Democratic backsliding is a form of autocratization, a process of structural government transition from democracy toward authoritarianism in which the exercise of political power becomes less limited and more arbitrary and repressive. The process typically restricts the space for public contest and political participation in the process of government selection. Democratic backsliding involves the weakening of democratic institutions, such as the peaceful transition of power or free and fair elections, or the violation of individual rights that underpin democracies, especially freedom of expression.
Proposed causes of democratic backsliding include economic inequality, unemployment, culture wars, culturally conservative reactions to societal changes, populist or personalist politics, and external influence from great power politics. Economic inequality is strongly associated with democratic backsliding in the 21st century, even in wealthy democracies. During crises, backsliding can occur when leaders impose autocratic rules during states of emergency that are either disproportionate to the severity of the crisis or remain in place after the situation has improved.
During the Cold War, democratic backsliding occurred most frequently through coups. Since the end of the Cold War, democratic backsliding has occurred more frequently through the election of personalist leaders or parties who subsequently dismantle democratic institutions. During the third wave of democratization in 1974, many new, weakly institutionalized democracies were established; these regimes have been most vulnerable to democratic backsliding. The third wave of autocratization has been ongoing since 2010 after the Great Recession, when the number of liberal democracies was at an all-time high. More than half of all autocratization episodes over 1900–2023 have a U-turn shape in which the autocratization is closely followed by and linked to subsequent democratization.
In recent years, democratic backsliding has increasingly been observed not only in newer or weakly institutionalized democracies but also in long-established democratic systems. According to the V-Dem Institute's Democracy Report 2026, nearly a quarter of the world's countries were undergoing autocratization in 2025, including several in Europe and North America. The report also highlights growing concerns about declines in democratic quality and increasing pressures on media and journalists worldwide.
Manifestations Democratic backsliding occurs when essential components of democracy are threatened. Examples of democratic backsliding include: Free and fair elections are degraded; Liberal rights of freedom of speech, press and association decline, impairing the ability of the political opposition to challenge the government, hold it to account, and propose alternatives to the current regime; The rule of law (i.e., judicial and bureaucratic restraints on the government) is weakened, such as when the independence of the judiciary is threatened or when civil service tenure protections are weakened or eliminated. A weakening in the rule of law can produce uncertainty that leads to self-censorship. An over-emphasis on national security as a response to acts of terrorism or perceived antagonists. Increased distance between median voter preferences and governance.
Forms
Democratic backsliding can occur in several common ways. Backsliding is often led by democratically elected leaders, who use "incremental rather than revolutionary" tactics. As emphasized by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, it is difficult to pinpoint a single specific moment at which a government is no longer democratic, given that this process of decline manifests "slowly, in barely visible steps." Ozan Varol uses the phrase "stealth authoritarianism" to describe the practice of an authoritarian leader (or a potential authoritarian leader) using "seemingly legitimate legal mechanisms for anti-democratic ends ... concealing anti-democratic practices under the mask of law." Together with Juan Linz (1996),"Linz, J. and Stepan, A., 1998. Problems of democratic transition and consolidation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, p.38." Levitsky and Ziblatt developed and agreed upon their "litmus test," which includes what they believe to be the four key indicators of authoritarian behavior. These four factors are rejection of (or weak commitment to) democratic rules of the system; denial of the legitimacy of political opponents; toleration or encouragement of violence; and readiness to curtail civil liberties of opponents, including media. Varol describes the manipulation of libel laws, electoral laws, or "terrorism" laws as tools to target or discredit political opponents and the employment of democratic rhetoric as a distraction from anti-democratic practices as manifestations of stealth authoritarianism. In addition to these key signs derived from the behavior of leaders, Samuel P. Huntington also describes culture as a main contributor to democratic backsliding and goes on to argue that certain cultures are particularly hostile to democracy, but they do not necessarily prohibit democratization. Fabio Wolkenstein also cautions that some measures taken to weaken democracy can shift or concentrate power in longer-lasting ways that may not be easily reversed in the next election.
