Keywords

Varieties of Democracy and Varieties of Parties

As shown in the previous section, only some of the theories of democracy have clearly indicated political parties as elements of democracy. Although they have been more or less abstract, theories on democracy have appeared to be very much interlinked with the real-life social, economic and political developments in particular parts of the world.

There is no one and only conception of democracy—there is also no single conception of a political party. History shows that both democracies and political parties have been changing to an important extent synchronically and diachronically, as have the relationships between the two phenomena.

The twentieth and twenty-first century appear to have followed the thesis that political parties and modern democracy are closely interlinked. However, it must not be forgotten that such a thesis is based on the history of Western Europe and the history of the founding of the United States of America. Early forms of political parties evolved within the institution (called parliament) that was established as a counterpower to the monarch. Nevertheless, this was not a modern democratic parliament, and early proto-parties were also not modern democratic political institutions. These parliamentary clubs evolved into parties as they organized electoral committees for parliamentary elections and as these committees evolved into more stable organizational structures needed for electoral competition for political power.

To the contrary, critical views on party government models based on representative, parliamentary and electoral democracy exported from the West to colonial Africa (Randall and Svåsand 2002) contributed to the development of indigenous ideas of no-party democracy. Crook (1999), for example, reported on alternative, ‘true democracy’ in Ghana, which was based on Ghana’s tradition, history and culture, theory of community-level, participatory, no-party democracy that idealized the consensual character of ‘traditional’ Ghanaian village life. Similarly, a model of an entirely non-partisan form of governance evolving from local communities developed in Uganda, which was based on village assembly, resembling a Greek polis model but including all adults.

It was a particularly Western-centric historical context in which political parties were recognized as a phenomenon closely interwoven with the institutional developments of modern governing. Indeed, parties were first formed in the Western European and North American environment in the nineteenth century. However, in Western Europe, they were developing in a struggle between the monarch and other social elites. In contrast, in North America, they were developing in a combination of struggles against the European colonial metropole and struggles among various ideas in America about the nature of the system of government to be established in America. While in Western Europe, the new system of government in the making was a result of struggles leading to a modern transformation of previous systems of governing, in North America, there was an opportunity to develop a modern system of government ‘from scratch’ due to a combination of decolonization and the exclusion of native peoples from designing the new political system.

Political parties are also changing phenomena within Western contexts. Historically, party models evolve even within the same country. Even within the United States of America, where it has been believed that parties are first of all coalitions of interests, quite different models of parties have been revealed (McSweeney and Zvesper 1991).

Varieties of democracy have been analytically linked with varieties of party models. Political scientists have analysed party models as they have evolved in particular social contexts. Katz and Mair (1995) presented the correspondence between particular party types and democracy. More precisely, they focused on party representative style (the positioning of the party in relation to the civil society and the state), typical for a particular social and political context: elite party, mass party, catch-all party, cartel party.

LaPalombara and Weiner (1966a, 3) noted the non-simultaneity of this process in different societies. Hence, in their definition of the term ‘party’, they explicitly emphasized that party rule is often associated with a growing expectation that individuals should not participate in the exercise of power because of hereditary position (birth) but because of political competences (LaPalombara and Weiner 1966b, 400). This is the reason parties today are also considered to be synonymous with modern society and modern politics.

Western Lenses

Western lenses are not only predominant in defining democracy but also in defining political parties. Indeed, the segment of political science that recognizes political parties has not questioned their existence. Rather, it has focused on their emergence, characteristics and functions. Nevertheless, up until today, no single definition of political parties exists in political science.

It can even be said that definitions are historically and culturally conditioned. The first attempts at defining parties can be traced back to the period when the beginnings of the modern parties evolved. These attempts were the developmental stages of the appropriately vague object of study. Among them, we find the identification of the party with the ‘organized opinion’ (Disreali, Benjamin Constant, Duverger) or with a group of men who jointly pursue the national interest on the basis of a specific principle on which they agree (Burke). The historical political reality of women’s exclusion from politics has also influenced the definition of fundamental political concepts or phenomena. Other authors (Brogan 1965; Duverger 1965) have attributed the party’s name to parliamentary clubs and political groups from the pre-party period. In the French revolutionary context, political clubs evolved based on major social groups (estates) as did ideas of the parliament representing various social groups.

In the multitude of definitions of the term political party, there are often specific political‒cultural, historical and ideological accents. While Marx defined the Communist Party as an instrument of the political struggle of the working class, the real world also produced variations in this aspect. Weber, for example, defined the party through the author's perspective of the distinction between party leaders and membership. In the liberal milieu, a party is defined as a ‘part of a whole’ that struggles for power with other parties in free elections.

