On the morning of April 6, 2010, Viktor Orban's Fidesz party won a supermajority of seats in the Hungarian parliament — 68% of seats on 53% of the popular vote, a result made possible by an electoral system that translated its plurality advantage into legislative dominance. With that supermajority, Fidesz proceeded to rewrite Hungary's constitution, pack the Constitutional Court with loyalists, restructure the electoral system to make future supermajorities more likely, and systematically purchase or pressure into compliance the major media outlets. By 2022, Freedom House reclassified Hungary not as a democracy but as a "hybrid regime" — the first EU member state to fall from the democratic category. None of the steps Fidesz took were illegal under the laws it was simultaneously rewriting. Viktor Orban had not staged a coup. He had won an election, and then used the tools available to democratic winners to systematically dismantle the constraints on his own power.

Hungary is the sharpest example of what political scientists now call "democratic backsliding" — the erosion of democratic norms and institutions not through violence or military intervention but through the patient, legalistic exercise of power by leaders who arrived in office through legitimate elections. It is the central finding of political science research on democratic decline: we are living through a period not of dramatic coups but of slow strangulation. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt's "How Democracies Die" (2018), drawing on comparative historical research and case studies of contemporary backsliding, identified the pattern: elected leaders who undermine democratic constraints step by step, each step individually defensible, the collective process visible only in retrospect.

Freedom House's annual "Freedom in the World" report has documented seventeen consecutive years of net global decline in political rights and civil liberties, as of its 2023 edition. The Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute at the University of Gothenburg, whose data series covers nearly all countries from 1900 to the present, finds what Anna Luhrmann and Staffan Lindberg (2019) described as a "third wave of autocratization" — a pattern of gradual democratic erosion affecting approximately a quarter of the world's population, the most people affected by autocratization since the peak of the Cold War. Whether this amounts to an existential crisis for liberal democracy or a manageable correction from the optimistic highs of the 1990s is contested. What is no longer contested is that the direction of travel, for the past fifteen to twenty years, has been consistently wrong.

"How does a democracy die? In countries like Venezuela, Turkey, and Hungary, the threat has come not from generals and soldiers but from elected governments themselves. Democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box." — Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (2018)

Region 2006 Democracy Score 2023 Democracy Score Trend
Western Europe High (stable) High (some erosion in Hungary/Poland) Stable with exceptions
Eastern Europe Rising Mixed (Hungary backsliding) Diverging
Latin America Mixed Mixed (Brazil recovery; Venezuela decline) Unstable
Sub-Saharan Africa Low-medium Low-medium (coups in Sahel) Stagnant/declining
Asia-Pacific Mixed Mixed (India declining; Taiwan/South Korea stable) Diverging
Middle East/North Africa Low Low (Arab Spring reversed) Persistently low

Key Definitions

Democratic backsliding: The gradual, incremental erosion of democratic norms, institutional constraints, and civil liberties by elected governments — typically through legal means, without formal military intervention or suspension of elections.

Autocratization: The process by which a political regime moves away from democracy toward authoritarianism. The V-Dem Institute distinguishes between "autocratization" (gradual process) and "democratic breakdown" (sudden collapse), noting that most contemporary cases are gradual.

Electoral authoritarianism: A system that maintains the formal appearance of competitive elections while systematically biasing the electoral playing field through control of media, manipulation of electoral rules, selective prosecution of opponents, and intimidation.

Mutual toleration: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt's term for the norm that democratic opponents treat each other as legitimate rivals rather than existential enemies whose success would be catastrophic. Erosion of this norm is an early warning sign of democratic stress.

Institutional forbearance: The norm that political actors do not use every legal power available to them to its maximum extent, preserving informal constraints on behaviour. An example is the convention against court-packing that historically prevailed in the US despite no constitutional prohibition.

Populism: A political logic, analysed extensively by Cas Mudde and Cristobal Kaltwasser, that pits a unified "virtuous people" against a corrupt "elite," with the populist leader claiming exclusive authority to speak for the people. Populism is compatible with both left and right politics but tends to challenge institutional constraints as obstacles to the people's will.

