Democracy-Reinforcing Constitutional Hardball

• In Event: Learning from Global Democratic Challenges and Innovations Mini-Conference I: Countering Illiberalism in Liberal Democracies I: Constitutional Perspectives

Abstract

The threat of democratic backsliding has prompted growing interest in political “hardball”: the pursuit of legal and constitutional changes with the intended purpose of biasing outcomes in favor of one party or set of outcomes over others. Such actions can be construed as constitutional and within the basic rules of the democratic game. But they are in deep tension with a broader concern that these rules ought to be insulated from the political contest for power. This paper provides a new definition of what I call democracyreinforcing hardball, and a framework for thinking about when it might be successful. I first provide a critical overview of the growing empirical literature on averting democratic backsliding, highlighting how many of the proposed reforms ultimately take for granted conditions that no longer exist. I outline the conditions under which hardball might be democracy-reinforcing, and examine three historical cases in which it had the long-term effect of re-stabilizing a democratic political order.

Author

• David Alexander Bateman, Cornell University