Abstract
ABSTRACT This article introduces a novel conceptualization of democratic resilience - a two-stage process where democracies avoid democratic declines altogether or avert democratic breakdown given that such autocratization is ongoing. Drawing on the Episodes of Regime Transformation (ERT) dataset, we find that democracies have had a high level of resilience to onset of autocratization since 1900. Nevertheless, democratic resilience has become substantially weaker since the end of the Cold War. Fifty-nine episodes of sustained and substantial declines in democratic practices have occurred since 1993, leading to the unprecedented breakdown of 36 democratic regimes. Ominously, we find that once autocratization begins, only one in five democracies manage to avert breakdown. We also analyse which factors are associated with each stage of democratic resilience. The results suggest that democracies are more resilient when strong judicial constraints on the executive are present and democratic institutions were strong in the past. Conversely and adding nuance to the literature, economic development is only associated with resilience to onset of autocratization, not to resilience against breakdown once autocratization has begun.
Highlights
In line with scholarly work on the importance of judges and courts for democracy, we find that stronger judicial constraints on the executive are significantly associated with greater democratic resilience to experiencing autocratization
Model 1 shows that coups, previous episodes of autocratization, and a larger population may significantly decrease the likelihood of onset resilience
We argue that the number of previous autocratization episodes and a greater number of concurrent episodes of regime transformations in other democracies should be expected to influence whether a democracy is more likely to lose onset resilience but that they should be substantively unrelated to the outcome once an episode is ongoing
Summary
These plots reveal wide variation in the quality of democracy at the onset of autocratization, in the extent of democratic decline, and the duration of the episode This demonstrates that taking democratic survival, breakdown, or annual changes at a given point in time would obscure this variation and potentially vital information on patterns that could help us better understand democratic resilience. The literature on democratic breakdown and survival informs much of what we know about resilience Scholars in this field typically test for the effects of factors on the probability of democratic survival or breakdown as events,[31] or incrementally using annual changes in levels of democracy.[32] We suggest a different approach and combine an onset model as well as a selection model following our conceptualization described above, and focus on four of the main factors identified in these two literatures: institutional constraints on the executive, economic factors, neighbouring regimes, and previous democratic experience. To reduce concerns of simultaneity bias, that could arise if aspiring autocrats dismantle institutional checks and balances, we lag all variables (except for coups) by one year
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