Misunderstanding Democratic Backsliding

One of the most common explanations of the ongoing wave of global democratic backsliding is that democracies are failing to deliver adequate socioeconomic goods to their citizens, leading voters to forsake democracy and embrace antidemocratic politicians who undermine democracy once elected. Yet a close look at twelve notable cases of recent backsliding suggests that this thesis, while having some explanatory power in some cases, has little in others; and even where it does apply, nuanced interpretation is required. In short, the main cause of backsliding is not the failure of democracies to deliver, but their failure to constrain the predatory political ambitions and methods of certain elected leaders. Consequently, those policymakers and donors who would seek to contain backsliding will need to time their diplomatic and aid interventions accordingly.

For several years now, democracies have been backsliding at an accelerating rate around the world, spurring on a frantic search among Western leaders and development partners for root causes. One of the most common ideas to have emerged in this policy community is that the blame lies in democracies' failure to deliver: When democracies do not provide their citizens with adequate socioeconomic benefits, the thinking goes, many of those citizens will lose faith in democracy and embrace antidemocratic political figures who, once elected, will undercut democratic norms and institutions. This means that the political consequence of democratic backsliding, which worried policymakers and aid providers, must support new or fragile democracies so as to have a greater tendency of delivery for the citizen's needs. In a work recently carried in Foreign Affairs last year, Samantha Power argued, Administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development saying that, "to. As we swing the pendulum of history back toward democratic rule, we must tear down the wall separating democratic advocacy from economic development work and show that democracies can deliver for their people."1. We shall develop such a picture by analyzing the democratic backsliding experienced over the past twenty years by twelve countries from an initial position of either electoral or liberal democracy: Bangladesh, Brazil, El Salvador, Hungary, India, Mexico, Nicaragua, Philippines, Poland, Tunisia, Turkey, and the United States. This group, selected from the roughly 25 to 40 countries-usually understood to have undergone backsliding during the period, depending on the measures used-includes some of the most internationally salient cases of backsliding-Brazil, Hungary, India, Turkey, and the United States-while also being representative in multiple dimensions, such as population size, wealth, and geography.2 The countries included in this group are diverse not only with respect to these background conditions but also in their precursory levels of democracy: Some, like Poland and the United States, were relatively well-consolidated democracies at the outset of backsliding; others, like Bangladesh, Nicaragua, and Turkey, were considerably less so.The objects of research also followed paths of backsliding along different courses. Democratic erosion has been intense in some, such as Bangladesh and Hungary, while mild in others, including the United States. Similarly, backsliding continues uninterrupted in some-for example, El Salvador and India-but it would appear to have been at least for the time being reversed in others, like Brazil and Poland. For each country, we consider a range of socioeconomic and political developments with a view to answering three central questions: First, did the election of the leader who subsequently engaged in backsliding clearly result from a failure of democracy to deliver?

Second, did that leader run on an antidemocratic platform? And third, when the backsliding occurred, did citizens support it? Our findings cast significant doubt on the usefulness of the democracy-not-delivering thesis as a broad causal account of the recent wave of democratic backsliding.

It provides substantial explanatory power for some of the cases and little in others. Furthermore, even in those countries where the hypothesis does fit, it tends to do so with significant empirical nuance, the interpretation being rather subtle. Our findings reinforce on a global basis a central insight drawn from the seminal study by Larry Bartels of democratic trends in Europe-that democracies "erode from the top" rather than at the behest of their citizens.3 Policymakers and aid providers seeking to stem democratic erosion globally should direct their energies and resources accordingly and focus on strengthening institutions and norms that may restrain predatory powerholders. Performance Realities To examine whether poor economic performance predates the emergence of leaders who backslide, we analyzed three key indicators of economic performance-inequality, poverty, and growth-for the five years leading up to each of the focal elections.