Democratization and Backsliding: Theories and Evidence

In the last five decades the world has seen the third wave of democratization (~1974-1991) and now the third wave of autocratization (~1994-present) (Luhrmann and Lindberg 2018). Both waves changed our understanding of why and how countries democratize or backslide. Before these waves, democratization occurred almost exclusively in wealthy, industrialized nations and autocratization occurred primarily through military coups and other drastic executive takeovers (Svolik 2014).

These third waves have broken those trends and forced scholars and practitioners to rethink theories of democratization and backsliding. What theories explain why countries move toward or away from democracy? What is the evidence for those theories? While the process of democratization and backsliding varies from case to case, in this edition we review some of the most important and widespread factors leading to democratization and backsliding, deriving implications for DRG programming. Most of these theories (even the most recent scholarship) haven’t yet accounted for the positive and negative transnational impacts of new information and communications technologies on democratization and backsliding; we hope to address these issues in a future edition.

This edition of the DRG Learning Digest examines the following topics: 

• Supply-side factors about elites and political institutions: Elite competition promotes democratization
• Demand-side factors about citizens’ attitudes: A civic-minded, activated citizenry can support democratization
• International factors: Norms and economic connections can incentivize democratization or autocratization