Files
Download Full Text (882 KB)
Description
Maimouna Samba, International Relations
Faculty Mentor(s): Professor Patrick McGovern, Political Science and Public Administration
With the rise of authoritarian regimes throughout the world, the growing power of ˜illiberal' democracies in Europe, and the advent of the Trump presidency in the United States, there has been a growing interest among scholars with regard to ˜democratic backsliding.' Democratic backsliding entails a deterioration of qualities associated with democratic governance within any regime and is best conceived of as a change in a combination of competitive electoral procedures, civil and political liberties, and accountability. The purpose of this research is two-fold: assess the availability of peer-reviewed journal articles through the E.H. Butler Library that address democratic backsliding, and examine a selection of these articles using democratic indices from the University of Gothenburg's V-Dem Project to address how backsliding is occurring in the countries and regions researched in these articles. ˜Democratic backsliding' was used as the search term at the Butler Library website and the search was limited to peer-reviewed articles. The V-Dem Indices identify five key areas of democratic contraction: electoral processes, liberal values, civic participation, deliberative practices, and egalitarian norms. The most prominent form of backsliding described in our selection of articles was found primarily in electoral processes, particularly media censorship and the compromising of free and fair elections through government intimidation and electoral violence.
Publication Date
2021
Recommended Citation
Samba, Maimouna, "Democratic Backsliding and the New Authoritarianism" (2021). Psychology and Social Sciences. 4.
https://digitalcommons.buffalostate.edu/srcc-sp21-psychsocsci/4
