How Autocrats Rise Sequences of Democratic Backsliding [1 ed.] 9789819975792, 9789819975808

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GLOBAL POLITICAL TRANSITIONS

How Autocrats Rise Sequences of Democratic Backsliding Ali Riaz · Md Sohel Rana

Global Political Transitions

Series Editors Imtiaz A. Hussain, Global Studies & Governance, Independent University, Dhaka, Bangladesh Leonard C. Sebastian, S. Rajaratnam School of Int’l Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

The series publishes books dealing with important political changes within states and in relations between states. The two key questions it seeks to answer are: to what extent are countries becoming more democratic/liberal, and to what extent are inter-state/inter-regional relations creating/demanding new ‘governance’ arrangements? The series editors encourage submissions which explore local issues (where the local could be a state, society, region) having global consequences (such as regionally, internationally, or multilaterally), or vice versa, global developments (such as terrorism, recession, WTO/IMF rulings, any democratic snowball, like the Third Wave, Fourth Wave, and so forth) triggering local consequences (state responses; fringe group reactions, such as ISIS; and so forth).

Ali Riaz · Md Sohel Rana

How Autocrats Rise Sequences of Democratic Backsliding

Ali Riaz Department of Politics and Government Illinois State University Normal, IL, USA

Md Sohel Rana Department of Political Science Indiana University Bloomington, IN, USA

ISSN 2522-8730 ISSN 2522-8749 (electronic) Global Political Transitions ISBN 978-981-99-7579-2 ISBN 978-981-99-7580-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-7580-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: domin_domin This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore Paper in this product is recyclable.

Acknowledgments

It took more than three years for this book to come to fruition, during which we received inputs and suggestions from a wide range of people. The list is quite extensive, but we cannot let this opportunity pass to thank a few individuals without whose help this book would not have seen the light of day. At the initial stage of the project, our ideas, theory, and preliminary evidence were presented at the Democracy and Autocracy division of the American Political Science Association (APSA) 2020 conference. We thank the discussant for insightful comments and suggestions. Jack Bielasiak, Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, has patiently read our preliminary literature review and theoretical framework, provided valuable comments, and encouraged to move forward with our pursuit. We are indebted to him. Nancy Lind, an Emeritus Professor at Illinois State University, has read the manuscript and made a few suggestions which brought clarity. We are thankful to her. Vishal Daryanomel, Senior Commissioning Editor of Palgrave Macmillan, showed keen interest in the book even before a formal proposal was submitted. He not only encouraged us but also remained patient throughout the process, although we missed several deadlines. We sincerely thank him. Three anonymous reviewers provided us with valuable comments and suggestions that helped us to reorganize our thoughts and sharpen our arguments. We owe gratitude to them.

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Contents

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1

Introduction: “Despots Masquerading as Democrats”

2

What Is Democracy?

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3

Understanding Democratic Backsliding

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4

The Sequence of Backsliding and the Rise of the Autocrats

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Bangladesh: The Making of an Electoral Autocracy

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Bolivia: A Miracle Turning into a Competitive Autocracy

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Hungary: The Perfect Autocracy?

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Turkey: Becoming a Closed Autocracy?

143

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Conclusion: The Lessons Learned and the Way Forward

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Index

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About the Authors

Ali Riaz is a distinguished Professor of Political Science at Illinois State University, USA, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council South Asia Center, and the President of the American Institute of Bangladesh Studies (AIBS). He served as a Visiting Researcher at the Varieties of Democracy Institute (V-Dem) at Gothenburg University, Sweden in 2023, and as a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at Washington D.C in 2013. Riaz previously taught at universities in Bangladesh, England, and South Carolina, USA, and worked as a Broadcast Journalist at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in London. His primary areas of interest are democratization, violent extremism, South Asian politics, and Bangladeshi politics. His recent publications include Pathways of Autocratization: The Tumultuous Journey of Bangladeshi Politics (2024), Trials and Tribulations: Politics, Economy and Foreign Affairs of Bangladesh (2023), and More than Meets the Eye: Essays on Bangladeshi Politics (2022). He has edited and coedited Religion and Politics in South Asia (2nd ed, 2021); and Political Violence in South Asia (2019). Md Sohel Rana is an Associate Instructor and a Ph.D. student at the Department of Political Science in Indiana University. He earned his master’s degree from Illinois State University. His scholarly interests broadly fall into the field of Comparative Politics and Research Methodology. His specific research interests include democratic and authoritarian

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politics, South Asian politics, and religion and 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 (World Scientific, 2023), “Securitization of the Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh” (with Ali Riaz, Journal of Asian and African Studies, 2022), “The God Gap? Public Perception on Religion-Politics Mix in South Asia” in Ali Riaz ed. Religion and Politics in South Asia (2nd Ed., 2021), and “Transformation of Indo-Bangladesh Relations: From Insecurity to Cooperation” (Strategic Analysis, 2019).

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2 Fig. 5.3 Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

5.4 5.5 6.1 7.1 7.2 8.1

Number of countries improved and declined in terms of freedom and democracy, 2005–2022 Institutional-ideological approach to democratic backsliding process The State of Democracy in Bangladesh, 2003–2022 Combined Polity IV score of Bangladesh, 2009–2018 Bangladeshi elections: party participation, voter turnout, and unopposed candidates, 1973–2014 Bangladesh’s GDP growth rate, 1996–2018 Public perception about the direction of Bangladesh The State of Democracy in Bolivia, 2004–2020 The State of Democracy in Hungary, 2007–2022 Liberal democracy score of Hungary (1989–2021) The State of Democracy in Turkey, 2003–2022

3 39 58 58 65 71 73 86 116 116 147

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List of Tables

Table 1.1 Table 3.1

Larry Diamond’s typologies of regimes Four approaches to processes of democratic backsliding

6 27

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: “Despots Masquerading as Democrats”

Democracy is facing a global crisis. Those who study democracy and democratization, and the organizations which track the state of global democracy have been sounding the alarm for more than a decade that the situation is getting worse. As more and more countries have regressed from democracy in quick succession, it has now become an era of autocrats. “Despots masquerading as democrats” is the order of the day, across continents, irrespective of cultures, as noted by Kenneth Roth (2009). “Rarely has democracy been so acclaimed yet so breached, so promoted yet so disrespected, so important yet so disappointing” (Roth 2009, 140). The extent of the crisis can be understood from the data provided by the organizations which track the state of democracy around the world. Freedom House, in its 2022 report informs, as of the end of 2021, “some 38 percent of the global population live in Not Free countries, the highest proportion since 1997. Only about 20 percent now live in Free countries” (Freedom House 2022, 1). However, the trend continues, though slightly improved in 2022. According to the Freedom House 2023 annual report, as of the end of 2022, 57 out of 195 countries are “Not Free”, while 54 countries are “Partly Free” (Freedom House 2023, 23). In terms of population, about 29% of the world’s population live in the “Not Free” countries, while 28% live in the “Partly Free” countries (Freedom House 2023, 30).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 A. Riaz and Md S. Rana, How Autocrats Rise, Global Political Transitions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-7580-8_1

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In a similar vein, Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU)’s 2022 report published in early 2023 says, out of 167 countries and territories, today less than half of the world’s population (45.3%) live in a democracy of some sort, while “more than one-third of the world’s population (36.9%) live under authoritarian rule” (EIU 2023, 3). According to the report, the share of the global population under the hybrid regimes, that is a system which holds both democratic and authoritarian traits, was 17.9%. Flawed democracies in 48 countries comprised 37.3% of the global population. Only 8% of the global population were enjoying full democracy (EIU 2023, 3). In a report published in November 2021, the Stockholm-based organization, the International Institute of Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), stated that, “more than a quarter of the world’s population now live in democratically backsliding countries. Together with those living in outright non-democratic regimes, they make up more than two-thirds of the world’s population” (International IDEA 2021, vii). In the words of the report, The world is becoming more authoritarian as autocratic regimes become even more brazen in their repression and many democratic governments suffer from backsliding by adopting their tactics of restricting free speech and weakening the rule of law, exacerbated by what threatens to become a “new normal” of Covid-19 restrictions. Over a quarter of the world’s population now live under democratically backsliding governments, including some of the world’s largest democracies, such as Brazil, India and three EU members - Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia. (International IDEA 2021)

The trend of de-democratization or reversal of democracy became a phenomenon since 2006. According to Freedom House 2023 report, the present threat to democracy is the product of 17 consecutive years of decline in global freedom. A total of 35 countries suffered declines over the past year [2022], while only 34 improved (Freedom House 2023, 3) (Fig. 1.1). The severe erosion of democracy in India and Brazil has significantly increased the number of people living under non-democratic rule. But it is also the United States, purportedly the bastion of democracy, that “fell victim to authoritarian tendencies itself and was knocked down a significant number of steps on the democratic scale”, the report stated.

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Fig. 1.1 Number of countries improved and declined in terms of freedom and democracy, 2005–2022 (Source Freedom House [2023, 3])

Indeed, this is not for the first time that democracy is facing the challenge—it has happened before. Samuel Huntington’s Wave Theories (Huntington 1991) showed that after the first long wave between 1828 and 1926, there was a reverse wave which lasted for 20 years (1922– 1942); the second wave of democratization (1943–1962) was followed by the second reverse wave of 17 years (1958–1975). At the pick of the first wave, there were 33 democracies in the world. In the second wave, 52 countries were democratic, and the third wave resulted in at least 65 countries having democratic governance. The much cherished and celebrated third wave began in 1975 and continued at least until the early 2000s. But, by 2005, signs became palpable that the situation has changed. This reversal of democracy is variously described as, for example, democratic decline, de-democratization, democratic erosion, democratic decay, democratic recession, democratic regression, and democratic deconsolidation. In this study, we will describe the process as democratic backsliding. Although there is no scholarly consensus on what it entails, backsliding is understood as “a deterioration of qualities associated with democratic governance within any regime” (Waldner and Lust 2018, 95). Backsliding can occur within both democracies and

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autocracies, but our focus is backsliding within democracies or democratic backsliding. Bermeo (2016) defined democratic backsliding as “the state-led debilitation of any political institutions that sustain democracy” (Bermeo 2016, 5). It is elite-driven and involves “successful willful acts by elected powerholders to undermine democracy” (Bakke and Sitter 2020, 3). The third reverse wave, which we describe as democratic backsliding is marked with some distinct new features vis-à-vis the previous two reverse waves. Firstly, the process has affected the countries which were the most vulnerable—the countries which began the journey toward democratization after 1988. According to Freedom House, “of the 23 countries that suffered a negative status change over the past 13 years (moving from Free to Partly Free, or from Partly Free to Not Free), almost two-thirds (61 percent) had earned a positive status change after 1988” (Freedom House 2019). The interruption of transition, either as stagnation or outright reversal, has happened in at least 32 instances between 2000 and 2014, according to available data and analyses. Except for the time of the beginning of the democratization process, there is very little in common to these countries located in various continents and at various stages of development. Secondly, it has impacted both consolidated and new democracies, with the latter being more prone to backsliding (Foa and Mounk 2016). But it is worth noting that the consolidated democracies, countries with a long history of democracy which were expected to have capabilities to endure, have experienced democratic erosion, if not breakdown. The rise of Donald Trump in the United States epitomized this aspect while many of the European countries are also experiencing this phenomenon. India, long described as the world largest democracy, has similarly suffered a serious setback in past years. Thirdly, there are ample signs that citizens of various countries, for disparate reasons, have expressed dissatisfaction about the way democracy has been practiced (Wike et al. 2019; Mounk and Foa 2020). Widespread perception, in many instances backed with enough information, is that democracy has become beholden to a small group of people in respective countries. Fourthly, the efforts to undermine democracy have global backers, such as Russia and China, who not only want to challenge the liberal democratic ideology and system, but also actively pursue the goal with deep pockets (Kendall-Taylor and Shullman 2018; Diamond 2020).

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Fifthly, unlike previous waves of reversal, a new form of undemocratic system—which appears to be democratic but essentially authoritarian— has proliferated, making it difficult to separate them from democratic states. These are described variously; many have called them electoral authoritarianism. In almost all instances, the rulers are claiming to be a democrat. Determined not to let mere facts stand in their way, these rulers have mastered the art of democratic rhetoric which bears little relationship to their practice of governing (Roth 2009). Larry Diamond, in his categorization of regimes, has mentioned three kinds of them which fall into this gray zone (See Table 1.1). Finally, most of the instances of democratic reversal have been taken through apparently democratic processes, most importantly through elections. Andreas Schedler has described elections under such regimes as an “instrument of authoritarianism” (Schedler 2002). Widespread occurrence of the pattern raises two significant questions—why democracy backslides and how democracy backslides. This book develops a theoretical approach to address the second question and examines four cases of spectacular instances of backsliding leading to the transformation of the system of governance to an autocracy. Seven chapters follow this introduction. Chapter 2 delves into the definitions of democracy. It is generally accepted that there is no universal definition of democracy. However, for centuries, political scientists and political philosophers have been discussing various aspects of political systems which provided the foundations of a democratic theory, or in other words, their works outline the elements of democracy. Although the concept of democracy is traced back to Aristotle and Plato, we will focus on the academic discourses since the sixteenth century, particularly on the works of Montesquieu, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, David Hume, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, followed by the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’ evolution of the thoughts of democracy. Discussion on democracy and available definitions have considered democracy not only as a system of governance but also as a set of normative principles. We argue that there are four normative principles of democracy—popular sovereignty, representation, accountability, and freedom of expression. In the twentieth century, political scientists, such as Robert Dahl and Joseph Schumpeter, have highlighted the essential attributes of democracy. Following them we insist that there are three attributes of democracy; they are—(a) universal suffrage; (b) regular, free, competitive, multiparty elections for legislative and chief executive offices;

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Table 1.1 Larry Diamond’s typologies of regimes No.

Regime type

Key characteristics

1

Liberal democracy

2

Electoral democracy

3

Ambiguous regimes

4

Competitive authoritarian

5

Hegemonic electoral authoritarian

6

Politically closed authoritarian

• Free and fair elections for all key positions of power • Solid protection of civil liberties under a strong rule of law • Freedom House rating 1–2 or score 74–100 • Fall in between full-fledged democracy and outright dictatorship • Regular, competitive, and multiparty elections • Feckless and poorly functioning • Fall in between electoral democracy and competitive authoritarianism • Independent observers largely disagree over how to classify them • Unavailability of information about the autonomy of electoral administration and the extent of fairness in elections • Use of formal democratic institutions to obtain and exercise authority • Presence of significant parliamentary opposition • Often violation of democratic rules by the incumbents • Failure to meet minimum conventional standards of democracy • Insufficient space and competitiveness for political opposition, media, and civil society organizations • Elections and democratic institutions as facade in the regimes • Almost all parliamentary seats won by the ruling or dominant party • No architecture for political competition • No political pluralism

Source Diamond (2002)

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and (c) respect for civil and political rights including freedom of expression, assembly, and association as well as a rule of law under which all citizens and agents of the state have true and legal equality. Drawing on this discussion, this chapter develops a working definition based on two aspects—process and goals. In Chapter 3, we examine the available literature on democratic backsliding. In the past decade, there has been a plethora of studies which have examined various aspects of the crisis of democracy, described as erosion, backsliding, and outright collapse. Books such as How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (2018), How Democracy Ends by David Runciman (2018), and Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by Anne Applebaum (2020) have drawn global attention. But other studies—books and essays—have endeavored to provide explanations to the causes of and conditions for the global phenomenon. Country-specific studies, notwithstanding, the existing literature can be broadly divided into four approaches: Historical-institutional (or structural), strategic (or actor-centric), institutional, and regime-specific approach. The structural or historical-institutional approach underscores the institutional legacies of state and political society in explaining the patterns of democratic backsliding, the strategic approach highlights elitedriven strategic moves that result in democratic backsliding, and the institutional approach explains how elected authoritarians shatter political institutions that lead to democratic backsliding. Regime-centric approach examines dynamics specific to a regime without referring to other aspects. We argue that these approaches have several weaknesses, especially because they fail to offer a clear sequence of steps and/or events of democratic backsliding. Based on this critical exploration, Chapter 4 offers a new theoretical framework with two aspects—institutional and ideological. We observe that when authoritarian incumbents-led, institutional mechanisms undermine both procedural and liberal elements of democracy, their ideological narratives justify their actions and the process of democratic backsliding. Therefore, we argue that an institutional-ideological approach, which combines these two aspects, better explains the process of democratic backsliding. The institutional-ideological approach assumes that any process of democratic backsliding includes four elements: agents, contexts, audience, and strategies. Each of them has a distinct role to play and a combination of them produces a pathway for debilitation of democracy.

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As mentioned previously, democratic backsliding has become a global phenomenon and according to Freedom House, in 2021, at least 60 countries have faced some decline in the quality of democracy. Larry Diamond (2022) highlighted some of these countries. He writes, Tunisia is “morphing into a dictatorship”. Elections in “Bangladesh, Hungary, and Turkey have long ceased to be democratic”. “Democratic norms and institutions are under attack” in Brazil, India, and Mexico. “In Africa, seven democracies have slid back into autocracy since 2015, including Benin and Burkina Faso” (Diamond 2022, 182–183). From this diverse pool of countries, we have examined four countries of four geographic regions—South Asia, South America, Central/Eastern Europe, and greater Middle East. Respectively, these countries are— Bangladesh, Bolivia, Hungary, and Turkey. These countries featured consistently in the annual reports of Freedom House and V-Dem Institute for the 2010–2022 period as cases of democratic backsliding. They also represent dissimilar historical, cultural, political, and demographic characteristics. We have observed a similar pattern in the backsliding processes of these dissimilar case studies in terms of sequences of the processes, though each of these countries has a particular inflection point of unraveling backsliding practices. The sequence and process of democratic backsliding of these cases are described in detail in Chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8. The ongoing democratic backsliding in various countries, in an incremental manner, is resulting in a centralization of power in the hands of the executive branch, described as executive aggrandizement. Frantz and Kendall-Taylor (2017) showed that of the authoritarian shift between 2000 and 2010, a staggering 75% led to personalistic dictatorships. Such rulers are now labeled as neo-autocrats. They rule not only based on institutional power but also through constructing an ideology which creates an aura of invincibility. They are projected as irreplaceable. In the concluding chapter of the book, we discuss the contributions of this book to the existing body of knowledge on democratic backsliding, provide a comparative picture of the four case studies based on the four elements of our proposed institutional-ideological approach and look at the importance of understanding sequences in halting the ongoing phenomenon of the rise of the autocrats.

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References Applebaum, Anne. 2020. Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism. New York: Doubleday/Penguin Random House. Bakke, Elisabeth, and Nick Sitter. 2020. “The EU’s Enfants Terribles: Democratic Backsliding in Central Europe Since 2010.” Perspectives on Politics: 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592720001292. Bermeo, Nancy. 2016. “On Democratic Backsliding.” Journal of Democracy 27 (1): 5–19. Diamond, Larry. 2002. “Thinking About Hybrid Regimes.” Journal of Democracy 13 (2): 21–35. Diamond, Larry. 2020. Ill Wind: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency. New York: Penguin Press. Diamond, Larry. 2022. “All Democracy Is Global.” Foreign Affairs, Centennial Issue (October): 182–197. Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). 2023. “Democracy Index 2022: Frontline Democracy and the Battle for Ukraine.” https://pages.eiu.com/rs/753RIQ-438/images/DI-final-version-report.pdf?mkt_tok=NzUzLVJJUS00Mzg AAAGNSYm1lulapfhmu-9SDf3_qGrVipBRlv68MqUgD5f9Pic8BLOj0SsFD ucjobh586CSLx3NxMVMs5xk1BMDlrLXpBlZnwRlFwWlwUqU3Hb9. Foa, Roberto S., and Yascha Mounk. 2016. “The Democratic Disconnect.” Journal of Democracy 27 (3): 5–17. Frantz, Erica, and Andrea Kendall-Taylor. 2017. “The Evolution of Autocracy: Why Authoritarianism Is Becoming More Formidable.” Survival 59 (5): 57– 68. Freedom House. 2019. “Freedom in the World 2019: Democracy in Retreat.” https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/Feb2019_FH_F ITW_2019_Report_ForWeb-compressed.pdf. Freedom House. 2022. “Freedom in the World 2022: The Global Expansion of Authoritarian Rule.” https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/202202/FIW_2022_PDF_Booklet_Digital_Final_Web.pdf. Freedom House. 2023. “Freedom in the World 2023: Making 50 Years in the Struggle of Democracy.” https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/ 2023-03/FIW_World_2023_DigtalPDF.pdf. Huntington, Samuel P. 1991. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. International IDEA. 2021. “Democracy Faces Perfect Storm as the World Becomes More Authoritarian.” https://www.idea.int/news-media/news/ democracy-faces-perfect-storm-world-becomes-more-authoritarian. Kendall-Taylor, Andrea, and David O. Shullman. 2018. “How Russia and China Undermine Democracy Can the West Counter the Threat?”. Foreign Affairs, 2 October. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-1002/how-russia-and-china-undermine-democracy.

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Levitsky, Steven, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2018. How Democracies Die. New York: Crown Publishing. Mounk, Yascha, and Roberto Stefan Foa. 2020. “This Is How Democracy Dies.” The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/ confidence-democracy-lowest-point-record/605686/. Roth, Kenneth. 2009. “Despots Masquerading as Democrats.” Journal of Human Rights Practice 1 (1): 140–155. Runciman, David. 2018. How Democracy Ends. New York: Basic Books. Schedler, Andreas. 2002. “The Menu of Manipulation”. Journal of Democracy 13 (2): 36–50. Waldner, David, and Ellen Lust. 2018. “Unwelcome Change: Coming to Terms with Democratic Backsliding.” Annual Review of Political Science 21: 93–113. Wike, Richard, Laura Silver, and Alexandra Castillo. 2019. “Many Across the Globe Are Dissatisfied with How Democracy Is Working.” Pew Research Center, 29 April. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/04/29/manyacross-the-globe-are-dissatisfied-with-how-democracy-is-working/.

CHAPTER 2

What Is Democracy?

