Fifty Years after the Third Wave: What do we know about Democratization?

Almost fifty years have passed since Portugal's 1974 Carnation Revolution, which marked the beginning of the Third Wave of Democratization. The 1990s have seen a surge in democratization. Since then, scholars in the field have furthered our understanding of how and why countries democratize, what prompts authoritarian breakdown and what helps institutionalize democratic consolidation. Nevertheless, by the year 2020, the world has seen the largest drop in democratic regimes, with the average levels of democracy going down to almost the level of democratic countries of the 1990s (Hellmeier et.al., 2021). This prompted a new interest in understanding a Third Wave of autocratization that is allegedly sweeping the world. Despite this reversal, recent cases of democratic transition and durability have shown how democracy can be resilient to pressures from would-be autocrats, or can even be revived after periods of democratic erosion.
Given this context, this panel aims to take stock of the Third Wave of Democratization, focusing both on its outcomes and scholarship. Questions which individual contributions will answer include the following:
• What have we learnt from the Third Wave? How has the Third Wave changed or refined our conceptualization, measurement and theorization of democracy and democratic change?
• What are the major debates and findings about domestic and international causes and consequences of democratization and autocratization?
• What lessons can we derive from resilient democracies that were able to resist of recover from erosion?
• What are the main questions that remain unanswered?