In the frame of the socialist system, Kardelj (1977, 50) stated that the League of Communists in socialist Yugoslavia is not a classical party. Rather, he affirmatively defined it as a ‘social and political organisation’ (ibid., 176), which is and must be a minority (ibid., 179), ‘because only as such can it be, in our situation vanguard of social progress’ as ‘the ideological and political cohesive force of the revolution’ and ‘the ideological and political vanguard of the working class’ and ‘a factor of socialist consciousness of the self-managing working masses’ (ibid., 177–182). The League of Communists ideologically and politically leads the process of ‘emancipation of society as a whole’.

Attempts to trace the early development of parties to the emergence of parliaments and electoral systems could hardly be applied to most of the developing areas (LaPalombara and Weiner 1966a, 12).

Furthermore, the Western liberal understanding of parties starts with an individual (citizen) as a unit of politics, while in reality, parties also evolve in a collective unit, particularly an ethnic group (Dowd and Driessen 2008).

Researchers of governing in the Third World have also shown the Western bias in normative expectations that parties are to be mass-based organizations (Erdmann 2004). Such a conceptualization of parties in studying party politics outside the Western world doesn’t even recognize that (1) such parties in Western milieus evolved as working class political organizations in the context of industrialization, urbanization, mass communication and expansion of the political borders of democracy, and (2) parties in Western milieus evolved into predominantly electoral parties. For example, parties in Africa are compared to an ideal that does not exist, even in the West (Osei 2013, 546).

It is not only that a particular notion of a party is nested in a particular systemic context within a particular timeframe (see, e.g., Lawson 2010). For example, parties in the United States have been changing quite a lot over time, including not only the caucus type but also others—for example, party machines and amateur clubs (McSweeney and Zvesper 1991)—while today, American political parties appear to be best viewed as coalitions of intense policy demanders (McCarty and Schickler 2018).

Is it possible to find a common ground among various definitions? What are those common characteristics of the parties in the mass of different political systems in different stages of social, political and economic development? Perhaps Schattschneider’s (1942, 35–37) simple answer that parties are primarily an organized attempt to seize power is such a minimal summary of party definitions.

Still, the notion of the political party as an instrument for achieving power and the management of power is very strongly rooted. On top of this minimal definition comes an elaborated functional view of parties as power-oriented organizations that fulfil certain social tasks. Based on the historical processes of formation and (re)formation of Western democracies, von Beyme (1985) systemized them into the following categories: interest articulation and aggregation, goal definition, recruitment of political elites and the formation of governments, mobilization and socialization. Similarly, but in less detail, other major political scientists have defined the tasks of parties, for example, Almond and Powell (1978), Duverger (1965), Hague and Harrop (1991), Sartori (1976), Panebianco (1988) and Pierre (2000).

Nevertheless, in the current world, the only truly discriminatory definition that equates a party with a political organization is competing in the electoral arena, while all other elements in the definitions known today can be challenged with empirical arguments. Panebianco (1988, 5–6) stated that a political party is: ‘An organised group, an association, directed towards political goals, which seeks by its activities to maintain or change the existing social, economic and political conditions by means of influencing the exercise of power or by taking power, and is the only type of organisation operating in the electoral arena’.

In the context of a stable, liberal democracy following the Western European and North American examples, Panebianco’s definition seems to be largely valid. Some countries even explicitly provide in their party legislation that parties repeatedly failing to participate in elections can be expelled from the official register (i.e. the register of legally functioning parties).

Taking into account various functions of parties, parties are expected to act as the key link between citizens and the state. On a more abstract level, the functions of parties in democratic societies have been linked to representation. However, in practice, it is more common to talk about governments, which are representative ‘if they do what is best for the people and act in the best interests of at least a majority of citizens’ (Przeworski 1999, 31). Besides other actors and institutions, parties are also considered to act in the control of administrative power.

During the last decades, however, a rather clear distinction has been made between two key party functions—representative and procedural roles. Even more so, a decline was noticed in the representative role but not in the procedural role (Bartolini and Mair 2001). Indeed, parties have been perceived to be less and less able to fulfil their essential representative functions (van Biezen 2004).

In addition, some parties seek to dismantle the state (a particular political order or polity) and create a new one (‘the withering away of the’ state, the replacement of one regime by another, the change of the state). Ware (1996, 3) also pointed to borderline cases in which individual political groups, self-styled ‘parties’, were ridiculing politics and expressing anti-party sentiments.

Yet, Ware draws attention to the particular circumstances in which even the minimalist definition of the party can become questionable. Parties that do not recognize the existing regime or question the legitimacy of a particular election may decide as a matter of protest (a) not to participate in that regime to contest for power and thereby help to maintain the legitimacy of the regime or (b) not to contest for power in the specific elections that they consider to be illegitimate (there is a reasonable suspicion of fraud in the electoral results).

Variety of Relationships Between Political Parties and Democracy

As shown in previous sections, the relationship between political parties and democracy has not been theorized in a homogenous way. Here we summarize a rather rich variety of theses in the literature (Table 3.1).

