The democratic recession is the most significant governance story of the past decade. Its causes are multiple, its trajectory is uncertain, and its consequences depend on how democratic institutions respond.
The Pattern
The democratic recession — the pattern of democratic backsliding across multiple regions and governance contexts that has characterised the past decade — involves several distinct mechanisms that operate independently and in combination. The autocratisation of formally democratic governments through the gradual erosion of institutional constraints, the use of democratic procedures to accumulate anti-democratic power, and the capture of the courts, the media, and the civil society organisations that constrain executive power. The consolidation of genuinely authoritarian regimes in contexts where democratic transitions had not fully stabilised. And the weakening of democratic performance in established democracies — the policy gridlock, the rising inequality, the declining responsiveness to public needs — that reduces democratic legitimacy without necessarily producing formal autocratisation.
Each of these mechanisms has different implications for how democratic institutions should respond. The autocratisation of formally democratic governments requires the defence of institutional constraints against actors who are using democratic procedures to erode them — a task for which the legal and constitutional frameworks of most democracies are imperfectly equipped because they were not designed for the specific strategy of using democratic legitimacy to undermine democratic governance. The weakening of democratic performance requires the reform of democratic institutions to produce the outcomes that democratic legitimacy depends on — a task for which the reform coalitions and the institutional capacity may be inadequate.
The democratic recession is simultaneously a crisis of democratic performance and a crisis of democratic design. Responding to it requires both defending the institutional frameworks that constrain the abuse of power and reforming the institutional frameworks that have failed to deliver the governance quality that democratic legitimacy requires. Both are necessary. Neither is sufficient alone.
Discussion