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11. The Signs of Deconsolidation

Author:
Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Democracy
Institution:
National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:
In recent years, parties and candidates challenging key democratic norms have won unprecedented popular support in liberal democracies across the globe. Drawing on public opinion data from the World Values Survey and various national polls, we show that the success of anti-establishment parties and candidates is not a temporal or geographic aberration, but rather a reflection of growing popular disaffection with liberal-democratic norms and institutions, and of increasing support for authoritarian interpretations of democracy. The record number of anti-system politicians in office raises uncertainty about the strength of supposedly “consolidated” liberal democracies and highlights the need for further analysis of the signs of democratic deconsolidation.
Topic:
Democracy, Liberal Order, Norms, and Deconsolidation
Political Geography:
Global Focus

12. The End of the Postnational Illusion

Author:
Ghia Nodia
Publication Date:
04-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Democracy
Institution:
National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:
With the advance of modernization, nationalism was supposed to fade away. Yet everywhere we look, even in advanced democracies, nationalism’s influence seems larger than ever. What did we get wrong? The assumption (sometimes implicit) in most theories of nationalism is that it belongs to early modernization and therefore is bound, as development advances, to outgrow its utility and become marginal or even (in the Marxist view) vanish altogether. This understanding allows for a happy congruence between normative and theoretical views. Normatively, nationalism is considered bad because it is antiliberal, opposes individual rights, is hostile to minorities, generally opposes diversity, and so on. But luckily, nationalism is also historically doomed because history will make it redundant. It is this assumption of happy congruence that we must now give up.
Topic:
Nationalism, Democracy, Modernization, and Postnationalism
Political Geography:
Global Focus

13. The Pipe Dream of Undemocratic Liberalism

Author:
Sheri Berman
Publication Date:
07-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Democracy
Institution:
National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:
Over the past decade illiberal democracy has spread across the globe. Many analysts argue that democracy itself is to blame. Democracy is all about empowering the people, but, according to this line of argument, the people can be moved by passions and self-interest, and their unchecked rule can lead to tyrannical majoritarianism. While illiberal democracy is certainly worrying, many of its critics fundamentally misunderstand how democracy has traditionally developed and what its historical relationship with liberalism has been. Rather than the norm, liberal democracy has been the exception. Moreover, illiberal democracy is most often a stage on the route to liberal democracy rather than the endpoint of a country’s political trajectory. In addition, although democracy unchecked by liberalism can slide into tyrannical majoritarianism, liberalism unchecked by democracy can easily deteriorate into elitist oligarchy.
Topic:
Democracy, Liberal Order, Elites, and Illiberal Democracy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

14. Eroding Norms and Democratic Deconsolidation

Author:
Paul Howe
Publication Date:
10-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Democracy
Institution:
National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:
Two recent papers in the Journal of Democracy highlight a disturbing erosion in public support for core democratic principles in a number of Western democracies over the past twenty years. The common assumption is that this trend reflects growing public dissatisfaction with the operation of the democratic system. This paper (focused on the United States and drawing upon World Values Survey data) rejects this interpretation and argues instead that the rise of antidemocratic opinion is more closely linked to shifting social and cultural values, in particular burgeoning antisocial attitudes. Disregard for democratic norms is part of a larger social transformation that has seen rising disengagement and alienation, particularly among younger generations and lower socioeconomic classes.
Topic:
Democracy, Norms, Deconsolidation, and antidemocratic
Political Geography:
Global Focus

15. Facing Up to the Democratic Recession

Author:
Larry Diamond
Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Democracy
Institution:
National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:
Democracy has been in a global recession for most of the last decade. Yet the picture is not entirely bleak. We have not seen “a third reverse wave.” The key imperative in the near term is to work to reform and consolidate the democracies that have emerged during the third wave—the majority of which remain illiberal and unstable, if they remain democratic at all. It is vital that democrats in the established democracies not lose faith. Democrats have the better set of ideas. Democracy may be receding somewhat in practice, but it is still globally ascendant in peoples’ values and aspirations.
Topic:
Global Recession, Democracy, and Political stability
Political Geography:
Global Focus