Table 3.1 Theses on the relationship between parties and democracy
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First, early liberal theory on democracy was focused on the individual and did not explicitly mention parties. At best, in the intermediation between citizens and the state, other political forms were recognized. These included: a contract among citizens (Locke 1690); ‘a spirit of party’ (Madison 1787/2003, 119); parties as phenomena formed on pre-existing political interests (Burke 1770); a certain kind of political organization in support of those who are in possession of the government (Mill 1861/2001). Nevertheless, these political forms were actually not determined in more detail.

Second, the issue evolved as to what comes first—parties or democracy. Weber called modern forms of parties ‘children of democracy’, as they are a key factor in modern governance (Mair 1990, 1). For LaPalombara and Weiner (1966a, 3) parties are both; that is, a continuous process and the formation of modern and modernizing political systems. Nevertheless, since the Second World War, the normative formulation for a working democracy has been the sum of democratic institutions, including political parties, the rule of law and free media. However, in building new democracies, particularly in the context of democracy promotion, the question arose as to what comes first: organized parties or democracies. In particular, a chicken-and-egg problem arises in hybrid authoritarian‒democratic milieus where parties are expected to enhance and improve democracy but the contextual factors undermine parties’ capacities (Dargent and Muñoz 2011; Osei 2013).

Third, there are recognitions of many positive roles of parties in relation to democracy. As shown earlier, in British and American history, it was not the theory of democracy but rather the empirical evolution of democracy that led to recognizing parties as ‘creators’ of democracy (Schattschneider 1942, 3).

A critical role of parties in a democracy was systematically recognized in Western-centric literature after WWII. The most influential definition of democracy has become Dahl’s (1971) definition of democracy for a large share of citizens—polyarchy. Parties have been recognized as the key link between nearly all citizens who participate in elections and government (Dahl 1971). Unlike historical experiences with parties evolving as private organizations, political parties have more recently been to a great deal understood as a ‘public utility’—that is, an essential public good for democracy (Katz 1996; van Biezen 2004).

In addition to the positive roles of parties in relation to democracy, many of their negative impacts on democracy have been recognized. It has particularly been in the left-wing and far-left ideological conceptions that party has always had (also) a negative connotation. At the end of the twentieth century, however, party criticism and anti-party sentiments also became an important component of far-right politics.

Criticism of parties has ranged from moderate criticism to demands for the abolition of parties. Let us list some typical criticisms of parties. Parties are:

  1. a.

    egoistic, they are organizations of interest rather than organizations of principle (American political thought at the birth of the Republic at the end of the eighteenth century; McSweeney and Zvesper 1991);

  2. b.

    a factor of negation of democracy, as they limit the activity of citizens to elections only, sacrificing their political principles to increase participation in power (Pulišelić 1971, 31–33);

  3. c.

    apparatuses that elevate themselves above the citizen, or an apparatus within which the leadership elevates itself above the membership (Duverger 1965; Weber 1946);

  4. d.

    in the political sense of the word, a ‘military organisation’ that operates ‘the iron law of oligarchy’ (Michels [1915] on the basis of a study of the German social democracy);

  5. e.

    the apparatus of repression of the spontaneity and political energy of the masses (Ostrogorski [1964] on the basis of an analysis of the functioning of the parties in Britain and the United States), and therefore, they must be abolished and direct action introduced in their place (revolutionary syndicalists, anarchists) or direct democracy in the form of workers’ trade union committees (anarcho-syndicalists) or in the form of a system of workers’ councils (anarcho-communism, guild socialism, movement factory superintendents, council communism; Vranicki 1981);

  6. f.

    a threat to the ‘good society’ because their practice is not democratic (Daalder 2002);

  7. g.

    an alienated form of political organization within society and power over the citizen in capitalist states (Kardelj 1977). According to communist and socialist ideology, communist parties should be parties of a ‘new type’—an instrument for the realization of the interests of the working class and the ‘common good’ at the same time. The pursuit of working-class interests should also mean the realization of the ideal of a society that resolves all the key social conflicts in society as a whole.

In spite of tendencies to either look at parties in negative or positive relations with democracy, a thesis on parties’ ambiguity deserves special attention. Indeed, parties appear to have a dual nature. On the one hand, they (can) be the democratic link between citizens and government. On the other hand, they are also an instrument for mobilizing citizens on the basis of democratic or non-democratic platforms (Stokes 1999). Parties can also work effectively in non-democratic regimes without such a direct link. Mainwaring (1989) hints at factors that are believed to impact the role of parties. Here, it is important to note as well that parties’ incentives for their commitment to democracy are very relevant. Whose voices parties bring into politics is of critical importance as is how parties manoeuvre between representation and governability (Stokes 1999).

Negative roles of parties in relation to democracy. Parties have also been recognized as problematic for democracy. Such theses evolved rather early based on studying party practice developments in the Western world. A systematic analysis of authors pointing at the problem of internal party democracy, including the iron law of oligarchy as well as the changing character of institutionalizing parties in relation to the environment, can be found in Panebianco (1988).

