Autocratization and sustainability

A third wave of autocratization has been unfolding since 2010. In such a process, core institutional requirements for electoral democracy decline through a change away from free and fair elections towards a concentration of power in a single individual or group of organized individuals. Moreover, autocratization may further involve a deterioration of liberal, egalitarian or deliberative features (Tomini, 2024). This process of ‘democratic backsliding’ has increasingly been associated with an anti-sustainability ideology and a respective decline in efforts for achieving sustainable development, such as observed in the United States under Donald Trump, Brazil under Jair Bolsonaro, Hungary under Viktor Orbán, or India under Narenda Modi. While the policy decisions and the outcomes of these policies are well documented for recent cases of autocratization, our insights still remain mostly descriptive. The panel strives to go beyond the state of research in two ways. First, it seeks to establish a causal relationship between autocratization and policy action taken in order to achieve sustainable development. Second, it defines sustainability broadly and investigates economic, environmental, and social policies. Consequently, the panelists will discuss two overarching questions: First, how does autocratization affect the formulation, adoption and implementation of sustainability-related policies? Second, does the effect of autocratization vary across the three dimensions of sustainability? The papers in this panel will assess these questions by focusing on autocratization processes or episodes as they occurred in different world regions in order to identify generalizable patterns. The panel is co-organized by the journal Democratization and the Nature portfolio journal Climate Action.