They seek to challenge that view.į&M use waves 3 through 6 of the World Values Surveys (1995–2014). The people know that democracy allows them these expressions of discontent and thus support the regime, but not the government.į&M feel that that the critics argument is optimistic. In these stable regions of the world, democracy seems to be in trouble.Ĭritics of the “decline of democracy” approach (Inglehart, Wezel, Norris, Dalton) argue that while support for particular governments regularly declines (what they call government legitimacy), support for democracy itself (what they call regime legitimacy) remains robust. Voters are turning to anti-establishment parties, fueling a rise in populism. The authors note that, in North America and Western Europe, trust in institutions (such as parliament and the judicial system), party membership, and voter turnout has declined, and party identification has weakened. We have not anticipated other extreme events (like the collapse of the USSR) and we may be in the midst of one now. In the end, the core idea is that democracy is under threat of backsliding.įoa and Mounk’s The Danger of Deconsolidationįoa & Mounk seek to warn us that we may be unjustifiably complacent about the well-being of consolidated democracies. The literature has tendrils in many topics, such as democracy, democratization, states and regimes, transitions and development, political behavior (voting especially), and democratic values, but also civil society, bureaucracy, and economic development. F&M’s definition is a good place to start, but in the end, they do not offer enough specifics to identify a consolidated from a transitional democracy. There are some similarities across authors’ arguments. The various definitions can be compared and contrasted, but in the end (it’s sometimes called, “democratic decay”), there has been no singular definition of what a consolidated democracy looks like or what the process of consolidation entails. The emphasis of the 1990s literature seemed to be on how transition societies – especially Latin America and Eastern Europe – could solidify their democratic gains into long term stability.īut Consolidated/Consolidation have always been fuzzy concepts. The concern has always been the survival of democratic regimes, and thus intrinsically about democratic backsliding. Democratic Backsliding is about TransitionĬonsolidation is mainly seen as a process from transition democracies to consolidated democracies. Foa and Mounk’s (F&M) 2016 article outlasts their critics because their fundamental point was correct, even if their measures of democratic backsliding had some flaws. We should be looking for the small and troubling signs of democratic backsliding. Around that time there was a proliferation of quantitative democracy measures.įoa and Mounk in 2016 revived the term by trying to sound the alarm on “deconsolidation.” Because Foa and Mounk did not properly acknowledge the long history of democratic consolidation studies from the 1990s, they obscured those early studies’ original purpose, which was to sound the alarm on possible deconsolidation.įoa and Mounk’s critics missed the point. When it changes to authoritarianism, it has “deconsolidated.”ĭemocratic consolidation was a popular term in the 1980s and 1990s, around the time that the US had a policy of democracy promotion around the world. The concept of “democratic backsliding” is also called “democratic deconsolidation.” An “established” democracy is consolidated. History of Democratic Backsliding Studies The Many Definitions of Political Inequality.Political Equality as Measured by Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem).In this post, we examine Foa & Mounk’s argument and some of their critics. They argued that major democracy measures do a passable job, but we also need to understand, from the ground level, changes in mass support for democracy. Their famous 2016 article, The Danger of Deconsolidation, used the World Values Survey, a cross-national survey dataset of many countries around the globe, to understand who supports democracy. A major problem is that they may not pick up smaller, more subtle signs of backsliding.Įnter Roberto Foa & Yascha Mounk. However, democracy measures can have problems. A country that has a lower score from year to year may be backsliding. Then, to measure change, in a subsequent year, they measure democracy again. First, they measure democracy in one year. Social scientists typically use democracy measures, such as Freedom House, or Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), or the Global State of Democracy, as a benchmark. How do we know when democratic backsliding occurs? Poland in the early 1990s) or is firmly established as a democracy (the USA). Backsliding can occur when a democracy has just a foothold (e.g. Democratic backsliding is when a democratic country shows signs of becoming autocratic or authoritarian.
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