Liberal democracy: A political system combining competitive elections with protection of civil liberties, minority rights, rule of law, and institutional constraints on executive power. The combination is not inevitable: electoral competition can exist without liberal protections (electoral authoritarianism), and liberal protections can coexist with limited suffrage (historical oligarchic liberalism).

The Data: What the Indices Show

The measurement of democracy is both technically complex and politically contentious. Different indices operationalise democracy differently, weight components differently, and produce somewhat different country rankings — though they converge on the overall picture of recent decline.

Freedom House has produced annual assessments of political rights and civil liberties since 1973. Its methodology scores countries on a 1-7 scale for both political rights and civil liberties, combining them into a status of "Free," "Partly Free," or "Not Free." The 2023 report found that only 43% of the world's population lives in countries rated "Free" — the lowest share in the report's history — down from 46% in 2005. Forty countries declined in scores in 2022; only nineteen improved. The seventeen consecutive years of net decline represent the longest sustained backsliding trend in the organization's history.

The V-Dem Institute's Varieties of Democracy dataset, developed over fifteen years by Lührmann, Lindberg, Staffan I. Lindberg, and hundreds of country specialists, is the most comprehensive democracy dataset in existence. It measures over 400 indicators organised into five core principles: electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian democracy. The V-Dem Liberal Democracy Index shows sharp declines in Hungary, Turkey, India, Brazil under Bolsonaro, and the Philippines under Duterte, with the US also showing measurable decline on some sub-indices during 2017-2021. The index's granularity allows researchers to identify which specific dimensions of democracy are deteriorating in specific countries — often executive constraints and media freedom show the earliest erosion.

The Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index shows similar trends. In its 2022 edition, only 24 countries were classified as "full democracies" — home to 8.0% of the world's population — while 59 were "flawed democracies," 36 were "hybrid regimes," and 57 were "authoritarian regimes."

Larry Diamond at Stanford, who coined the term "democratic recession" in his influential 2015 article in the Journal of Democracy, has argued that the recession reflects both the fragility of third-wave democracies (those established after 1989 often without the institutional depth of older democracies) and the emergence of effective authoritarian learning — autocrats studying how to consolidate power while maintaining a democratic facade.

How Democracies Actually Die: The Erosion Pattern

The dramatic version of democratic collapse — a coup, tanks in the streets, a suspension of the constitution — was the dominant mode of democratic failure in the twentieth century. Of the 264 democratic breakdowns Levitsky and Ziblatt identify between 1900 and 2015, the majority in the middle decades were coups. Since the end of the Cold War, the dominant mode has shifted.

Levitsky and Ziblatt identify two key "guardrails" of democratic behaviour that have historically protected democracy in practice, separate from formal constitutional design. The first is mutual toleration — the norm that political opponents treat each other as legitimate rivals rather than existential enemies who must be defeated by any means necessary. When opponents are characterised as criminals, foreign agents, traitors, or threats to the national existence rather than legitimate competitors for power, the informal constraint against using every available legal and institutional tool to neutralise them dissolves. The second is institutional forbearance — the norm that political actors don't use every power technically available to them, preserving the informal constraints that constitutions cannot specify. A governing party can legally pack courts, exploit procedural rules to block opponents, maximise the electoral advantage of redistricting, or use prosecutorial authority selectively — but conventions against doing so, if widely respected, constrain behaviour more effectively than prohibitions because they don't require enforcement.

These norms erode in ways that are individually justifiable but collectively corrosive. Anna Grzymala-Busse at Stanford has analysed institutional erosion in post-communist Europe, identifying how governing parties gradually hollowed out public institutions — civil service, courts, regulatory agencies — by replacing career officials with political loyalists, changing procurement rules to favour party-connected businesses, and directing state resources toward political supporters. Each step has a plausible justification in the language of reform and efficiency; the collective effect is the conversion of public institutions into partisan instruments.

