The second decade of this century has ushered in an age of autocratisation. All the major democracy indices show an aggregate picture of declining democracy worldwide: the quality of democracies is eroding, hybrid regimes that previously harboured potential for liberalisation became more authoritarian, and repression has hardened in many authoritarian countries (V-Dem 2023; Freedom House 2023). This panel contributes to academic and practitioner understandings of the global state of democratic erosion and, just as importantly, the potential for democracies to recover or even deepen in the face of such threats to civil liberties and political rights. Papers will analyze the processes by which democratic backsliding and breakdown is happening, as well as the factors and strategies that promote democratic resilience, and their degree of efficacy in democratic protection and recovery.
Existing research has tended to focus on either the drivers of democratic erosion. Less attention has been given to the question of how countries can respond to autocratisation by building more effective, inclusive and representative political systems better placed to withstand future threats (Riedl et al 2024). This is problematic, because the process of rebuilding democratic systems is one of the most pressing of our times - and features different opportunities and challenges than previous episodes of democratisation.
Recent research suggests, for example, that cases of re-democratisation in countries such as Brazil and Poland feature distinctive challenges in terms of how to re-legitimate the political system and remove authoritarian actors without operating in ways that could themselves be considered to be authoritarian (Cheeseman, Desrosiers, Cianetti and Gerhke 2024). Put differently, building back better requires novel insights. We therefore invite papers that focus on different aspects of democratic resilience and renewal, including (but not limited to) those addressing the following questions:
• How should we conceptualise democratic resilience?
• What, if anything, is distinctive about re-democratisation?
• How can democracy be reimagined and designed to be more resilient to future authoritarian threats?
• What particular challenges and opportunities do episodes of re-democratisation generate for issues such as reducing corruption and enhancing state capacity?
• How do local and international factors shape the prospects for democratic resilience?