Towards a unified approach to research on democratic backsliding
Abstract
A growing literature examines democratic backsliding, but there is little consensus on when, where, and why it occurs. Reviewing more than 100 recent articles and working papers, this research note argues that inattention to the measurement of backsliding and the underlying concept of democracy drives this disagreement. We propose three remedies. First, we outline several questions that help researchers navigate common measurement challenges. Second, we argue that conceptual confusion around backsliding is driven in large part by inconsistent definitions of democracy. We show how outlining a comprehensive concept of democracy enables researchers to better account for the diversity of instances of democratic backsliding. Our third contribution is drawing attention to a previously overlooked form of backsliding: when governments lose the effective power to govern or voters and elites increasingly disagree about truths and facts. The research note urges scholars to pay closer attention to the conceptualization and measurement of backsliding prior to empirical analysis.
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Different epistemological understandings between parties have undermined coordination.
“What is perhaps more concerning (and of direct relevance to the Trump administration) is how different epistemological understandings between parties have undermined coordination (Jee et al., 2022).”
From How to study democratic backsliding (2024) · cites this paper as Jee et al., 2022
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- Authors
- Jee, H., Lueders, H., & Myrick, R.
- Affiliations
- Stanford University (US)
- Duke University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Lueders, Hans
- Venue
- Democratization
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2021-12-09
- Volume
- 29
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 754-767
- ISSN
- 1351-0347 (ISSN-L)
- 1743-890X
- OpenAlex
- W4200257118
- Cited by
- 80
- References
- 48
- Citations by year
- 2026: 18 · 2025: 33 · 2024: 15 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 5
- FWCI
- 24.07
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Democratization (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Political Theory and Democracy
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Political Conflict and Governance
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
- Keywords
- democratic backsliding, concept of democracy, definition of democracy, conceptual confusion, government effectiveness
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
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