More recently, the crisis of democracy has been directly linked to problematic party politics. Political parties, particularly their leaders, have been found to erode democracy ‘from the top’ (Bartels 2023). This view, however, is not the first warning of such a damaging role of political parties. Two decades earlier, researchers had already been critical of inadequate performance of political parties as institutions of representative democracy while the thesis on parties as necessary institutions for representative democracy had been maintained (Schmitter 2001; van Biezen 2004; Mair 2005).

Mair (2005) pointed at this issue based on research showing that democracy in Western democratic countries as well as on the EU level had been steadily stripped of its popular component hand in hand with a stripped understanding of democracy without demos. He held that this change has had much to do with the failings of political parties.

Indeed, ‘crisis of parties’, ‘party decline’ (as described since the 1970s in Western Europe) is generally negatively estimated. The phenomenon not only includes rejection of a particular party but also parties in general (anti-party sentiment) as well as selective rejection of certain party systems (Daalder 2002). More recently, parties have been increasingly recognized as contributors to the fundamental transformation of democracy at the expense of representative qualities of democracy.

Parties are redundant/democracy without parties. Parties are ‘redundant’, as it is possible to create a relationship between citizens and the state using other—that is direct—channels of political communication. It is particularly outside the West European and American context that alternatives to party democracy can be found. It may be that politicians’ incentives to build parties are weakened—as, for example, in the context of the growing informal sector and the spread of mass media technologies in Peru (Levitsky and Cameron 2003). Political parties also may be seen as unnecessary or impractical—for example, in small polities and/or in the context of different traditions (e.g., in Africa; Ware 1987).

Parties and Other Factors of Democratic Transitions and Consolidation of Democracy

Transitologists (e.g., Linz 1990) note that it is the parties that can bring about the transition from authoritarian or totalitarian systems to a democratic system. Although opposition movements or active civil society play an important role in the transition to democracy, parties are the only ones who can peacefully repeal the old legal order, accept a new, democratic constitution, hold free elections, and democratically fill the new institutions of the democratic system by democratic means. The last wave of democratic transitions, including the democratization of post-socialist countries in Eastern and Central Europe, are believed to have shown two things: (a) that modern governance cannot be established without parties, even if they are still at an early stage of development; and (b) that parties are primarily a ‘clientelistic clientele-oriented structure’ (Eldersveld 1964, 5).

Indeed, parties have been recognized as supportive mediators in the process of regime change. More specifically, they have been found to be key actors in all—the transition from an authoritarian regime, in introducing a new democratic political order, legitimation of a new constitutional order and in establishing the democratic structure for building the multiparty system (Gebethner 1997). Based on a literature review, Mainwaring (1989) showed that groups and parties with stakes in the process towards democracy may have nothing to do with democracy. Rather, they seek to fulfil their particular, biased objectives.

However, analysis in the past has also shown that political democracy is not the only possible outcome of transitions from authoritarianism (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986). So, what determines the success of transition? Particular circumstances have been revealed in which transitions have been successful. The literature has stressed the role of political factors. It should not be overlooked that theorizing about transitions to democracy has been heavily based on early empirical studies of Latin America. In these studies, the autonomy of political factors—political elites and arrangements, electoral and party systems—appeared to be critical (Mainwaring 1989). In contrast, democracy has been seen less as a result of factors like a level of modernization, a mode of interaction with the international system and a form of social structure. More precisely, the following political factors have been exposed. First of all, successful contractual transitions appeared to be an important factor. More precisely, both the ruling elites and the opposition opted for negotiations in the process towards democracy (O’Donnell et al. 1986; Huntington 1993; Linz and Stepan 1996). However, this had not only been about the goodwill of both sets of party elites but also about their strength. The opposition organizations needed to be very strong to make such arrangements possible (Iakovlev 2022). Such power relations appeared to be possible in countries where a ‘liberalisation’ phase allowed for the development of opposition (O’Donnell et al. 1986; Colomer 2000).

Generally speaking, the literature on democratic transition has stressed the role of political processes (including the role of political parties) as relatively autonomous in relation to structural factors (Kitschelt 1992; Schmitter 1995). For successful transitions to democracy, there have been power relations between regime actors and opposition that appeared particularly important (O’Donnell et al. 1986; Swaminathan 1999). Among those who represent the opposition, the presence of certain combinations of political parties, trade unions and the Catholic Church are expected to be sufficient for the success of negotiations and the subsequent democratization.

Later research developments joined both the political science trend of new institutionalism (March and Olsen 1984) and were also more open to other socio-economic factors. Overall, two trends can be observed in the literature: (1) stressing the role of agency or (2) stressing structural conditions.

Domestic anchoring and external anchoring are the two core subprocesses that should be mentioned (Morlino 2011).