The Hungary Case Study

Hungary represents the most complete transformation of a EU democracy into what Orban himself calls an "illiberal democracy." After winning his supermajority in 2010, Fidesz moved systematically:

The Constitutional Court was expanded from eleven to fifteen members, allowing Fidesz to appoint four immediate loyalists. The retirement age of justices was lowered, removing experienced members. Electoral districts were redrawn in ways that heavily favour Fidesz geographically. The Electoral Commission gained Fidesz-appointed members. Fidesz allies purchased major media outlets; public broadcasting was converted into a partisan operation; independent outlets faced harassment, regulatory action, and advertising market pressure (major companies faced unofficial pressure not to advertise in critical media). Academic freedom was attacked through legislation targeted at the Central European University (which was forced to move its US-accredited programmes to Vienna). Civil society organisations received funding restrictions and public stigmatisation. The judiciary was restructured through the creation of a new administrative court system, staffed with Fidesz loyalists, to handle cases involving the government.

By the 2022 elections, Fidesz won 54% of votes but 68% of seats, a result that Orban's critics argue reflects so thoroughly a tilted playing field that fair competition is no longer possible. The EU has launched infringement proceedings against Hungary on rule of law grounds and frozen substantial structural funding. None of this has reversed Fidesz's grip on Hungarian institutions.

The Role of Populism

Populism — the political logic that opposes a unified, virtuous "people" against a corrupt "elite," with the populist leader as the authentic voice of the former — has been the most common political vehicle for contemporary democratic erosion. Cas Mudde at the University of Georgia and Cristobal Kaltwasser at the Catholic University of Chile have provided the most rigorous academic analysis of populism as a political phenomenon. Mudde defines populism as a "thin-centered ideology" — one that provides a basic moral framework (pure people vs. corrupt elite) but requires attachment to another ideology (nationalism, socialism, Christian democracy) to flesh out specific policy content.

This thinness is important: populism is ideologically flexible. Left populism (Hugo Chavez, Bernie Sanders, Jean-Luc Melenchon) and right populism (Viktor Orban, Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, Marine Le Pen) share the people-versus-elite frame but differ in which elite is targeted and which people are valorised. What they share is a challenge to intermediary institutions — parties, courts, media, expert bureaucracies — as obstacles to the direct expression of the people's will that the populist leader embodies.

This challenge to intermediary institutions is precisely where populism creates democratic risk. Courts that constrain executive action are not, in the populist frame, guardians of rule of law; they are elites blocking the will of the people. Independent media are not a democratic check; they are part of the corrupt elite lying to the public. This delegitimisation of constraint creates political permission for the kind of institutional erosion Levitsky and Ziblatt document.

Pippa Norris at Harvard has argued, based on comparative survey data, that economic insecurity and perceived status decline are the primary drivers of populist voting. Her "cultural backlash" thesis, developed with Ronald Inglehart in "Cultural Backlash" (2019), holds that authoritarian-populist parties draw disproportionate support from older, less educated, non-urban voters who have experienced economic decline and cultural marginalisation as social liberal values became dominant among educated urban elites. Thomas Ferguson's investment theory of politics adds a structural dimension: populist movements are often bankrolled by specific business elites — oil, coal, real estate, finance — whose interests align with weakening regulatory and labour institutions.

India, Turkey, and Brazil: Three Case Studies

Beyond Hungary, three large democracies illustrate different variants of democratic backsliding.

India under Narendra Modi and the BJP has shown a consistent pattern of decline on V-Dem's liberal democracy and civil liberties measures since 2014. Freedom House downgraded India from "Free" to "Partly Free" in 2021. Specific concerns include: the Citizenship Amendment Act (2019), which creates a pathway to citizenship based on religion in ways critics argue are structurally discriminatory; restrictions on civil society organisations through the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act; media consolidation and the marginalisation of critical outlets; use of sedition and anti-terrorism laws against journalists and activists; and the revocation of Jammu and Kashmir's special status. India's scale — it is the world's most populous democracy and was long regarded as evidence that democracy can function in diverse, poor societies — makes its trajectory particularly consequential for the global democratic narrative. The BJP disputes the characterisation of these measures as anti-democratic, arguing they represent legitimate security and development policies.

