The Crisis of Liberal Democracy: Connective Action & the Rise of the Far-Right

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

A 2023 V-Dem report concluded that “Advances in global levels of democracy made over the last 35 years have been wiped out. 72% of the world’s population – 5.7 billion people – live in autocracies by 2022” (V-Dem 2023). The Economist Intelligence Unit's (EIU's) Democracy Index offered similarly pessimistic conclusions: in 2020, 116 of 167 countries recorded a decline in their total democracy score compared with the previous year. The United States held steady as a “flawed democracy,” unchanged from 2016 when it lost its “full democracy” status (EIU 2020). By 2022 the gloom hanging over the U.S. had lifted a bit, but the EIU still observed that “Social cohesion and consensus have collapsed in recent years as disagreements over an expanding list of issues fuel the country’s ‘culture wars’” (EIU 2022).

What accounts for this crisis of liberal democracy? The proposed theme panel addresses this question by synthesizing two distinct yet complementary research literatures. One perspective focuses primarily on the spread of disinformation and the algorithmic amplification of extremist content, while the other addresses the role of institutions and elites in restricting popular participation and promoting extremist ideas. We refer to the first approach as the technocentric research paradigm and the second as the institutionalist research paradigm. Both literatures provide incomplete yet complementary clues as to why anti-democratic tendencies are more pronounced among parties and voting publics on the right.

In this panel, these two broad research traditions are brought together to shape an analytical framework we believe explains the core threat to democracy in the 21st century. Drawing on the “connective action” model (Bennett and Segerberg 2014), we argue that hitherto scattered and uncoordinated extremist elements cohere online into quasi-organizations, or what the research literature has referred to as “digitally constituted surrogate organizations.” Because digital organizational forms tend to be more fluid, non-hierarchical, and leaderless, they also tend to be more resistant to distancing efforts by party leaders. Incorporating digitally constituted organizational forms into institutionalist arguments brings its analytical reach into the digital era as it simultaneously anchors technocentric arguments in broader historical, social, and economic contexts.

We argue that one of the chief threats to liberal democracy in the 21st century comes from the organization of illiberal movements, both on and offline. In short, we argue that democratic backsliding is the consequence of far-right connective action. The five (5) papers that constitute this panel assess the effects of digitized public communication on democracy without losing sight of social and economic power structures. They offer a more holistic connective action model of democratic backsliding that situates digital networks in a broader institutionalist framework to shed light on the rise of illiberal politics in both institutions and public communication spheres.

Sub Unit

• Division 38: Political Communication

Cosponsor

• Division 40: Information Technology, & Politics

Individual Presentations

• Technological & Institutional Roots of Democratic Backsliding in the US - Steven L. Livingston, George Washington University; Lance Bennett, University of Washington, Seattle

• How QAnon Developed from a Fringe Group to a Digital Surrogate for the GOP - Josephine Lukito, University of Texas at Austin; Yunkang Yang; Sang Jung Kim, University of Iowa

• The Democratic Decay Within: The GOP and QAnon as a Digital Surrogate - Daniel Kreiss, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Aaron Sugarman, Global Disinformation Index

• Ingroups & Outrage: Narratives, Digital Surrogate Networks & Far-Right Parties - Curd Benjamin Knüpfer, University of Southern Denmark; Ulrike Klinger, European University Viadrina

• Demographic Determinism, Republican Identity, and Democratic Backsliding - Andrew I Thompson, University of Pennsylvania

Chair

• Michael L Miller The City College of New York

Discussant

• Sarah J. Jackson University of Pennsylvania