Democracy is one of the most widely used and highly contested terms in political science and politics. On the one hand, everyone agrees that there is no universal definition of democracy, while on the other hand, almost all rulers, particularly those whose system of governance resemble autocracy, claim that their democracy is the ideal one. Perhaps the most glaring example of recent times is the document of the Chinese Communist Party published in December 2021. In the wake of the Democracy Summit organized by the White House, China’s State Council Information Office issued a white paper titled, “China: Democracy That Works” (Xinhua 2021). A country whose constitution stipulates its system of governance as “people’s democratic dictatorship” (emphasis added) and accords the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) a monopoly over power, claims its system as the ideal vision of democracy. Undoubtedly, the use of “ideal” is a contentious proposition on many counts. Robert Dahl, the foremost living theorist of democracy, noted that the very term “ideal” in the context of democracy is ambiguous. The term can be understood in two senses, he argued: In one sense, a system is ideal if it is considered apart from, or in the absence of, certain empirical conditions, which, in actuality, are always present to some degree. Ideal systems in this sense are used to identify what features of an actual system are essential to it, or what underlying laws are responsible, in combination with empirical factors, for a system’s © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 A. Riaz and Md S. Rana, How Autocrats Rise, Global Political Transitions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-7580-8_2

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behavior in actual circumstances. In another sense, a system is ideal if it is ‘best’ from a moral point of view. An ideal system in this sense is a goal toward which a person or society ought to strive (even if it is not perfectly attainable in practice) and a standard against which the moral worth of what has been achieved, or of what exists, can be measured. (Dahl 1982)

If we consider the former as empirical interpretation of the ideal, the latter is evidently the normative version. Comprehending democracy warrants exploration of both normative and empirical notions. For constructing and elucidating the notion of democracy we propose adopting a “puzzle” metaphor that includes at least two pieces—the foundational principles of democracy and the essential attributes of democratic systems. Political theorists have never shied away from exploring the essential elements and principles of democracy. Such endeavors can be traced back to political philosophers such as Aristotle of the classical period in Greece. But it has taken the center stage of academic discourse since the sixteenth century, thanks to the contributions of Montesquieu, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, David Hume, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, to name but a few. Their works span over a century, address a wide range of topics, and in many instances, not only offer different perspectives but also advance contesting positions. But their arguments’ point of departure is against an absolutist state and insists on personal liberty. Hobbes (1588–1679) had a penchant for absolutism, primarily on the grounds of individualism, but he too insisted on a social contract among the people and the assurance of protection provided by the sovereign in exchange for giving away some rights (Hobbes 2014 [1651]). Locke (1632–1704), often described as the “reluctant democrat”, has not only challenged Hobbes on the social contract issue, but expanded the concept further, and argued that the contract must be between the governed and the state. His insistence that some rights are inalienable, that the King does not hold absolute power, and that people can be governed only by consent, laid down the basic principles of democracy, although Locke did not outrightly reject the need for monarchy. His emphasis on the importance of government by consent and that consent can be revoked if the government and its deputies fail to sustain the “good of the governed” remains the fundamental premise of the relationship between the government and the governed in any democracy. He has further underscored

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the need for separation of legislative and executive power (Locke 2016 [1689]). Montesquieu (1689–1755) insisted that there are three types of governments: republican governments, which can take either democratic or aristocratic forms, monarchies, and despotisms. But most importantly, he underscored the sovereignty of the people—that they are the sovereign. Whatever way they govern themselves—either through ministers or their senators, Montesquieu insists “they must have the power of choosing their ministers and senators for themselves” (Bok 2018). The form of a democratic government makes the laws governing suffrage and voting fundamental. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), particularly in his oft-quoted book titled Social Contract (1998 [1762]), emphasized that people will enter the social contract, which requires giving up some rights, but not to a king, rather to “the whole community”, all the people. The people then exercised their “general will” to make laws for the “public good”. According to Rousseau, all political power must reside with the people, exercising their general will. “Sovereign authority is the people making the rules by which they live”. The “general will” will be implemented by the government, it is assumed by almost all the theorists mentioned thus far; the question that remained is how we ensure that it will not be engaged in excess. Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) and James Mill (1773–1836) addressed this issue in detail. For them, accountability of the governors to the governed is an important issue. Bentham wrote, “A democracy… has for its characteristic object and effect… securing its members against oppression and depredation at the hands of these functionaries which it employs for its defense” (Bentham quoted in Held 1983, 15). As such, democracy requires protection from despotic powers, even from those who have been assigned to act for the purpose of the general will. Both Bentham and Mill, therefore, insisted on “vote, secret ballot, competition between potential political leaders (representatives), elections, separation of powers and liberty of the press, speech, and public association could the interests of the community in general be sustained” (Held 1983, 15). John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) addressed two issues, democracy and liberty, in his essays titled, “Considerations on Representative Government” [1861], and “On Liberty” [1859] (Mill 2015). Mill argued that liberty is vital to our lifestyle; without liberty people will be stifled and unable to explore new ideas, make discoveries, and fully develop as people.

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The best defense of liberty is an active population living in a democratic system. Of the three kinds of liberty that Mill discusses at length, the first one is, freedom of thought and emotion, that is the freedom of expression. Mill states that the “establishment of constitutional checks by which the consent of the community, or of a body of some sort, supposed to represent its interests, was made a necessary condition to some of the more important acts of the governing power”. Brief summaries of the works of prominent political theorists show that there are four foundational normative elements of democracy—popular sovereignty, representation, accountability, and freedom of expression. Popular sovereignty means that government is created by and subject to the will of the people. This notion not only rejects the despotic power or oligarchic rule, but underscores the rule of law, that is equality in the eyes of the law, as the bedrock of democracy. Sovereignty is inalienable, therefore cannot be appropriated in the name of divine power, development, national security, or a political ideology. Representation is a way of providing consent by the governed to those who govern. The US Constitution, for example, affirms that life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness are inalienable rights, and “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”. The consent of the governed provides legitimacy to the government and the moral right to govern. In the words of English poet John Milton, “The power of kings and magistrates is nothing else, but what is only derivative, transferred and committed to them in trust from the people, to the common good of them all, in whom the power yet remains fundamentally, and cannot be taken from them, without a violation of their natural birthright”. Accountability, a concept which has evolved and continues to evolve, is the basis of checks and balances on the one hand, while ensuring the role of citizens in the daily functioning of government, on the other. Accountability should not be considered as a vertical mechanism only. For a viable and functioning democracy accountability means vertical, horizontal, and societal. Vertical accountability is the election system, while horizontal accountability of the government comes from a network of relatively autonomous powers, which are often the constitutionally mandated organizations such as the anti-corruption and human rights bodies; societal accountability is to citizens’ associations. Freedom of expression encompasses freedom of speech, of the press, of association, of assembly, and is a constitutive element of human rights. US

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Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo in 1937 introduced the notion of “preferred position”, which maintained that there was a “hierarchy of constitutional rights” in which free speech would always be privileged over others, and declared that freedom of expression “is the matrix, the indispensable condition of nearly every other form of freedom” (Palko v. State of Connecticut, December 1937). Democracy is not only a set of normative principles, but also a way of governance. As the ideology gained salience and more countries adopted the idea, especially in the twentieth century, political scientists ventured to explain what democracy means. Works of a host of political scientists contributed to the conceptualization of democracy; among them Joseph Schumpeter, Samuel Huntington, Adam Przeworski, Giovanni Sartori, Juan Linz, and Robert Dahl, are important. Their works have focused, in large measure, on identifying the attributes of democracy as practiced. Their notion of ideal democracy was the second sense of “ideal” that Dahl discussed. Schumpeter defined democracy as an “institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote” (Schumpeter 1950, 296). In the view of Huntington, democracy is “a political system in which the most powerful collective decision makers are selected through fair, honest, and periodic elections in which candidates freely compete for votes and in which virtually all the adult population is eligible to vote” (Huntington 1991, 7) and Przeworski claimed that “democracy is a system in which parties lose elections” (Przeworski 1991), and that it is hence characterized by: (i) ex ante uncertainty, (ii) ex post irreversibility, and (iii) repeatability. According to Dahl, besides universal suffrage there are seven prerequisites for a system to be considered “democratic”: (1) elected officials, (2) free and fair elections, (3) inclusive suffrage, (4) the right to run for office, (5) freedom of expression, (6) alternative sources of information, and (7) associational autonomy (Dahl 1989, 221). Dahl insists that democracy requires “not only free, fair, and competitive elections, but also the freedoms that make them truly meaningful (such as freedom of organization and freedom of expression), alternative sources of information, and institutions to ensure that government policies depend on the votes and preferences of citizens”.

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Drawing on this tradition of studies we maintain that three attributes are essential to democracy: (i) universal suffrage, (ii) regular, free, competitive, multiparty elections for legislative and chief executive offices, and (iii) respect for civil and political rights including freedom of expression, assembly, and association as well as a rule of law under which all citizens and agents of the state have true and legal equality. These attributes comprise the minimalist definition of democracy and should be considered as a package instead of mutually exclusive indicators. That means to be called a democratic country, one must meet all three criteria. Meeting these criteria to become a democracy is just as important as for that democracy to be consolidated, especially to avoid a reverse turn. For a democracy to be consolidated, as Przeworski (1992, 106) insists, four issues need to be resolved: (i) an institutional framework for contestation must be constructed and stabilized, (ii) a competitive representative regime must be established, (iii) economic conflicts must be channeled into the democratic institutions, and (iv) the military must be tucked under civilian control. Thus, democratic consolidation requires that a democratic regime has these issues settled and institutionalized and continues to last well into the future. Drawing from these perspectives, this study takes into cognizance two definitions of democracy. First, the Schumpeterian definition—“an institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote” (Schumpeter 1950, 296). The second definition offered by Munck (2016, 4) insists that “a country is democratic if it guarantees three freedoms to all individuals: freedom of choice, freedom from tyranny, and equality in freedom”. While the first definition highlights democracy as an institutional process, the second definition concentrates on the goals of a democratic system. This study contends that both process and goals of a democracy are essential to understand democracy, particularly an instance of democratic backsliding. To identify an instance of democratic backsliding, one should look at three dimensions of a democracy: political and civil rights, electoral procedures, and rule of law (Waldner and Lust 2018; Jee et al. 2019). In cases of backsliding, authoritarian incumbents and their elites undermine political and civil rights, especially freedom of expression and freedom of association through regulations, financial incentives, and informal or illegal practices (Jee et al. 2019, 7–8). They change electoral conditions and institutions for the next race to favor the ruling party as to serve to

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limit free and fair elections. Additionally, since the rule of law requires horizontal separation of powers between the executive and the legislature and the judiciary, authoritarian rulers undermine such powers through legal changes, purges, nepotism, clientelism, and a range of other mechanisms. Thus, it can be stated that democratic backsliding involves an elite-driven debilitation in civil and political rights, electoral procedures, and rule of law within a democracy.

References Bok, Hilary. 2018. “Baron de Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2018 ed., edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/entries/montesquieu/. Dahl, Robert. 1982. Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy: Autonomy vs. Control. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Dahl, Robert. 1989. Democracy and Its Critics. New Haven: Yale University Press. Held, David. 1983. “Introduction: Central Perspective on the Modern State.” In States and Societies, edited by David Held, James Anderson, Bram Giben, Stuart Hall, Laurence Harris, Paul Lewis, Noel Parker, and Ben Turok. New York: New York University Press. Hobbes, Thomas. 2014. Leviathan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Huntington, Samuel P. 1991. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Jee, Haemin, Hans Lueders, and Rachel Myrick. 2019. “Towards a Unified Approach to Research on Democratic Backsliding.” Democratization. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2021.2010709. Locke, John. 2016. Second Treatises of Government and a Letter Concerning Toleration. Edited with introduction and endnotes by Mark Goldie. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mill, John Stuart. 2015. On Liberty, Utilitarianism and Other Essays. Edited with introduction and notes by Mark Philip and Frederick Rosen. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Munck, Gerardo L. 2016. “What Is Democracy? A Reconceptualization of the Quality of Democracy.” Democratization 23 (1): 1–26. Przeworski, Adam. 1991. Democracy and the Market. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Przeworski, Adam. 1992. “The Games of Transition.” In Issues in Democratic Consolidation: The New South American Democracies in Comparative Perspective, edited by Scott Mainwaring, Guillermo O’Donnell, and J. Samuel Valenzuela. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

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Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1998. The Social Contract or, Principles of Political Right. Translated by H. J. Tozer and Introduction by Derek Matravers. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited. Schumpeter, Joseph. 1950. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper. Waldner, David, and Ellen Lust. 2018. “Unwelcome Change: Coming to Terms with Democratic Backsliding.” Annual Review of Political Science 21: 93–113. Xinhua. 2021. “Full Text: China: Democracy That Works.” 4 December. http:// www.news.cn/english/2021-12/04/c_1310351231.htm.

CHAPTER 3

Understanding Democratic Backsliding

Even before the reversal of existing democracies became a global phenomenon and easily discernable in a significant number of countries, political scientists began to ponder how to describe the emerging trend of moving away from democracy. In the 1990s, while many authors were euphoric about proliferation of democracy around the world, some were expressing pessimism and suggesting its potential “demise” (Schmitter 1994), “decay” (Schedler 1998), and “death” (O’Donell 1992). This pessimism became more explicit in the mid-2000s, and scholars began to talk of “collapse” (Diskin et al. 2005) and “breakdown” (Svolik 2008). By the second decade of the century, a pattern had emerged which some scholars were modestly calling “democratic erosion” (Plattner 2014), others were insisting on “death” (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018) and the “end” (Runciman 2018) of democracy. Some authors, for example, Steven Levitsky, shifted his position from calling the “democratic recession a myth” (Levitsky and Way 2015) to a worrying situation. The growing number of countries where democratic rules and norms were being compromised by the incumbents was viewed, not as a discrepancy between “excessive post–Cold War optimism” (Levitsky and Way 2015) and the hard reality of “stable” situation, but a serious downward spiral. It is in this context that the term “democratic backsliding” emerged. Nancy Bermeo (2016), Waldner and Lust (2018), and Bakke and Sitter

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 A. Riaz and Md S. Rana, How Autocrats Rise, Global Political Transitions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-7580-8_3

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(2020) provide perspectives as to what is meant by “democratic backsliding”. Bermeo (2016) defined democratic backsliding as “the state-led debilitation of any political institutions that sustain democracy” (Bermeo 2016, 5). According to Waldner and Lust (2018) backsliding refers to “a deterioration of qualities associated with democratic governance within any regime” (Waldner and Lust 2018, 95). In the words of Bakke and Sitter, the process of backsliding is elite-driven and involves “successful willful acts by elected powerholders to undermine democracy” (Bakke and Sitter 2020, 3). The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) defined backsliding as “a particular form of democratic erosion involving the gradual and intentional weakening of checks and balances and curtailment of civil liberties” (International IDEA 2019, 2). It further notes that “Democratic backsliding is an incremental, partly concealed institutional change that is legitimized by references to popular electoral mandates, majority decisions and laws. It is often driven by the intentional dismantling of accountability institutions” (International IDEA 2019, 33). Haggard and Kaufman consider democratic backsliding as “a result of purposeful effort of autocrats, who come to power through electoral means, to undermine … three constitutive elements of democracy [electoral process, protection of basic political rights and civil liberties, and horizontal checks]” (Haggard and Kaufman 2021a, 4). Two points regarding democratic backsliding need to be mentioned here. Firstly, the process of democratic backsliding is incremental and open-ended (International IDEA 2019, 33). It is incremental in the sense that sliding takes place in a smooth and continuous manner, and is not rapid nor episodic (Bakke and Sitter 2020, 3). It is open-ended in the sense that the backsliding process may or may not lead to regime change (Bakke and Sitter 2020, 3). Secondly, the process unfolds within a broad context of politics. The contexts of the backsliding process emphasize the understanding of the socio-economic and political contexts of a country at a particular time, from which and when the process emerges. Despite emerging clarity on the definition of “democratic backsliding” and the acceptance that backsliding can occur within both democracies and autocracies (Waldner and Lust 2018, 95), two diametrically opposite criticisms have been lodged against it. On the one hand, some have suggested that it is too expansive (Wolkenstein 2022), while others insist that it fails to capture the breadth of the global phenomenon. According to Lührmann and Lindberg (2019),

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We find the use of term backsliding problematic for three reasons: First, democratic backsliding implies a decline “in terms of” democracy and thus a conceptual extension beyond the democratic regime spectrum would border on conceptual stretching. From our point of view, an already autocratic country cannot undergo “democratic” backsliding into a deeper dictatorship. Second, the term suggests that regimes slide “back” to where they were before whereas in reality, they may develop in a new direction, to a different form of authoritarianism, for example. Finally, “sliding” makes it sound like an involuntary, unconscious process, which does not do justice to conscious actions political actors take to change a regime. It simply invokes the wrong kind of notion about the process. (Lührmann and Lindberg 2019, 5)

Lührmann and Lindberg, and the institution they are based in—Varieties of Democracy Institute (V-Dem)—suggest that the process be called autocratization. In this study, we have explored the reversal in democratic countries; thus, we adopted the term democratic backsliding.

Measurement of Backsliding Measuring democratic backsliding, indicators to gauge whether a country is experiencing a backsliding, has two elements to begin with—a continuous observation of the trend, as opposed to a snapshot, across critical elements of democracy, and understanding that what is being measured is not what is the state of democracy at a particular point but instead whether it has regressed over time. International IDEA uses four elements of democracy to determine the pattern: representative government, fundamental rights, checks on government, and impartial administration (International IDEA 2017, 77). Besides, the organization also analyzes the impacts of the changes in these four dimensions of democracy on participatory engagement. Haggard and Kaufman suggest three indicators—horizontal checks and balances, state of political and civil rights, and fairness of the electoral system (Haggard and Kaufman 2021a). Although precisely which quantitative variables are considered for these indicators vary, similarities among the suggested variables are worth noting.

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Background and Drivers One of the key elements of the discussion on democratic backsliding is what socio-political background factors prompt the process of democratic backsliding. In other words, researchers and analysts have tried to identify the drivers of erosion, decline, and eventual collapse of democracy in various countries. Although there are specific situations pertaining to each country which have played significant roles in democratic backsliding, there are three developments which contribute to the process. They are—polarization, social media’s role in social fragmentation, and decreased support for democratic norms and practices. Democracy requires dissent, differences of opinion, and vigorous debates on issues and policies. It engenders some polarization. The polarization among the elites—the political actors and parties, offers the voters clear alternatives and discussion on programs and principles, thus contributing to the vibrancy of democracy. But in recent decades these differences have been transformed into a tool of toxic polarization (Haggard and Kaufman 2021a, 14–39; International IDEA 2019; Carothers and O’Donohue 2019; McCoy and Somer 2018). Polarization has permeated the grassroots and become mass polarization with an affective aspect as a central element. Affective polarization fosters a dislike for others rather than a disagreement, segregation rather than reconciliation and a sense of moral superiority rather than equality. Deepening of polarization has engendered a mindset of “us” versus “them”. Debates have been turned into a way of vilification; division has been made into a chasm. Often the opponents are portrayed as enemies, not only of the party but of the nation and state, and therefore, it is insisted that they need to be vanquished. Differences have been wrapped around the notion of moral positions; they are presented as irreconcilable differences and mutually exclusive camps have been created on purpose for political gains. This kind of polarization has become pernicious because it has led to a “zero-sum” game and thus promotes “victory at any cost”, even if it requires abandoning the basic principles of democracy. Polarization has resulted from and is then accelerated by the rhetoric of political leaders, especially those who either seek or want to retain power, and falsehood. As the chasm is constructed, political leaders with the agenda to undermine democracy use incendiary rhetoric against people and democratic institutions. Salil Shetty, the secretary general of Amnesty International, on the occasion of the publication of its 2016 annual report, pointed

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to the emerging pattern saying, “The limits of what is acceptable have shifted. Politicians are shamelessly and actively legitimizing all sorts of hateful rhetoric and policies based on people’s identity: misogyny, racism, and homophobia” (Amnesty International 2017). But these attacks not only targeted individuals and groups, but also the democratic institutions with a goal to undermine public confidence. The second conducive element comes from the proliferation of social media. Once considered as the harbinger of democracy it has become a tool to undermine the fundamentals of democracy. Social media have become the principal vehicle for spreading the falsehood and amplifying the message. Two aspects of this technological facilitator are important. First, there are well-coordinated efforts by state actors, such as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea in creating fake news. These efforts, on the one hand, provide false information, and, on the other hand, contribute to the increasing schism in society. Second, social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter facilitate the interaction between like-minded individuals and reinforce the notion of a divided society. It is now well documented that profit, emotional response, and popularity have shaped the Facebook algorithm which contributes to ideological homophily, which is defined as the tendency to choose to associate with others like oneself in political views (Abreu and Jeon 2020). By making the truth a casualty, these leaders, and the tech giants have created a serious threat to democracy all around the world. Social media’s immense reach, particularly as a source of news which shapes the audiences’ world view, is in part due to the changing role of the mainstream media. Corporate influences combined with legal restrictions imposed on them have weakened their influence. Besides, in many countries, media’s ownership has been overtaken by the allies of the government, thus has become an unofficial spokesperson of the regimes. These media tend to set an agenda that is comfortable for the regime. The third conducive element is dissatisfaction among citizens about the performance of democratic institutions. Several surveys of citizens of the consolidated democracy found that the people are dissatisfied with the way the democratic system is working in their countries (Wike et al. 2019). As noted by a survey conducted by Pew Research Center in 2019 in 27 countries, “most believe elections bring little change, that politicians are corrupt and out of touch and that courts do not treat people fairly” (Wike et al. 2019).

