7 - Conclusion

Summary

The erosion of democracy has become globally pervasive. New and old democracies around the world are now led by executives willing to undermine democratic institutions in order to achieve their policy goals. The booming literature on democratic backsliding has, for the most part, focused on the factors that drive these executives with hegemonic aspirations to power (Handlin 2017b; Norris and Inglehart 2019b) or the resources they have available to successfully undermine democratic institutions (Corrales 2018b; Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018b; Ginsburg and Huq 2019b; Weyland and Madrid 2019b). The underlying assumption of these theories is that popular and economically solvent heads of government in institutionally weak countries are almost always going to erode democracy, while their less popular and economically solvent counterparts in institutionally strong countries are almost always going to fail.