ABSTRACT This article offers six main findings about the state of democracy in the world. First, for the statistically average global citizen, the level of democracy in 2025 has reverted to 1978 levels. Second, autocracies now outnumber democracies (92 to 87) and are home to 74% of the world’s population. Third, freedom of expression is the worst-affected aspect, worsening in 44 countries over the last decade. Fourth, 44 countries are currently autocratizing, representing 41% of the world’s population and 39% of global GDP, while only 18 are democratizing. Fifth, the systematic analysis of the cumulative effects of the third wave of autocratization shows that 85 countries – almost half of the world – were autocratizing at some point since 2000. Three-quarters of them are worse in terms of democracy by 2025. Sixth, comprehensively analyzing the ongoing autocratization in the USA, this article highlights a dramatic 24% decline in liberal democracy during the first year of the second Trump presidency, reverting to 1965 levels. This represents the most rapid dismantling of democracy in modern history, marked by a concentration of power in the presidency, undermining civil rights and the rule of law, and the suppression of dissent and the media.

ABSTRACT When anti-system protests denounce political parties as complicit in perpetuating corruption and authoritarian rule, citizens’ identification with traditional parties typically collapses. Yet, following the second wave of the Arab Uprisings (2019–2021), Algeria and Iraq exhibited sharply divergent trajectories. While Iraq experienced a decline in party identification, Algeria registered a sharp increase, including among parties that had been targeted by the protests. Drawing on data from the Arab Barometer, this article examines how large-scale mobilizations impact political attitudes across two distinct regime contexts. Results show that in Algeria, the mobilizations triggered an attitudinal backlash, reinforcing regime-supportive attitudes among previously party-unaffiliated citizens and those with limited civil-society embeddedness. In Iraq, by contrast, protest participation fostered political detachment and eroded partisan identification. This pattern points to a process of reactive politicization, whereby segments of the population aligned with traditional parties not out of ideological affinity but as a conservative mechanism to preserve the status quo in the face of anti-system contention. Conversely, in Iraq party identification declined uniformly, reflecting the fragmented nature of its political system. The findings shed light on how regime structure may shape the attitudinal consequences of protests.

ABSTRACT My study contributes to the scholarship on democratic backsliding and polarization by examining whether partisan media use is associated with support for the open marketplace of ideas and moral stereotype polarization using a survey of U.S. participants. My results show that conservative media use is associated with support for the open marketplace of ideas. However, neither conservative nor liberal media was associated with higher levels of moral stereotype polarization. My results did find that the relationship between each type of media varied by people's extant political beliefs on levels of moral stereotype polarization. Specifically, supportive media was associated with higher moral stereotype polarization, while opposing media was associated with lower moral stereotype polarization. Moreover, when including my moderating variable in the model, moral stereotype polarization served as a mediating variable between partisan media use and support for the marketplace of ideas, with supportive media leading to lower support through higher levels of moral stereotype polarization and opposing media associated with higher support for the marketplace of ideas through lower levels of moral stereotype polarization.

ABSTRACT Despite the global autocratization wave, there is a limited understanding of how bilateral engagement is used to constrain autocrats. This study begins to fill that gap by examining whether and how U.S. security cooperation is employed to counter autocratizing actions. We propose a framework arguing that the effectiveness of security cooperation as an influence lever is conditioned by three features of the relationship: the breadth of its policy design, the degree of institutional coordination, and the nature of its funding model. We explore this framework through a study of U.S. responses to autocratization episodes in El Salvador (2019-2023), drawing on interviews with U.S. officials and security assistance data. We find that while security cooperation was employed as a tool to counter Bukele’s autocratization efforts, the established framework significantly undermined the signal’s strength. A narrow policy focus, weak institutional coordination, and a funding model characterized by both structural inflexibility and historical volatility diluted the U.S. response, undermining its effectiveness as an influence tool. The study contributes to our understanding of the conditions that shape the utility of bilateral engagement for influencing domestic political behaviour.

ABSTRACT Democratic backsliding is often described as a slow, incremental process, yet this framing obscures the critical role of political tempo. This paper examines how the acceleration of political decisionmaking has become a key enabler of backsliding, allowing incumbents to restructure democratic institutions rapidly and constrain opportunities for resistance. While largely achieved within the law, these practices exploit gaps in protections of “time rules” – the legal provisions that structure political timing, tempo, and sequencing. Drawing on cross-jurisdictional examples this paper offers the first thematic analysis of time rules as a common vulnerability of democratic systems. It further explores comparative design options, such as staggered amendments, deferred implementation, and opposition-triggered delay mechanisms, to strengthen resilience without paralyzing governance. By highlighting tempo as both a tool of democratic erosion and a potential site of constitutional reinforcement, the paper contributes to broader debates on institutional design and democratic resilience.

