“Proof” by Classification Is Not Proof

The most straightforward justification for the pessimism of the past years is, simply, that we are now in the sixteenth year of a global “democratic recession.” As Larry Diamond has argued, citing Freedom House data, the number of countries that have moved away from democracy has exceeded the number of countries that have moved toward democracy in each of the past sixteen years. In and of itself, this cannot explain how intensely many scholars have started to worry about the stability of democracy. After all, as Samuel P. Huntington pointed out long ago, previous “waves of democratization” have also been followed by “reverse waves” marked by the backsliding or failure of recently established democracies.¹

This is why signs of backsliding in more affluent and longstanding democracies have played a key role in justifying recent concerns about the state of democracy. As Brownlee and Miao rightly point out, there is nothing especially new about the tragic fact that democratic institutions in poor democracies are comparatively likely to fail. What is new is that supposedly consolidated countries such as Italy and the United States have experienced “democratic deconsolidation” over the past few years.

Any analysis that makes fulsome pronouncements about the future of democracy therefore has to give a convincing account of the nature and likely consequences of democratic backsliding in those rich democracies once seen as consolidated. Sadly, Brownlee and Miao’s empirical strategy makes this impossible because, with very little argument or justification, it classifies many of the countries that have elicited the greatest concern as success stories. According to them, countries including Brazil, Hungary, Poland, and the United States should be seen as cases of “survival preceded by backsliding.” 

This is surely premature. According to most democracy indices, for example, democracy in the United States has rapidly deteriorated in the last decade. There is no reason to think that the country has overcome either the root causes (including the rise of social media and a stagnation of living standards) of this backsliding or its immediate triggers (such as the influence of Donald Trump). Indeed, it now appears likely that the country will witness the unprecedented prosecution of a former president, and it is at least possible that key political actors will again refuse to accept the outcome of the 2024 elections. But Brownlee and Miao insist that the United States is a case of democratic survival because U.S. political institutions have so far not buckled under pressure—a clever if misleading way to define away the very possibility that America’s democratic institutions could fail.

The same problem applies to many of the other twenty countries that fall into the category of “survivals preceded by backsliding” on which Brownlee and Miao base their optimism. In Poland and India, for example, leaders who have been in power for less than a decade have significantly suppressed civil liberties, curtailed press freedom, and made it harder for the political opposition to function. In Brazil, an incumbent authoritarian populist is likely to lose his bid for reelection but has been trying to prepare the ground for an autogolpe by undermining popular faith in the electoral system. In Hungary, the playing field has become so skewed against the opposition that it is far from certain that the opposition retains an ability to replace the current government through free and fair elections. And in the Philippines, the authors’ upbeat emphasis on Rodrigo Duterte’s departure from the presidency rings hollow in light of his succession by a ticket comprising his own daughter and (as president) the son of a deceased dictator.

As a result, the core empirical component of Brownlee and Miao’s analysis begs the question it purports to answer. Recent backsliding has caused many scholars to become concerned about the stability of supposedly consolidated democracies such as Hungary, Poland, and the United States. I would be the first to embrace and even celebrate evidence that comparable countries have, in the past, proven resilient after comparable episodes of backsliding. But Brownlee and Miao simply draw on the unrealistically rosy premise that these countries constitute success stories to argue for the unrealistically rosy conclusion that there is no reason to worry about their future. Clever as this sleight of hand may be, it will be cold comfort to scholars and activists who are trying to defend their countries’ institutions against massive attacks that are still ongoing.

This brings us to the second problem, which is normative in nature. Based on their flawed analysis, Brownlee and Miao claim that “backsliding tends to roil electoral democracy without curtailing it,” concluding that the “prognosis [for democracy] is generally positive.” But even if they should prove correct that the countries which are now in the middle of serious episodes of democratic backsliding will ultimately avert a descent into outright authoritarianism, this significantly downplays the costs of democratic backsliding.

In recent years, the United States has seen a significant increase in the number of people who died due to politically motivated violence. The government in Hungary has expelled one of its best universities from the country. In India, incidents of “communal violence” are on the rise. In Turkey, thousands of government critics languish in jail and the economy has entered a perilous tailspin. Far from being outliers, these kinds of developments are typical corollaries of significant democratic backsliding. Instead of making us optimistic about the future, the prospect that more of the world’s most powerful and storied democracies might soon encounter similar problems should be seen as deeply concerning.

Neither Alarmism nor Naïve Complacency

Roberto Foa and I first warned about the prospect of democratic backsliding in supposedly consolidated democracies in the pages of this journal in July 2016.² Our goal was to point out that it is a mistake to take the stability of affluent and long-established democracies for granted. In the years since that opening salvo in the debate about the crisis of democracy, some scholars and many commentators gave that argument a much more radical spin. Going far beyond our point about the vulnerability of established democracies, they began to imply that democratic doom is certain.

Brownlee and Miao are right to point out that this was a serious intellectual mistake. Given the long history of democratic institutions in countries such as the United States, it would be premature to conclude that the serious attacks to which democratic institutions are now subject will prove successful. Scholars who are willing to argue against doom-mongering on the basis of serious evidence and a subtle counternarrative can thus make a big contribution to political science and the larger public discourse. Sadly, this is not what Brownlee and Miao offer here.

Instead of joining a grasp of the sources of democratic resilience with a serious examination of current trends in backsliding, they try to revive a consensus that has been long dead for good reason. In prematurely declaring Hungary and the United States examples of “survival preceded by backsliding,” they dismiss concerns about the rise of authoritarian populists as “evidence-resistant ‘tyrannophobia.'” But although it is, thankfully, far too early to declare the end of the democratic century, the danger to the most affluent and longstanding democracies in the world is far from banished.

The events of recent years make it painfully clear that it is naïve to assume that countries such as the United States are virtually certain to remain democracies. But even if they avoid the worst-case scenario of full democratic breakdown—as very well they might—the serious democratic backsliding that grips them now is likely to make the lives of millions of people far more perilous.

Notes