Democratic Backsliding and Institutional Resilience
Summary
Democratic backsliding denotes the progressive weakening of democratic institutions, norms and checks on executive power, often disguised within legal frameworks or justified as responses to crises. Key manifestations include the erosion of judicial independence, the politicisation of electoral management, restrictions on media freedom and the undermining of civil liberties. Such dynamics have been documented across regions—from Central Europe’s contested rule of law to Southeast Asia’s elite capture of civil society. Institutional resilience captures the capacity of democratic systems to withstand, adapt to and recover from these authoritarian pressures. Factors promoting resilience include robust constitutional constraints, an independent judiciary, active civil society and the mobilisation of historically marginalised groups. Recent scholarship highlights that resilience operates in two distinct stages: preventing initial autocratization and averting full breakdown once erosion begins. Globally, the surge of incremental autocratization underscores both the fragility of democratic gains and the importance of reinforcing institutional safeguards to maintain pluralistic governance.
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Democratic Backsliding and Institutional Resilience publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in democratic backsliding and institutional resilience across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Democratic backsliding: The gradual erosion of democratic institutions, norms and checks on power, typically under the guise of legality or national emergency.
Institutional resilience: The ability of democratic structures—courts, legislatures and civic bodies—to absorb, adapt to and recover from pressures aimed at weakening them.
Autocratization: A subtle, often incremental process by which elected governments consolidate power, diminish pluralism and hollow out democratic procedures.
Civil society: The network of non-state, voluntary associations and organisations that link citizens to political life and serve as a check on government authority.
References
- Antidote to Backsliding: Ethnic Politics and Democratic Resilience. American Political Science Review (2023).
- How democracies prevail: democratic resilience as a two-stage process. Democratization (2021).
- Elite capture, civil society and democratic backsliding in Bangladesh, Thailand and the Philippines. Democratization (2020).
- The EU’s Enfants Terribles: Democratic Backsliding in Central Europe since 2010. Perspectives on Politics (2020).
- State of the world 2020: autocratization turns viral. Democratization (2021).
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