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." A 2018 analysis by political scientists
Yascha Mounk and Jordan Kyle links populism to democratic backsliding, showing that since 1990, "13 right-wing populist governments have been elected; of these, five brought about significant democratic backsliding. Over the same time period, 15 left-wing populist governments were elected; of these, the same number, five, brought about significant democratic backsliding." A December 2018 report by the
Tony Blair Institute for Global Change concluded that populist rule, whether left- or right-wing, leads to a significant risk of democratic backsliding. The authors examine the effect of populism on three major aspects of democracy: the quality of democracy in general,
checks and balances on executive power, and citizens' right to politically participate in a meaningful way. They conclude that populist governments are four times more likely to cause harm to democratic institutions than non-populist governments. Also, more than half of populist leaders have amended or rewritten the countries' constitution, frequently in a way that eroded checks and balances on executive power. Lastly, populists attack individual rights such as freedom of the press, civil liberties, and political rights. Around the world, citizens are voting away the democracies they claim to cherish. Scholars present evidence that this behaviour is driven in part by the belief that their opponents will undermine democracy first. In experimental studies, they revealed to partisans that their opponents are more committed to democratic norms than they think. As a result, the partisans became more committed to upholding democratic norms themselves and less willing to vote for candidates who break these norms. These findings suggest that aspiring autocrats may instigate democratic backsliding by accusing their opponents of subverting democracy and that we can foster democratic stability by informing partisans about the other side's commitment to democracy. The term "populism" has been criticized as a misleading term for phenomena such as
nativism and intentional promotion of authoritarianism by political elites.
Economic issues Many
political economy scholars, such as
Daron Acemoglu and
James A. Robinson, have investigated the effect of income inequality on the democratic breakdown. Hungary is another example of a country where a large share of unemployed people, especially after the
2008 financial crisis, contributed to popular support for a national-populist party.
Institutional reforms Recent research on Latin America shows that institutional reforms, often introduced during crises, sometimes worsen democratic backsliding. Reforms intended to strengthen
presidential powers or address public discontent can
fragment political landscapes, leaving democracies vulnerable to instability and populist pressures.
Loneliness Loneliness can be associated with support of
authoritarianism.
Personalism A 2019 study found that personalism had an adverse impact on democracy in Latin America: "presidents who dominate their own weakly organized parties are more likely to seek to concentrate power, undermine horizontal accountability, and trample the rule of law than presidents who preside over parties that have an independent leadership and an institutionalized bureaucracy." The same thing is also true in the Middle East, its most prevalent example being seemingly Turkey and consolidation of power in the hands of the president
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who has been in power
since 2003.
COVID-19 Many national governments worldwide delayed, postponed or canceled a variety of democratic elections at both national and subnational governmental levels, resulting in the
COVID-19 pandemic opening gaps in the action of democracy. According to the V-Dem Institute, only 39% of all countries have committed no or only minor violations of democratic standards in response to COVID-19. According to Ingo Keilitz, both authoritarian leaders and
surveillance capitalists used the pandemic to "make massive shifts and reprogramming of our sensibilities about privacy and civil liberties that may not be reversible". Keilitz saw this as a threat to judicial independence.
Great power politics Great power transitions have contributed to democratic backsliding and the spread of authoritarianism in two ways: "First, the sudden rise of autocratic Great Powers led to waves of autocracy driven by conquest but also by self-interest and even admiration, as in the fascist wave of the 1930s or the post-1945 communist wave. Second, the sudden rise of democratic hegemons led to
waves of democratization, but these waves inevitably overextended and collapsed, leading to failed consolidation and rollback."
Authoritarian values Global variation in democracy is primarily explained by variance between popular adherence to authoritarian values vs. emancipative values, which explains around 70 percent of the variation of democracy between countries every year since 1960. Emancipative values, as measured by the
World Values Survey, have been consistently rising over time in response to increasing economic prosperity. Professor
Jessica Stern and the political psychologist Karen Stenner write that international research finds that "perceptions of sociocultural threat" (such as rising ethnic diversity and tolerance for
LGBT people) are more important in explaining how democracies turn authoritarian compared to economic inequality (though they include economic threats such as globalization and the rising prosperity of other ethnic groups). Stern and Stenner say about a third of the population in Western countries is predisposed to favor homogeneity, obedience, and strong leaders over diversity and freedom. In their view, authoritarianism is only loosely correlated with conservatism, which may defend a liberal democracy as the status quo. Political scientist
Christian Welzel argues that the third wave of democratization overshot the demand for democracy in some countries. Therefore, Welzel sees the current autocratization trend as
regression to the mean, but expects that it too will reverse in response to long-term changes in values.
Polarization, misinformation, incrementalism, and multi-factor explanations The 2019 Annual Democracy Report of the V-Dem Institute at the
University of Gothenburg identified three challenges confronting global democracy: (1) "Government manipulation of media, civil society, rule of law, and elections"; (2) rising "toxic polarization", including "the division of society into distrustful, antagonistic camps"; diminishing "respect for opponents, factual reasoning, and engagement with society" among political elites; and increasing use of
hate speech by political leaders; and (3) foreign
disinformation campaigns, primarily digital, and mostly affecting Taiwan, the United States, and former
Soviet bloc nations such as
Latvia. According to
Suzanne Mettler and
Robert C. Lieberman, four characteristics have typically provided the conditions for democratic backsliding (alone or in combination):
political polarization, racism and nativism, economic inequality, and excessive executive power. Stephen Haggard and Robert Kaufman highlight three key causes of backsliding: "the pernicious effects of polarization; realignments of party systems that enable elected autocrats to gain legislative power; and the incremental nature of derogations, which divides oppositions and keeps them off balance." A 2022 study linked polarization to support for undemocratic politicians.
Effects of judicial independence A 2011 study examined the effects of
judicial independence in preventing democratic backsliding. The study, which analyzed 163 nations from 1960 to 2000, concluded that established independent judiciaries are successful at preventing democracies from drifting to authoritarianism, but that states with newly formed courts "are positively associated with regime collapses in both democracies and non-democracies". ==Psychological impact==