It has been particularly in transitology and in studies of non-Western parts of the world that—beside parties—also expose other underlying factors of democratic development (Table 3.2). Of course, economic factors were recognized as important. Economic crises may contribute to the delegitimation of the old system and transition to democracy, but economic crises may also contribute to the breakdown of democratization (Lipset 1994). The correlation between the level of economic development and democracy has been noted, although not in a simple way (Lipset 1959; Dahl 1971; Bollen 1979; Huntington 1984). Economic problems may impact the disintegration of the old regime (Ramet 1995). Economic problems and poverty may also hurt democratization and the consolidation of a democracy (Cheibub et al. 1996). In contrast, good economic achievements may contribute to the sustaining of the new democratic system (Lewis 1997). After 2000, the attention to international influences on democratization have also grown, especially looking into leverage or governments’ vulnerability to Western pressures and linkage (see, e.g., Levitsky and Way 2006).

Table 3.2 Segments of political science literature related to the transition, consolidation, decline of democracy and autocratization
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Besides the economy, other factors have been recognized: (socio-)economic variables (wealth), ethnic structure, cultural variables, religious traditions, various electoral systems, free and lively civil society, characteristics of the transition (especially with regard to the strength of civil society and the relationship between the opposition and the old ruling actors), political parties and institutional choices as well as external factors (bordering with democratic countries, foreign support in favour of democratization; e.g., Lipset 1959; Huntington 1993; Karl and Schmitter 1991; Linz and Stepan 1996; Cheibub et al. 1996; Lewis 1997; Gasiorowski and Power 1998). Last but not least, an analysis of factors impacting the success of transitions to democracy in former Yugoslav countries has revealed that peace is a necessary condition for a successful transition to a democracy, although not per se but in combination with several other factors (Fink-Hafner and Hafner-Fink 2009).

The 1990s brought about more of a research focus on factors ensuring the thriving of democracy in the medium term—democratic consolidation. This has been defined as ‘the process by which democracy becomes so broadly and profoundly legitimate among its citizens that it is very unlikely to break down’ and involving ‘behavioral and institutional changes that normalize democratic politics and narrow its uncertainty’ (Diamond 2015, Chapter 5).

In the context of consolidating third-way democracies, research interests have both proliferated and narrowed at the same time. Besides relations among party elites, specialized literature has increasingly focused on elites’ institution building, parliaments and separately on specific other political institutions (such as executives and courts) and their functioning. Political parties have also been found to be important in the consolidation of democracies in Africa (Randall and Svåsand 2002).

As the study of the consolidation of party systems was believed to be a factor in the consolidation of democracy during the 1990s, the consolidation of party systems evolved into a separate research subfield. Such research has been particularly vivid in the field of post-socialist countries (see, e.g., Kitschelt et al. 1999; Mainwaring 1998; Lewis 2006; Horowitz and Browne 2008). It can be said that the study of parties and democracy in post-transition countries during the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s was more or less confined to two separate clusters. Even when looking into party literature beyond post-transition countries, van Biezen (2004, 1) estimated that ‘the literatures on parties and democratic theory have developed in a remarkable degree of mutual isolation’. The closest subfield to issues of democracy seems to have been learning processes at elite and mass levels towards democratic legitimation.

Nevertheless, political parties have been viewed as actors and institutions with indispensable functions for ensuring democracy. However, they have been found to be rather weak in the process of consolidation of young democracies. So, their role has been evaluated both positively and negatively (see a literature review in Osei 2013). Looking at political factors, characteristics of transition have been found to also matter for consolidation (particularly power relations between former regime actors and opposition actors; Stradiotto and Guo 2010) as well as the (post)transition constitutional and other political institutional choices. Special attention has been paid to civil society as a set of intermediary actors supporting the power of democratic governments, monitoring and subjecting the government to public scrutiny and generating opportunities for citizens’ political participation.

An analysis of other factors in the consolidation of democracy have been rare. Remmer (1996) noted that literature on the consolidation of democracy lacked interest in macrosocial prerequisites for political democracy. Gasiorowski and Power (1998) even claimed that perspectives on democratization have been narrowed by ignoring the rich tradition of structural analysis. Still, several other factors of democratic consolidation can be found in the literature; more precisely, in the literature looking into factors of ‘surviving’, ‘sustaining’ or ‘maintaining’ democracy (democracy keeping free from the threat of backsliding). Among such factors have been economic factors, such as economic growth with moderate inflation, declining income inequality and favourable international climate (Cheibub et al. 1996). However, it has also been recognized that to endure, democracy needs to generate desirable and politically desired objectives that are conditioned by various social, political and economic conditions under which democracy is likely to generate desirable and politically desired objectives (Przeworski 1995). Special emphasis is placed on the interdependence between political and economic reforms. It is argued that the state has an essential role in promoting universal citizenship and in creating conditions for sustained economic growth. What new democracies need above all else to attain legitimacy is efficacy, particularly in the economic arena, but also in the polity (Lipset 1994).