Turkey's transformation under Erdogan is further advanced. The AKP won its first election in 2002 on a platform of EU-aligned democratic reform. By the mid-2010s, following a failed coup in 2016 that Erdogan used as pretext for sweeping purges of the military, judiciary, and civil service, Turkey had moved clearly into hybrid regime territory. The V-Dem Liberal Democracy Index shows a steep decline beginning around 2013. Press freedom indices rank Turkey among the most restrictive environments for journalism globally.

Brazil under Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022) represented a case of attempted backsliding that ultimately failed. Bolsonaro adopted the textbook playbook — delegitimising electoral institutions before the election, refusing to commit to accepting results, creating conditions for a contested outcome. After he lost to Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in October 2022, Bolsonaro's supporters stormed the Brazilian Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace in January 2023 — an event closely resembling the January 6, 2021 Capitol assault in the US. Brazilian democratic institutions held: the military did not support an attempt to overturn the election, courts functioned, and Lula was inaugurated. The Brazilian case illustrates both the vulnerability of democracies to elected authoritarian leaders and the importance of institutional and elite consensus in resisting backsliding.

Youth, Polarisation, and Democratic Support

Yascha Mounk and Roberto Stefan Foa's 2016 paper "The Danger of Deconsolidation" in the Journal of Democracy reported declining support for democracy among younger cohorts in Western countries, drawing on World Values Survey data from 1994-2014. They found that younger Americans were substantially less likely than older cohorts to consider living in a democracy "essential" and more open to non-democratic alternatives including military rule. The paper generated significant attention and significant pushback.

Erik Voeten at Georgetown, Pippa Norris, and others published critiques arguing that Mounk and Foa's findings were sensitive to measurement choices and question wording, and that alternative analyses showed high and stable support for democracy as a concept among young people in Western countries. The more specific finding — declining confidence in democratic institutions — has proven more robust: surveys consistently show younger voters expressing lower trust in parliaments, parties, and electoral processes, though this largely reflects frustration with democratic performance rather than preference for authoritarian alternatives.

Milan Svolik's experimental research provides a more troubling finding. Svolik embedded descriptions of candidates with norm-violating behaviours (describing opponents as criminals, calling for restrictions on media, asserting authority to ignore court rulings) in hypothetical candidate profiles and asked respondents whether they would still vote for their preferred party's candidate. He found that Americans significantly discounted anti-democratic behaviour when it came from their preferred party, particularly when partisan polarisation was high. In highly polarised settings, roughly two-thirds of voters prioritised partisan policy preferences over democratic norm enforcement. The implication is that polarisation is not merely a symptom of democratic stress — it is a mechanism through which democratic erosion becomes politically feasible.

What Can Be Done: The Research on Democratic Resilience

Political science research on democratic survival and recovery offers several empirically supported insights.

Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan's analysis of resistance movements in "Why Civil Resistance Works" (2011) found that non-violent civil resistance campaigns have historically been about twice as successful as violent resistance in achieving political change, and that campaigns achieving sustained participation from approximately 3.5% of the population have never failed to achieve their objectives. The implications for democratic resistance are cautiously encouraging: mass non-violent mobilisation, if sustained, is effective against authoritarian consolidation.

Arend Lijphart's comparative research on consensus democracy — proportional representation, coalition governments, federal arrangements, strong minority rights protections — suggests that institutional design choices affect democratic resilience, with more consensus-based systems showing greater stability. However, institutional design is path-dependent and difficult to change: the US majoritarian system, for example, has deep structural roots that make proportional reform politically impractical.

Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way's comparative research on competitive authoritarianism ("Competitive Authoritarianism," 2010) finds that external linkage to democratic powers — economic integration with, and institutional ties to, established democracies — significantly improves democratic prospects in transitional countries. The EU's role in constraining backsliding in candidate and member countries, though limited as Hungary demonstrates, has historically been substantial.

The cases of democratic reversal after backsliding are instructive but limited. Poland's 2023 elections, which brought a pro-democratic coalition to power after eight years of Law and Justice rule, are among the most significant recent examples. The coalition's subsequent experience — discovering that courts, electoral commissions, and public media had been packed with loyalists who resisted the new government's authority — illustrates the asymmetry between democratic erosion (fast, achievable through legal means) and democratic restoration (slow, requiring either cooperation from loyalist appointees or constitutional confrontations that themselves risk appearing anti-democratic).

