Twenty years of global autocratization have inspired a wide range of literature on the crisis of democracy. This has included analyzing the impact of economic and social processes such as globalization and migration, rising polarization, disinformation, and the recent return of coups in parts of sub-Saharan Africa (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018; Arriola, Rakner, and van de Walle 2022). More recently, researchers have begun to unpack the specific forms that autocratization takes in different contexts, including identifying different “‘pathways” of autocratization by mapping and explaining the different ways in which autocratization is happening across the globe (Wunsch and Blanchard 2022; Cheeseman and Cianetti 2023; Balderacchi and Tomini2024). This includes, but is not limited to, executive aggrandizement, violent rupture (such as a coup), political polarization, and state capture.
This panel aims to gather diverse perspectives on these pathways and their specific consequences. Notably, recent research has highlighted that certain pathways – such as political polarization driven by right-wing populism – are especially likely to be more corrosive of the status of minorities and historically marginalized groups than others (Cheeseman and Cianetti 2023). Similarly, while some pathways constitute rapid regime ruptures, others gradually erode democratic processes in ways that may be harder to identify and just as challenging to address. In other words, different pathways give rise to varying consequences and opportunities for re-democratization, which need to be disaggregated and understood.
We therefore invite papers that focus on different processes of autocratization and their consequences, including (but not limited to) those addressing the following questions:
• How can we categorize, map, and explain different pathways of autocratization?
• What are the local, national, or transnational factors that shape pathways of autocratization in different parts of the globe?
• To what extent are authoritarian and autocratizing regimes developing new governance systems and practices, and how far do these differ from existing forms of authoritarianism?
• What is the relationship, if any, between pathways of autocratization and other important political outcomes, such as respect for human rights?
• What are the consequences of gradual autocratization for different communities and institutions and how can this be remedied?