Please join the Comparative Politics Workshop as they host Susan Stokes, Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago and Director of the Chicago Center on Democracy.
Abstract: This essay argues that the main contemporary threat to democracy is not military coups but democratic erosion led by elected officials. Economic globalization, party-system realignment, and especially high inequality created openings for right-wing ethnonationalists in advanced democracies and left-populists in the Global South. Though ideologically different, democratic erosion from both right-wing ethnonationalists and left-populists often weaken courts, the press, civil society, and electoral accountability. Inequality fuels grievance, distrust, and polarization, which backsliding leaders exploit through divisive rhetoric and attacks on institutions. Democratic decline can be resisted through coordinated action by opposition elites, civil society, courts, and voters.
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.
Ariel Sowers
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