Description:

In recent decades, two dozen presidents and prime ministers have come into office and started attacking key democratic institutions– the press, the courts, and election administration bodies, among others. Some processes of democratic erosion have ended in full autocracies. Why is this happening? What can be done to put the brakes on democratic backsliding? I explore the effects of income inequality, partisan polarization, and loss of confidence in democratic institutions in encouraging erosion. I identify strategies of resistance that parties, civil society groups, and individuals can deploy, including ones that will help reconstitute their democracies once a backsliding leader is out of power.

Susan Stokes is the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor and Director of the Chicago Center on Democracy. Her research and teaching interests include democratic theory and how democracy functions in developing societies, distributive politics, and comparative political behavior. Her single and co-authored books include Mandates and Democracy: Neoliberalism by Surprise in Latin America (2001), Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism: The Puzzle of Distributive Politics (2013), and Why Bother? Rethinking Participation in Elections and Protests (2019). She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.