The American Question

The United States occupies an unusual position in the global democratic decline narrative: a long-established democracy with deep institutional roots, but one that showed measurable deterioration on multiple democratic indices during 2017-2021 and that has experienced unprecedented levels of political polarisation and institutional stress.

Levitsky and Ziblatt devote a substantial portion of "How Democracies Die" to the American case, arguing that the US survived the twentieth century partly because partisan guardrails — mutual toleration and institutional forbearance — were maintained even during periods of intense political conflict. They identify the erosion of these norms beginning in the 1990s with Newt Gingrich's congressional strategy and accelerating through the 2000s and 2010s, culminating in what they describe as unprecedented norm violations during the Trump presidency. The January 6 Capitol assault was a democratic stress test of a severity without precedent in American history.

Whether American democratic institutions have been durably strengthened or weakened by the 2016-2021 period remains actively contested among political scientists. The institutions held in 2020-2021 — courts rejected post-election challenges, state officials certified accurate results, the military did not intervene. Whether the same would hold under different conditions, with different personnel in key positions, is a question whose answer depends on contingent factors that political science cannot resolve in advance.

The political polarisation that Svolik's research identifies as the central mechanism of democratic vulnerability is, by most measures, more intense in the US than at any period since the Civil War — and it is a structural feature of the electoral system (geographic sorting, primary system incentives, media ecosystem fragmentation) rather than an aberration that will naturally resolve.

Perspectives on the Democratic Recession

Not all analysts share the assessment that democracy is in deep trouble. Steven Pinker and others have argued that the current period of democratic decline follows an extraordinary expansion that was unlikely to be permanent, and that the underlying forces supporting democracy — economic development, education, urbanisation — remain powerful. On this reading, the current regression is toward a mean rather than a secular collapse.

Lucan Way at the University of Toronto has argued that the "democratic recession" framing overstates the threat, noting that most of the countries registering decline were competitive authoritarian regimes rather than established democracies, and that the established democracies of the OECD remain stable. This is technically correct but may understate the significance of partial backsliding within established democracies (the US, Hungary) and the longer-term implications of global authoritarian momentum for democratic norms internationally.

What the research most robustly supports is this: democratic institutions do not protect themselves automatically. They depend on active defense by citizens, civil society, opposition parties, and crucially by elite actors within governing coalitions who prioritise institutional preservation over short-term advantage. The historical cases of successful democratic defense share a common feature: enough people in enough positions chose the institution over the party.

For related analysis of how inequality drives political polarisation and populism, see Why Inequality Is Growing. For how disinformation and AI affect democratic discourse, see What Will AI Do to Society. For the philosophical foundations of democratic governance, see What Is Political Philosophy.

References

  • Levitsky, Steven and Daniel Ziblatt. How Democracies Die. Crown, 2018.
  • Lührmann, Anna and Staffan I. Lindberg. "A Third Wave of Autocratization Is Here: What Is New About It?" Democratization 26(7): 1095-1113, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2019.1582029
  • Diamond, Larry. "Facing Up to the Democratic Recession." Journal of Democracy 26(1): 141-155, 2015.
  • Mounk, Yascha and Roberto Stefan Foa. "The Danger of Deconsolidation: The Democratic Disconnect." Journal of Democracy 27(3): 5-17, 2016.
  • Svolik, Milan W. "Polarization versus Democracy." Journal of Democracy 30(3): 20-32, 2019.
  • Mudde, Cas and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser. Populism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2017.
  • Norris, Pippa and Ronald Inglehart. Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism. Cambridge University Press, 2019.
  • Chenoweth, Erica and Maria J. Stephan. Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. Columbia University Press, 2011.
  • Levitsky, Steven and Lucan A. Way. Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
  • Freedom House. Freedom in the World 2023: Marking 50 Years in the Struggle for Democracy. Freedom House, 2023. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2023/marking-50-years
  • V-Dem Institute. Democracy Report 2023: Defiance in the Face of Autocratization. University of Gothenburg, 2023. https://v-dem.net/democracy_reports.html
  • Grzymala-Busse, Anna. "How Populists Govern: State Capture and Democratic Backsliding in Hungary and Poland." Comparative Politics 54(1): 17-40, 2021.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is democracy really declining globally?