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Theories and Approaches In the past decades, with the recognition of the incidences of democratic backsliding, two significant questions are raised—why democracy backslides and how democracy backslides. The literature of democratic backsliding, thus, can be discussed based on these two directions. In the early stage of the phenomenon, an array of literature addressed the first question and explored the causes of democratic backsliding (Cooley 2015; Kendall-Taylor and Frantz 2016; Tomini and Wagemann 2017; Jakli et al. 2018; Gandhi 2018; Waldner and Lust 2018; Lührmann and Lindberg 2019; Luo and Przeworski 2021; Meyerrose 2021; Diamond 2022), while relatively few studies have explored the question of how democracy backslides, or the process of democratic backsliding (Bermeo 2016; Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018; Andersen 2019; Warburton and Aspinall 2019). The studies on the causes of democratic backsliding argued that the following are the proximate and structural causes of ongoing backsliding. Though scholars disagree on the predominance of some causes more than others, they largely agree to a plurality of explanatory causes contributing to backsliding. Broadly, scholars offered two sets of causes for the occurrence of democratic backsliding: domestic and international. Domestically, the causes were divided into economic, political institutional, and social factors. Economic factors, such as poor economic and infrastructural development and higher economic inequality, were elevated as the central pillar for democratic backsliding and regime transitions (Jakli et al. 2018, 274; Waldner and Lust 2018, 101). Political institutional conditions such as a higher degree of fragmentation in the party system, excessive concentration of executive power, and poor institutional checks and balances trigger democratic backsliding by creating instability in the political system (Tomini and Wagemann 2017, 7). More importantly, a substantial consensus exists among scholars that the contemporary phenomenon of democratic backsliding has its roots in political institutions. Democratic backsliding is more likely under poor institutional configurations as they degrade government’s horizontal and vertical accountability as well as performance and efficaciousness (Waldner and Lust 2018, 99). Not to mention, political actors or elites are the prime movers in molding political institutions to undermine democracy. As Gandhi (2018) insisted, democracy is reversed by unscrupulous elites who use institutions of democracy to entrench their political and

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economic power (Gandhi 2018, 11). They do so mostly by using legal means, making the whole game of autocratization as a “legal façade” (Lührmann and Lindberg 2019, 1105). Regarding social factors, ethno-linguistic fractionalization, intergroup conflicts, and social class divisions create conditions for social and political instability, leading to democratic backsliding. More specifically, these social conditions underpin the seeds for polarization and populism, and democracy is highly likely to backslide under either of them or when they work in tandem. Luo and Przeworski (2021) insisted on this line of argument. Under polarization, citizens seek to remove the incumbent regardless of the attractiveness of the opposition leader and the incumbent stays in power by undermining democracy (Luo and Przeworski 2021, 9). In contrast, under populism, citizens knowingly or unknowingly consent to the erosion of democracy because they find the incumbent highly appealing, leading the incumbent to take free steps to bolster and concentrate executive power by undermining democracy (Luo and Przeworski 2021, 6–7). The incumbents, in such circumstances, appoint loyalists in key positions of power (e.g., the judiciary and the security services) and enforce censorship by buying independent media and control others through legislations. The insidiousness of this strategy poses one of the most significant factors in democratic backsliding because it makes it hard to discern when the break with democracy actually occurs (Kendall-Taylor and Frantz 2016). Apart from domestic level factors, international conditions played a key role in the occurrence of democratic backsliding. There has been a major shift in liberal democratic norms and narratives across the globe. On the one hand, norms of liberal democracy such as liberty, freedom, and civil rights, have been significantly eroding and subsequently replaced by counter-norms, e.g., state security, civilizational diversity, and traditional values, reshaping the international environment (Cooley 2015, 50). On the other hand, a counter narrative has been taking hold that “democracies are corrupt and worn out” and “the future, therefore, lies with stronger, more efficient authoritarian regimes, e.g., China” (Diamond 2022, 5). Together, these changes contribute to the making of an international political climate conducive to democratic backsliding by reinforcing the advent of alternative providers of international public goods. Additionally, an aspect of economic globalization—international organizations (IOs)—has also unintentionally contributed to democratic backsliding

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by limiting domestic policy options and supporting institutions outside elections and executives (Meyerrose 2021). Though the aim of this book is to examine how democracies backslide or the process of democratic backsliding, leading to the rise of autocrats, understanding the above causes and conditions help navigate the processes and mechanisms in which democratic backsliding takes place. It is important to note that there is no single, universal framework for explaining the process because democratic backsliding, itself, “is not mono-causal”, rather multiple causes trigger multiple streams and mechanisms which might sometimes overlap (Gerschewski 2021, 45). This is reflected in the existing literature which proposes broadly four approaches to understanding the processes and causal mechanisms of democratic backsliding. They include structural, strategic, institutional, and regime-centric approaches. Table 3.1 presents a summary of the central arguments of these approaches and the list of authors contributing to each specific approach. The following section offers a detailed discussion of each of these approaches. First, the structural approach offers to understand how structural and contextual causes pave the way for anti-pluralist actors to assume power and undermine democracy, leading to democratic backsliding. Advocating this approach, Andersen (2019) offered two models of backsliding, distinguishing based on the differences between exogenous and endogenous causes. The “exogenous shocks model” insists that state and political institutions may lead to democratic backsliding due to the public grievances generated by international events such as global economic crises and terrorist attacks (Andersen 2019, 658). In contrast, the “endogenous change model” suggests that due to the failure of implementing racial inclusion and equal distribution of wealth and income causing anger and grievances, a populist strongman may emerge at the scene leading to democratic backsliding (Andersen 2019, 658–659). Gerschewski (2021) expands the exogenous-endogenous arguments but substantially differs from Andersen (2019) on two grounds. First, for Gerschewski (2021, 48), the exogenous causes “do not necessarily need to come from the international arena” as they can also emerge domestically. The major dividing line is to understand “whether the cause is generated within or outside the democratic institutions that one studies” (Gerschewski 2021, 49). In this formulation, ethnic-political cleavages can constitute an exogenous cause, while rediscovery or activation of a previously suppressed or suspended institutional practice can be an example of an

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Table 3.1 Four approaches to processes of democratic backsliding Approaches

Central argument regarding backsliding

Authors

Structural approach

• Structural and contextual causes such as economic crisis, inequality, and polarization, open door for autocratic incumbents to assume power, who then subvert democratic institutions and limit civil and political rights to slowly destroy democracy • Backsliding takes place through different elite-led strategies or modes of autocratization that limit political competition, restrict civil and political rights, and modify institutions surrounding the executive’s preferences. The selection of the strategy is contingent upon context-specific circumstances and preferences of erosion agents • Backsliding process begins at the hands of elected autocratic incumbents and occurs through the reliance on constitutional and legal changes and institutional reforms to consolidate executive power, to restrict political competition and media freedom, and to manipulate elections • Backsliding may take place following distinct pathways within specific regime contexts that are likely to differ from the pathways offered by established approaches as well as those followed by other regimes

Andersen (2019), Haggard and Kaufmann (2019, 2021b), Gerschewski (2021), and Lührmann (2021)

Strategic approach

Institutional approach

Regime specific approach

Bermeo (2016), Cassani and Tomini (2019), and Bajpai and Kureshi (2022)

Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018), Ginsburg and Huq (2018), and Scheppele (2018)

Hanley and Vachudova (2018), Warburton and Aspinall (2019), and Bernhard (2021)

Source Authors’ compilation

endogenous cause. Second, democratic erosion is exogenously driven, while endogenous causes lead to democratic decay, but the key to understanding democratic regression or backsliding is that both exogenous and endogenous causes involve different causal mechanisms (Gerschewski 2021, 46).

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A further development of the structural explanations can be traced in the works of Haggard and Kaufmann (2019, 2021b) and Lührmann (2021), who demonstrated how structurally induced causes determine different stages or causal processes of democratic backsliding. For Haggard and Kaufmann(2019, 418; 2021a, 27–28), three interrelated causal processes are associated with reversion from democratic rule. The first stage constitutes social and political polarization that contributes to government dysfunction and lack of trust in institutions which, in turn, open doors for autocratic electoral appeals. The second stage centers on to what extent the would-be autocrats can concentrate executive power by gaining legislative support. In the third stage, executive powers are used to gradually subvert democratic institutions and curtail civil and political rights, making the process not only difficult to detect, but also hard to counter until it is too late. These stages resemble the three ideal–typical stages of autocratization, offered by Lührmann (2021, 1017–1018). Structural and contextual causes generate “citizens’ discontent with democratic parties and mounts (Stage 1), which enables adept anti-pluralists to rise to power in elections (Stage 2), and then to erode to the extent that is possible given existing constraints”. The relevance of the structural approach and the above causal mechanisms can be found in Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela (Haggard and Kaufmann 2019); and some extreme instances such as Nicaragua, Serbia, Ukraine, and Zambia (Haggard and Kaufmann 2021a). Second, the strategic or agent-based approach explains a series of elite-driven strategic moves that lead to democratic backsliding. Bermeo (2016, 8) argued that the current trends in de-democratization follow three paths—promissory coups, executive aggrandizement, and strategic manipulation of election. Promissory coups suggest “the ouster of an elected government as a defense of democratic legality and making a public promise to hold elections and restore democracy as soon as possible” (Bermeo 2016, 8). Executive aggrandizement occurs when elected executives check the power of the opposition forces, by undertaking a series of institutional changes, so that they cannot challenge the executives’ preferences (Bermeo 2016, 10). Strategic manipulation of election refers to “a range of actions, aimed at tilting the electoral playing field in favor of incumbents” (Bermeo 2016, 13). It takes place by restricting media access, using government funds for incumbent campaigns, keeping opposition candidates off the ballot, hampering voter registration, packing electoral commissions, and harassing opponents. The strategic moves

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contributing to democratic backsliding can be traced in several cases such as promissory coups in Madagascar (2009) and Mali (2012); executive aggrandizement in Turkey and Ecuador (Bermeo 2016, 9–12); and strategic manipulation of elections in Bangladesh (Riaz 2021) and Venezuela (Corrales 2020; Kneuer 2021). However, Cassani and Tomini (2019, 60) sharply challenged Bermeo’s categorization, insisting that such categories “are sometimes ambiguous concerning the fundamental divisions”. While Bermeo (2016, 6–8) suggested that coups by military and blatant electoral fraud are rare, Cassani and Tomini (2019, 61) insisted that military interventions and manipulation of the entire electoral process are prevalent and significant modes of autocratization. Analyzing the trends of autocratizing regimes in the post-Cold War period, Cassani and Tomini (2019, 61), thus, identified five modes of autocratization—military intervention, electoral process manipulation, political rights violation, civil liberties restriction, and horizontal accountability loosening. The relevance of these strategic modes contributing to democratic backsliding can be traced in Ecuador, Moldova, Rwanda, Thailand, and several other countries in Latin America, Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa (Cassani and Tomini 2019, 96). It is important to note that these modes of autocratization may or may not follow specific sequences, depending on the intention and the ability of erosion agents as well as the opportunity to access and perpetuate power (Kneuer 2021, 1447–1448). Additionally, depending on the context-specific circumstances, erosion agents may utilize different strategies, such as institutional capture and ideational capture, as found in South Asia (Bajpai and Kureshi 2022), as well as the use of a series of formal and informal political and institutional changes leading to democratic backsliding, as captured in East and Central Europe (Karolewiski 2021). Third, the institutional approach explains how elected authoritarians shatter political institutions, that are originally designed to protect democracy, thereby, resulting in the slow death of democracy. Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018, 78–87) insisted that democratic backsliding takes place in three subsequent steps: targeting referees, attacking opponents, and changing “the rules of the game”. In the first step, the incumbent captures the referees of the state that are essential to protecting the neutrality of the state and the rights of citizens. These referees include the judiciary, law enforcement agencies, and intelligence, tax, and regulatory agencies. In the second step, incumbents target the opponents of the

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government such as opposition politicians, business leaders, major media outlets, intellectuals, and cultural figures through legal and informal means. In the third step, incumbents change “the rules of the game” by reforming the constitution, legislative bodies, and electoral systems to consolidate power. In this stage, electoral systems are shaped in a way that is designed to deliver victory to the incumbents, even without any apparent electoral fraud (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018, 92). Two points require further description to better understand the institutional approach. Firstly, the approach marks the beginning of the backsliding process with the arrival of elected autocratic incumbents in power. As Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018, 11) wrote, “democratic backsliding today begins at ballot box”. Corrales (2015) and Scheppele (2018) called these elected autocratic incumbents as legalistic autocrats who hijack constitutions to consolidate power and to entrench themselves in office indefinitely. The process of legalistic autocrats ’ use of electoral mandates and constitutional and legal changes in the service of an illiberal agenda is called “autocratic legalism” (Scheppele 2018, 545). The process of autocratic legalism unfolds using several tactics such as reliance on narratives that distinguish themselves from stick-figure stereotyped autocrats, e.g., Hitler or Stalin; restructuring of state institutions using legal and constitutional revisions and institutional reforms; and limiting media freedom and weakening civil society (Scheppele 2018, 571–577). Put differently, legalistic autocrats use the legal mandate to enact laws that empower the executive branch at the expense of other branches, abuse the law in the sense of inconsistent and biased implementation, and non-use of the law by relying on illegality which is mostly evident in electoral irregularities (Corrales 2015, 39–43). Secondly, unlike the strategic approach, sequencing is of great importance in the institutional approach. Though scholars might disagree on the primacy of one step before another in the sequence, they generally assume that democratic backsliding takes place in a sequence of distinct steps or modalities. For instance, like Levistky and Ziblatt’s (2018) three piecemeal steps, Ginsburg (2018, 355–357) and Ginsburg and Huq (2018, 72–73) offered five different modalities or pathways. These include the use of constitutional amendments to consolidate power and alter basic governance arrangements; the elimination of institutional checks and balances; the centralization and politicization of executive power; the degradation of shared public sphere by manipulating information, environment and controlling the media; and the manipulation

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of elections by eliminating or suppressing effective political competition. However, a large number of democratic backsliding and erosion cases were explained using the institutional approach such as Venezuela (Corrales 2015); the United States (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018); Hungary, Poland, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Turkey (Ginsburg and Huq 2018, 91–119); and Bangladesh (Riaz 2019). The regime-centric approach explains country-specific conditions and processes of democratic backsliding that may not necessarily fit with the explanations provided by the above approaches. In the past decade, a plethora of studies examined and conceptualized regime-specific pathways that different countries followed in regressing from democracy, in many instances from electoral democracy to electoral autocracy. The analysis of Warburton and Aspinall (2019) based on Indonesia, Hanley and Vachudova (2018) on the Czech Republic, and Bernhard (2021) on Poland and Hungary are just a few. Insisting on following a sequence, Warburton and Aspinall (2019) asserted that Indonesian democratic decline took place in three stages. The structural forces such as poor economic development and income inequality (Stage 1) contributed to social and political polarization enabling anti-liberalist and illiberal elites to chip away from democracy (Stage 2), while these structural and agency-based conditions were further aggravated by attitudinal forces (Stage 3) as the mass attitudes were conducive to an illiberal form of democracy (Warburton and Aspinall 2019, 264–273). In a different manner, Hanley and Vachudova (2018), insisting on the importance of both sequencing and timing, argued that democratic backsliding in the Czech Republic occurred in three stages: the accumulation of economic and political power by the incumbent party—ANO, becoming an oligarch; the strengthening of party system, becoming a media magnate, and exploiting institutions and opportunities in government; and the co-optation of opponents and the concentration of power in the name of efficiency and modernization. Again, another pathway can be traced in the backsliding process of Hungary and Poland. Bernhard (2021, 589–590) argued that democratic stability in Hungary and Poland was disrupted by external shocks such as the economic recession of 2007–2009 and the European refugee crisis of 2015, while the combination of accommodation and contention of extrications from authoritarianism created conditions that proved conducive to democratic backsliding. Thus, the regime-centric approach offers pathways that differ

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not only from those of the structural, strategic, and institutional approach, but also from one regime-specific pathway from another. However, the above four approaches to democratic backsliding do not provide a comprehensive analytical framework to investigate the process of democratic backsliding Two major limitations of these approaches are discussed here. First, although having different mechanisms, these approaches relied heavily on the institutional aspect of the backsliding process, making them highly skewed toward the institutional dimension, partly, because most studies view democratic backsliding through an institutional lens. For example, a report of the International IDEA states, Democratic backsliding is initiated and driven by executive incumbents, legislative majorities, and governing political parties. The process is relatively straightforward. First, they win competitive elections. Second, they form governments and use their power to weaken institutional checks on governmental power. Third, they modify the constitutional balance in their favor, restrict electoral competition and reduce the civic space underpinning political participation. (International IDEA 2019, 33)

Thus, targeting, reforming, and manipulating institutions by executive incumbents lie at the core of the democratic backsliding process, formulating the rationale for focus on the institutional aspect. However, these approaches largely ignored the ideological aspect which acts as the means of rationalizing and legitimizing the institutional measures leading to the backsliding processes. Though a little discussion of populist ideological narratives can be traced in the structural or regime-centric approach, such narratives are referenced in the institutional approach under the essential conditions conducive to democratic backsliding. It is important to note that beyond legal and political rationalization, each backsliding regime is likely to use ideological narratives to justify their policies, practices, and their right to rule. Thus, ideological aspect should be considered as a combined or interactive strategy for rationalizing legal and institutional changes and reforms. Second, when it comes to process or causal mechanism, sequencing plays an instrumental role in understanding when and how the process of democratic backsliding starts and ends, and which step or stage comes first, and which comes next. The existing approaches largely differ regarding sequencing. For instance, the institutional and the structural

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approach puts significant emphasis on the sequencing, while the strategic approach is ambivalent to the question of sequencing. At the same time, sequencing may or may not matter for the regime-specific approach. Additionally, there are also disagreements among scholars of the same approach about sequencing. For instance, Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018) identified changing constitutional rules of the game as the third step, while Ginsburg and Huq (2018) insisted on constitutional amendments as the first step. Thus, wide disagreements exist among scholars and approaches about sequencing in the backsliding process, which requires further explanation. These limitations inform that there exists a significant gap in the existing literature regarding the process of democratic backsliding. The aim of this book is to fill this gap by theorizing an alternative approach and testing it empirically. In the next chapter, we offer an alternative to the existing approaches through highlighting both institutional and non-institutional dimensions. We call the proposed approach the “institutional-ideological approach”. In this approach, we argue that in the instances of democratic backsliding, institutional strategies of the incumbents are accompanied by ideological narratives to provide a legitimate cover on the authoritarian actions and to justify the regime in place.

References Abreu, Luis, and Doh-Shin Jeon. 2020. “Homophily in Social Media and News Polarization.” Working Paper, Toulouse School of Economic. https://www. tse-fr.eu/sites/default/files/TSE/documents/doc/wp/2020/wp_tse_1081. pdf. Amnesty International. 2017. “‘Politics of Demonization’ Breeding Division and Fear.” Press Release, 22 February. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/pressrelease/2017/02/amnesty-international-annual-report-201617/. Andersen, David. 2019. “Review: Comparative Democratization and Democratic Backsliding: The Case for a Historical-Institutional Approach.” Comparative Politics 51 (4): 645–663. Bajpai, Rochana, and Kureshi, Yasser. 2022. “Mechanisms of Democratic Authoritarianism: De-centring the Executive in South Asia and Beyond.” Democratization. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2022.2062324. Bakke, Elisabeth, and Nick Sitter. 2020. “The EU’s Enfants Terribles: Democratic Backsliding in Central Europe since 2010.” Perspectives on Politics: 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592720001292.

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Bermeo, Nancy. 2016. “On Democratic Backsliding.” Journal of Democracy 27 (1): 5–19. Bernhard, Michael. 2021. “Democratic Backsliding in Poland and Hungary.” Slavic Review 80 (3): 585–607. Carothers, Thomas, and Andrew O’Donohue. 2019. Democracies Divided: The Global Challenge of Political Polarization. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Cassani, Andrea, and Luca Tomini. 2019. Autocratization in Post-Cold War Political Regimes. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Cooley, Alexander. 2015. “Authoritarianism Goes Global: Countering Democratic Norms.” Journal of Democracy 26 (3): 49–63. Corrales, Javier. 2020. “Democratic Backsliding Through Electoral Irregularities: The Case of Venezuela.” European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 109: 41–65. Corrales, Javier. 2015. “The Authoritarian Resurgence: Autocratic Legalism in Venezuela.” Journal of Democracy 26 (2): 37–51. Diamond, Larry. 2022. “All Democracy Is Global: Why American Can’t Shrink from the Fight for Freedom.” Foreign Affairs. https://www.foreignaffairs. com/united-states/all-democracy-global-america-cant-shrink-fight-freedomlarry-diamond. Diskin, Abraham, Hanna Diskin, and Reuven Y. Hazan. 2005. “Why Democracies Collapse: The Reasons for Democratic Failure and Success.” International Political Science Review 26 (3): 291–309. Gandhi, Jennifer. 2018. “The Institutional Roots of Democratic Backsliding.” The Journal of Politics 81 (1): 11–16. Gerschewski, Johannes. 2021. “Erosion or Decay? Conceptualizing Causes and Mechanisms of Democratic Regression.” Democratization 28 (1): 43–62. Ginsburg, Tom. 2018. “Democratic Backsliding and the Rule of Law.” Ohio Northern University Law Review 44: 351–369. Ginsburg, Tom, and Aziz Z. Huq. 2018. How to Save a Constitutional Democracy. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Haggard, Stephan, and Robert Kaufman. 2019. “Democratic Decline in the United States: What Can We Learn from Middle-Income Backsliding?”. Perspectives on Politics 17 (2): 417–432. Haggard, Stephan, and Robert Kaufman. 2021a. Backsliding: Democratic Regress in the Contemporary World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haggard, Stephan, and Robert Kaufman. 2021b. “The Anatomy of Democratic Backsliding.” Journal of Democracy 32 (4): 27–41. Hanley, Sean, and Milada A. Vachudova. 2018. “Understanding the Illiberal Turn: Democratic Backsliding in the Czech Republic.” East European Politics 34 (3): 276–296.

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International IDEA. 2017. The Global State of Democracy: Exploring Democracy’s Resilience. Stromsburg: International IDEA. International IDEA. 2019. The Global State of Democracy 2019: Addressing the Ills, Reviving the Promise. Stromsburg: International IDEA. Jakli, laura, M. Steven Fish, and Jason Wittenberg. 2018. “A Decade of Democratic Decline and Stagnation.” In Democratization, edited by Christian W. Haerpfer. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Karolewiski, Ireneusz P. 2021. “Towards a Political Theory of Democratic Backsliding? Generalizing East Central European Experience.” In Illiberal Trends and Anti-EU Politics in East Central Europe, edited by Astrid Lorenz and Lisa H. Anders. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Kendall-Taylor, Andrea, and Erica Frantz. 2016. “How Democracies Fall Apart: Why Populism Is a Pathway to Autocracy.” Foreign Affairs. https://www.for eignaffairs.com/articles/2016-12-05/how-democracies-fall-apart. Kneuer, Marianne. 2021. “Unraveling Democratic Erosion: Who Drives the Slow Death of Democracy, and How?” Democratization 28 (8): 1442–1462. Levitsky, Steven, and Lucan A. Way. 2015. “The Myth of Democratic Recession.” Journal of Democracy 26 (1): 45–58. Levitsky, Steven, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2018. How Democracies Die. New York: Crown Publishing. Lührmann, Anna. 2021. “Disrupting the Autocratization Sequence: Towards Democratic Resilience.” Democratization 28 (5): 1017–1039. Lührmann, Anna, and Staffan I. Lindberg. 2019. “A Third Wave of Autocratization Is Here: What Is New About It?” Democratization 26 (7): 1095–1113. Luo, Zhaotian, and Adam Przeworski. 2021. “Democracy and Its Vulnerabilities: Dynamics of Democratic Backsliding.” SSRN . https://doi.org/10. 2139/ssrn.3469373. McCoy, Jennifer, and Murat Somer. 2018. “Toward a Theory of Pernicious Polarization and How It Harms Democracies: Comparative Evidence and Possible Remedies.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 681 (1): 234–271. Meyerrose, Anna M. 2021. “International Sources of Democratic Backsliding.” In Routledge Handbook of Illiberalism, edited by Andras Sajo, Renata Utiz, and Stephen Holmes. New York: Routledge. O’Donnell, Guillermo. A. 1992. “Transitions, Continuities and Paradoxes.” In Issues in Democratic Consolidation: The New South American Democracies in Comparative Perspective, edited by Scott Mainwaring, Guillermo A. O’Donnell, and Julio Samuel Valenzuela. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Plattner, Marc. 2014. “The End of the Transition Era.” Journal of Democracy 25 (3): 5–16.

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Riaz, Ali. 2019. Voting in a Hybrid Regime: Explaining the 2018 Bangladeshi Election. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. Riaz, Ali. 2021. “The pathway of democratic backsliding in Bangladesh.” Democratization 28 (1): 179–197. Runciman, David. 2018. How Democracy Ends. New York: Basic Books. Schedler, Andreas. 1998. “What Is Democratic Consolidation.” Journal of Democracy 9 (2): 91–107. Scheppele, Kim L. 2018. “Autocratic Legalism.” The University of Chicago Law Review 85 (2): 545–584. Schmitter, Philippe C. 1994. “Dangers and Dilemmas of Democracy.” Journal of Democracy 5 (2): 57–74. Svolik, Milan. 2008. “Authoritarian Reversals and Democratic Consolidation.” American Political Science Review 102 (2): 153–168. Tomini, Luca, and Claudius Wagemann. 2017. “Varieties of Contemporary Democratic Breakdown and Regression: A Comparative Analysis.” European Journal of Political Research 57 (3): 687–716. Waldner, David, and Ellen Lust. 2018. “Unwelcome Change: Coming to Terms with Democratic Backsliding.” Annual Review of Political Science 21: 93–113. Warburton, Eve, and Edward Aspinall. 2019. “Explaining Indonesia’s Democratic Regression.” Contemporary Southeast Asia 41 (2): 255–285. Wike, Richard, Laura Silver, and Alexandra Castillo. 2019. “Many Across the Globe Are Dissatisfied with How Democracy Is Working.” Pew Research Center, 29 April. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/04/29/manyacross-the-globe-are-dissatisfied-with-how-democracy-is-working/. Wolkenstein, Fabio. 2022. “What Is Democratic Backsliding?” Constellations. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12627.

