Image credit: Dibyangshu SARKAR / AFP via Getty Images 

Understanding Democratic Backsliding For the last two decades, democracy has been in retreat. Autocracies now outnumber the world’s democracies, and countries that had made impressive democratic strides have been purposefully undoing those gains. Most confounding, this global democratic recession has been driven not by traditional coups but by elected leaders themselves. Yet we have seen bright spots—notably, last month in Hungary and, before that, in Poland in 2023. To turn the tide back toward democracy, we must first understand what is driving democratic backsliding and how it is carried out, as well as what prodemocracy leaders and citizens can do to counter these forces. The following Journal of Democracy essays, now free for a limited time, do just that.

On Democratic Backsliding Old-fashioned military coups and blatant election-day fraud are becoming mercifully rarer these days, but other, subtler forms of democratic regression are a growing problem that demands more attention. Nancy Bermeo Why Elected Leaders Subvert Democracy Today, the principal challenge to democracy is coming not from coups but from democratic erosion driven by elected leaders. What is behind this shift, and how can prodemocracy forces push back? Susan Stokes The Anatomy of Democratic Backsliding Can we recognize the symptoms of backsliding before it’s too late? Though the signals are sometimes faint, a new study of sixteen cases around the world reveals key dynamics common to all. Stephan Haggard and Robert Kaufman   Misunderstanding Democratic Backsliding If democracies did a better job “delivering” for their citizens, so the thinking goes, people would not be so ready to embrace antidemocratic alternatives. Not so. This conventional wisdom about democratic backsliding is seldom true and often not accurate at all. Thomas Carothers and Brendan Hartnett Delivering for Democracy: Why Results Matter Voters around the world are losing faith in democracy’s ability to deliver and increasingly turning toward more authoritarian alternatives. To restore citizens’ confidence, democracies must show they can make progress without sacrificing accountability. Francis Fukuyama. Chris Dann, and Beatriz Magaloni  Why Democracies Survive Democracies are under stress, but they are not about to buckle. The erosion of norms and other woes do not spell democratic collapse. With incredibly few exceptions, affluent democracies will endure, no matter the schemes of would-be autocrats. Jason Brownlee and Kenny Miao The Danger Is Real Analysis that subtly defines away problems is not going to help democracies survive the threats they now face. The fear is warranted. Yascha Mounk Questioning Backsliding It is no easy feat to agree on how democratic backsliding should be measured. No surprise scholars are coming up with strikingly different results. Nancy Bermeo The Value of “Tyrannophobia” Democratic death has been exaggerated. But fear that a democracy is going to break down may, ironically, be one of the things that protects it. Tom Ginsburg Follow the Leader Democracies are increasingly under attack by the leaders they elect. We may not know the damage until it is too late. Susan D. Hyde and Elizabeth N. Saunders A Quiet Consensus We welcome the common ground. The challenge ahead is to protect democracies genuinely in peril, while not losing valuable time and resources chasing authoritarian ghosts. Jason Brownlee and Kenny Miao The End of the Backsliding Paradigm Like the “transition paradigm” before it, the concept of democratic backsliding threatens to flatten our perceptions of complex political realities. Examples from East-Central Europe illustrate the ambiguous dynamics at play in many troubled democracies. Licia Cianetti and Seán Hanley  How Much Democratic Backsliding? Democracy’s retreat is real, yet alarmist reports of a global demise or crisis of democracy are not warranted. Valeriya Mechkova, Anna Lührmann, and Staffan I. Lindberg