The data from multiple independent measurement projects consistently show a global trend toward democratic decline, though the picture is more complex than simple decline narratives suggest. Freedom House's annual 'Freedom in the World' report has documented 17 consecutive years (2006-2022) of net global decline in political rights and civil liberties — more countries declining than improving each year. The V-Dem Institute's dataset, developed by Anna Luhrmann, Staffan Lindberg, and colleagues at the University of Gothenburg, finds what they call a 'third wave of autocratization' — a gradual erosion of democratic norms rather than sudden coups, affecting about a quarter of the world's countries. The Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index shows similar trends. These findings are broadly consistent, though different methodological choices produce somewhat different conclusions about specific countries. What is also true is that democracy's coverage remains far higher than at any point before 1990: the third wave of democratization from the late 1980s through the 1990s produced a large expansion of democratic governance globally, and some current decline represents reversion of countries that democratized quickly without building robust institutions. The net global position — more people living under democratic governance than in 1980, but fewer than in 2005-2010 — captures the complexity better than either 'democracy is flourishing' or 'democracy is collapsing.'

What does 'democratic backsliding' mean and how does it happen?

Democratic backsliding refers to the gradual erosion of democratic norms, institutions, and practices by leaders who come to power through legitimate elections and then systematically undermine the constraints on executive power. This is the key finding of Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt's 'How Democracies Die' (2018): that most contemporary democratic collapses happen not through coups — the sudden, dramatic seizure of power by the military — but through legal and quasi-legal means by elected leaders who undermine democratic constraints incrementally. The steps are typically gradual and each step is individually defensible: appointing loyalists to courts and regulatory agencies (described as restoring integrity or draining the swamp), using legal processes to investigate and prosecute opponents (described as fighting corruption), delegitimising independent media (described as fighting fake news), changing electoral rules to advantage the governing party (described as ensuring electoral security), and packing constitutional bodies to ensure judicial deference to executive action. By the time the erosion is complete, elections still occur but are no longer fair contests, courts no longer constrain executive power, and independent media has been intimidated or bought out. Because each step is incremental and each has a plausible justification, the collective process is harder to resist than a dramatic coup. Hungary under Viktor Orban, Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Venezuela under Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro are the most-studied cases.

Why do democracies sometimes vote against themselves?

Milan Svolik, a political scientist at Yale, has conducted research examining why citizens sometimes support leaders who undermine democratic norms. His experimental work (2019) with survey respondents in the US and seven other countries found that partisan policy preferences significantly affect how much voters penalise anti-democratic behaviour by politicians — voters who strongly prefer a candidate's policy positions are substantially less likely to punish norm-violating behaviour by that candidate than by opponents. In polarised political environments, where voters perceive the stakes of policy differences as very high, the willingness to overlook anti-democratic behaviour in preferred candidates rises. This dynamic explains a critical vulnerability: democratic erosion becomes possible when partisan loyalties and policy preferences cause voters to treat democratic constraints as less important than winning policy battles. Svolik estimates that in the United States, only a minority of the electorate is what he calls 'democracy defenders' — willing to cross party lines specifically to punish democratic norm violations. Other research by Noam Gidron and Peter Hall links economic anxiety, cultural status threat (particularly among white working-class voters in rich countries whose relative social standing has declined), and perceived disrespect from elites to populist voting that often supports leaders with authoritarian tendencies.

What factors predict whether democracy survives or fails?

