Global Challenges to Democracy: Comparative Perspectives on Backsliding, Autocracy, and Resilience

Following democracy's global advance in the late 20th century, recent patterns of democratic erosion or 'backsliding' have generated extensive scholarly debate. Backsliding towards autocracy is often the work of elected leaders operating within democratic institutions, challenging conventional thinking about the logic of democratic consolidation, the enforcement of institutional checks and balances, and the development and reproduction of democratic norms. This volume tackles these challenges head-on, drawing theoretical insights from classic literature on democratic transitions and consolidation to help explain contemporary challenges to democracy. It offers a comparative perspective on the dynamics of democratic backsliding, the changing character of authoritarian threats, and the sources of democratic resiliency around the world. It also integrates the institutional, civil society, and international dimensions of contemporary challenges to democracy, while providing coverage of Western and Eastern Europe, South and Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the United States.

Valerie J. Bunce is the Aaron Binenkorb Professor of International Studies Emerita in the Department of Government at Cornell University. She studies democracy, authoritarianism, and regime change with a specialization in Russia and Eastern Europe. She is the author of Subversive Institutions: The Design and the Destruction of Socialism and the State (1999), co-author of Defeating Authoritarian Rulers in Postcommunist Countries (2011), and co-editor of Citizens and the State in Authoritarian Regimes: Comparing China and Russia (2022). She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010.

Thomas B. Pepinsky is the Walter F. LaFeber Professor of Government and Public Policy at Cornell University, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He studies comparative politics and political economy with a primary specialization in Southeast Asia. His most recent book is Pandemic Politics: The Deadly Toll of Partisanship in the Age of COVID (2022), with Shana Kushner Gadarian and Sara Wallace Goodman.

Rachel Beatty Riedl is Peggy J. Koenig '78 Director of the Center on Global Democracy at Cornell University, and a professor in the Department of Government and the Brooks School of Public Policy. Her current research examines the politics of democratic opposition to executive-led backsliding in Africa and beyond. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of Authoritarian Origins of Democratic Party Systems in Africa (2014) and co-author of From Pews to Politics: Religious Sermons and Political Participation in Africa (2019).

Kenneth M. Roberts is the Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government at Cornell University. His research interests lie at the intersection of political parties, social movements, populism, and crises of democratic representation in Latin America and beyond. He is the author of Changing Course in Latin America: Party Systems in the Neoliberal Era (2014) and a co-editor of Democratic Resilience: Can the United States Withstand Rising Polarization? (2021).