil rights are rare. Thailand, rated "Free" before its 2006 promissory coup, returned to dictatorship.

Executive Aggrandizement: Gradual Institutional Weakening

Executive aggrandizement is a more common and slower form of backsliding that occurs without executive replacement. Elected executives systematically weaken checks on executive power, undertaking institutional changes that hamper opposition forces. This is done through legal channels, often using constitutional assemblies or referenda, framing changes as democratic mandates.

Legal Channels: Institutional disassembling is achieved through new laws, constitutional amendments, or referenda, often passed by newly elected constitutional assemblies or majorities in existing legislatures and courts.
Illustrative Examples:
Turkey (Recep Tayyip Erdoğan): Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) used parliamentary strength to pass hundreds of laws undermining accountability. Media freedoms and judicial autonomy were targeted, with laws allowing prosecution of journalists, facilitating website blocking, and giving the state control over media coverage. Constitutional changes in 2010 gave the president power to name Constitutional Court judges, and legislation in 2014 allowed the justice minister to appoint High Council of Judges members and discipline judges, leading to the removal of over three thousand judges.
Ecuador (Rafael Correa): Correa, with strong electoral mandates, initiated a "Citizens' Revolution." He used a Constitutional Assembly to force Congress into recess and make profound changes to democratic institutions. His party gained a supermajority, leading to the elimination of presidential term limits. Laws were passed controlling media ownership, broadcast frequencies, and legal liability for journalists, alongside dissolving citizens' organizations deemed harmful by the state.
Ideological Breadth: This form of backsliding is not limited to populists; leaders across the ideological spectrum, like Abdoulaye Wade in Senegal and Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine, have engaged in executive aggrandizement.

Strategic Electoral Manipulation: Tilting the Playing Field

Strategic election manipulation, often coupled with executive aggrandizement, involves actions aimed at tilting the electoral playing field in favor of incumbents. Unlike blatant fraud, it occurs long before polling day and rarely involves obvious legal violations, making it harder for observers to detect or criticize.

Subtle Tactics: This includes hampering media access for opposition, using government funds for incumbent campaigns, keeping opposition candidates off the ballot, hampering voter registration, packing electoral commissions, changing electoral rules, and harassing opponents.
An Unintended Consequence: Some studies suggest this rise is an unintended consequence of increased international election monitoring, which made overt fraud too "costly."
Aggregate Persistence: While blatant fraud declines, overall electoral misconduct is not decreasing; rather, subtler forms have filled the void, often before election day.

Addressing Democratic Backsliding: Challenges and Prospects

The shift towards incremental backsliding, rather than sudden breakdowns, presents new challenges for scholars and activists alike.

The Challenge of Incremental Erosion

Slow Pace: De-democratization today is more likely to be incremental, eroding "piece by piece" rather than shattering in one blow. This is less violent but creates distinct challenges.
Scholarly Blind Spots: Social science has largely focused on clear cases of democratic collapse, paying "scant attention" to gradual regime changes. More research is needed on how the slide into "hybrid" regimes occurs.
Political Difficulties: Incremental changes (e.g., electoral laws, court packing, media restrictions) can seem too arcane to provoke mass mobilization. Opponents may be framed as "special interests," and civic organizations silenced. Fragmented resistance is a common outcome.
Lack of a "Bright Spark": Slow slides often lack a clear, dramatic event to ignite effective calls to action or galvanize opposition leaders. Backsliding often takes root where a majority supports it or where oppositions are already weakened.

Rational Responses and International Incentives

Opponents of backsliding are more likely to succeed if they recognize that current trends are rational responses to local and international incentives.

Domestic Drivers: State actors often restructure institutions defensively, preventing past assaults. For example, Correa's and Erdoğan's policies can be seen as reactions to histories of executive instability or troubled institutional landscapes.
International Influence: Democracy promotion efforts have had an ironic impact. Aid sanctions against illegal ousters have reduced coups, driving them to be framed as "promissory." The international prestige of "clean elections" has made blatant fraud less viable, pushing manipulation to subtler forms.
Liberal-Democratic Project: The push for free media, stronger parties, and active civil society has put executives under increased scrutiny, leading to predictable attempts to control these areas, especially in polarized polities.

The Vexing Ambiguity of Modern Backsliding

Contemporary forms of backsliding are profoundly ambiguous, often legitimated through national elections, legislative and judicial majorities, and the "rule of law" produced by these majorities.

Sovereignty Concerns: Challenging laws crafted by democratically elected bodies is seen as an affront to sovereignty, making foreign pressure difficult.
Difficulty in Proving Malice: Changes in laws governing elections or media occur routinely in democracies; proving a nefarious, antidemocratic purpose is often difficult.
Questionable Targets: Sometimes, the institutions or individuals targeted by backsliding (e.g., corrupt politicians, ruthless media moguls) are not unambiguously democratic themselves, which can weaken the credibility of defenders.
Promissory Coups' Pledges: These coups gain legitimacy by promising a "better democratic regime" and often have the backing of jurists, legislators, and mobilized citizens, making responses difficult, especially when security concerns lead to sanctions being lifted.
Popular Support: A critical and uncomfortable truth is that modern backsliding often marshals broad popular support. Citizens may genuinely support an elected official's actions, even if they undermine democracy. Changing these preferences is a long-term project.
Democratizing Edge: Sometimes, the impetus for institutional change comes from marginalized groups demanding a more inclusive model. Backsliding can occur with the intention of deepening rather than destroying democracy, requiring individual, historically informed responses.

Conclusion: A Better Mix?

The challenges posed by contemporary backsliding are daunting, but not insurmountable. The current mix of backsliding is arguably preferable to that of the past, as incremental and ambiguous change preserves mixed landscapes where different institutions or ideas can correct each other. As long as some electoral competition and civil society space remain, power can be clawed back, and countermobilization can occur.

There is evidence that negative trends can be reversed, as seen in Venezuela's opposition gains or Rafael Correa's decision not to seek re-election in Ecuador. Furthermore, when modern forms of backsliding do lead to regime change, the outcomes are less onerous. There's a marked decrease in the length of time countries stay autocratic after a democracy is toppled, and successor dictatorships are, on average, less authoritarian. This suggests that democracy's prospects remain good, especially with more systematic thinking about how to cope with backsliding.

Frequently Asked Questions About Democratic Backsliding

What is democratic backsliding in simple terms?

Democratic backsliding is the gradual weakening or elimination of a country's democratic institutions by state actors, often elected officials. It's a shift away from democratic norms and practices, which can happen slowly over time rather than through a sudden event like a coup.

How has democratic backsliding changed over time?

Historically, backsliding often involved dramatic events like military coups or executive coups where leaders suspended the constitution. Today, these blatant forms are less common. Instead, we see more subtle methods like "promissory coups" (coups framed as temporary to restore democracy) and "executive aggrandizement" (elected leaders legally dismantling checks on their power), along with strategic manipulation of elections.

What are examples of executive aggrandizement?

Examples include Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, who used his party's parliamentary strength to revise penal codes affecting journalists, control judicial appointments, and restrict media freedoms. Rafael Correa in Ecuador similarly used constitutional assemblies and referenda to weaken opposition parties and control media outlets, all while holding strong electoral mandates.

Why is contemporary democratic backsliding difficult to confront?

It's difficult because it often happens incrementally and through seemingly legal means, making it ambiguous. Changes are frequently legitimated through democratic institutions like elections and legislative votes. Additionally, challenging these changes can be seen as an affront to national sovereignty, and sometimes the targets of backsliding are elites with questionable democratic credentials themselves. The process often garners popular support, further complicating opposition.

Understanding Democratic Backsliding