Stopping democratic backsliding

[Celerity]

Sheri Berman argues that democracy today faces a more insidious threat than coups d’état—slow strangulation by elected autocrats.

https://socialeurope.eu/stopping-democratic-backsliding



In recent years democracy has been under siege: since 2015 the number of countries experiencing democratic backsliding has outstripped the number democratising. Varieties of Democracy, an organisation which tracks the global development of democracy, describes this as ‘an age of autocratization’. While this trend should sadden, from an historical perspective it should probably not surprise. The backstory to contemporary backsliding is the ‘third wave of democracy’ at the end of the 20th century—a wave which left in its wake more democracies than ever previously existed. Waves are characterised by their power and sweep when ascendant but also by the inevitable undertow coming after.

As anyone knows who has studied the previous waves of democratisation, for example, those which swept over Europe in 1848 and at the end of the first world war, these undertows can indeed be formidable. Yet as the well-known aphorism often attributed to Mark Twain goes, ‘History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.’ That an undertow has followed the third wave of democracy indeed repeats the historical pattern, but that does not mean it is a mere facsimile of its predecessors. Unlike in previous undertows, during the past years democracies have not died—as one influential treatment puts it—quickly or violently ‘at the hand of men with guns’. Rather, they have been eroded gradually, at the ‘hands of elected leaders’ who have used their power to undermine democracy over time.

‘Electoral autocracy’

Another, related difference is in the type of authoritarian regime left behind. During much of the 20th century, the collapse of democracy most often gave way to closed, repressive dictatorships, such as those in interwar Europe or the military regimes established in Asia and Latin America during the 1960s and 70s. In contrast, the most common authoritarian product of the third wave’s undertow has been ‘electoral autocracy’.

Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey and Narendra Modi’s India fall into this category. These regimes are less authoritarian than their predecessors, allowing flawed elections and some space for civil society. They thereby provide potential opportunities for oppositions to mobilise and peacefully transform their societies. But because the system is rigged in electoral autocracies—such as by gerrymandering, control of the press and corruption—oppositions must be unified to take advantage of potential opportunities available to them, prioritising the defeat of incumbent leaders over their own disparate goals.

snip

[Beartracks]

1. Unity of opposition

This is an important point: "oppositions must be unified to take advantage of potential opportunities available to them, prioritising the defeat of incumbent leaders over their own disparate goals."

===========