Promissory coups In a promissory coup, an incumbent elected government is deposed in a coup d'état by coup leaders who claim to defend democracy and promise to hold elections to restore democracy. In these situations, coup-makers emphasize the temporary and necessary nature of their intervention to ensure democracy in the future. This is unlike the more open-ended coups that occurred during the Cold War. Political scientist Nancy Bermeo says that "The share of successful coups that fall into the promissory category has risen significantly, from 35 percent before 1990 to 85 percent afterward." Examining 12 promissory coups in democratic states between 1990 and 2012, Bermeo found that "Few promissory coups were followed quickly by competitive elections, and fewer still paved the way for improved democracies."
Executive aggrandizement In political science, executive aggrandizement refers to the expansion of the leader's power beyond the checks and balances provided by the legislature and the judiciary or by interfering with the independence of the public service. Even a legitimately elected leader can undermine democracy or cause a democratic backlash by using government resources to weaken his political opposition.Williamson, Vanessa (2023). Understanding democratic decline in the United States brookings.edu.
This process contains a series of institutional changes by elected executives, impairing the ability of the political opposition to challenge the government and hold it to account. The most important feature of executive aggrandizement is that the institutional changes are made through legal channels, making it seem as if the elected official has a democratic mandate. Some examples of executive aggrandizement are the decline of media freedom and the weakening of the rule of law (i.e., judicial and bureaucratic restraints on the government), such as when judicial autonomy is threatened.
Over time, there has been a decline in active coups (in which a power-seeking individual, or small group, seizes power through force, violently removing an existing government) and self-coups (involving "a freely elected chief executive suspending the constitution outright in order to amass power in one swift sweep") and an increase in executive aggrandizement. Political scientist Nancy Bermeo notes that executive aggrandizement occurs over time, through institutional changes legitimized through legal means, such as new constituent assemblies, referendums, or "existing courts or legislatures ... in cases where supporters of the executive gain majority control of such bodies." Bermeo notes that these methods mean that the aggrandizement of the executive "can be framed as having resulted from a democratic mandate." Populist rhetoric, which frames the executive as the sole legitimate representative of the people, has been shown to increase public support for executive aggrandizing actions. Executive aggrandizement is characterized by the presence of distress in axes of democracy, including institutional or horizontal accountability; and executive or discursive accountability.
Legislative authoritarianism Legislative authoritarianism is the use of elected legislatures to consolidate power and undermine democratic accountability while upholding formal democratic processes. Because legislative authoritarianism operates through legally sanctioned procedures and maintains the external appearance of democratic governance, scholars point out that it is particularly challenging to identify. But over time, these actions may weaken legislative checks on executive power and diminish parliaments' ability to function as autonomous forums for political debate. Rather than sudden regime change, this type of erosion is most frequently seen in instances of democratic backsliding.
In 2026, Madeleine Rogers argued that parliamentary procedure had been used in democratic backsliding in six main ways that were difficult to oppose because of their technical nature and lack of public attention: fast-track procedures; time limits to debates (such as limiting speeches to 30 seconds in Poland); "alternative legislative procedures" that make scrutiny and opposition or amendment difficult; weakening opposition power, such as via committee composition fractions; "abusing disciplinary measures"; and a speaker abusing the expected neutrality of the speaker's role. Rogers proposed democratic resilience methods that she argued would make parliamentary procedure more robust against backsliding.
Incremental election subversion This form of democratic backsliding, called "strategic election manipulation" by Bermeo, entails the subversion of free and fair elections by, for example, blocking media access, disqualifying opposition candidates, and voter suppression. This form of backsliding typically takes place before the voting day(s) of an election and is done in a slower and more incremental way so that the changes are difficult to counter, making it tougher for media and election monitoring bodies to find and broadcast the cumulative effect of the mostly small but significant misconduct.
Causes and characteristics The V-Party Dataset demonstrated a greater statistical significance of autocratization for victorious parties with very high populism, high anti-pluralism, lack of commitment to the democratic process, and incitement or acceptance of political violence.
Populism Pippa Norris of the Harvard Kennedy School and the University of Sydney argues that the two "twin forces" pose the largest threat to Western liberal democracies: "sporadic and random terrorist attacks on domestic soil, which damage feelings of security, and the rise of populist-authoritarian forces, which feed parasitically upon these fears." Norris defines populism as "a governing style with three defining features": A rhetorical emphasis on the idea that "legitimate political authority is based on popular sovereignty and majority rule"; Disapproval of, and challenges to the legitimacy of, established holders of "political, cultural, and economic power"; Leadership by "maverick outsiders" who claim "to speak for the vox populi and to serve ordinary people."