Democratic Erosion and Resistance: Domestic to International Factors 1

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

These two panels bring together scholars undertaking new research on the actors, institutions, and structural factors that contribute in interaction to contemporary patterns of democratic erosion or backsliding and resistance or safeguarding. The two panels highlight the particular forms of cooperation and contestation between domestic actors (civil society, political parties, voters, elected officials and bureaucrats), and international actors (including foreign policy priorities of the U.S., Europe, Russia and China and their modes of operation).

“2024 will set a record for the greatest number of people living in countries that are holding nationwide elections: more than four billion, or just over half of humanity” (Atlantic Jan 2024). It is also an era marked by threats to democracy from within such nominally democratic institutions, via elections, by elected officials, and with varying degrees of support from the voting public. Given the scale and significance of such elections, we seek to understand the interactive nature of democratic threats and resistance strategies. As democracy can be conceived of as a continued contestation over rights, responsibilities, and rules, we seek to use this critical historical moment of contestation to expand our comparative conceptions of democratic practice, strategies of maintenance and deepening, and the social, economic, technological, institutional, and international factors that contribute to varied outcomes.
These two panels build from a workshop in March 2024 on democratic resilience on the following themes: Concepts and Measurements of Democracy; Resilience Factors, Resistance Strategies, and Opposition Tactics; (De)Stabilizing Forces of advanced industrial democracies; and International Actors and Regional Organizations. The two APSA panels will combine these four themes to examine the social and economic bases of democratic resiliency, as well as various strategies, actors, and institutions that can fortify and even enhance democratic practice, with attention to the interaction between domestic and international resources and actors.

Sub Unit

• Division 44: Democracy and Autocracy

Individual Presentations

• The Puzzles of Successful Democracies in Interwar and Postwar Europe - Sheri Berman, Barnard College, Columbia University

• Crisis and Resilience in Established Democracies - Steven Levitsky, Harvard University; Lucan A. Way, University of Toronto

• Backsliding in Advanced Industrial Democracies: Historical Patterns to Today - Kenneth M. Roberts, Cornell University; Rachel Beatty Riedl, Cornell University; Paul Friesen, Cornell University

• A Political and Oppositional Concept of Democratic Resilience - Jennifer McCoy, Georgia State University; Murat Somer, Ozyegin University Istanbul

• Civic Engagement and the Collapse of Law and Justice’s Poland - Frances Cayton, Cornell University

Chair

• Rachel Beatty Riedl Cornell University

Discussants

• Jiayun Elvin Ong National University of Singapore

• Stephan Haggard University of California, San Diego