Parties and Other Factors of Democratic Backsliding and Democracy’s Failure

While in the 1990s, post-socialist countries democratization appeared as a major issue, Zakaria (1997) warned about the trends opposite to democratic consolidation. This has not only entered the political agenda but also on the agenda of theoretical debates.

Nevertheless, it has only been recently that the issue of democratic backsliding prevailed in academic research. However, it has not only been one term that has been used to entail the trends opposite to democratic consolidation. Among them have been ‘a decline of democracy’, ‘deconsolidation’, ‘erosion’, ‘retrogression’ and ‘recession’. The terminology additionally pluralized with researchers’ pointing at a new empirical autocratization wave. Thus, an additional issue evolved—the issue of distinguishing de-democratization/democratic backsliding from autocratization and the idea of illiberal democracy.

It is very difficult to determine an optimal definition of democratic backsliding since there is no clear consensus on a definition of democracy The critical difference is whether it is defined in procedural aspects or (also) in substantive aspects. According to the procedural view, for an entity to be classified as a ‘democracy it is crucial that it has constitution, representative legislature, voting rights, and ballot secrecy, while substantive democracy additionally entails that representatives in legislatures and executives actually hear the demands of the people (including public opinion) and acted upon for their benefit by the passing or modifying of laws, adopting or amending a constitution, and in concrete efforts of executives to implement laws’ (Haas 2019, 8–9).

In line with the procedural understanding of democracy, democratic backsliding (erosion, deconsolidation, regression, recession) is ‘an incremental process’ of substantial erosion of competitive elections, liberal rights to speech and association, and the rule of law and decreasing ability for the opposition to win elections or ‘assume office if it wins, established institutions lose the capacity to control the executive, while manifestations of popular protest are repressed by force’ (Huq and Ginsburg 2018, 17, 78–169).

In contrast, a decline in democracy in relation to the substantive definition of democracy has been referred to as a loss of democratic quality, changes from liberal democracy to hybrid and to authoritarian regimes (Erdmann 2011). In fact, the term has covered both changes within democracy and in the form of democracy. Based on empirical research involving 88 cases of negative changes in the quality of democracy in 53 countries worldwide in the period between 1974 and 2008, the following main findings were revealed (Erdmann 2011, 34): First, that democratic quality and hybridization outnumber the cases of decline, while breakdowns in democracy have been very rare. Second, young democracies and poorer countries are more prone to decline than older democracies and richer countries, with a few exceptions.

It is important to note that democratic backsliding comes ‘from the top’. As Bermeo (2016) puts it, democratic backsliding is a state-led debilitation of the political institutions that sustain an existing democracy. However, in practice, it is not a state as such, but there are political parties and political elites that play a major role.

In search of factors impacting the decline of democracy, Scheiring (2021, 602) exposed income inequality as a crucial factor among social requisites for illiberalism. He also pointed at political economy literature showing a growing regional polarization between large towns enjoying positive effects of their participation in global economic networks and deindustrialized rural areas locked out of such fortunes as well as additional factors of polarization among regions and particular social segments on the axis of losers vs winners of globalization/modernization/deindustrialization (Scheiring 2021, 603).

As in the case of studying democratic consolidation, parties and party systems have been analysed as critical factors in backsliding processes. Based on empirical research on democratization and de-democratization cases in the period between 1960 and 2004, Kapstein and Converse (2008) stressed the role of political institutions in preventing a return to authoritarianism. However, researchers have also pointed at more detailed elaboration of political factors, such as populism, polarization; politicians getting away with violating political norms in the process of norm erosion (Hinterleitner and Sager 2022); elite's use of moral persuasion; citizens’ political behaviour, particularly citizens opposing the incumbent regardless of the attractiveness of the challenger (Luo and Przeworski 2020) and elite (mis)use of technological change (Delbert 2019).

Nevertheless, extraordinary factors have become increasingly relevant. Among them have been various international crises—financial and economic, migration and health crises. For example, the V-Dem Institute perceives emergency measures as creating little threat to democracy in just 47 states, but deems 82 states at high (48) or medium (34) risk, with the pandemic response accelerating or emphasizing established trends of democratic decay (Daly 2020). Indeed, patterns of democracy are confirmed to matter in the COVID-19 crisis (Bandelow et al. 2021). Bandelow et al. (2021) stress that not only COVID-19 policy processes differed from everyday policymaking but also governments were forced to establish new institutions and strategies. At the same time, they were bound by their established rules, agencies, actors and history. Institutions matter—they frame what determines which actors and strategies are possible and which particular challenges will be faced.