CHAPTER 4

The Sequence of Backsliding and the Rise of the Autocrats

Understanding the sequence of democratic backsliding leading to the rise of autocrats is closely linked to understanding the nature and types of democratic breakdowns. The trends in democratic backsliding suggest that the nature of the backsliding process is incremental and open-ended. It is incremental in the sense that sliding takes place in a smooth and continuous manner, but neither rapid nor episodic (Bakke and Sitter 2020, 3). It is open-ended in the sense that the backsliding process may or may not lead to regime change (Bakke and Sitter 2020, 3). More importantly, the incremental nature of democratic backsliding has often raised the question as to whether it is possible to identify an inflection point in the process. In this regard, the conventional wisdom suggests that “injuries to democracy can emerge almost undetectably as a result of democratic politics” (Chou 2013, 60); therefore, today’s democratic backsliding is “almost imperceptible” because “there is no single moment” setting off “society’s alarm bells” about a regime stepping into dictatorship (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018, 11–12). Instead, we argue that a specific moment in time is identifiable, from which the injuries to democracy can be detected, creating conditions for democratic backsliding. The sequence of backsliding might also be contingent upon the types of democratic breakdown. It has been argued that democratic backsliding is caused by different reasons and follows divergent trajectories © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 A. Riaz and Md S. Rana, How Autocrats Rise, Global Political Transitions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-7580-8_4

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(International IDEA 2021); therefore, identifying a specific pathway of backsliding is often elusive. While a variety of reasons behind backsliding can be identified, as discussed in the previous chapter, a short discussion on the types of democratic breakdown is worth mentioning here. In this respect, Maeda (2010, 1129–1130) argued that there are two types of democratic breakdown—exogenous termination and endogenous termination—by which democracies become nondemocracies. Relying on the origin and source of the breakdown, Maeda (2010, 1130) insisted that democratic breakdown is exogenous if the source comes from outside the government, usually the military, while breakdown is endogenous if it springs from within the government, primarily the chief executive. Though Maeda’s typology, based on the origins of the process, limits itself to the primary actors of the breakdown, Chou (2013) expanded the typology by incorporating other essential elements beyond actors. For Chou (2013, 26, 44–45), exogenous termination might also include, apart from the military, specific institutions, socio-economic, and political determinants, while endogenous termination might further be propelled by majoritarianism, lack of tolerance for pluralism, and failure of gatekeeping. Both Maeda (2010, 1129) and Chou (2013, 11) maintained that nearly half of all democratic breakdowns in the last half century were due to endogenous termination. More importantly, the discussion on the types of democratic breakdown raises the question of whether different types generate different trajectories. The question is pertinent to our goal as we aim to conceptualize a specific pathway of democratic backsliding. In this regard, the standard assumption is that “all factors influencing the risk of democratic termination have uniform and indiscriminate impacts” (Maeda 2010, 1130). Following this logic, we argue that despite having different sources and factors, once the process begins, democratic backsliders follow a specific, similar pathway as they share the same goal—the concentration of power. Thus, contrary to the argument that identifying the pathway of democratic backsliding is elusive, we argue that a pathway of democratic backsliding from a particular point in time is identifiable. In so doing, we also contend that understanding the inflection point and the process requires a different approach which transcends the institutional bias of the existing approaches. As noted by the existing analytical literature discussed in the previous chapter and data provided by various democracy tracking institutions such as Freedom House, V-Dem, European Intelligence Unit (EIU),

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Context

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Agent

Strategy

Institutional

Ideological

1. Change of Constitution and Laws

1. Construction/ evocation of an ideology

2. Capturing the referees

2. De-legitimation of other ideologies

3. Silencing political opposition, media, CSOs etc.

3. Dominance of the regime ideology

Audience Democratic Backsliding Begins

Fig. 4.1 Institutional-ideological approach to democratic backsliding process (Source Authors’ compilation)

and International IDEA, authoritarian incumbents-led institutional mechanisms undermine both procedural and liberal elements of democracy. We further contend that they employ ideological narratives to justify their actions and their regime in place throughout the process of democratic backsliding. Thus, we argue that it is necessary to combine both aspects, institutional and ideological, and to explore how these two aspects work in tandem. We therefore propose an institutional-ideological approach, which combines these two aspects, and helps explain the process of democratic backslidingleading to the rise of autocrats. Our institutionalideological approach includes four elements: contexts, agents, audience, and strategy. Figure 4.1 provides a schematic view of our institutionalideological approach.

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The context, in this instance, is the overall socio-political and economic environment of the backsliding state. Context describes a constellation of forces that converge to mark the beginning of democratic backsliding. While political context may or may not necessarily be violent or vibrant, albeit significant, a greater degree of polarization in society may create conditions conducive to backsliding. As Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018, 97) wrote, Polarization can destroy democratic norms. When socioeconomic, racial, or religious differences give rise to extreme partisanship, in which societies sort themselves into political camps whose worldviews are not just different but mutually exclusive, toleration becomes harder to sustain….As mutual toleration disappears, politicians grow tempted to abandon forbearance and try to win at all costs. This may encourage the rise of antisystem groups that reject democracy’s rules altogether. When that happens, democracy is in trouble.

Additionally, when and how a democracy backslides “depends as a matter of course on the specific individuals and circumstances involved” (Chou 2013, 60). Deep knowledge and understanding of a country’s overall domestic context help us to understand not only whether there is a likelihood of democratic breakdown, but also to identify the type of democratic breakdown. The point is to understand changes take place within domestic contexts, which may or may not be obvious. This is not to suggest that contexts in all backsliding cases are similar, and produce similar kinds of events, circumstances, and actors. In fact, each case is context-dependent and is likely to have its own distinctive features (Tyulkina 2015, 36), but the point is to identify some general patterns in different contexts that bolster our understanding of the pathways in the backsliding process. Moreover, understanding a country’s overall socioeconomic and political contexts further helps not only to conceptualize the conditions conducive to backsliding, but also to identify a specific moment in time from which the backsliding process begins (Ginsburg and Huq 2018, 44). This is because these specific moments emerge through timely convergence of circumstances within a context which paves the way for democratic backsliding (Brunckhorst et al. 2017). More importantly, we further argue that once the backsliding begins from the specific moment in time, a democracy never comes back to its original position.

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The second element is the agent. Agents are the actors leading the backsliding process. In modern autocratic contexts, agents are mainly civilian elected political leaders. A political context can produce leaders who are willing to preserve the democratic traditions, by respecting the formal and informal rules and norms, and practicing mutual toleration and forbearance. The context can also produce leaders with a penchant for concentration of power who stretch the existing laws or introduce new laws to achieve their aim. Schepple (2018) described these leaders as “legalistic autocrats”. Their goal is “to consolidate power and to remain in office indefinitely, eventually eliminating the ability of democratic publics to exercise their basic democratic rights” (Schepple 2018, 545). The way to identify the legalistic autocrats is to look at their behaviors and how they have attained power. According to Schepple (2018, 549), the attempts of a democratically elected leader to loosen “the bonds of constitutional constraints on executive power through legal reform is the first sign of a legalistic autocrat”. Some other signs of legalistic autocrats include denial of the legitimacy of opponents, toleration or encouragement of violence, and restriction of civil liberties and media activities (Chou 2013, 11; Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018, 24). Additionally, a penchant for executive aggrandizement and the personalistic nature of governance are key to the identification of legalistic autocrats. A politician showing any one of these signs is a cause for concern indicating that democracy is at risk. The third element is the audience. While the audience can be both domestic and international, we concentrate on the domestic audience due to its direct linkage to our theoretical framework. Thus, the audience in this context refers to only the domestic audience in a democracy such as the public, or the electorate. In this regard, Karolewski (2021, 307) insisted that the citizens of a country “become an audience acting through plebiscites on the popularity of politicians” and they replace “democratic accountability with popularity” and “are often likely to fall under the spell of authoritarian leaders who make the citizens react to political decisions in a yes or no manner”. In any country, the collapse of a democracy is “ultimately determined by the citizens and the particular contextual conditions in which they find themselves” (Chou 2013, 61). This is more clarified in Mark Chou’s “theory of democide” that focuses on citizens and how they may contribute to murder their democracy. For Chou (2013, 12), whether a democracy commits an act of suicide is contingent upon how its citizens react.

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How the audience reacts to the rise of the anti-democratic agents and responds to the pernicious polarization influences the pathway of the backsliding. As Karolewski (2021, 307) wrote, “backsliding can thrive on how citizens behave”. Broadly, active support, passivity, and opposition shape the trajectory of the rise of legalistic autocrats , especially because these autocrats rise through apparent democratic processes like elections and insist on a populist message. However, the role of the audience does not remain limited to the early stage but continues as the autocrats devise and implement strategies. Like Urbinati (2014, 172) noted, the role of the public as a power is “intriguing” as they can contribute to make “democracy look at first sight different from authoritarian regimes, while they (sic) can transform its features quite radically and in ways that are remarkable”. The legalistic autocrats thus seek compliance from the audience on its policies and actions while punishing the dissenting audience. Finally, the legalistic autocrats adopt and implement well-calculated strategy which constitutes the fourth element in our approach. It has two complimentary aspects: institutional and ideological. These strategies have specific goals and tactics. Since “democratic institutions structure political processes and outcomes” (Waldner and Lust 2018, 100), the legalistic autocrats first mold institutions to their favor (Schepple 2018). Institutions are “formal and informal ‘rules of the game’, authoritative organizations, and procedures” (Lust and Waldner 2015, 11). They are authoritative in the sense that “they are capable of sanctioning non-conforming behavior” (Lust and Waldner 2015, 11). These institutions are designed to ensure that governments are responsive to citizens (vertical accountability), their powers are checked (horizontal accountability), and their actions are efficacious (Waldner and Lust 2018, 99; Lust and Waldner 2015, 11). The legalistic autocrats hollow out these institutions to remove checks on their authority and to concentrate unlimited power in their hands. They configure these institutions by employing three steps: changing rules of the game, capturing the referees of the state, and attacking political opponents (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018, 78–87). According to Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018), the elected autocrats change the rules of the game after capturing the referees and attacking political opponents, and they do so in a piecemeal approach. In contrast, we contend that the legalistic autocrats first change the rules of the game, followed by capturing the referees and attacking political opponents simultaneously.

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The legalistic autocrats , in the first step, change the rules of the game by reforming the constitution, governing legislation, and altering electoral rules. As Chou (2013, 60) wrote, “the seeds of democracy’s fall are sown into the very fabric of its constitution and operation”. Their aim is to establish complete control of the ruling party over the state and the polity. They change the rules of the game in ways that disadvantage or weaken political opposition, tilting the playing field against their rivals (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018, 88). The legalistic autocrats then capture the referees of the state such as the judiciary, law enforcement agencies, and intelligence and regulation agencies, to ensure the loyalty of these institutions to shield the government from investigation and criminal prosecution (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018, 78–81). To capture these referees or institutions, the incumbent may use tactics such as blackmail, bribery, replacement of civil servants with loyalists, impeachment, court-packing, and the creation of new institutions. Capturing the referees serves as a powerful weapon for protecting the allies and punishing the opponents. Concurrently, the legalistic autocrats attack political opponents such as opposition politicians, business leaders, critical media outlets, intellectuals, and cultural figures (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018, 82–85). Although the legalistic autocrats do not completely wipe out the opponents, they silence these opponents by bribing, bullying, co-opting, offering positions and financial concessions, and using legal means to undermine them. Their aim is to weaken and demoralize political opponents and dissuade them from criticizing the government. However, although the legalistic autocrat-led institutional configurations are central to the process of democratic backsliding, it does not explain the process in its entirety as to how a country reverses its path of democracy (Riaz 2020, 192). Thus, we contend that the legalistic autocrat-led institutional configurations are accompanied by ideological narratives that aim to provide a legitimate cover to their authoritarian actions and justify the regime in place. This can be called an authoritarian narrative. While ideology refers to a belief system intended to create a collective identity and/or a specific political order (Linz 2000), ideological narratives are spread to elevate the righteousness of a given political order (Easton 1975). By constructing such narratives, the legalistic autocrats present themselves as the bearer and defender of these ideologies. The ideological aspect of the strategy is not a single step but a combination of three pieces of the puzzle. Often these three pieces work in

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sequence. These three pieces are evocation or construction of an ideology, delegitimization of the contesting narrative, and creating dominance of a particular interpretation of the ideology. Most common ideological narratives, spread by authoritarian incumbents, are based on nationalism, religion, and populism (Soest and Grauvogel 2017, 290). The authoritarian rulers refer to historical accounts to arouse nationalist or foundational sentiments by highlighting their role in the state-building process to legitimize their rule. Parties that led a successful national liberation struggle often use such narratives to claim an entitlement to steer the country’s future based on past achievements (Schedler 2013, 227). The authoritarian incumbents also use religious narratives as an instrument of social control and political mobilization (Omelicheva 2016). Through religious narratives, they emphasize religious majoritarian identities and present themselves as more religious than the political opponents, who, as autocrats deem, would destroy the religion of the nation (Appadurai 2006, 51–52). Additionally, perhaps the most frequently used narratives are based on populism, which is a discursive narrative that appeals to the interests of ordinary people (Howarth 2008, 180). Populist narratives are thin centered, because it has limited programmatic scope, meaning that they always appear attached to other ideological elements (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2018, 1669). By spreading populist narratives, the authoritarian incumbents present themselves as anti-elitist and attempt to create a division between “us” and “them” and between “pure people” and “corrupt elite” (Fukuyama 2017). The construction, (re)construction, and invention of an ideology— based on nationalism, religion, and populism—either separately or in combination constitutes the first phase of the ideational aspect of the strategy. This is followed by questioning the bona fide of other ideological positions. All contesting ideas are portrayed as unpatriotic and vilified by the government and its supporters. It is also at this stage that autocrats are portrayed as the personification of the ideology and as such elevated to an invincible pedestal. In the third stage, these narratives are spread through media and public forums and promoted by state patronization, such as finances, building religious centers, revising educational curriculum, and political rhetoric making it the dominant ideology These two parallel stands of strategy—institutional and ideological— complement each other. The convergence of two steps of two separate strands of strategy creates the inflection point of democratic backsliding.

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In our schema, when the legalistic autocrats succeed in changing the constitution and laws and begin to evoke the first stage of the ideational strategy (re/construction of an ideology), the country’s democratic backsliding begins. The acceptance of this as a natural phenomenon, maintaining passivity and/or acquiesce by a large audience should be marked as the point of departure of backsliding. As such, we emphasize convergence of three elements—institutional changes, ideational underscoring, and audience acquiescence as the point of departure. In conclusion, our institutional-ideological approach to democratic backsliding is distinct from previous approaches in at least three ways. First, contrary to the conventional wisdom that no particular moment in time sets off alarms for a democracy to backslide, one can be identified. We argue that a particular moment in time is identifiable, looking closely at the domestic context of the backsliding case. Second, against the conventional notion that authoritarian incumbents first capture the referees of the states followed by changing constitutions and attacking opponents, leading a democracy to backslide, we contend that these authoritarian incumbents are legalistic autocrats who, in their first step, change constitutional and electoral rules, followed by concurrent actions of capturing referees of states and attacking opponents. Third, as opposed to the institutional bias of traditional backsliding literature, we alternatively propose an institutional-ideological approach to better explain the process of democratic backsliding. We insist that the legalistic autocrats’ institutional maneuvering is accompanied by the spread of specific ideological narratives to provide a legitimate cover for the manipulative actions as well as to justify the regime in place. However, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The validity, applicability, and transferability of our institutional-ideological approach lies in the extent of its relevance to cross-country cases. We, therefore, selected four cases from four different regions—Bangladesh, Bolivia, Hungary, and Turkey—respectively located in South Asia, South America, Central/Eastern Europe, and greater Middle East, to empirically test the applicability of our approach. These country cases demonstrate a strong relevance of our institutional-ideological approach in explaining the process of democratic backsliding.

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References Appadurai, Arjun. 2006. Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Bakke, Elisabeth, and Nick Sitter. 2020. “The EU’s Enfants Terribles: Democratic Backsliding in Central Europe Since 2010.” Perspectives on Politics: 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592720001292. Brunckhorst, David, E. J. Trammel, and M. Shannon. 2017. “Landscape Loopholes: Moments for Change.” Journal of Research Practice 13 (1): 1–12. Chou, Mark. 2013. Theorizing Democide: Why and How Democracies Fail. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Easton, David. 1975. “A Re-assessment of the Concept of Political Support.” British Journal of Political Science 5 (4): 435–457. Fukuyama, Francis. 2017. “What Is Populism?” The American Interest, 28 November. https://www.the-american-interest.com/2018/02/09/thepopulist-surge/. Ginsburg, Tom, and Aziz Z. Huq. 2018. How to Save a Constitutional Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Howarth, David R. 2008. “Ethos, Agonism, and Populism: William Connolly and the Case for Radical Democracy.” The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 10 (2): 171–193. International IDEA. 2021. “Democratic Backsliding: Different Causes, Divergent Trajectories.” https://www.idea.int/blog/democratic-backsliding-differ ent-causes-divergent-trajectories. Karolewski, Ireneusz P. 2021. “Towards a Political Theory of Democratic Backsliding? Generalizing the East Central European Experience.” In Illiberal Trends and Anti-EU Politics in East Central Europe, edited by Astrid Lorenz and Lisa H. Anders. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Levitsky, Steven, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2018. How Democracies Die. New York: Crown Publishing. Linz, Juan J. 2000. Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner . Lust, Ellen, and Wander, David. 2015. “Unwelcome Change: Understanding, Evaluating, and Extending Theories of Democratic Backsliding.” The Democracy Fellow and Grants (DFG) Program, Funded by the Institute of International Education (IIE) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PBAAD635.pdf. Maeda, Ko. 2010. “Two Modes of Democratic Breakdown: A Competing Risk Analysis of Democratic Durability.” The Journal of Politics 72 (4): 1129–1143. Mudde, Cas, and Cristobal R. Kaltwasser. 2018. “Studying Populism in Comparative Perspective: Reflections on the Contemporary and Future Research Agenda.” Comparative Political Studies 51 (13): 1667–1693.

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Omelicheva, Mariya Y. 2016. “Islam and Power Legitimation: Instrumentalization of Religion in Central Asian States.” Contemporary Politics 22 (2): 144–163. Riaz, Ali. 2020. “The Pathway of Democratic Backsliding in Bangladesh.” Democratization 28 (1): 179–197. Schedler, Andreas. 2013. The Politics of Uncertainty: Sustaining and Subverting Electoral Authoritarianism. Oxford: The Oxford University Press. Schepple, Kim Lane. 2018. “Autocratic Legalism.” The University of Chicago Law Review 85: 545–583. Soest, Christian, and Julia Grauvogel. 2017. “Identity, Procedures and Performance: How Authoritarian Regimes Legitimize Their Rule.” Contemporary Politics 23(3): 287–305. Tyulkina, Svetlana. 2015. Militant Democracy: Undemocratic Political Parties and Beyond. London and New York: Routledge. Urbinati, Nadia. 2014. Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth, and The People. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Waldner, David, and Ellen Lust. 2018. “Unwelcome Change: Coming to Terms with Democratic Backsliding.” Annual Political Science Review 21: 93–113.

CHAPTER 5

Bangladesh: The Making of an Electoral Autocracy

Although the quality of democracy in Bangladesh was undergoing an incremental debilitation for almost a decade, it began to come under scrutiny of the international media after December 2021, when the United States imposed sanctions on the country’s elite police force called the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) for egregious violations of human rights (United States Department of Treasury 2021) and the country was left out of the list of invitees of the White House organized Democracy Summit (The Business Standard 2021). Until then, the country’s tumultuous history of coups and countercoups in the mid-1970s, a long spell of military rule until 1990 and a brief intervention of the military in 2007 were seen as matters of the past, and in recent decades it was featured as an economic success story. But not only was there a question about the government provided economic growth statistics (Khatun 2020; The Daily Star 2019; Islam and Uddin 2018), but also were concerns about significant erosion in the quality of democracy, especially after two consecutive elections in 2014 and 2018, which made Sheikh Hasina the longest-serving head of the government of the country. Concerns about the human rights situation were voiced by various international Human Rights organizations such Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) since the early 2000s. But the rapid deterioration began after 2009. As for the overall governance situation, it

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became evident that in recent years the government has wielded increasingly unchecked power, the opposition is cowed and fragmented, the media is under severe restrictions, the judiciary is grossly compromised, and civil society has withered. These developments have led analysts to describe Bangladesh as a “hybrid regime” (Riaz 2019), and the system of governance as “authoritarian” (Savoia and Asadullah 2019; Blair 2020; Hossain 2020), “competitive authoritarian” (Mostofa and Subedi 2021), “moderate autocracy” (BTI 2022), “authoritarian regime” (International IDEA 2022), and “electoral democracy” (V-Dem 2023). This chapter explores how the country’s democratic endeavor took a downward turn and reached this stage. The exploration intends to contribute to the understanding of sequence of the process of democratic backsliding employing the institutional-ideological approach which we have offered as an alternative to the existing theoretical frameworks.

Background: Two Rounds of the Rise and Fall of Democracy The constitution framed in 1972, within less than a year of Bangladesh’s independence, promised a liberal democracy and upholding popular sovereignty. But the commitment and resolve of the leaders to democratic practices began to unravel soon, as demonstrated in the first parliamentary election. The 1973 election was rigged and delivered a stunning victory to the ruling Bangladesh Awami League led by the founder President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, popularly referred to as Mujib, and fondly described by his supporters as Bangabandhu—the Friend of Bengal. In the following two years the country experienced a decline in democratic practices with the declaration of the state emergency in December 1974, which suspended several fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution, and the introduction of the Presidential system moving away from the Parliamentary system in January 1975. The constitutional amendment made the country a one-party state and a new party called the Bangladesh Krishak Sramik Awami League (BKSAL) was formed. The AL was the core of the newly declared national party as all other political parties were proscribed. The economic policies of the Mujib regime had the hallmark of populism as was the rhetoric of Mujib himself, a charismatic leader with a power of mesmerizing oratory. The first attempt to establish democratic governance ended as the country became an authoritarian state, under

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the same leaders who promised and fought for democracy before the independence of the country. The era of populist authoritarianism was replaced through a violent coup in August 1975 when then President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, his family members (except two daughters who were out of the country) and close associates were brutally killed at their homes and four other leaders were killed after being incarcerated. A series of coups and countercoups followed until November which brought Ziaur Rahman (Zia) to the helm of power. Several failed coups plagued his rule. Although Zia civilianized his rule through various measures, the military remained the holder of power. Zia’s assassination in May 1981 created an interregnum until another military leader—Hussain Muhammad Ershad—staged a coup in March 1982. Both military rulers created political parties from the seat of power, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Jatiya Party (JP), respectively. A pro-democracy movement ensued in 1983 with three alliances—one led by the BNP, another by the AL, and the third by the left parties, spearheading the street agitations and demonstrations. The BNP was by then led by Zia’s widow Khaleda Zia, and the AL was led by Mujib’s daughter Shiekh Hasina, who returned from exile in 1981. The country’s largest Islamist party, the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), joined the movement from a separate platform. An eight-year-long pro-democracy culminated in a popular uprising in December 1990 and deposed the pseudo-civilian military government (Maniruzzaman 1992). The uprising ostensibly brought an end to the era of civilian and military authoritarianism and raised the hopes for democratization. The optimism was largely due to the collaboration between all parties through the period of pro-democracy movement and an agreement signed by all political parties at the height of the movement promising to adhere to the fundamental canons of liberal democracy such as fair elections, freedom of assembly, freedom of press, and independence of judiciary, among others. Therefore, 1991 was a watershed moment in the history of the country’s democratic journey, a new beginning—Bangladesh’s second round of the democratic journey began. The transition from authoritarianism commenced in an almost textbook fashion, through an electoral process within the existing constitution without any stumbling blocks. Bangladesh, perhaps unwittingly, joined the “Third Wave of Democracy” (Huntington 1993).

