Democracy and Its Vulnerabilities: Dynamics of Backsliding

Abstract

The dream of all politicians is to remain for ever in office. Most governmentsattempt to advance this goal by building popular support within the establishedinstitutional framework. Some, however, seek to protect their tenure in office byundermining institutions and disabling all opposition. The striking lesson of thesuccessful cases of backsliding is that governments need not take unconstitutional orundemocratic steps to secure domination and yet the cumulative effect is that unlesscitizens react early they may lose the ability to remove the incumbent government bydemocratic means. We investigate what makes democracy vulnerable to such steps,specifically, whether a government would take anti-democratic steps, whether it canbe stopped short of realization of complete domination, and whether it is likely to beremoved at any stage of the process