Democratic Erosion and Multilateralism: When Authoritarian Leaders Challenge the Liberal International Order

Abstract

In recent years, scholars’ attention to changes of government toward non-democratic variants has increased. The studies to date crystallize around a consensus that the modes of democratic regression in the post-Cold War period differ from the previous ones and that the prevailing archetype for this period is democratic erosion marked by two characteristics: first, a gradual and incremental process distinct from abrupt breakdowns such as coups d’état, executive coups or revolutions; and second, the process is implemented by legally elected incumbents by legal means or upholding the façade of legal means. In fact, quantitative measurement corroborates that 70 percent of the cases of autocratization after 1994 occurred on account of democratic erosion. So far, scholars have set out to describe and explain this process of gradual democratic erosion on a domestic level. This chapter will take a different perspective and ask: What foreign policy implications does the fact that countries are in a process of democratic erosion have on the international level? Departing from an actor-centered approach, the argument is that the protagonist of democratic erosion, the erosion agent, might link her or his domestic mission to missions on the regional or international level. That means that in the same way that erosion agents strive to change the rules of the game domestically, they strive to change the rules of regional politics or even might try to influence the international level. This chapter looks at cases of democratic erosion and the activities of their incumbents on the regional and international level and traces in what way and to what degree the erosion agents did change foreign policy approaches and introduce new foreign policy elements. The sample for this study embraces the following countries: Venezuela, Russia, Hungary and Poland, as well as the United States under President Trump.