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In the initial years of democratization, Bangladesh fulfilled five key indicators of electoral democracy as identified by Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute (V-Dem 2018, 71). They are—universal suffrage, elected officials, clean elections, freedom of association, and freedom of expression and alternative sources of information. A competitive, multiparty political system with universal adult suffrage and a contested election pointed to a promising start. Media became relatively free and promises of an independent judiciary were reiterated by all parties, particularly the two major parties—the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Bangladesh Awami League (AL). With these developments, Bangladesh became an electoral democracy (Freedom House 2012). The first free and fair election held since the country’s independence delivered a victory to Khaleda Zia-led BNP in 1991. The election was held under an interim non-partisan cabinet of technocrats and members of the civil society described as the “caretaker government”. The constitutional amendment in 1991, to scrap the Presidential system and re-introduce the parliamentary system, was a positive step toward accountability as the Presidential system had endowed unrestrained power to an individual (i.e., the president) with little or no accountability mechanism. However, this bipartisan supported amendment, followed by a referendum, had one serious wrinkle; the power of the president was transferred to the prime minister lock stock and barrel in addition to the prime minister’s power under the parliamentary system. The hastily made amendment provided unbridled power to the prime minister, who was the head of the party, the leader of the house, and the leader of the parliamentary party. As such, a pathway for executive aggrandizement, one may even say constitutional authoritarianism, was structurally embedded in the constitution. This was further accentuated by a particular constitutional provision. Article 70 of the Bangladesh constitution stipulates that a member of the parliament will lose the membership if she votes against party, is present in the parliament but abstains from voting, or abstains from any sitting ignoring the direction of the party. This provision has provided complete control of the parliamentary party to the respective leaders. In the case of the PM, it allows her to exercise unrestrained power. While the country witnessed a promise of liberal democracy, it also began to experience an incessant acrimony between two major parties and their leaders. Most importantly the lack of interest among the political elites of major parties to develop institutions which would strengthen

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the accountability mechanism, ensure fair elections, and keep the civil administration free from politicization was shared by the BNP and the AL. Parliament and its standing committees were not functioning as robustly as a parliamentary democratic system requires. Along with the fragility of these institutions the absence of a democratic culture and tolerance to different views became easily discernable. Trust deficit among the BNP and the AL increased over time. Street agitations, violence, and unending wrangling revealed the lack of strong commitment toward democracy of the BNP and the AL. A deeply disturbing trend began soon after the 1991 election when the vanquished AL refused to accept the election results. The pattern continued in subsequent rounds of elections, although the role was reversed (Schaffer 2002). Levitsky and Ziblatt identified four authoritarian behaviors which contribute to the demise of democracy, which includes “rejection of (or weak commitment to) democratic rules of the game” (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018, 23). They specifically mentioned that undermining the legitimacy of elections by refusing to accept credible election results is a test to measure a leader’s commitment to democracy. These began to become apparent within a short period after 1991 and thus revealed a long road to antiunionization of democracy. In late 1994, the opposition members of the 5th parliament led by the AL and the JI resigned, demanding that a non-party caretaker government system be included as a permanent arrangement in the constitution to oversee the election. The demand was made after a series of elections to the parliamentary seats were blatantly rigged by the incumbent BNP and the Election Commission was not able to ensure fair election. This en masse resignation made the parliament ineffective. Incumbent BNP showed an obdurate attitude and declined to make any changes; it insisted that the opposition adhere to the existing constitutional provisions (Hossain 1996). While the 5th parliament completed its term in late 1995, the impasse continued. In late 1995, on the one hand, the AL launched massive street agitations, repeatedly imposed hartal (general strike), and endorsed violence by their supporters; a key indicator of authoritarian behavior noted by Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018, 24), while the incumbent BNP used heavy-handed measures against the opposition which revealed its willingness to restrict or curtail civil liberties of the opposition (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018, 24). The incumbent BNP finally went ahead with a non-inclusive election in February 1996 which elected a parliament with BNP members only. The 6th parliament incorporated the caretaker government system

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into the constitution through the 13th amendment to the constitution and dissolved immediately. The 13th amendment of the constitution ensured that free and fair elections were held upon completion of the term of the incumbent and provided safeguards against manipulation of elections. The amendment created the provision of the caretaker government (CTG)—a non-partisan government to oversee the election. The provision stipulated that an eleven-member non-partisan cabinet will be appointed upon the completion of the term of the elected government for ninety days. The cabinet will be headed by the immediate past chief justice of the Supreme Court. With no other accountability mechanism in place and increasing politicization of state institutions, elections remained the only means for keeping the incumbent in check. The incorporation of the caretaker government (CTG) in the constitution in 1996, although by a parliament with questionable legitimacy, allowed establishing a system of peaceful power transition, something the original constitution seems to have failed. Despite such a significant step toward transfer of power through the October 1996 election, the parliament began to lose its importance, thanks to the boycott of the opposition, and ruling party’s proclivity toward disregarding the opposition’s demands. After five years of AL rule, the BNP returned to power through the 2001 election. In 2004, two important developments took place which had serious implications for the democratic trajectory of the country. The first was a constitutional amendment passed by the BNP-led parliament, and the second was a brazen attack on Sheikh Hasina. In May 2004, the 14th amendment of the constitution was passed which created the possibility of impacting the composition of the next caretaker government. The constitution as per the 13th amendment stipulated that the immediate past chief justice will be the head of the caretaker government, the BNP raised the retirement age of the justices through the amendment to ensure that its preferred retired CJ could be appointed as the head the next CTG. The intent of the amendment was ostensibly to have a government sympathetic to BNP in power during the election. This was an example of how a competitive authoritarian regime acts: using the “formal democratic institutions … as the principal means of obtaining and exercising political authority” (Levitsky and Way 2002, 52). Considering that previous three fair elections demonstrated that the BNP and the AL had an almost equal support base—about 40% of the popular vote (Riaz 2016)—any manipulation of the system would disrupt the existing equilibrium.

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The second event was an example of how the competition between the two parties increasingly became vicious and the use of state power to persecute opponents through judicial and extrajudicial manners became the norm. In August 2004, Sheikh Hasina faced an assassination attempt in a public rally. At least 24 people were killed in a series of grenade attacks. The AL alleged that the attack was orchestrated by the Islamists with the support of the government, especially the intelligence agencies. The BNP not only denied the allegations but actively worked to cover them up in such a poor manner that it became public perception that it was designed by the government. Both these incidents accentuated the trust deficit, and it seemed that the two parties now consider each other mortal enemies. The opposition, on the other hand, throughout the period had adopted the strategy of repeated street agitation instead of making the parliament the center of politics. It is against this background that the AL and its allies launched violent street agitations in October 2006, ahead of the next election scheduled for early 2007. It is worth noting that violence perpetrated by the activists received very little condemnation from the party leadership, instead the leaders of these parties tacitly, in some instances openly, condoned. The opposition was adamant about stopping the appointment of former chief justice K. M. Hasan to this post at any cost. After Hasan declined the position, then president Iajuddin Ahmed, a BNP appointee, assumed the position of head of the CTG (in addition to his presidential responsibilities). While the incumbent president’s acceptance of the role followed the letter of the constitution, it was inconsistent with the spirit of a neutral caretaker government and therefore added to an already volatile situation (Hagerty 2007; Riaz 2014a, 2014b). In the midst of the crisis, on 11 January 2007, the military intervened and established a civilian cabinet as the caretaker government, but the power was essentially held by the military and its intelligence agency. Bangladesh’s fifteen years of democratization process came to a screeching halt. However, fortunately the third opportunity to return to the democratic path was not too far away.

Democratic Backsliding: Processes and Sequences While in the past years, there has been an emerging agreement among the scholars on Bangladesh that the country has slid toward a personalistic autocracy under Sheikh Hasina, the exact turning point, the pathway and the mechanism of democratic backsliding has remained under-researched.

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Like many other countries, the incremental nature of the backsliding masked the slow death of democracy and elections in 2014 and 2018 provided the veneer of the presence of a multiparty system. But we argue that 2011 marks the milestone of democratic backsliding since the country embarked on the third round of the democratization process. The theoretical approach presented in Chapter 4 underscored that a combination of factors precipitates democratic backsliding paving the road to the rise of an autocrat. Four elements are identified as the constitutive to the process; they are—context, the role of the agent, the strategies adopted by the agent, and reactions from the audience. Strategies adopted by the Hasina regime, like in other instances of democratic backsliding, constitute two elements—institutional and ideological. The following sections discuss these elements in detail.

Context As discussed in the background section, after 15 years of the second round of democratic endeavors, continued fragility of the institutions and pernicious acrimony of two major parties, the military was once again in power in January 2007. The military intervention, albeit under civilian guise, initially had the public support and blessings of the international community. The opposition Awami League (AL) was also content with the military’s move as the soft coup removed its archrival BNP from power, and stopped an election which was likely to deliver a victory to the incumbent. It was what Nancy Bermeo called a promissory coup, a form of military intervention which “frame the ouster of an elected government as a defense of democratic legality and make a public promise to hold elections and restore democracy as soon as possible” (Bermeo 2016, 8). By mid-2008, the situation began to change. Domestic discontent, the Asian economic crisis, inability to deliver on the promised reforms in politics, failure to address widespread corruption, ill-conceived idea of removing two leaders (Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina) from politics (Montlake 2007), and pressure from international actors, forced the military to hold an election in late 2008. The election produced a two-thirds majority victory for the Awami League, and Bangladesh had the third opportunity to chart a democratic pathway, the first being in 1972, and the second in 1991. In 2009, when the Awami League came into power through the election, it was faced with three choices; (a) to learn from the experience

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of the collapse of the democratic processes in 2006, address the fragility of the democratic institutions, create accountability mechanisms including strengthening the Election Commission and the Anticorruption Commission, make the parliament the center of policymaking and democratize the party mechanism; (b) to return to “business-as-usual”, that is reoccurrence to the pre-2006 model of an acrimonious politics, continuation of weak institutions and muddle through to allow the possibility of alteration of power relying on the caretaker system of government during the election; (c) to overhaul the system to ensure that its continuation to power remains unchallenged, executive power grab is legitimized through legal and extralegal measures, and a personalistic rule is established not only by establishing Sheikh Hasina’s complete control over the party but also over the state institutions, including civil administration and law enforcing agencies. While many analysts were afraid that the status quo will be restored and a two-party spoils system will be back, within two years it became evident that Sheikh Hasina had opted for the third option, which was to create a system of governance which appears to be democratic but essentially authoritarian in nature, a system described by political scientists as a “hybrid regime” (Diamond 2002) or an “electoral authoritarianism” (Schedler 2002). These regimes, neither practice democracy nor resort regularly to naked repression. By organizing periodic elections, they try to obtain at least a semblance of democratic legitimacy, hoping to satisfy external as well as internal actors. At the same time, by placing those elections under tight authoritarian controls they try to cement their continued hold on power. Their dream is to reap the fruits of electoral legitimacy without running the risks of democratic uncertainty. (Schedler 2002, 36–37)

The overall situation with democracy, as recorded by Freedom House since 2003 (Fig. 5.1) showed the initial rise of scores under the Hasina regime until 2011. In 2008, Bangladesh scored 40 on a scale of 100 under the military backed regime, but it improved dramatically since the government came into power and reached 60 in 2011. As we will show in the following discussion that 2011 marks the inflection point when the decline began and subsequently reached 53 points in 2014. After the 2014 election, the slide accelerated and reached well below the 2008 mark by 2020.

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70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

Fig. 5.1 The State of Democracy in Bangladesh, 2003–2022 (Source Freedom House annual reports, 2003–2022)

The overall decline in democracy is not only reflected in Freedom House scores but also in Polity IV data. According to the available Polity IV data, the country’s score has dropped from a positive 5 in 2009 to a minus 6 in 2018 (Fig. 5.2). 6 4 2 0 2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

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-2 -4 -6 -8

Fig. 5.2 Combined Polity IV score of Bangladesh, 2009–2018 (Source Polity IV, “Annual Polity IV Annual Time Series 1800–2018,” Regime Authority Characteristics and Transitions Datasets, Center for Systemic Peace, https://www.sys temicpeace.org/inscrdata.html)

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The decline is a result of shrinking democratic space for the opposition, limiting the scope for participation in politics, and political competitiveness, among other factors. One of the major contributory factors leading to the inflection point was the enhanced polarization created by the ruling party. Although polarization has been an integral part of Bangladeshi politics since its independence, over time it became far more entrenched. Post1991, the acrimonious relationship between two political parties and the lack of institutionalization of the party system contributed to growing schisms and sharp contestations. As Rahman (2019a) has noted that in the post-1991 situation, two major political parties, the Awami League (AL) and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), “appeared identical in their support for electoral democracy and the market economy” and “were mostly indistinguishable in terms of their programmatic appeals to the voters” (Rahman 2019a, 177). As such, they had to craft distinct differences in the face of electoral volatility and create a solid support base to ensure victory in the general elections. The share of popular votes of these two parties between 1991 and the 2001 elections shows that they had almost equal strengths; in 1991, BNP secured 30.8% of popular votes cast while the AL secured 30.1% votes; in 1996 the BNP received 33.6%, while the AL received 37.6% votes; and in 2001, the BNP bagged 41.40% while the AL bagged 40.02% votes. It is in this context the national identity issue, a difference between religion and territory-based identity (Bangladeshi) on the one hand and ethnicity-based ostensibly secular (Bengali) on the other, was pushed to the forefront. While the question of religion in politics was an unresolved issue since secularism was included as a state principle in the constitution in 1972 and was removed in 1978 (Riaz 2017, 55–60), the question did not feature prominently beyond elite discourse until the democratization process ensued in 1991. However, it took a dramatic turn after 2010 when the AL decided to establish the International Crimes Tribunal, a domestic tribunal, to try those who committed crimes against humanity during the war of independence in 1971 and began the trials in 2011. As the most prominent Islamist party, Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) organizationally opposed the war, supported and collaborated with the Pakistani Army, many of its leaders were charged with war crimes. The JI and the BNP described the trial as politically motivated to weaken the opposition. But such differences crystallized the politics of polarization (Rahman 2019a, 183). Generally, it is acknowledged by a large number of people that the

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trial was “long overdue in terms of delivering justice for the victims of war crimes in 1971” (Rahman 2019a, 183). The trial process created fissures among society and increasingly became the source of pernicious polarization which was capitalized on by the incumbent in pushing for its autocratic agenda. Polarization was not limited to the issue of identitybased politics but increasingly became vitiated with claims to founding the nation, that is, who should be credited for the establishment of Bangladesh. The AL’s claim to lead the nation during the independence war transformed into post-2011 rhetoric as the claim to have the right to rule the country, even without a popular mandate, suggesting that the victory of the BNP will be a threat to the nation’s independence.

Agent Agents of autocracy are those civilian leaders who assume power through the electoral process and use constitutional and legal means to expand their powers and weaken the institutional mechanisms which constrain their powers. These leaders may demonstrate their disdain for the existing democratic norms and practices even before they gain power and mobilize a large number of people portraying the leader as the savior of the nation. This is a typical trait of populist leaders who divide the entire population into two camps—common people and elite. These populist leaders are often anti-pluralists. However, in recent decades, personalist autocratic regimes have become a common feature. According to one estimate in 2010, about 40% of the autocratic regimes were personalistic in nature (Frantz et al. 2021). In case of the countries which have experienced democratic backsliding, these leaders seldom show any derision for democratic institutions or practices, instead they tend to gain power through fairly held elections and then engage in consolidating their power and remain in power for indefinite period while arranging engineered elections. They tend to claim that these are necessary to protect democracy. Drawing on Schepple (2018), we have described these actors as “legalistic autocrats” (see Chapter 4). Sheikh Hasina falls into this category. Hasina entered politics in 1981 when the AL was in very dire straits as the party was already split into two; dynastic inheritance brought her to the leadership of a party which was “riven by factionalism and opportunism, with some members defecting and even conspiring with military dictators” (Khondkar 2017, 225). The factious nature of party and the existing leaders’ links to AL’s past failings including their failure to protect

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her father from being deposed in a bloody coup provided Hasina the opportunity to establish her control over the party by sidelining the veteran leaders, some of whom were close associates of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. She adopted a patrimonial style of leadership wherein she became the ultimate decision maker. Party constitution allowed her as the president to exercise constitutional and extra constitutional powers, absence of regular party conventions legitimized the practiced and when the party conventions were held the party council officially adopted motion delegating her the power to appoint almost the entire Central Committee including the party’s Secretary General (Riaz 2016, 158– 162). Repeated exercises of these practices within the party over two decades ostensibly made her a leader who is beyond any accountability mechanism. Indeed, her lineage, that she is a daughter of the “father of the nation”, who according to the party narrative made the supreme sacrifice for the nation, put her in a position which became somewhat sacrosanct. Bangladeshi culture’s traits for unquestionably accepting a hierarchical order and the neo-patrimonial nature of Bangladeshi politics contributed to cementing her position within the party. Sheikh Hasina in her first term in office between 1996 and 2021 did not display any obvious indications of her desire to subvert democratic institutions, although she, like her predecessor Khaleda Zia, was unwilling to strengthen democratic institutions and accountability mechanisms. But by the time she returned to power in 2009, the political landscape had remarkably changed. The acrimony with her counterpart has become more vicious, apparently for two reasons. Hasina was convinced that the 2004 assassination attempt was engineered by the BNP’s high leadership with the consent of Khaleda Zia; therefore, the relationship between them can only be of mortal enemy. The second factor was the failed attempt of the 2007–2008 caretaker government to banish her from politics. Although the so-called Minus-Two formula was intended to banish both Hasina and Khaleda Zia, Hasina now had the power to eradicate any such future possibility through making changes in political dynamics. The 2009 mutiny of the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR), the paramilitary border guards, on February 25–26, which killed 74 officials of which 49 were on a secondment from the Bangladesh Army, not only put her leadership to test (HRW 2012; Khondkar 2017) but also provided an opportunity to conduct a purge of whose loyalty to her party was suspect (ICG 2018). Thus by 2020, Hasina was confident to take on the state institutions as

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well as the constitution to ensure that challenges to her unchecked power are muted. How much an actor can play a role in the democratic backsliding, especially changing the rules of the game through constitutional measures, was on display in 2011 when the Bangladesh parliament decided to amend the constitution, especially the provision regarding the caretaker government provisions (salient features of the amendment and their implications are discussed in the next section). The process of amending the constitution began on 21 July 2010 with the formation of a parliamentary committee. The committee was supposed to have 15 members drawn from both the ruling AL and the opposition BNP. As the BNP did not send any representative to the committee, all 12 of the committee’s eventual members were from the Awami League. In total, 104 of the 114 individuals from various walks of life who the committee invited to present their opinions on the matter did so. The invitees included a former president, the sitting prime minister, three former chief justices, three former and current attorneys general, five senior lawyers, and other professionals. After holding 27 meetings on 29 May 2011, the committee unanimously voted to retain the caretaker government and recommended limiting its tenure to three months prior to elections. After its meeting with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina the following day, however, the committee changed its recommendation in favor of abolishing the caretaker government system. While the PM claimed on May 30 that the court verdict had made it imperative to scrap the system, this had not been mentioned either during meetings of the amendment committee which took place between May 10 and 29, nor was it stated unequivocally in the verdict itself (Riaz 2019, 143). With the constitutional change not only Sheikh Hasina’s complete control over the executive and legislative bodies was established, but the country also entered the institutional phase of democratic backsliding. At this stage autocratic leaders on the one hand change the rules of the game through constitutional and extraconstitutional measures, while on the other hand, they sidestep the institutional norm. As noted by Khondker, Hasina too trod the path and began to “use economic development to compensate for the deficit in political legitimacy” (Khondkar 2017, 217).

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Institutional Strategy As noted in our theoretical framework (Chapter 4), the institutional strategy of the autocrats has three elements, and these are often implemented in sequence. These are—changing the rules of the game, capturing the referees of the state, and silencing the opponents. Changing the Rules of the Game The first stage of the process in Bangladesh under the incumbent AL was targeting the constitution. The 15th Amendment of the constitution passed in 2011, which removed the caretaker government (CTG) provision, and was intended to establish the dominance of the ruling Awami League. With the removal of the CTG provision the incumbent had removed the uncertainty regarding election results. All elections held under the incumbent in Bangladesh between 1973 and 1990, and in February 1996 delivered victory to the ruling party. The 15th amendment made sure that the same can be repeated as under the new stipulation, elections will be overseen by the incumbent. The door for unchecked electoral fraud was opened through this new arrangement. Elections are an important element of democracy and democratization. But it assumes a greater significance and becomes a high-stakes event in a competitive authoritarian system. In a competitive authoritarian system, elections become high-stake exercises because they become the only source of legitimacy; ensuring a “victory in elections—whether the elections are fair or not” (Kilinc 2017) turns out to be the principal objective. As mentioned previously, the ruling party used a summary verdict of the Supreme Court delivered in May 2011 as a pretext to bring this change, despite objections of members of civil society and opposition political parties. On 10 May 2011, the Supreme Court issued a verdict on a case challenging the constitutionality of the existing CTG system. The summary verdict stated that “The Constitution (Thirteenth Amendment) Act, 1996 (Act 1 of 1996) is prospectively declared void and ultra vires of the Constitution”. But it also made observation that “The election to the Tenth and the Eleventh Parliament may be held under the provisions of the above-mentioned Thirteenth Amendment” (Sarkar 2011, 1). Interestingly, the full verdict was not written until 14 months after the summary verdict (short order). The verdict, neither the summary nor the complete one, unequivocally suggested a complete scrapping of the

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CTG system, yet the ruling party used it as a pretext. A parliamentary committee comprised of ruling party members recommended amendments to the CTG system, not scrapping the system altogether. But the annulment decision was unilaterally made by the prime minister (Riaz 2019, 143). The 15th amendment of the constitution removed the CTG system and stipulated that the parliamentary election would be held within 90 days prior to the completion of tenure (or within 90 days of the dissolution of parliament if the parliament is dissolved before completion of its tenure). It was implied that the incumbents in the Cabinet would continue to serve up to the time of the election, and that the parliament would continue to function. It also stipulated that an election would be held while the previously elected parliament remained effective, which is contrary to the level playing field necessary for ensuring an acceptable election and common practice of parliamentary systems around the world. Besides, constitutional law experts have questioned the legality of the amendment itself as the ruling party did not seek mandate from the citizens during the 2008 election and did not arrange a referendum after the parliament passed the proposed amendments (Hoque 2022). It was a classic move to turn the country into a hegemonic electoral authoritarian regime, a regime which holds “uncompetitive multiparty elections that are not free or fair” (Diamond 2002) where “there is never any uncertainty in the outcome of national elections” (Roessler and Howard 2009) and which “systematically … render elections instruments of authoritarian rule rather than ‘instruments of democracy’” (Schedler 2006). An electoral authoritarian regime, to ensure its access to power, effectively strips the efficacy of elections. As such, the 15th amendment of the Bangladeshi constitution was neither a response to the abuse of the caretaker system by the previous government nor the Supreme Court’s verdict, but a way to make the elections ineffective. The opposition parties, including the BNP, threatened to boycott the election if the CTG system, was not restored (Economist 2011); the international community repeatedly called for ensuing an inclusive election, and an UN-brokered talk between the incumbent and BNP failed to yield any result (UN News 2012). The incumbent went ahead with the election which was boycotted by all opposition parties. The result, therefore, was a foregone conclusion. Besides, more than half of the 300-member parliament was elected unopposed, because the opposition parties did not file any candidates (Ahmed 2014). Various features of the election—from

