TY - JOUR

T1 - Erosion or decay? Conceptualizing causes and mechanisms of democratic regression

AU - Gerschewski, Johannes

N1 - Funding Information: Research for this contribution is part of the Cluster of Excellence “Contestations of the Liberal Script” (EXC 2055, Project-ID: 390715649), funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation). The original idea for this paper grew out of a more general project on types of institutional change (Gerschewski 2020). Here, I take up the initial idea of distinguishing between endogenous and exogenous forms of change and spell it out for the realm of democratic regressions. I would like to express my deep gratitude to Aurel Croissant and Jeff Haynes as the editors of Democratization and of this special issue. I thank the participants of the University of Heidelberg’s Workshop on “Democratic Backsliding in Asia” as well as the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback and insightful advice. For helpful research assistance, I thank Louisa Böttner.

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

N2 - Democratic regression has become a worrying phenomenon in the last years. Social science has provided a variety of explanations why democratic regimes have lost democratic regime quality. Against this backdrop, I take stock of the recent literature by putting forward two important analytical distinctions that we should make more explicit. First, I propose to classify our current explanations along the source where the cause for the malaise originated. By doing so, I introduce a distinction between erosion and decay type of arguments. While the former is a gradual process that is caused exogenously–like wind or water hitting a stone–the latter is caused endogenously–like the half-life in nuclear decay processes. Second, I draw a distinction between the endogenous or exogenous roots of the cause and the subsequent causal mechanism that connects the cause with the outcome. I outline the need for dissecting a causal mechanism into its constitutive components and highlight its underlying dimensions of temporality. Throughout the article, I use empirical case material as well as relevant secondary literature to illustrate these points.

AB - Democratic regression has become a worrying phenomenon in the last years. Social science has provided a variety of explanations why democratic regimes have lost democratic regime quality. Against this backdrop, I take stock of the recent literature by putting forward two important analytical distinctions that we should make more explicit. First, I propose to classify our current explanations along the source where the cause for the malaise originated. By doing so, I introduce a distinction between erosion and decay type of arguments. While the former is a gradual process that is caused exogenously–like wind or water hitting a stone–the latter is caused endogenously–like the half-life in nuclear decay processes. Second, I draw a distinction between the endogenous or exogenous roots of the cause and the subsequent causal mechanism that connects the cause with the outcome. I outline the need for dissecting a causal mechanism into its constitutive components and highlight its underlying dimensions of temporality. Throughout the article, I use empirical case material as well as relevant secondary literature to illustrate these points.

KW - Asia

KW - decay

KW - Democratic regression

KW - erosion

KW - institutional change

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85092557424&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/13510347.2020.1826935

DO - 10.1080/13510347.2020.1826935

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85092557424

VL - 28

SP - 43

EP - 62

JO - DEMOCRATIZATION

JF - DEMOCRATIZATION

SN - 1351-0347

IS - 1

ER -