In the past, it has been recognized that a war (lack of peace) contributes not only to democratic backsliding but also to the freezing of transitions to democracy (e.g., in countries in the territory of former Yugoslavia; Fink-Hafner and Hafner-Fink 2009). Today, we can recognize far-reaching impacts of the war in Ukraine. However, different kinds of war also seem to be spreading around the globe, which have been very relevant for illiberal tendencies in many countries. In the more recent past, it had been ‘the global war on terror’ (Crotty 2006; Donohue 2008). Today, it is the ‘cultural’ war that has been contributing to the development of illiberal political projects with the use of Eurasian civilizationist narratives in nationalist aspects of illiberalism (Kremmler 2023) as well as policies damaging to particular marginal social groups. The latter has been increasingly linked to illiberalization processes meeting the criteria of autocratization (as shown in the next section).

However, it is of crucial importance to recognize that democratic backsliding does not inevitably lead to a breakdown of democracy ending in a hybrid or authoritarian regime. It is particularly valuable to learn when democratic backsliding is successful and what prevents its success. Luo and Przeworski (2020) stress that there are various factors that separately (co)determine the sustainability of democracy, its backsliding and the success of backsliding. For democratic stability (that is, democracy free from the threat of backsliding), it is crucial that opposing politicians are neither very attractive nor very unattractive to citizens. For democratic backsliding, Luo and Przeworski (2020) exposed two critical factors: (1) populism, which attracts citizens by high appeal of the incumbent in knowingly consenting to the erosion of democracy and (2) in circumstances of polarization, when citizens oppose the incumbent regardless of the attractiveness of the challenger (the incumbent can only remain in office by backsliding). Still, not all democratic backsliding cases are successful. Luo and Przeworski (2020) only found successful cases of backsliding where governments didn’t need to take unconstitutional or undemocratic steps to achieve the cumulative effect of their secure domination. However, this is only possible if citizens don’t react on time and remove the incumbent government by democratic means. It does not come as a surprise that researchers have pointed at the political elite’s interest to keep citizens politically uninterested and submissive (Wolin 2017).

While there have been attempts to explain why democracy backslides, the ways in which democracy backslides (the ‘how’ issue) remain underexplored. Nevertheless, Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018, 143–144) revealed a three-stage model of backsliding: (1) attacking referees; (2) targeting opponents; and (3) changing the rules of the game. Put differently, Riaz and Sohel Rana (2020) found two stages of backsliding. Their model is based on studying Bangladesh, Bolivia, Mali, Turkey, Ukraine and Zambia and includes two main stages: (1) changing the rules of the game (changes in the constitution) and (2) media manipulation. It may be worthwhile to learn about trajectories of democratic backsliding based on more empirical research—as suggested by Wunsch and Blanchard (2023)—and then develop a more theoretically elaborated systematic analysis of variations in patterns of democratic erosion.

Still, the question remains: Why does democracy fail? In the literature, some factors of democracy’s breakdown and hybridization have been noted. Interestingly enough, democracy’s inherent characteristic are among them. Indeed, crises of democracy and its self-destructiveness have been pointed out as a factor on its own. Other factors include: (1) multiple but differing forms of democracy’s erosion over longer preceding periods; (2) political factors (e.g., democracy’s age; constitutional choice—parliamentary vs presidential); (3) unresolved institutional problems, including constitutions promoting gridlock; weak constraints on the executive; (4) proactive anti-democratic alternatives already active prior to breakdown; (5) intense political polarization; (6) core institutions, including the army, infected by polarization; (7) the characteristics and roles of citizens; erosion of democratic political culture, including softened democratic commitment of citizens and political leaders; (8) self-centred pressure groups, political parties led by elites only interested in their re-election; (9) governments that are unable to constrain transnational economic forces; (10) restricting civil and political rights; (11) unaccountable bureaucrats; elected anti-democratic leaders; (12) significant political violence; (13) polarized media offering opposing perspectives to divided public subscribers; (14) losses of legitimacy resulting from economic, security or other crises; (15) economic factors; (16) socio-economic factors (unresolved socioeconomic problems; severe economic inequality); (17) international factors (external non-supporting of pro-democratic actors; colonial heritage); (18) security problems (threat increases the probability of democratic breakdown) (Offe and Schmitter 1996; Sutter 2002; Hagopian 2004; Kapstein and Converse 2008; Chou 2011; Svolik 2019; Masterson 2023; Moss et al. 2023). Indeed, the list of variables expected to explain democracy’s breakdown is becoming ever longer as empirical analyses of ever more case studies are revealed. Nevertheless, there is no consensus on exactly which variables make a crucial difference. Rather, the role of context has been increasingly acknowledged as very important.

Illiberal Abuse of Democracy and Autocratization

This part of the text is a substantially developed and amended part of the article Fink-Hafner, Danica. 2020. “The Struggle over Authoritarian Pressures in Slovenia in the Context of the COVID-19 Epidemic.” Politički život 18, 20–32. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Danica-Fink-Hafner/publication/346965244_dfh-politicki-zivot-corona/links/5fd4cf6b299bf1408802f211/dfh-politicki-zivot-corona.pdf.