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number of parties participating to voter turnout to election of unopposed candidates (Fig. 5.3)—not only bear the marks of an unusual election, but they also show how the removal of the CTG has impacted the electoral landscape. For example, the number of parties participating was down to 12 from 38 in the previous election. Although immediately after the election Sheikh Hasina hinted at a fresh poll ahead of schedule (Burke 2014), she later reneged. With a new system in place, and the result of 2014, Bangladesh became a hegemonic authoritarian system under which the 2018 election became a stage-managed show. 180 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 1973

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Fig. 5.3 Bangladeshi elections: party participation, voter turnout, and unopposed candidates, 1973–2014 (Notes [1] Parties participated: Among the 12 parties which participated in the 2014 election, five had less than three candidates [Khelafat Majlish: 2; Islamic Front: 1; Gonofront; 1, Tariquat Federation: 3; and Gonotontri Party: 1]. Only seven parties had more than five candidates and there were six parties with 10 or more candidates. [2] Voter Turnout: Official sources, including the EC claimed that the turnout was 39%. But this figure is contested by the local and international press, amid reports that ballots were stuffed by party activists, particularly in the afternoon as it became evident that the turnout would be too low. The Guardian reported voter turnout at 10%, others have suggested about 22% at best. It is worth noting that in 50 polling centers no votes were cast. Considering that the election was held for 147 seats, a 39% turnout is about 18% of the total voters. Sources Compiled by the author based on information from the Election Commission and press reports)

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Capturing the Referees of the State In the second stage, control over various institutions, especially the court, became the hallmark of legalistic autocrats. In the case of Bangladesh, the ruling party not only packed the court with its supporters, but also forced the chief justice out of the court and into exile. Subordination of the judicial arena is almost a prerequisite for the maintenance of the regime. Levitsky and Way argue that this is often done by means of bribery and extortion, and, if possible, by appointing and dismissing judges and officials (Levitsky and Way 2002, 52). According to Brown and Wise, institutions such as the supreme court or constitutional courts tend to function not only as arbiters of constitutionality and legal principles but also as advocates of the current regime (Brown and Wise 2004). The 16th Amendment of the Bangladesh Constitution passed by the parliament in September 2014 which has empowered the parliament to impeach judges of the Supreme Court for incapability or misconduct falls within this kind of effort. The insalubrious rhetoric of the ruling party leaders after it was struck down by the High Court (May 2016) and the Supreme Court (July 2016) is indicative of the mindset to establish complete control over the higher courts. This is what led to the “resignation” of Chief Justice S K Sinha, who also left the country (Dhaka Tribune 2017). The CJ, in his memoir published a year later, claimed that he was forced to resign and exiled (Bergman 2018). Similarly, retaining the power of appointment, administration and removal of lower court judges in the president’s hands as opposed to the Supreme Court through the Bangladesh Judicial Service (Discipline) Rules 2017 contravenes the spirit of the separation of the executive and the judiciary (The Daily Star 2018a). Silencing the Political Opponents With the constitutional change completed and engaged in capturing the referees of the state, the incumbent entered the third stage, the persecution of opposition leaders, particularly the BNP. By bringing frivolous charges against them and engaging them in court battles, the incumbent succeeded in weakening them. Along with the opposition, the incumbent targeted the media and civil society organization. The most telling example of the persecution of the opposition is the number of cases filed against BNP Chairperson and former PM, Khaleda Zia. Between

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2012 and 2019, a staggering 36 cases have been filed against her (The Business Standard 2020). Although the first signs of such an approach became evident when a series of corruption cases filed by the caretaker government against Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia faced different fates. By May 2010, all fifteen cases against Sheikh Hasina—some filed during the BNP government between 2001 and 2006 and some filed by the CTG during 2007–2008 by the Anti-Corruption Commission, were dropped or quashed by courts (BBC 2010) while cases against Khaleda Zia remained (The Daily Star 2018b) Khaleda Zia was sentenced to five years in prison by a special court in February 2018 in a graft case (Rashid 2018). Her prison sentence was raised to ten years by the High Court in October 2018, an unprecedented event (The Asian Age 2018). Her son, Tarique Rahman, was also convicted on these graft charges (Aljazeera 2016). In the same month she was sentenced to seven years in another case. Corruption is so endemic in Bangladesh, like many other developing countries, that it was ranked the most corrupt country by Transparency International for five years in 2000–2005. But as democracy eroded, the corruption became institutionalized as neopatrimonialism became pervasive (Islam 2013). In such a system, the corruption serves various purposes, from buying friends to muzzling media. But in competitive authoritarian systems, anti-corruption tends to be weaponized and used against political opposition. The persecution of opposition was very much on display when the government adopted harsh measures against the Jamaat-i-Islami soon after the International Crimes Tribunal was appointed in 2010 to try those who committed crimes against humanity in 1971 (Islam 2011). In addition to the change in the constitution, the government changed a law related to freedom of expression which was essentially designed to silence the critics: the act in question is the Information and Communication Act. Although the Act was formulated in 2006, it was not applied until 2008. There was an amendment made in 2009 but the most significant and far-reaching changes were brought about in 2013. The amended law not only provided the power to law enforcement agencies to arrest someone without a warrant but also to detain him/her for an indefinite period. Article 57 of the ICT Act 2006 (as amended in 2013) stated that one can be charged for publishing materials which are “false”, “prejudicial to the state or person”, and /or hurt “religious beliefs” (The Daily Star 2015). None of those offenses were defined, yet

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the steep penalty for the violation—14 years’ imprisonment and a fine of a crore taka ($125,000)—was set. The Act, since 2013, became a tool for curtailing freedom of speech, for allegedly hurting religious sentiment, and criticizing the government. The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) along with Human Rights Groups and groups working for freedom of media described it as draconian. The ICJ stated, “Provisions of the original ICT Act, particularly section 57, are also incompatible with Bangladesh’s obligations under Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)” (ICJ 2013). Soon after enacting the amended law, the government began to use it against “secularist” bloggers and “Islamist” websites alike. It also was used against individuals with no political affiliations but expressing their opinion in social media. Essentially, Article 57 of the ICT Act became the key in silencing critics and gradually establishing complete control over cyberspace resulting in the precipitous decline of freedom of expression since 2013. At the beginning of the AL government, the freedom of expression score in Freedom House score was 9, which by 2018 came down to 7 and continued to slide down in the subsequent years. Further legal and extralegal measures to muzzle the press and gag the dissenting voices were taken. Eminent journalists and editors, as well as newspapers, faced the wrath of the government and its supporters. Seventy-nine cases were filed against an editor (Sattar 2016) after the PM had spoken harshly against the editor (bdnews24 2016), another editor was incarcerated for years (BBC 2016) and was attacked at the court premise (Sagor 2018), the government forced businesses to stop advertising in two newspapers to deprive them of revenue (DW 2015), and a photojournalist was detained for months (Meixler 2018). In October 2018, months before the election, the government implemented a vaguely defined law with harsher punitive measures called the Digital Security Act 2018 (DSA). “The Digital Security Act criminalizes many forms of freedom of expression and imposes heavy fines and prison sentences for legitimate forms of dissent. It is incompatible with international law and standards and should be amended immediately”, said Dinushika Dissanayake, Deputy South Asia Director at Amnesty International in November 2018 (Amnesty International 2013). The wanton use of the DSA by the government and the supporters of the ruling party grew exponentially in the following years. Criticisms by the international and national organizations were brushed off by the government claiming that the “abuse” of the law was limited. However, under intense

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pressure and repeated calls from the United Nations Human Rights office, Law Minister Anisul Huq acknowledged on 6 June 2023 that between October 2018 and January 2023, a total of 7,001 cases had been filed under the law (The Daily Star 2023). Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reports over the years documented the precipitous decline of press freedom in the country. According to the RSF, Bangladesh’s score was 57.99 in 2013, and since then it began to slide and reached 51.38 in 2018. In 2023, the score was 35.31. Freedom of the press and freedom of expression were not the only casualties of the growing autocratic tendency of the government, but also so were human rights activists and common citizens. Systemic persecution of the citizens, through legal and extralegal measures, created a culture of fear. The most worrying development was the rise of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. Extrajudicial killings euphemistically described as “crossfires”/“encounters”/“gunfight” became so pervasive that citizens were afraid that anyone could be a victim of these at any time. In 2013, the year before the election, 329 people became victims of extrajudicial killings according to Odhikar, a national human rights organization. It continued unabated and in 2018, in another election year, the number rose to 466. Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), the elite police force was alleged to have been engaged in most of these violations of human rights. As for the enforced disappearances, which began in 2011, spiked in 2013, ahead of the election year making 54 individual victims. In 2018, at least 98 people were reported to be picked up by the law enforcement agencies in plain clothes and many were never to be returned. The government continues to deny that state actors are involved in such heinous crimes. However, these gross violations of human rights led to the imposition of sanctions on the RAB and seven current and former officials in December 2021. It was quite evident that after the 2014 election, the road was not leading to, but rather away from, democracy. The 2014 election produced a legislature which was completely under the control of the ruling party and the executive, with the Jatiya Party, declared “official opposition” and being a part of the cabinet, it became a de facto one-party state. As such, the 2018 election which was participated in by opposition parties, including the BNP, made no difference. According to international media the ballot boxes were stuffed the night before and widespread rigging was orchestrated by the election commission, civil administration, members

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of the law enforcing agencies, and party activists (Riaz 2019; Riaz and Parvez 2021).

Ideological Strategy Although the “debilitation or elimination of the political institutions” is central to backsliding, it does not explain the process as to how a country deviates from the path of democracy in its entirety. As we have insisted that non-institutional measures are accompanied with, and in many instances preceded by, ideational measures creating an environment which allows and legitimizes the undemocratic actions of the incumbent. Differences and contestation on various issues are not unique to Bangladesh, but they are increasingly portrayed as the source of epistemic insecurity—that is, the survival of the group is at stake. As such, a contrived “Us versus Them” mentality and discourse have been inflamed in the past decade. Such discourse has portrayed the opposition parties, particularly the BNP, as the enemy of the people. The ideational effort of the ruling Awami League to undermine democracy became palpable in 2009–2010 when supporters of the government insisted that development should precede democracy. The ruling party, since coming to power in 2009, underscored infrastructural development as a key to their economic agenda. It embarked on several large-scale infrastructure projects, often described as “mega projects”, which have been touted as the marker of development and have the potential to change the livelihood of the people of Bangladesh. These include the Padma Bridge and Roopur Nuclear Power Plant. It was argued by supporters of the regime that development requires stability and continuity which can only be achieved by continuation of the same party in power. By 2014, the central argument of the regime was that it is delivering unprecedented economic growth measured by the GDP growth rate. Data belies this claim. Bangladesh’s GDP began to grow in the 1990s when the country embarked on democratization. Data show that, save one exception (2002), the GDP growth rate was above 4% and was in an upward trend despite alterations in power and bad governance (Fig. 5.4). During the 2018 election campaign, the AL made “development” its central claim for continuation in power and framed the election as a referendum on its development agenda (Maîtrot and Jackman 2023).

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9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

Fig. 5.4 Bangladesh’s GDP growth rate, 1996–2018 (Source World Bank)

Like many other countries where democratic backsliding has taken place in the past decade, the incumbent in Bangladesh has used “patriotism” as a weapon to create schisms and used it as a legitimizing tool since it came into power in 2009. Since 2013, the country has witnessed efforts to accentuate this division using the term muktijudhher chetona (the spirit of liberation war) as a marker of this division. The concept, which literally means to uphold the ideals which underlined the 1971 war, has been used by supporters of the ruling Awami League as an indicator of patriotism and unqualified support to the incumbent government. The 2013 grassroots movement demanding capital punishment for those who were convicted of crimes against humanity perpetrated during the 1971 war of independence, was co-opted by the ruling party (Zaman 2016). While the movement initially emerged spontaneously, the government soon co-opted and made the “muktijudhher chetona” the battle cry. There is neither an agreed meaning to the term muktijudhher chetona and what it entails nor is there a way to devise a common meaning to such a nebulous idea, yet it is used as a marker of identity and as an instrument to marginalize parties, groups and individuals for their political positions. Criticism of the notion was portrayed as unpatriotic and almost treasonous. The movement, called Gonojagorn Moncho, gradually winded down but it created the environment for a non-inclusive election facilitating the

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slide toward autocracy. In an equal vein, after 2014, the AL intensified its campaign to portray the party as almost the exclusive political force which participated and led the war of independence, and Mujib as the eternal sovereign. As Rudd noted, “there is a government-pushed cult around Bangabandhu and although not necessarily against the hairs of popular appraisal of his role for the nation’s independence, the cult does actively establish him as the nation’s unquestionable authority above the everyday, an eternal sovereign for an otherwise struggling and conflicted nation” (Rudd 2022, 533). In this endeavor, roles of other leaders, including the prime minister of the exiled government Tajuddin Ahmed and freedom fighter Ziaur Rahman were obliterated from the official narrative. Tajuddin Ahmed was one of the four AL leaders who were killed after the 1975 coup while being detained in Dhaka Central Jail. Ziaur Rahman has become the target of incessant vilification. Implications of the ideational element are not limited to a specific stage, although it started even before the institutional changes were made, yet it continues to serve as the source of legitimacy throughout the entire process of backsliding.

Audience With the election process made an instrument to legitimize the rule of the incumbent, other institutions tamed or captured and avenues of freedom of expression limited, it has become a challenge to gauge the citizens’ reaction to the transformation of an elected leader to an autocrat and the support or lack thereof to the agenda of the ruling party. This is a challenge to researchers in almost all countries where democratic backsliding has taken place. In many countries, the space for independent public opinion surveys still exists and allows analysts to assess support to the incumbent. The reactions and responses of the citizens of Bangladesh to the increasing move toward autocracy has seen dramatic turns between 2013 and 2019, during which period the country witnessed two highly flawed elections. While Bangladeshi media discontinued conducting and publishing opinion surveys after 2014, in fear of retribution, various international organizations conducted several surveys. The interesting elements of these opinion surveys conducted by various international organizations are that, on the one hand, they reflect increasing support to the incumbent, primarily based on their perceptions about economic growth while, on the other hand, a latent fear to express their opinion

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has increased. These surveys conducted by the Asia Foundation, International Republican Institute (IRI), and Democracy International (DI), and 2018 survey under the seventh wave of World Values Survey (WVS) show not only support of the direction of the country but also of various state institutions. According to the series of surveys conducted by the International Republication Institute (IRI) under its Center for Insights in Survey Research, there have been significant shifts in public perceptions in favor of the existing direction (Fig. 5.5). In October 2016, Democracy International’s survey revealed a similar pattern. There was a surge among the respondents who felt that the country is moving in the right direction (73% compared to 14% in April 2013) (Democracy International 2016). The Asia Foundation survey of 2019 reported that almost 64% of the respondents felt that Bangladesh is moving in the right direction in the political domain, however, almost one-third of the respondents said it is moving in the right direction (The Asia Foundation 2019). The seventh wave of the World Values Surveys, under which surveys in Bangladesh were conducted in 2018, have demonstrated that the citizens of Bangladesh have overwhelming confidence in the government; a combination of “a great deal” and “quite a lot” makes up more than 81%. The Survey also showed that 11.8% of the 80 70

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respondents thought that the country is “completely democratic”. On a scale of 1–10 (1 being not at all democratic and 10 being completely democratic), more than 50% have rated the country between 8 and 10 (WVS 2023). These are indicative of acquiescence of the audience to the growing authoritarianism in Bangladesh. But a few details of these surveys also show that the citizens were facing severe constraints in expressing their opinions and were less supportive of the autocratic pathway. For example, in the 2016 DI survey, 38% of the respondents said that they do not feel free to express their political opinion in the area they live in, and 8% decided not to respond. Increasing numbers of respondents preferred to select Don’t Know/ Don’t Respond (DK/DR). In 2016, 35% of the respondents did not want to reveal who they would have voted for if the election was held today. The number was only 5% in December 2014. Besides, 14% said they “Don’t Know” compared to only 1% in another survey of the DI in 2014 (Democracy International 2018). A survey conducted by the Asia Foundation between October and November of 2015 reported that “a third of respondents did not feel free to express their political opinions or were unsure” (The Asia Foundation 2016). The DK/DR responses in the International Republican Institute (IRI) surveys increased over time. In response to the question “Overall, how would you rate the current level of political stability in Bangladesh?”, it was 3% in 2014, 15% in 2017, and 21% in 2018. As part of the survey in September 2018, UK Aid, USAID, and Democracy International (DI) held several Focus Group Discussions (FGDs). The report of the survey and the FGDs was not made public but circulated among selected stakeholders of these organizations. The author obtained a copy through a reliable source. The report mentioned that participants of the urban focus groups said that they were reluctant to offer their true opinion due to fear. In Summer 2017, the IRI held several FGDs. One of the findings of these FGDs was that “participants across every focus group said Bangladeshis fear discussing politics in public” (International Republican Institute 2018, 17). The assessment of the report was “The fear of discussing politics in public appears mostly linked to intimidation from the government rather than the opposition” (International Republican Institute 2018, 18). While various surveys, including the WVS, show that Bangladeshis are overwhelmingly supportive of democracy, 75% respondents felt that one party plays a dominant role in politics/governance (Asia Foundation 2019, 17). These surveys show that after the 15th amendment in 2011,

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especially after the 2014 election, as the country paced toward an autocracy, public opinion was ostensibly acquiescing—either in fear or as a sign of resignation of accepting the reality. Such acceptance contributed to the autocratization process. As the caretaker government attempted to banish Hasina (and Khaleda) from politics in 2007–2008, it attempted to split these parties and create leaderships from within respective parties to replace Sheikh Hasina (and Khaleda Zia). Several senior leaders of both the AL and the BNP joined the effort. This machination was countered by the AL activists loyal to Hasina by insisting that there was no alternative to her leadership in the party. After 2009, gradually the irreplaceability argument was extended beyond the party and insisted that there was no alternative to her leadership for the country. This was meant to counter the longstanding portrayal of equivalence between Hasina and Khaleda. Repeated insistence by the party leaders (Prothom Alo 2016; The New Nation 2019) and pro-government journalists (Rahman 2019b), that there is no alternative to Hasina, not only affirmed the personalistic nature of her leadership but also viewed her as a savior of the nation during its endeavor to achieve economic development. In some measures, the ineffectiveness of institutions, ranging from civil administration to judiciary, made it evident that it is only Sheikh Hasina’s intervention that will lead to a positive result. The demands for her intervention in solving any problems, from capital markets (Mia 2020), to helping innocent children (Bangladesh Post 2020), to school-level examinations (The Daily Sun 2020), contributed to the idea that there is no other power center in the country.

Conclusion Bangladesh’s propitious beginning toward democratization in 1991 did not produce strong institutions to prevent creeping authoritarianism on the one hand and breakdown of the democratic system, on the other. After fifteen years, the fragile system vitiated by incessant acrimony between two major parties paved the road for military intervention. However, two years of the democratic hiatus raised hope that the political class, especially the victor of the 2008 election, will chart a new course toward a resilient democratic governance. But the AL, under the leadership of Sheikh Hasina, charted a course in the opposite direction, Bangladesh’s democratic backsliding took a spectacular pace after 2011.

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The incumbent embarked on a process which was intended to debilitate or eliminate political institutions that sustain an existing democracy. This process is institutionalized through two engineered elections in 2014 and 2018, which produced de facto one-party parliaments, and furthered the concentration of power in the hands of the prime minister. The pathway away from democracy had institutional and non-institutional elements. The sequence of the backsliding started with the context within which a non-democratic actor emerged who adopted institutional strategies to debilitate the institutions, legitimized through ideological strategies and constructed support from an audience. As such, Bangladesh’s system of governance transformed into an autocracy.

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Human Rights Watch. 2012. ““The Fear Never Leaves Me”: Bangladesh: Torture, Deaths of Jailed Mutiny Suspects Torture, Custodial Deaths, and Unfair Trials After the 2009 Mutiny of the Bangladesh Rifles.” 4 July. https://www.hrw.org/report/2012/07/04/fear-never-leaves-me/tor ture-custodial-deaths-and-unfair-trials-after-2009-mutiny. Huntington, Samuel. 1993. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ICJ. 2013. “Bangladesh: Information and Communication Technology Act Draconian Assault on Free Expression.” https://www.icj.org/bangladesh-inf ormation-and-communication-technology-act-draconian-assault-on-free-exp ression/. International Crisis Group (ICG). 2018. “Countering Jihadist Militancy in Bangladesh.” Asia Report 295, 20 February. https://www.crisisgroup.org/ asia/south-asia/bangladesh/295-countering-jihadist-militancy-bangladesh. International IDEA. 2022. “Global State of Democracy Initiative.” Stockholm: Sweden https://idea.int/democracytracker/country/bangladesh. International Republican Institute, 2018. “Bangladesh: Daily Challenges Public Opinion on Economics, Politics and Security, Summer 2017.” Washington, DC: IRI. Islam, MD Saidul. 2011. ““Minority Islam” in Muslim Majority Bangladesh: The Violent Road to a New Brand of Secularism.” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 31 (1): 125–141. Islam, Mohammad Mozahidul. 2013. “The Toxic Politics of Bangladesh: A Bipolar Competitive Neopatrimonial State.” Asian Journal of Political Science 21 (2): 148–168. Islam, Aminul, and Jasim Uddin. 2018. “Indicators Mismatch GDP Growth Claim.” New Age, 29 May. https://www.newagebd.net/article/42406/ind icators-mismatch-gdp-growth-claim. Khatun, Fahmida. 2020. “Bangladesh’s GDP Growth Number Does Not Hold Water.” The Daily Star, 17 August. https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/ macro-mirror/news/bangladeshs-gdp-growth-number-does-not-hold-water1946009. Khondkar, Habibul Haque. 2017. “Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh: Politics, Personality and Policies.” In Women Presidents and Prime Ministers in Posttransition Democracies, edited by Verónica Montecinos. London: Palgrave. Kilinc, Faith Resul. 2017. “What We See in Venezuela Is the Faith of Hybrid Regimes.” August 27. http://foreignpolicynews.org/2017/08/28/see-ven ezuela-faith-hybrid-regimes/. Levitsky, Steven, and Lucan A. Way. 2002. “Elections Without Democracy: The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism.” Journal of Democracy 13 (2): 51–65. Levitksy, Steven, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2018. How Democracies Die. New York: Crown.

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CHAPTER 6

Bolivia: A Miracle Turning into a Competitive Autocracy

On 10 November 2019, the longest-serving Bolivian President Evo Morales resigned after 14 years of rule. The allegations of electoral fraud in the re-election of Morales in October 2019 triggered violent protests and confrontations across the country, forcing the president to step down from power. Since his assumption of power in 2006, Morales caught the attention of the world and the international media, as being the country’s first indigenous, left-leaning president. Morales’s anti-imperialist and anti-US stance exhibited resonance of the “pink tide” of Latin America, with left-wing leaders ousting traditional elites and challenging the US influence in the region. With 14 years of personalist style of rule, Morales altered the country’s democratic progress, throwing it to authoritarian paths. Once hailed as a miracle of the third wave of democratization and as “one of the most interesting phenomena in recent history of Latin America” (Balderaccchi 2017), Bolivia’s democracy under Morales transformed into a competitive authoritarian regime. How did Bolivia’s democracy arrive here? When and why did democratic backsliding begin in the country? What strategies were adopted by Morales in the process of backsliding? This chapter seeks to answer these questions and to contribute to the existing debates on Bolivia’s democratic backsliding. The chapter employs the institutional-ideological approach of democratic backsliding, advanced in this book, to investigate and answer these questions. To understand Morales-led de-democratization © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 A. Riaz and Md S. Rana, How Autocrats Rise, Global Political Transitions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-7580-8_6

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in Bolivia, it is helpful to begin with the country’s democratic trajectory. The following section provides a brief background of Bolivia’s journey toward democratization.

