A New Kind of Authoritarianism: Democracy in Decline at Home and Abroad

The U.S. is not alone in showing signs of democratic backsliding. Threats to democracy are occurring all over the globe, and UC San Diego scholars, including Prather, are taking a deep dive into understanding the growing phenomena.

They are part of the Future of Democracy, an initiative of the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) that is co-directed by Emilie Hafner-Burton, professor at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy, and Christina Schneider, professor in the Department of Political Science at the UC San Diego School of Social Sciences.

The initiative brings together multiple disciplines and perspectives from across the University of California to better understand why illiberal regimes—governing systems that hide their nondemocratic practices behind formally democratic institutions and procedures—are increasingly on the rise and what the consequences are for populations around the globe.

Democratic backsliding is now harder to see and counter

“In the past, the standard route from democracy to autocratic rule came through the military coup. Now, duly elected leaders are using executive offices to erode democracy from within,” said Stephan Haggard, distinguished research professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy and research director for Democracy and Global Governance at IGCC. “Such actions—for example, against the judiciary or the integrity of the electoral system—are harder to see and counter.”

This phenomenon of “democratic backsliding” has occurred in a variety of governments—from Poland to Hungary,  Brazil, Venezuela and the Philippines. And, as the events of Jan. 6 showed, even the U.S. is vulnerable.

Yet, illiberal rule has also gone global, influencing international organizations which were once a mainstay of international cooperation. The researchers have identified three trends they find particularly worrisome:

• First: authoritarian great powers—China and Russia—are seeking to build coalitions in multilateral organizations that would challenge prevailing norms. Institutions like the UN’s Human Rights Council are particularly vulnerable.
• Second: authoritarian leaders are using regional organizations to their advantage or even forming their own regional clubs, like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union.
• Finally: democratic regional organizations such as the European Union and Organization of American States now must contend with backsliding members—Poland and Hungary, Venezuela and Nicaragua—who openly flaunt democracy and rule-of-law norms.

Autocracies often leverage international organizations to consolidate power

Several faculty from the Future of Democracy initiative have recently published studies in a special issue of the Review of International Organizations, one of the most prestigious academic journals in the field of international relations.

Four UC San Diego-affiliated authors developed a study featured in the journal that explores how illiberal regimes navigate international organizations and what the consequences are for international cooperation and domestic politics.

“Autocracies, backsliding democracies and illiberal political movements often leverage international organizations to protect themselves from internal and external challenges, including pressures to democratize,” said Hafner-Burton, coauthor of the study. “We find that participation in illiberal organizations reduces the prospects for political liberalization and democratization.”

In addition to Hafner-Burton, coauthors of the paper “Illiberal regimes and international organizations” include Christina Cottiero of the University of Utah, who is a UC San Diego alum from the Department of Political Science, as well as Haggard, Prather and Schneider.

Dictators and autocrats hide behind symbolic laws that promote “good governance”

A separate study from Hafner-Burton, Schneider and Jon Pevehouse of the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows how autocratic regional organizations, such as the African Union (A.U.), adopt formal "good governance" mandates, such as human rights and anti-corruption policies, but that these measures are largely symbolic or are applied to non-members only.

“A particular irony of our study is that these mandates often arise from external pressure from democratic partners, such as the European Union, but end up having little effect,” said Schneider.

The study utilizes data from 48 primarily autocratic regional organizations between 1945-2015.

Fake or “zombie” election monitors help prop up autocracies

The concluding study in the Review of International Organization focuses on the rise of low-quality election monitors, often referred to as "zombie" election monitors. These “fake” election monitors have been shown to validate flawed elections and undermine credible election assessments, confusing voters and allowing authoritarian regimes to legitimize their rule.

The paper, authored by Prather, Cotteria and Sarah Sunn Bush of the University of Pennsylvania, includes recent data that reveals the presence of these questionable monitoring entities has surged, from 23% of elections observed by such groups in 2000, to a staggering 39% by 2020.

Their role in validating flawed elections is increasingly undermining high-quality monitors—international observers committed to upholding the principles of free and fair elections.

An example of this alarming trend occurred during the 2020 parliamentary election in Azerbaijan. While the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) reported that the election lacked genuine competition, low-quality monitors from the authoritarian regional organization, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) that includes Russia, Belarus and other nation states in Eurasia, praised the election as "competitive and free," directly contradicting the OSCE's findings.

‘Democracy and its Discontents’

Recently, faculty from the Future of Democracy initiative discussed the challenges facing democracy in a miniseries of podcasts produced by IGCC. Listen to all episodes of “Democracy and its Discontents.” Topics include the allure of strongmen, the rise of anti-immigrant rhetoric and how to move forward with hope.