When linking illiberal abuse of democracy and autocratization, the question arises not only as to how democracy is defined but also how to define autocratization. In analogy with defining democratization, autocratization has recently been defined as a process moving towards its end, which is autocracy. Still, this ‘end’ needs to be determined.

Several definitions of autocratization can be found in the literature. For example, autocracy has been simply defined as a regime not meeting the criteria for democracy (Svolik 2012, 20) or as rule by other means than democracy (Brooker 2014, 1). More precision can be found in a definition of autocracy as rule in which an executive achieved power through undemocratic means (Geddes et al. 2014, 317). Schattschneider (1942) had already defined the accumulation of all powers legislative, executive, and judiciary in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, as tyranny. More recently, Wright (2021) summarized three time-varying dimensions of autocracy corresponding with party dominance, military rule and personalism.

Processes leading from democracy in a direction of autocracy have been particularly observed as the decomposing of democracy in its institutional basis. Already in the mid-1990s, Zakaria (1997) had noted the start of a global trend in which democratically elected regimes, often ones that had been re-elected or reaffirmed through referenda, not only routinely ignored constitutional limits on their power and deprived their citizens of basic rights and freedoms but also usurped the power both horizontally (from other branches of the national government) and vertically (from regional and local authorities as well as private businesses and other nongovernmental groups).

In the post-socialist context, Zalan (2016) showed that among the most critical changes in recent tendencies towards autocratization have been: the government’s introduction of measures that curb democratic checks and balances; the dismantling of constitutional checks and weakening of other institutions set up to keep an eye on the executive; taking control of the public media and squeezing private media hard; discrediting the opposition and Western critics; creating an enemy or enemies (NGO, immigrants); and rewriting election rules.

These notes show how important it is to not only look at formal but also informal institutions that regulate how political power is assigned and exercised (Eckstein and Gurr 1975). This is the reason we look at autocratization through three main dimensions of political regime variance—political participation, public contestation and executive limitation—developed by Cassani and Tomini (2018, 277). While the authors developed this approach with the main focus on cross-country comparisons, we believe it is also very useful for tracing the dynamics within one country over a studied period of time.

In Table 3.3, we present dimensions, variables and indicators of regime change towards autocracy based on Cassani and Tomini (2018) and contributions by several other authors.

Table 3.3 Dimensions, variables and indicators of regime change towards autocracy
Full size table

There have been some attempts to indicate what transformations may be sufficient to trigger autocratization. For example, Waldner and Lust (2018) set a criteria of transformations in at least one and any of the three institutional dimensions presented in Table 3.3 as sufficient to trigger autocratization. Still, it is the magnitude of such changes that is critical, not whether these changes will necessarily trigger regime change (Cassani and Tomini 2018, 278). Negative changes in terms of executive constraints, civil and individual liberties, political rights, electoral integrity, competition and participation can vary and may still be considered in the frame of an existing democracy. So, it is not necessary that triggering autocratization automatically leads to the regime change—the actual installation of the new, autocratic regime (the outcome of the processes).

There are still questions that require answers (Lueders and Lust 2018): (1) the question of qualifying when democratic backsliding starts to shape into the autocratization process; (2) the question of measuring the democratic backsliding and autocratization processes; and (3) establishing the threshold in the empirical reality when autocratization actually reaches the final point of regime transformation into autocracy.

As shown in the previous section, answers to these questions have been partially offered in the literature on democratic backsliding. More recently, it seems that researchers who focus on factors of the autocratic outcome stress the importance of a more complete understanding of agency and also stress the global economic (re)distribution (accelerated accumulation of capital; region-dependant economic model); ‘authoritarian’ capitalism and national authoritarian legacies (antiliberal cultural legacies such as those inherited from state socialism and other/previous non-democratic regimes) (Scheiring 2021; Sallai and Schnyder 2021).

In terms of agency, it is not only the role of autocratic leaders, their parties and governments that has been acknowledged but also conservative intellectual networks, including selected conservative think tanks and individual intellectuals developing theoretical defences of illiberalism; networks of loyal national capitalists, fused economic and political powers, including electoral clientelism; disinformed citizens and/or citizens ‘bribed’ by some populist policies. Here also the ‘helplessness’ of international organizations including the European Union is mentioned (Buzogány and Varga 2018; Mares and Young 2019; Scheiring 2021).

Last but not least, it should be noted that autocratization is not always produced in a gradual process of democratic erosion. Rather, there are sudden examples taking place in particular circumstances: state emergency. This brings us back to crises and their national management in the interplay between international and national politics. More precisely, extraordinary circumstances make it easier for the authoritarian leaders to declare an emergency and to gain more power over state resources since the nation becomes more susceptible to democratic decline; this reduces the costs for leaders of subverting democratic rule and constraining the freedom of action of the opposition (Lührmann and Rooney 2021). Indeed, a study of sixty democracies from 1974–2016 showed that autocratic episodes are 75% more likely in years with declared states of emergency (Lührmann and Rooney 2021, 630).