16. The Myth of Democratic Recession

Author:
Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way
Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Democracy
Institution:
National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:
Contrary to widespread belief, there is no global “democratic recession.” Despite less favorable international conditions, levels of democracy in the world remained stable in the 2000s. Perceptions of democratic recession originate in excessive post–Cold War optimism, rooted in the successful democratizations of the 1980s. During the early 1990s, economic crisis, weakened states, and external pressure forced many autocrats to abandon power or tolerate opposition. These authoritarian crises were widely viewed as democratic transitions, even though most were not. Subsequent authoritarian (re)consolidation was thus perceived as democratic “backsliding.” Misplaced pessimism was reinforced by disappointment over non-democratization in China, the Middle East, and elsewhere, despite the fact that most remaining dictatorships existed amid highly unfavorable conditions for democratization.
Topic:
Democratization, Authoritarianism, Democracy, and Dictatorship
Political Geography:
Global Focus

17. Is Democracy in Decline?

Author:
Marc F. Plattner
Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Democracy
Institution:
National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:
For 25 years, the Journal of Democracy has been “taking the temperature” of democracy around the globe. Here in our twenty-fifth anniversary issue, we feel compelled to confront head-on the question of whether democracy is in decline. Why? There are two aspects to the answer, which although intertwined are in some measure separable. The first deals with what is actually taking place on the ground: How many countries are democratic? Is their number rising or shrinking? What is the situation with respect to such liberal-democratic features as freedom of the press, rule of law, free and fair elections, and the like? The second, more subjective, aspect concerns the standing of democracy in the world: How is it viewed in terms of legitimacy and attractiveness? It is in this latter dimension that the evidence, or at least the widespread perception, of decline is most striking. Democracy’s supporters must undertake a clear-eyed appraisal of democracy’s current decline and summon the resolve and seriousness of purpose needed to reverse it.
Topic:
Democracy, Political stability, and Legitimacy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

18. The Authoritarian Resurgence: Autocratic Legalism in Venezuela

Author:
Javier Corrales
Publication Date:
04-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Democracy
Institution:
National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:
This paper contributes to the literature on dynamics of hybrid regimes, i.e., whether these regimes stay stable, or instead, turn more democratic or more autocratic with time. Venezuela since the mid-2000s is an example of the latter. I first focus on how this happened in Venezuela. I posit that the turn toward greater authoritarianism occurred through autocratic legalism. This refers to the use, abuse, and disuse of the law to disempower veto players. I then focus on the “why” question. The main cause of Venezuela’s regime dynamics is a combination of external factors (increasing tolerance from abroad) and the ruling party’s declining electoral competitiveness at home and institutional path dependence.
Topic:
Democratization, Authoritarianism, Elections, and Democracy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

19. Authoritarianism Goes Global: Countering Democratic Norms

Author:
Alexander Cooley
Publication Date:
07-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Democracy
Institution:
National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:
Over the past decade, the international backlash against liberal democracy has grown and gathered momentum. Authoritarians have experimented with and refined a number of new tools, practices, and institutions that are meant to shield their regimes from external criticism and to erode the norms that inform and underlie the liberal international political order. These global political changes and systemic shifts have produced new counternorms that privilege state security, civilizational diversity, and traditional values over liberal democracy. The effects of these changes are most visible in the narrower political space that nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are facing, the shifting purposes that regional organizations are embracing, and the rising influence of non-Western powers as international patrons.
Topic:
Security, Authoritarianism, Democracy, Diversity, and NGOs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

20. The Rise of the World’s Poorest Countries

Author:
Steven Radelet
Publication Date:
10-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Democracy
Institution:
National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:
For more than two decades now, the majority of the world’s poorest countries have been making some of the fastest and biggest development gains in history. The momentous progress achieved since the early 1990s is unprecedented. One-billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty, the child death rate has been cut in half, life expectancy has increased significantly, millions more girls are enrolled in school, deaths in civil wars have dropped by three-quarters, average incomes have almost doubled, food production has increased by half, and democracy has spread like never before in the world’s poorest countries, notwithstanding with many setbacks, obstacles, and imperfections along the way. Some of these gains—especially the declines in poverty and child mortality—rank among the greatest achievements in human history. Yet few people are aware that this progress is even happening.
Topic:
Poverty, Economic Inequality, Mortality, and Quality of Life
Political Geography:
Global Focus