The Rise and Fall of Bolivian Democracy After gaining independence from the Spanish Empire in 1825, Bolivia experienced hundreds of military coups, several episodes of military rule, numerous wars, and severe economic crises. The devastating experience in the War of the Pacific (1879–1884) and the Chaco War (1932–1935) shattered the traditional social system and gave rise to a military-dominated oligarchic nature of politics in the country. It was only in 1982, after the collapse of military rule, that Bolivia stepped toward democratization by introducing several reforms for restoring civilian government and constitutional normalcy. The country finally managed to hold a relatively free election in 1985 that marked the first ever peaceful transfer of power between opposition political parties since independence. Between 1985 and 1997, civilian rule was stabilized, and politics was dominated by three political parties such as National Democratic Action (ADN), Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR), Leftist Revolutionary Movement (MIR), turning Bolivia into an electoral democracy. In the 2002 presidential election, Evo Morales, and his Movement toward Socialism (MAS) gained prominence in politics, demonstrating massive popular support. This was, partly, because citizens seemed tired of the empty promises of traditional political parties and were looking for a change, and partly, because of Morales’ populist stance, promising to end the US-led coca eradication, to resolve the national debt crisis, and to nationalize privatized enterprises (Morales 2010, 229). With his populist themes and popularity among the indigenous majority, Morales won 54% of the popular vote in the December 2005 election and became the country’s first ever indigenous president, raising hope for democratic consolidation. However, since 2006, MAS emerged as the single most important political party, whereas most of the traditional political parties merged under a new non-indigenous party, PODEMOS, creating a new political division in the country (Klein 2011, 264). Following the victory in 2009 with impressive electoral margins, Morales and the MAS began consolidating their control in the country. In 2009–2019, the Morales regime monopolized control over

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state resources, captured the election management body and the judiciary, abused the two-thirds majority in the legislative assembly to pass self-serving constitutional and legal reforms, and established a hegemonic control over the media environment, turning Bolivia to a competitive authoritarian state (Sanchez-Sibony 2021). After the contentious election of October 2019, Morales was forced to leave the presidency, and shortly thereafter, the country, due to allegations of electoral fraud and massive post-election anti-government protests, led Bolivia’s democracy to an uncertain future.

Democratic Backsliding in Bolivia: Process and Sequences Bolivia under Morales has been given many names by scholars such as “semi-democracy” (Mainwaring and Perez-Linan 2015), “competitive authoritarianism” (Levitsky and Loxton 2013; Sanchez-Sibony 2021), “plebiscitarian dictatorship” (Mayorga 2017), and “nondemocratic regime” (Barrios 2017). The aim of this section is to apply our institutional-ideological framework of democratic backsliding to the Bolivian case. Thus, we examine the relevance of four key elements of our framework—context, agent, strategy (e.g., institutional and ideological), and audience—to explain the process of democratic backsliding in Bolivia.

Context Based on Freedom House data, Bolivia’s democracy score of 72 began dropping since 2005 and fell to 63 in 2020 (see Fig. 6.1). Based on our theoretical assertion, the year 2005 is an inflection point, from when Bolivia’s democracy began backsliding and never returned to its original position. Why did Bolivian democracy begin backsliding since 2005? We contend that increasing polarization and a series of political crises following 2005 created an environment, causing the beginning of de-democratization. The failure of neoliberal policies and elitist political order for almost two decades came under challenge in the late 1990s, leading to the emergence of two social blocs, divided along the lines of class, race, and region. On the one hand, a left-indigenous bloc, comprising urban proletarian and peasant forces, emerged with the demands of a radical redistribution of land and wealth, nationalization of natural resources, and

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74 72 70 68 66 64 62 60 58

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Fig. 6.1 The State of Democracy in Bolivia, 2004–2020 (Source Freedom House annual reports, 2004–2020)

the convocation of a revolutionary constituent assembly (Webber 2010, 52). On the other hand, an eastern-bourgeois bloc, led by the regional bourgeoisie of the hydrocarbons-rich departments of Tarija, Santa Cruz, Beni, and Pando, which are together known as the Media Luna (Half Moon), emerged with demands such as regional autonomy, regional control over natural resources, free-market capitalism, etc. (Webber 2010, 52). In 2000–2005, the left-indigenous bloc confronted the ruling elites and government forces (supported by the eastern-bourgeois bloc) with massive street protests, especially during the Cochabamba Water War (2000) and the Gas Wars (2003, 2005) for blockades over natural resources. During the second Gas War in 2005, two blocs engaged in violent clashes, leaving dozens of protesters injured. Morales and the MAS, with the roots of coca growers’ peasant union and of anti-neoliberal protest movements, forged an alliance with the left-indigenous bloc that reignited and significantly empowered the bloc. Though the 2005 election of Morales briefly raised hope to stabilize the political situation, this exhilarating optimism was soon lost in the air. In 2006–2009, Morales’s ambitious agenda such as nationalizing natural resources and constitutional reform, unleashed a firestorm of controversy, fierce disagreements, and confrontation that resulted in heightened political polarization. Three major issues of contention are worth mentioning owing to their substantial contribution to heighten polarization during this period, undermining democracy.

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First, since 2006, the structure of the political party system encountered a new fragmentation, with the indigenous MAS party in power and the non-indigenous traditional political parties in opposition, unlike any other time in the country’s history. This fragmentation became more apparent when Morales integrated several leaders of indigenous and social movement organizations into government’s ministerial posts, key positions of power, and administration. Ten out of sixteen ministers of Morales’s first cabinet (2006–2009) were drawn from indigenous sectors, social organizations, and workers’ unions (McNelly 2020, 81), while thousands of them were incorporated into the state bureaucracy. These developments not only undermined the importance of traditional political parties, but also created a new political division, with the new indigenous class in the central government’s departments on the one hand, and the traditional elites in the Media Luna group on the other hand, deepening political fragmentation and polarization (Klein 2011, 265). It resulted in fierce opposition from traditional elites against government’s agenda and policies, including the demand of regional autonomy by the Media Luna group, that represents almost 70% of the total national territory (Morales 2010, 234). This new division destabilized the political environment and weakened the credibility of Morales government. Second, soon after taking office in 2006, Morales passed a decree and ordered the army to seize control of fifty-two oil and gas installations (Postero 2006, 230). The decree involved measures such as raising taxes substantially, reviving state oil companies, and renegotiating contracts. In 2006–2008, the government nationalized twelve major foreign companies, renegotiated at least forty-four contracts, and gave the state-run company, YPFB, active control over their facilities (Klein 2011, 288). Under the new contracts, the foreign companies would still run their facilities, but the state share of oil and gas income would be 54% (Harten 2011, 181). Between 2008 and 2010, the government nationalized the Italian telecommunications company, Telecom, and all electricity companies operating in Bolivia (Klein 2011, 288–289). These nationalization efforts substantially increased government revenues and flooded the treasury with money. For instance, gas revenues increased from US$173 million in 2002 to about US$1.57 billion in 2007 (Harten 2011, 181). However, the continued nationalization of foreign companies negatively affected the amount of foreign direct investment and capital inflow from foreign aid funds. According to World Bank data, the net inflows of foreign direct investment in Bolivia dropped from US$736.4 million in

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2000 to US$423 million in 2009. Similarly, the stock of foreign capital investment in GDP fell from 61% in 2000 to only 35% in 2009 (Klein 2011, 289). The lack of foreign investment, especially in labor-intensive manufactures, threw an overwhelming majority of Bolivians to informal labor markets, employed in low-productive and low-wage jobs. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO) data, about 85% of the labor force was employed in the informal economic sector in 2007. Morales dedicated a large portion of its public expenditure to infrastructure, while the lack of investment in the capital-intensive extractive sectors did not create a significant number of jobs (Webber 2016, 1864), indicating not much change in poverty dynamics that led to economic grievances and frustration. On a different note, Morales’s nationalization efforts aggravated the polarizing positions between the left-indigenous bloc and the eastern-bourgeois bloc. The pro-government forces’ rallying supporters favoring the nationalization of foreign companies solidified the political and ideological distance between the traditional elites in the regional departments and the central government led by the left-indigenous bloc. It induced noncooperation, opposition, and apathy of traditional elites in terms of government policy implementation. Third, the regime’s process of drafting a new constitution resulted in political crises and armed clashes between 2006 and 2008. Elected in July 2006, the Constituent Assembly was charged with drafting a new constitution that would represent the entire Bolivian population and would give the country a new political order. However, as the Assembly was presided over by a pro-indigenous leader and had at least 56% of its delegates pertaining to an indigenous group, it met with sharp opposition and protests from traditional elites and regional departments, claiming that the new constitution would express most of the ideas favored by radical indigenous leaders (Klein 2011, 291). In fact, the president of the Assembly played a major role in shaping certain sections of the new constitution related to indigenous rights (Crabtree 2017, 58). Meanwhile, the government, using its strong majority in the lower house of Congress, passed a land reform bill in November 2006 for acquisition and redistribution of unproductive land. It triggered renewed protests from the opposition, arguing that the bill would jeopardize the eastern region’s economic engine, e.g., export-oriented agri-business and natural gas exports (International Crisis Group 2007). The regional

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departments feared that the regime’s final goal was to produce a constitution that would deprive lowland peasants, seize their holdings, and divide the entire eastern regions into dozens of sub-regions through its decentralization scheme. The eastern regions, therefore, not only issued an ultimatum, threatening to declare a de facto regional autonomy unless their demands were met, but also organized strikes by closing roads and hiring private security forces (International Crisis Group 2007). The government responded with the threat of military intervention if the country’s unity was compromised by seeking secession, forcing the regional departments to negotiate. When the Assembly came up with a constitutional draft in 2007, it was bitterly debated and was submitted to the Congress for revision. The Congress revised the final draft in 2008, that was approved with 61% of the votes in the 2009 referendum. Though the regime succeeded in fulfilling its commitment to reform the constitution, political crises during the process of constitution-making substantially increased political polarization between the opposing blocs. Therefore, though the new constitution was meant to unite the entire Bolivian population, it ended up dividing the nation into two heavily polarized blocs. Matthew Singer (2016, 190), measuring political polarization in Latin America on a 0–4 scale (low to high), showed that the level of polarization in Bolivia scored highest, 2.49, in 2006–2010, compared to any other four years-term between 1993 and 2014. Following the theory of democratic backsliding developed by Haggard and Kaufman (2021), this increased level of polarization made up the social and political origins of democratic backsliding in Bolivia. For instance, due to fragmentation and polarization, the eastern regional departments lacked trust and confidence in the central government institutions, preventing effective democratic governance in 2006–2009. Additionally, polarization led the Media Luna group to take an anti-system stance such as the demand for regional autonomy. Similarly, the government’s partisan packing of the Constituent Assembly with the majority of delegates of indigenous origins to prepare a pro-indigenous constitution based on majoritarian tendency made up the institutional origins of democratic backsliding in Bolivia. Thus, these social, political, and institutional origins of democratic backsliding explain why Bolivian democracy began backsliding following the year 2005.

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Agent As per our theoretical contention, Morales was a legalistic autocrat who gradually captured democratic institutions to concentrate power at his hands primarily through legal engineering, leading Bolivia’s democracy to authoritarian paths. Though motivated by socialist and Marxist notions of social movements and revolutions, Morales’s political ideology could be best described as eclectic, because he obtained ideas from various ideological currents (Harten 2011, 40). His experience as an active social movement activist and a union organizer throughout the 1980s and 1990s, fighting for the rights of coca growers and against the coca eradication policies of governments, shaped his anti-imperialist and ethnonationalist ideological and policy stance. Since his joining the MAS in the late 1990s, Morales’s ideological and policy position concentrated on economic justice, indigenous rights, and popular democracy, aiming to bring together through parliamentary politics and mass social activism, the heterogeneous constituencies and the indigenous majority under a core agenda, that can be called “indigenous nationalism” (Postero 2010). Claiming to re-found and decolonize Bolivian society by restoring and retaining natural resources and establishing a true democracy—democracy from below, Morales took anti-neoliberalist and anti-establishment positions and policy choices just like a typical populist in Latin America. Through his skillful leadership of the MAS, Morales managed to turn the issue of the stigmatized coca plantation into the issues of imperialist intervention, the defense of national sovereignty, the rights of the indigenous communities, and the symbol of Andean culture, that paved the way for him to become a major national political figure and thereafter, the president. Apart from political ideology, Morales’s personality traits explain his political behavior. His charismatic personality not only helped him mobilize an overwhelming electoral support base, but also facilitated the establishment of a single person-dominated party, MAS, and government. In terms of personalist tendencies, hierarchical structure, and weak institutionalization, the MAS under Morales was no different than the previous systemic parties that were dominated by powerful caudillos who made decisions with little input beyond the inner circle (Centellas 2012). Moreover, Morales’s open-mindedness (or openness to experience) personality trait explains his attempts to relax presidential term limits and to remain in power. As Araya (2022, 116–117) suggests, because high openness is

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positively associated with leftist ideologies, unconventional behavior, and risk-taking, political leaders with high openness to experience are more likely to try to relax their term limits. Another study, examining risktaking personality of Latin American presidents in 1945–2012, shows that Morales was one of the most risk-taking presidents, especially in the risk of publicly challenging a rule, which explains why Morales made several attempts trying to relax the presidential term limits (Araya 2016). For instance, Morales pushed the term limits on re-election three times, first with the enactment of a new constitution in 2009, and then with the support of the subservient Supreme Court in 2013 and the Constitutional Court in 2017 (Araya 2022, 117). If Morales were able to remain in office following the 2019 election, his administration would rule until 2024. Beyond his political ideology and personality traits, the inability of the traditional parties to form a strong opposition against the government, facilitated the development of Morales’s personalist style of rule. Such tendency was further bolstered by the support of grassroots social movements and indigenous organizations that acted as a constant vigil of Morales’s government, especially during the first two terms. Combining his political commitments and maneuvers, Morales managed to establish a wide political network of social movement and indigenous organizations inside and outside of government (Rivera 2019), that served as an overarching support system for his rule. Besides, his impressive electoral successes in the elections of 2005, 2009, and 2014 (that delivered him 54, 64, and 61% of popular votes, respectively) and constitution-making majority in the parliament allowed Morales to eliminate institutional checks to entrench his personalist rule, that resulted in the transformation of Bolivia’s electoral democracy into a competitive authoritarian state.

Institutional Strategy Changing the Rules of the Game Throughout the process of democratic backsliding, Morales’s first target was to change the rules of the game. When Morales assumed power in January 2006, he knew that he would be ineligible to run for a second consecutive term as per the 1967 Constitution (that was amended several times, last amendment in 2005). Morales immediately established a Constituent Assembly (with 137 out of 255 delegates from the MAS)

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to create a new constitution. Though the Assembly finished drafting a new constitution in 2007, the MAS did not have a two-thirds majority to unilaterally approve the new constitution. Notwithstanding, Morales’s followers voted on a constitutional draft, excluding the opposition, that led to massive demonstrations and confrontations, leaving three people dead and hundreds injured. The MAS then pushed through its own draft by arbitrarily changing the rules of the game. It turned to a law that allowed the Assembly to go around the two-thirds requirement by handing over controversial issues to the Congress, which, in turn, would call for referenda to settle those issues (Lehoucq 2008, 119). The MAS also mobilized its supporters to violently prevent the opposition legislators from casting votes against the Assembly’s decision to send the draft constitution to the Congress (Levitsky and Loxton 2013, 117). Eventually, the draft constitution was sent to the Congress for approval in 2008 and was finally approved (with 61.4% of popular votes) in 2009 through a constitutional referendum. Later, the MAS delegates admitted that the decision to send the draft constitution for congressional approval was “a ruse meant purely to get their draft promulgated”, indicating their lack of respect for the rule of law (Lehoucq 2008, 119). In the new constitution of 2009, Morales introduced fundamental changes that paved the way for him to remain in office for another decade. For instance, as per Article 87 of the 1967 Constitution, presidents and vice presidents would be elected for four years and might be re-elected, but not consecutively (Political Database of the Americas 2008). Since 1985, this provision of no re-election for a consecutive second term partly contributed to the prevention of concentration of power at the hands of the executives and powerful elites and stabilization of the democratic habit of transferring power to the newly elected next president (Doyle 2019, 542). However, the 2009 Constitution significantly altered the structure of the term limits, as Article 168 specifies that “The term of the office of the President and the Vice President of the State is five years, and they can be re-elected or re-elected once continuously” (Political Database of the Americas 2011). Surprisingly, Morales and the MAS had generally refrained from mentioning their plan to change term limits during their election campaign in 2005 (Araya 2016), while they also minimized the importance of any change to term limits during a debate in the Assembly (Doyle 2019, 543), exhibiting their resorting of manipulative tactics. The consequence was that in the 2009 general election, the MAS secured 64% of the popular votes and won 88 out

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of 130 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 26 out of 36 seats in the Senate, gaining a supermajority in the Congress1 for the 2010–2014 term, unlike the 2006–2009 term with a comfortable majority (72 seats in the Chamber and 12 seats in the Senate). Thus, by changing the structure of term limits, Morales had largely removed the institutional checks on the executive power of the president. Moreover, the 2009 Constitution leaves vast discretionary power in the hands of the president (Article 172), enables indigenous communities to organize their own representatives following democratic modalities (Article 26), and puts the organizations of indigenous groups, peasants, citizen groups, etc., on equal footing as political parties for electing candidates for public office (Article 209). While these provisions, of course, promote inclusiveness, they also undermine political parties as the traditional mode of political representation. Simultaneously, these provisions benefitted Morales significantly, by expanding his indigenous and local support base, and by handpicking candidates for the legislative assembly from the MAS-allied indigenous and social groups. For instance, the highest percentage of the seat share in the legislative assembly (26%) in the 2010–2014 term went to workers, artisans, and those employed in the primary sector (e.g., fishing, farming, etc.) (Anria 2016, 103). Though a vast majority of them were inexperienced in legislative politics and national policymaking, they certainly reinforced Morales’s executive power. Morales, therefore, chose to concentrate power in his hands at the expense of the national legislature (Anria 2016, 104). Several other major changes were made that helped consolidate executive powers. Altogether these changes would mean that as long as the president has majority support, he/she will be extraordinarily powerful relative to other branches, e.g., the legislature and the judiciary (Wolff 2012, 194). Therefore, these changed rules of the game not only constrained the relative autonomy of the democratic institutions and eliminated institutional checks on the executive’s power, but also facilitated a populist-style of governance, undermining liberal democratic norms and rules.

1 The 2009 Constitution renamed “Congress” as “Plurinational Legislative Assembly”.

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Capturing the Referees of the State Morales once called judicial independence as a “doctrine” of the United States and of “capitalism” (Human Rights Watch 2020). Conceivably, his administration actively weakened the country’s judicial independence, making it one of the most unstable judicial systems in Latin America. In fourteen years of rule, the Morales regime captured the country’s judiciary using legislative control and court-packing. The 2009 Constitution introduced direct election for the top echelons of the Supreme Court (Article 182), the Agri-Environmental Court (Article 188), the Judicial Council (Article 194), and the Plurinational Constitutional Court (Article 198) (Political Database of the Americas 2011). As per these new provisions, the magistrates, judges, and members of these courts will be elected by universal suffrage after the Plurinational Legislative Assembly pre-selects candidates by a two-thirds majority. Consequently, with the supermajority in the legislative assembly (especially, in 2010–2014 and 2014–2018), Morales and the MAS would have full control over the preselection, and thereafter, over the courts. Therefore, the introduction of the direct election was nothing more than a ploy for establishing the ruling regime’s legislative-institutional control over the judiciary (Wolff 2012, 187). Similarly, the new constitution established that the number of Justices on the Supreme Court would be determined by law (Article 181). This rule undermines the independence of the judiciary because the president with strong executive power would be capable of expanding the size of the Court Justices to be filled with partisan appointments. Beyond legal machinations, frequent attacks on the courts and against judges, judicial purges, court-packing, etc., were some common features of Morales’s attempts to undermine the judiciary. Some examples are worth mentioning. Soon after Morales took office in 2006, the chief justice of the Supreme Court was charged with treason that led to his resignation in the next month. The government’s decision to reduce the salaries of the justices by 32%, initiation of the impeachment process, and accusations of favoring criminals, led to the resignation of some Justices. The Morales regime’s relentless pressure and public denunciations against the judiciary, labeling it “the most corrupt sector of the country”, caused some Justices to step down to avoid political harassment (Sanchez-Sibony 2021, 130). Apart from the Supreme Court, the Morales regime dismantled the Constitutional Court by attacking its Justices (or Magistrates).

