How Autocrats Rise: Sequences of Democratic Backsliding

For the past decade and a half, the world has witnessed a precipitous decline of democratic countries and the consequent rise of autocrats. How Autocrats Rise: Sequences of Democratic Backsliding challenges the conventional wisdom and offers an institutional-ideological approach to understand the phenomenon, examines the steps of emergent autocrats, and analyzes the methods of legitimizing their rules. Employing the new framework, the book provides incisive analyses of four countries located in four different regions with dissimilar national features – Bangladesh, Bolivia, Hungary, and Turkey, and demonstrates that political developments in these countries have followed a similar, specific pattern resulting in various shades of autocracy. Theoretically enriched and empirically grounded, this exceptionally timely book makes significant contribution to the democratic backsliding literature while offering insights on how to forestall an autocratic era.

Ali Riaz is a Distinguished Professor of political science at Illinois State University, USA, a Non-resident Senior Fellow of Atlantic Council, and the President of the American Institute of Bangladesh Studies. Riaz previously taught at universities in Bangladesh, England, and South Carolina, USA, worked as a Broadcast Journalist at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in London, and served as a Visiting Researcher at the Varieties of Democracy Institute (V-Dem) at Gothenburg University in Sweden and as a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at Washington D.C.

Md Sohel Rana is an Associate Instructor of Political Science and a PhD student at Indiana University, USA. He earned his Master of Science (M.S.) in Political Science from Illinois State University, USA. His research interests include democratic and authoritarian politics and South Asian politics. His recent publications include “Democracy Deficit in the D-8” (with Ali Riaz) in Ahmed M Khalid et al. eds. Economic Integration Among D-8 Muslim Countries (2023), and “The God Gap? Public Perception on Religion-Politics Mix in South Asia” in Ali Riaz ed. Religion and Politics in South Asia (2^nd ed., 2021).