International democracy support and protection can play a significant role in reversing the third wave of autocratization, according to new research.
A record of 42 countries are autocratizing, hosting 43% of the world’s population. Autocracies are home to almost 72% of the world’s population and generate 46% of global GDP/PPP, V-Dem Institute analysts Felix Wiebrecht, Yuko Sato, Marina Nord, Martin Lundstedt, Fabio Angiolillo, and Staffan I. Lindberg write for Democratization.
They detail eight cases of democratic resurgence, defiance or U-turns – Bolivia, Ecuador, the Maldives, Moldova, North Macedonia, Slovenia, South Korea, and Zambia – which illustrate the conditions in which contemporary autocratization can be stopped and reversed. Specifically, executive constraints, mass mobilization, alternation in power, a unified opposition coalescing with civil society, and international democracy support and protection seem to have played an important role in the reversals. RTWT
“The struggle between authoritarianism and democracy centers today around Russia and China on the one hand, and the US and Europe on the other,” Stanford’s Francis Fukuyama told last week’s Dahrendorf Colloquium (below).
.