Political scientists have identified several robust predictors of democratic survival, though no factor is individually determinative. Institutional strength and independence — courts, electoral commissions, press freedom, civil society organisations — that function independently of the governing party provide the most important resilience. Levitsky and Ziblatt emphasise two 'guardrails' of democratic behaviour: mutual toleration (treating opponents as legitimate rivals rather than existential enemies) and institutional forbearance (not using every available legal power to its maximum extent, leaving informal norms intact). Economic development correlates with democratic stability: democracies in wealthy countries rarely collapse. Adam Przeworski's research found that no democracy with a per capita income above approximately $6,000 has ever reverted to authoritarianism. Political culture — the degree to which democratic norms are internalised by elites and citizens — matters significantly, as Levitsky and Ziblatt show through historical comparisons. Proportional versus majoritarian electoral systems, presidential versus parliamentary systems, and federal versus unitary structures all affect the distribution of power in ways that influence democratic resilience, though there is no single institutional design that reliably prevents backsliding. The degree of political polarisation is among the strongest predictors of vulnerability to backsliding in wealthy democracies, as Svolik's research demonstrates: intense partisan conflict reduces the cross-party coalition needed to resist anti-democratic actions by any single party.

Are younger generations less committed to democracy?

Yascha Mounk and Roberto Stefan Foa published a widely cited paper in the Journal of Democracy (2016) finding declining support for democracy among younger cohorts in Western countries, drawing on World Values Survey data. They found that younger Americans and Europeans were substantially less likely than older cohorts to say that living in a democracy is 'essential' and more open to authoritarian alternatives including military rule. The paper generated significant attention and significant criticism. Erik Voeten at Georgetown and other researchers published re-analyses arguing that the declining-support finding was an artifact of question wording and measurement choices, and that support for democracy as a concept remained broadly high when measured differently. The more nuanced picture from subsequent research is: support for democracy in the abstract remains widespread among youth; support for specific democratic institutions (parliaments, political parties, electoral processes) is substantially lower; and there is increased frustration with democracy's performance on inequality, climate change, and institutional responsiveness rather than rejection of democratic values per se. This distinction matters: frustration with democratic performance is not the same as desire for authoritarianism, but it does indicate an opening for leaders who promise to cut through democratic process to achieve results.

What can citizens do when democratic norms erode?

Political science research on democratic resistance offers several evidence-based lessons. First, the importance of cross-partisan coalitions: democratic erosion is most effectively resisted when opposition comes from multiple parties and civil society organisations, not just electoral opponents. When established parties of the right refuse to legitimise authoritarian norm violations by conservative governments — as Swedish conservatives did in the early 2020s in refusing to partner with the far-right Sweden Democrats on terms that would undermine democratic institutions — it creates resilience. Second, the effectiveness of non-violent collective action: Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan's research ('Why Civil Resistance Works,' 2011) found that non-violent civil resistance movements have historically been about twice as successful as violent ones in achieving political change, and that campaigns achieving participation from approximately 3.5% of the population have never failed. Third, the role of independent institutions: courts, electoral commissions, and watchdog agencies that resist executive capture provide critical structural resistance. Fourth, the importance of civil society organisations that maintain collective civic capacity — professional associations, religious institutions, labour unions, journalism outlets — which provide both early warning and organised resistance capacity. The challenge is that these resources are eroded precisely by the incremental backsliding they are needed to resist.

What countries show democracy can be strengthened?

Several cases demonstrate that democratic strengthening is possible, complicating pure decline narratives. Chile transitioned from Pinochet's dictatorship to a stable democracy and has maintained it through economic crises and political turbulence, though recent constitutional debates illustrate ongoing tensions. South Korea and Taiwan both consolidated democracy from authoritarian developmental state origins and now rank among the world's most robust democracies by multiple measures. Botswana has maintained democratic governance and rule of law in a challenging African context for decades. Within Europe, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia — all of which experienced democratic backsliding under nationalist governments — have shown potential for democratic recovery: Poland elected a pro-democratic coalition in 2023 after eight years of institutional erosion under the Law and Justice party, though reversing the institutional damage proved difficult given that courts and regulatory agencies had been packed with loyalists. This illustrates both the possibility of democratic reversal and the asymmetry between erosion (which is faster) and restoration (which is much harder). The cases of strengthening tend to share features: active civil society, independent judiciary with adequate resources and public legitimacy, and political coalitions willing to subordinate short-term advantage to institutional preservation.

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