ABSTRACT This study examines the evolution of public participation in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq between 2016 and 2019, focusing on participatory reforms introduced under the Enhancing Democratization Program (EDP). Drawing on mixed methods – surveys, interviews, focus groups, and institutional documents – it analyses changes in access, trust, and perceived influence. The findings show that the EDP expanded visible participatory spaces and strengthened trust in civil society organizations and provincial councils, but had limited effects on confidence in government and parliament. Elite dominance, weak responsiveness, and selective inclusion constrained participants’ influence, leaving most forums consultative rather than transformative. Anchored in Arnstein's distinction between symbolic and substantive participation, the article argues that procedural inclusion can widen participation without redistributing power. The Kurdistan case thus highlights a broader challenge of democratization in hybrid regimes: participation may expand in form while remaining limited in function.

ABSTRACT This paper advances theoretical understandings of transnational repression by examining its gendered dimensions through 19 semi-structured interviews with Iranian women activists across Europe and North America. While scholarship has documented how authoritarian regimes target dissidents abroad, the intersections between transnational repression and gender remain undertheorized. Drawing on interviews with activists challenging gender apartheid in Iran, we make two key contributions. First, we demonstrate how transnational repression and anti-gender movements function synergistically, each reinforcing and amplifying the other’s effects. Second, we identify how “blurred boundaries” between repressive actors function as a control mechanism, as uncertainty about threat sources creates pervasive insecurity that spans online and offline worlds. Further, we contribute to the conceptualization of the “configurations of actors” that enact transnational repression – comprising regimes, diaspora opponents, anti-gender movements, and host countries – that collectively compound women’s vulnerability beyond additive effects. Through an intersectional analysis foregrounding minoritized women’s voices, we demonstrate how multiple systems of oppression converge to create a transnational ecosystem hostile to women’s activism and political participation, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of how authoritarianism operates across borders.

ABSTRACT Amid policy crises, many authoritarian regimes often deflect blame onto local authorities to protect their legitimacy. How does this strategy shape public attitudes toward different levels of government? We argue that blame-shifting, in the short run, shields central leaders from public criticism while eroding trust in local authorities. However, if the central government fails to respond to the crisis or the crisis persists, citizens gradually redirect blame toward the center, weakening support for both the central government and the regime. We test this theory through survey experiments in Vietnam and China and a case study of the Duong Noi land movement in Vietnam. Our findings support the theory. Furthermore, analysis of the data from the experiments and the Asian Barometer Survey reveals differences in hierarchical trust between China and Vietnam and provides suggestive evidence that the effects of blame-shifting strategies may vary across the two countries. Taken together, the study highlights a potential trade-off inherent in blame-shifting propaganda for sustaining authoritarian legitimacy.

ABSTRACT Elections can be manipulated in a variety of ways, both legal and illegal. Legal, or formal, electoral manipulation is common, while illegal manipulation is somewhat more variable. This variation has been attributed by some to the lower “legitimacy costs" of formal manipulation, compared to strategies like election fraud. Empirically, however, the relationship between formal manipulation and protest has been mixed. This study adds to the theory of legitimacy costs of manipulation by focusing on the interplay of procedural fairness and outcome favorability concerns. Using a survey-experiment from the Republic of Georgia in 2024, it shows that highly polarized opponents of the ruling party treat formal and illegal manipulation as equally illegitimate, while polarized incumbent supporters engage in motivated reasoning in the other direction – treating formal manipulation as equivalent to a clean election. These results help understand the limits of protest as a deterrent to manipulation efforts, and help illuminate the legitimacy costs of different tools of electoral malfeasance.

ABSTRACT Democratic backsliding is on the rise globally, prompting renewed attention to the strategies through which democracies resist authoritarian encroachments. One form of resistance involves the transition of protest movements into the electoral arena, in the form of so-called “movement parties.” While widely studied in Western Europe, this new party form has received little attention in Eastern European countries where governing elites are fundamentally undermining democracy. This article investigates two movement parties that have emerged in Central and Eastern European countries experiencing democratic backsliding – Momentum in Hungary and USR in Romania – and their impact on the quality of democracy. Focusing on their interaction with media institutions – key arenas both for contesting and enabling democratic erosion – the study draws on semi-structured interviews with party representatives and journalists, party materials and press coverage. The findings show that both parties challenged entrenched elites and introduced new ethical standards, yet their ability to institutionalize democratic gains and counter democratic erosion has been severely limited by media capture and persistent power asymmetries. By analysing the interplay between movement parties and traditional media institutions, the article offers new insights into the constraints and possibilities for democratic innovation under hybrid and democratically declining regimes.