Abstract
The third wave of democratization has given way to a reverse wave of autocratization. A critical question is what can be done to prevent democratic breakdowns and make democracy endure. A large body of historical-narrative and small-N comparative scholarship has suggested that an active mobilized civil society and institutionalized political parties can be mobilized to protect democracy from authoritarian takeovers. We provide the first rigorous set of empirical analyses to test this argument using data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project for the period from 1900 to 2010. We find that both exert a robust, independent, and substantial effect on the survival of democracies. These findings have important policy implications for the international community.
Highlights
The world is in a “third wave of autocratization,” disproportionally affecting a large number of established democracies (Lührmann and Lindberg 2019)
One could plausibly argue that as the breakdown process begins that civil society and the parties are eroded as a part of that process. If this is the case, there is the danger than any relationship we find between the state of political parties and civil society and breakdown is not in the direction we claim
With a “third wave” of autocratization currently affecting both new and established democracies and anti-democratic movements active globally, what means do those who seek to preserve democracy have at their disposal to counteract this threat? A large body of scholarship suggests that an active civil society and institutionalized political parties make democracies more durable in the face such challenges
Summary
The world is in a “third wave of autocratization,” disproportionally affecting a large number of established democracies (Lührmann and Lindberg 2019). Our empirical strategy is to use event history analysis to model a democratic regime’s hazard of experiencing breakdown as a function of civil society, party institutionalization, and a set of controls.
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