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In 2006, the Constitutional Tribunal declared unconstitutional segments of several laws, executive orders, and administrative regulations of the Morales government (Castagnola and Perez-Linan 2011, 291). In retaliation, the Morales regime launched corruption charges against the Justices of the Constitutional Court. Allegations of false charges, public defamation, physical threats, and the MAS-led street demonstrations against the Court’s Justices led to the resignation of some magistrates. Because of these measures in 2006–2009, most Justices of the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court were forced to quit, paving the way for partisan capture of these Courts. Using supermajority in the assembly, Morales politicized the process of pre-selecting pro-regime candidates. The MAS leadership provided a politicized list of candidates, more than half of whom had an ideological linkage with the MAS (Aguiar-Aguilar 2020, 22; Sanchez-Sibony 2021, 132). By electing these candidates in the 2011 judicial election, the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court were filled with Morales’s loyalists. Thus, by 2011, Morales had de facto control over these Courts, so his desired legislation would not face constitutional checks. This judicial control immensely benefitted Morales, especially for his desire for re-election. Some examples are presented below. In 2013, the MAS-controlled legislative assembly passed legislation in 2013 suggesting that Morales should be allowed to run again in 2014 for a third consecutive term (2015–2019). The legislation insisted that the constitutional clause allowing re-election of the president for two consecutive terms did not count Morales’s first term (2006–2009) as the new constitution was approved in 2009. The opposition rejected this interpretation and appealed to the Constitutional Court, that in turn, ruled in favor of this legislation and permitted Morales to run again. The subservient Court ruled that the interpretation was reasonable and did not contradict the constitution because the 2009 Constitution had created a new legal and political order, in which the two-consecutive-term limit came into effect (Doyle 2019, 544; Verdugo 2019, 1119). Again in 2015, the assembly passed a bill, calling for a referendum to reform the constitution to allow Morales to run in 2019 for his fourth consecutive term. The bill asserted that the articles related to the term limit were violating the constitutional rights of the president by limiting the constitutional rights of all Bolivians seeking to participate in elections (Doyle 2019, 550). Though 52% Bolivians in the 2016 referendum rejected the proposal for constitutional reform (Verdugo 2019, 1120), the regime

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submitted the matter to the docile Constitutional Court. In 2017, the Court again ruled in favor of Morales and removed the constitutional term limit for re-election, arguing that the clauses, limiting re-election of authorities, infringed the political rights of both candidates and voters (BBC 2017). Morales eventually ran in 2019, by flagrantly rupturing the constitutional order legitimized by the subservient Court. Thus, it is evident that Morales fully captured the judiciary, undermining the country’s judicial independence. According to the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem)’s data on judicial independence (high court), Bolivia’s judiciary had the lowest independence during the Morales regime compared to any governments since 1985 (Aguiar-Aguilar 2020, 15). Not to mention, in terms of judicial independence, Bolivia now ranks as one of the lowest countries across the Latin American region—thanks to the Morales regime’s authoritarian legalism and political control of the judiciary. Silencing the Political Opponents The Morales regime controlled the opposition political parties by limiting their access to state resources, capturing the election management body, and through repression. The regime made partisan use of state resources for government campaigns and propaganda. For instance, the Ministry of Communication and public broadcast Channel 7, key sources of government propaganda, spent over US$300 million during the 2006– 2016 period (Sanchez-Sibony 2021, 122). Conversely, the government deprived the major opposition parties of public resources by passing the Transitory Electoral Law 2009 that eliminated public financing for parties, weakening the party structures and hurting their electoral campaigns. While weakening the major opposition parties, Morales promoted several minor local parties such as the New Republican Force (NFR) and the Front of the Revolutionary Left (FRI). Moreover, the regime unleashed a series of accusations against the Electoral Court’s leadership for electoral fraud and significantly reduced their salary, leading to the resignation of most of the Court’s members. The regime then filled the Court with partisan appointments to be used for its own electoral advantage, tilting the electoral playing field. Having the Court subservient to the regime, Morales sought to keep many important political opponents out of electoral contests. The partisan Court, on several occasions, remained silent on the electoral wrongdoings of the

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MAS candidates, while punishing the opposition candidates for similar acts, leading to a drastic decline of the Court’s autonomy. According to the V-Dem data on Election Management Body (EMB) autonomy, measured on a 0–4 scale (low to high), Bolivia’s EMB autonomy under Morales declined from 1.72 in 2006 to 0.36 in 2018. Furthermore, the Morales government launched criminal charges against almost all living presidents and hundreds of opposition politicians, while they also mobilized social movement supporters to intimidate the opponents (Levitsky and Loxton 2013, 117–118). According to one estimate, severe government repression under Morales in 2006–2016 caused over 1,200 politicians to remain in exile (Sanchez-Sibony 2021, 128). In 2018, the regime modified the Law of Party Organizations, forcing all parties to conduct primaries to select candidates for the presidency and vice presidency at least nine months before the general elections, and prohibiting candidates from renouncing their candidacy to support another candidate (Sanchez-Sibony 2021, 129). It put the opposition parties in a difficult situation by reducing their preparation time and preventing them from forging strong interparty alliances, thereby hurting their electoral performance. All these measures skewed the electoral playing field and disadvantaged the opposition parties, undermining democratic spirit and practice. Like the opposition parties, the Morales regime captured the media environment. Shortly before taking office in 2006, Morales declared that the press was his principal “enemy”, blaming some journalists for allegedly practicing “media terrorism” by lying and portraying him and his supporters as if they were animals and savages (Garcia 2018, 40). His administration frequently referred to privately owned media as “a cartel of liars” (Mitchell 2019), protecting the oligarchic interests of traditional political parties and being at the service of “U.S. imperialism” (Peters 2009). Morales’s detestation of private media was triggered by the fact that the country’s major print and electronic media outlets and networks have historically been owned by some wealthy families or groups, which have strong ties with traditional political parties or the Media Luna group (Lupien 2013, 228). Morales, therefore, sought to alter this ownership structure to establish the hegemony of the MAS in the media landscape, undermining the freedom of media and expression. The new constitution, though guarantees the freedom of expression (Article 106), stipulates that the dissemination of information and

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opinions by the media must respect “the principles of veracity and responsibility” (Article 107) (Political Database of the Americas 2011). Article 107 also prohibits the formation of media monopolies or oligopolies and delegates to the state the task of supporting the creation and maintenance of community media. Utilizing these constitutional regulations, the government established two organs, namely the National Council on Ethics and the Media Observatory, to watch over media content (Quintanilla 2014, 187). The creation of these organs, which report directly or indirectly to the president, was tantamount to de facto governmental restriction on the freedom of media and expression. The government also resumed the Defamation Law that penalizes anyone up to two years if charged with defaming a public official, including the president, any lawmaker, or magistrates, in their exercise of duties. In 2006–2009, the regime charged at least 21 opposition politicians and supporters of defamation (Sanchez-Sibony 2021, 135). In 2010, the regime passed “The Law Against Racism and All Forms of Discrimination” that penalizes anyone for making racist or discriminatory comments with fines, suspension of licenses (Article 16), and prison sentences of up to five years (Article 23) (Quintanilla 2014, 188). Furthermore, the government passed the “Telecommunications, Information, and Communications Technology Law” (also known as Law 164) in 2011 for controlling broadcasting licenses of the electronic media. As per Article 11 of this law, broadcasting licenses for radio and television frequencies will be distributed based on the following allocation structure: 33% to the public sector or the state, 33% to the private sector, 17% to community groups, and 17% to indigenous groups (Garcia 2018, 52). This allocation structure provided the MAS with around 68% of licensing control, forcing the telecommunication providers to keep good terms with the government. The vaguely worded contents of these two laws instill fear among journalists and reporters, thereby inducing self-censorship limiting the freedom of media and expression. Due to these legal maneuverings, several TV stations and newspapers turned into pro-government outlets after being captured by business leaders who had ties with the MAS. For instance, television channels such as ATB, PAT, Full TV, Abya Yala TV, and the largest circulated national daily, La Razon, were captured by the MAS-friendly business leaders and became pro-government (Martinez 2014). In a book, titled Remote Control published in 2014, Bolivian journalist Raul Penaranda revealed that Morales created a media network of friendly TV channels and

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national dailies, receiving huge advertisement funds and financial benefits, whereas critical media outlets faced frequent inspections and tax audits by the government’s media regulation organs/agencies. According to one study of 2012, the state-owned Channel 7, Bolivia TV, Cambio, and the regime-friendly ATB and La Razon, received more state-advertising funds than any other private media outlets (Garcia 2018, 47). Another study showed that ATB and PAT had provided over 80% of their coverage to the government in 2014, while only 13–19% to the opposition parties (Sanchez-Sibony 2021, 134). Therefore, these licensing and advertising control mechanisms seriously undermined the independent voices of the media outlets. Moreover, the regime relentlessly hurled severe verbal abuse, physical attacks, and lawsuits against journalists, editors, and reporters, for their journalistic activities. According to Bolivia’s National Press Association (ANP), there had been at least 123 physical attacks on journalists, 8 bomb attacks on media properties, 20 cases of journalists being held hostage during the 2007–2009 period (Peters 2009). One prime example of lawsuits was in 2012 when the government filed charges against the news agency, ANF, and the newspapers, El Diario and Pagina Siete, for allegedly distorting the president’s words in a speech. All these repressive measures resulted in severe restriction over media outlets, putting the press and media freedom at grave risk. This is further evident in the drastic decline of Bolivia’s ranking in the World Press Freedom (WPF) Index of the Reporters Without Borders (RSF). According to RSF, Bolivia ranked 17 out of 168 countries in the WFP index of 2006, outperforming countries such as Canada (18), Denmark (20), New Zealand (21) (RSF 2006), but its rank fell to 113 in 2019 (RSF 2019). Thanks to the Morales administration’s extreme measures to capture the media environment— Bolivia’s position in terms of press freedom dropped by almost 100 ranks between 2006 and 2019. Like the opposition parties and the media, Morales did not leave Bolivian civil society alone. Historically, Bolivia had one of the most organized civil society organizations in the world, with one of the highest civic membership rates in Latin America (Boulding and Nelson-Nunez 2014, 129). This picture was changed after Morales came to power, though several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civic organizations significantly contributed to his election. Starting in 2008, the Morales administration’s attitude toward civil society organizations began shifting, as revealed in its rhetoric, while splits between loyalist and dissident

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NGOs began to appear (Anria 2016, 106). It became overt in 2010– 2011 when the government sought to revoke the subsidies of liquid fuels that would double the price of gasoline (the El Gasolinazo) and to build a highway through the middle of an autonomous indigenous territory (the TIPNIS). Both plans were forced to reverse due to severe protests, demonstrations, strikes, and blockades, led by civic organizations, such as CONAMAQ, CIDOB, CEJIS, and the Earth Foundation, that damaged Morales’s image as pro-indigenous and pro-social movement (Rivera 2019, 171). After the El Gasolinazo and the TIPNIS conflicts, the relationship between the Morales administration and the civic organizations continued to worsen, as reflected in frequent verbal abuse of NGO activists, and legal restrictions on their operation. Some examples are presented below. In 2013, the government passed the “Legal Personality Law”, requiring all NGOs (both domestic and foreign) to renew their registration, revealing their funding sources, and conforming to their statutes (Achtenberg 2015). The law allows the government to dissolve the legal standing of any NGO if it thinks that the NGO has delineated from its statutes or is working against public interests. The protracted registration process put several NGOs in a legal limbo, hurting their operations and performance. The U.N. High Commission on Human Rights viewed this law as threatening freedom of association (Ellerbeck 2015). In 2013, the government also accused the Danish NGO IBIS of conspiring to divide the indigenous organizations and eventually expelled it from Bolivia, serving as a warning for other NGOs. More flagrant attacks on civic organizations appeared in 2015, when Morales’s Vice President, Alvaro Garcia Linera, criticized the foreignfunded NGOs, accusing them of acting like political parties, interfering in domestic affairs, and defending the interests of transnational corporations and foreign governments (Fuentes 2015). Later that year, Linera launched an attack on four well-respected research organizations/ NGOs—CEDLA, CEDIB, the Tierra Foundation, and the Milenio Foundation, accused them of using foreign funds to promote “transnational imperial policy” and acting as “park rangers” for the benefit of the Global North and threatened them with expulsion from Bolivia (Achtenberg 2015). The government’s attacks on these NGOs were widely presumed as a retaliation to these organizations’ critique of the ruling regime’s extractive model of development. The year 2015 also witnessed the government charging a prominent NGO, CEJIS (that opposed Morales’s

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TIPNIS project), with a fine of US$167,545 for missing labor fees in the 1988–1991 period (Ellerbeck 2015). All these measures created a climate of fear and induced self-censorship in the operation of civil society organizations. In the absence of strong institutional checks on the president, the weakness of opposition political parties, and the captured media landscape, civil society organizations were the last strongest check on executive power (Anria 2016, 106). Morales, therefore, sought to silence civil society organizations, undermining the country’s democracy. The consequence was that the civil society organizations in Bolivia became deeply divided and their performance and influence in civic space significantly decreased, leading to a consistent decline in the civic space freedom, and thereby, the country’s democracy.

Ideological Strategy As mentioned above, Morales’s political ideology is best described as eclectic, since it significantly reflects features of various ideological currents. Morales needed to translate his eclectic ideological footing into a unified ideological apparatus that could be successfully used to legitimize his authoritarian tendencies and lust for power. Because populism, as a thin-centered ideology, can accommodate, and be blended with, other ideologies (Mudde 2004, 544), Morales expansively utilized populism as a unified ideological apparatus. Morales’s populist politics, reflecting a striking resemblance of other populist leaders in the region such as Hugo Chavez and Rafael Correa, accompanied his institutional strategy to legitimize his policies and actions. This section analyzes Morales’s populist rhetoric, narratives, and discourses, disseminated through speeches, statements, press releases, media, etc., to link these narratives in the public sphere with Morales’s authoritarian tendencies and legal and institutional policies that allowed him to rule for fourteen years. Like all authoritarian populists, Morales upheld and elevated a Manichean discourse, distinguishing good vs. evil, us vs. them, the people vs. the enemy, the people vs. the elite, etc. The people were portrayed as pure and good, while the elite was labeled as evil, corrupt, and the enemy. Indigenous groups, ethnic communities, peasants, class-based groups were defined as the people. The MAS was portrayed as the true representative of the people as it was created by union leaders representing poor coca farmers, fishers, non-whites, and the indigenous people of the

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Andean. In contrast, the government’s narratives broadly described the enemy at different levels. The United States and the transnational corporations at the external or foreign policy level, while the oligarchic, white, pro-western, and non-indigenous elites such as the Media Luna group and the traditional political parties at the domestic level, were described as the enemy (Postero 2010). Since the early 2000s, Morales capitalized on this Manichean division of Bolivia’s politics and society, leading to a binary characterization of political parties—the MAS vs. the traditional political parties. While Morales equated the MAS with “the sovereignty of the people” (Harten 2011, 82), he held the traditional political parties and the established elites responsible for the impoverishment, social injustices, and poor living conditions (McKay and Colque 2021, 2). This binary characterization of political parties resulted in massive popularity and intense loyalty for Morales, leading him to win 54% of popular votes in 2005 unlike any other presidential candidates since 1985. Three factors worked together to translate this binary characterization into the eventual election of Morales. First, as Bolivia has one of the most ethnically divided societies in Latin America with most of the indigenous population (about 62%2 ), Morales’s narrative attracted this majority, who had been victims in the then socio-economic structure and hoped to see it reversed under Morales, an indigenous, one of them (Postero 2010, 29). Second, despite two decades of democratic rule and neoliberal policies led by traditional political parties and established economic elites, Bolivia was (and still is) one of the poorest countries in Latin America, so most Bolivians desired a change and Morales’s narratives of antiestablishment, anti-neoliberalism, and communitarian democracy, seemed to offer an alternative. Like other populist leaders, Morales told the people what they wanted to hear by disparaging the elites in power, creating an appeal toward him. Third, Morales filled his campaigns and speeches with the discourses of social justice, redistribution, sovereignty, the rights of Mother Nature (highlighting the indigenous and the Andeans), etc.

2 According to the widely accepted 2001 Census, conducted by the National Institute

of Statistics (INE), 62% of the Bolivian population was indigenous. However, in the 2012 Census of the INE, only 41% of the population self-identified as indigenous. It was due to the change in the questionnaire, along with several methodological problems in the 2012 Census (see Morales 2019; McNelly 2021). We, therefore, stick to the findings of the original 2001 Census.

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(McKay and Colque 2021, 7). The symbolic significance and the material gains, inherent to these narratives, attracted the masses. Thus, this binary characterization provided him popular legitimacy and contributed to his electoral victories, leading him to reorganize the country’s legal and institutional structure. Along with the “us vs. them” characterization, the narratives of “refounding Bolivia”, “Plurinational State”, “decolonization”, “the government of social movements”, “rule by listening to the people”, “govern by obeying the people” dominated Morales’s first term (Harten 2011, 201– 203). These narratives emphasized an important signifier, a “change” from the previous administrations. Morales himself called his cabinet “the cabinet of change” and declared “the mandate of the people for change” (Harten 2011, 203). The cabinet of change was reflected in practice, as ten out of sixteen ministers in the first cabinet were from indigenous and social movement organizations. Similarly, unlike 4% in 1993–1997 and 11% in 1997–2002, the primary sector workers formed 19% seat share in the parliament in 2006–2009 and 26% in 2010–2014, leading them to pass several social and agrarian policies, meaning more popular legitimacy for Morales (Anria 2016, 103). The inexperienced cabinet and the absence of a strong opposition party in the legislative assembly also gave Morales an executive edge in the political game, that eventually fed into his tendency for a personalistic style of rule. Moreover, the narratives such as “re-founding”, “Plurinational”, and “the mandate of the people for change” were particularly effective in the process of drafting and promulgating the new constitution. While the regime set up the Constituent Assembly, with top echelons from indigenous and left organizations, for drafting the new constitution, it kept its supporters and social movement activists in the streets, who closely monitored the process. The MAS spread narratives such as “Now is the time”, “Enough is Enough”, “We can’t take it anymore”, “govern by obeying the people”, and “Evo is the people”, helping mobilize more supporters in the streets, that served as a pressure group to get the new constitution out of the assembly and eventually get it approved by the Senate. These populist narratives and social movement populism, therefore, significantly contributed to promulgate the new constitution that not only weakened checks and balances, but also left enormous power in the hands of the executive, paving the way for Morales to centralize political power and to run for re-election.

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Similarly, the decolonization narrative accompanied the government’s nationalization of the gas and oil industries by providing legitimate cover. When Morales announced his nationalization plan in 2006, the MAS revitalized binary characterizations such as nationalist vs. anti-nationalist, imperialist vs. anti-imperialist, neoliberal vs. anti-capitalist, reviving the social movement supporters who celebrated the government’s decisions. Again, when the Morales regime launched investigations against the Justices of the Supreme Court and the judges of the Constitutional Court and initiated the impeachment process, narratives such as corrupt elites and neoliberal elites accompanied the government’s actions, on the one hand, and the MAS supporters launched protests and demonstrations in the streets, demanding resignation and providing approval, on the other hand. This sort of populist politics created a routinization of the influence of social organizations in the policy process, increasing Morales’s popularity and electoral legitimacy. Such routinization also sidelined the traditional mode of politics through the legislative assembly and the court, resulting in the concentration of power in the executive deepening authoritarian tendencies and personalist rule. In 2013–2015, when the Morales regime began attacks on NGOs and civic organizations, it simultaneously disseminated narratives such as “enemies of the process of change”, “NGOism”, “a right-wingers’ infantile disease”, “agents of imperialism” (Andreucci 2018, 838–839) to provide a legitimate cover for its actions and policies. Concurrently, the MAS supporters began demonizing NGOs online spreading similar narratives for supporting the regime’s actions (Ellerbeck 2015). By seeking to control civil society relying on populist politics, the regime intended to silence pluralism and any opposing voices, throwing the country in authoritarian directions. Therefore, the Morales regime utilized populism as an ideological strategy that was implemented side-by-side with its institutional strategy in the process of democratic backsliding. The MAS’s populist narratives and politics not only contributed to its hegemonic rise to power, but also provided a legitimate cover for its mandate to reorganize the existing political system through rewriting the constitution, replacing the judges in courts, passing new legislation. In the process, the regime eliminated important institutional checks on the executive, packed the courts with loyalists, and implemented draconian laws and measures to restrict pluralism, pushing the country into competitive authoritarianism. However, the regime’s populist appeal began eroding significantly in its

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third term, especially in 2016, when Morales expressed his willingness to run for a fourth consecutive term and most Bolivians rejected with “no”. However, by 2016, the regime already transformed into a competitive authoritarian state, thanks to Morales’s concurrent implementation of institutional and ideological strategy.

Audience The Bolivian audience had roughly been supportive of the Morales regime in the first (2006–2009) and second (2010–2014) terms, contributing to Morales-led de-democratization. However, the audience took a step back in the regime’s third term (2015–2019). The results of public opinion polls, national elections, and referendums are indicative of this argument. In a 2006 survey of the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) with a sample of 3,013 people, when asked if they thought that the MASled constitutional reform was necessary, about 86% of the respondents believed in the necessity of changing the constitution, as Seligson et al. (2006) show. In the same survey, about 45% believed that the new constitution would resolve the country’s problems, while 55% were satisfied with the way democracy was functioning under Morales. The survey also found that, on average, the people’s trust in political institutions (63 on a 0–100 scale) and level of support for the political system under Morales (52.02 on a 0–100 scale) were higher than any other government since 1998 (Seligson et al. 2006). The 2010 LAPOP survey showed that on a scale of 0–100, the people’s level of support for the way democracy was functioning under Morales increased to 70.3, while their satisfaction with democracy rose to 57 (Seligson and Smith 2010). The rating for life satisfaction increased to 46 in 2010, that further rose to 67.1 in 2014, as reported in the 2014 LAPOP survey (Zechmeister 2014). Similarly, the rating for the people’s satisfaction with the government’s performance in the economy raised from 51 in 2010 to 53.2 in 2014, while the satisfaction in terms of local government services went up to 52.4 in 2014 compared to 49 in 2010 (Seligson and Smith 2010; Zechmeister 2014). These ratings indicate that the audience, on average, had supported Morales’s government and policies. This was, partly, because of increasing economic growth and the declining rate of poverty. The Morales regime maintained the economic growth rate of nearly 5% per year during the 2006–2018 period, in large part because of the commodities boom and the rents

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received from the nationalization of natural resources (Mckay and Colque 2021, 8). The poverty rate dropped from 61% to 39% between 2005 and 2013 (IFAD 2016), while the extreme poverty rate dropped from 38% to 17% (Government of Canada 2018). Furthermore, the audience’s positive and supportive attitude for Morales’s social development policies, such as pension reform, was reflected in the citizens’ approval rating. In a 2012 survey of IPSOS-APOYO (with a sample of 1,606 persons), 47% supported the government’s pension reform plan, while 51% supported the state’s management of pensions (Carnes and Mares 2016, 1656–1658). The audience’s positive and supportive attitude toward the Morales regime was reflected in three national elections. Though the electoral playing field was skewed, the elections of 2006, 2009, and 2014 were reasonably free and fair (Wolff 2018, 695), followed by the opposition’s acceptance of the results. Morales and the MAS won 54% in 2006, 64% in 2009, and 61% in the 2014 elections, indicating increased support from the audience. It is important to note that no presidential candidate and political party in Bolivia’s history has ever achieved these margins as Morales and the MAS did. Similarly, Morales won 61.4% of popular votes in the 2009 referendum, leading to the approval of the 2009 constitution and thereafter, the re-election of Morales. However, it does not mean that there were no protests and demonstrations against the government during 2006–2014. Apart from the opposition’s protests in 2006–2008 surrounding the issues of the new constitution, massive protests broke out in 2010 and 2011, respectively, against the government’s plans for reducing gas subsidies and for building a highway through the TIPNIS. None of these protests demanded the downfall of Morales, instead sought to reverse the government’s plans. Morales, therefore, maintained comfortable support from the audience in his first and second terms, during which he already captured key democratic institutions and concentrated enormous power in his hands. However, the audience’s attitude toward Morales began shifting in the regime’s third term (2015–2019). Like he did in 2013, Morales supported legislation in 2015, expressing his willingness to run again in 2019 for the fourth consecutive term (2020–2014) and calling for a referendum to reform the constitution to drop term limits. The audience, however, resisted this time, as Morales’s lust for political power became clear to them. In the February 2016 referendum, about 52% of the population rejected the proposal for changing the constitution in his favor.

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A few months after the referendum, when another survey asked citizens if they would vote for the MAS if an election were held today, 39% of the respondents said that they would for another party (Andreadis et al. 2019, 257), indicating declining support for Morales. However, Morales and the MAS refused to leave the matter in the voters’ hands, claiming that the referendum did not represent the will of the people. Morales then rerouted the matter to the MAS-captured Constitutional Court that ruled in favor of Morales in 2017 by suspending the articles related to the constitutional term limit for re-election. This incident significantly contributed to pushing the audience further away from Morales. It was evident in another opinion poll in 2017, in which 60% of Bolivians deemed Morales’s re-election illegal, while 75% opposed his unlimited re-election (Sanchez-Sibony 2021, 133). This negative attitude of the audience against Morales was further reflected following the October 2019 election. When the allegations of electoral fraud were made, massive anti-Morales protests escalated across the country, demanding Morales’ resignation. During the protests, several regional election offices were burnt down, while several roads and cities were paralyzed for weeks, causing several deaths. The allegations of electoral fraud also resonated among traditional MAS supporters from the popular sectors and the indigenous population (Wolff 2020, 167). Therefore, it is evident that the people extended their support for Morales in the first two terms, but their support declined in the third term.

Conclusion The chapter explains the process of democratic backsliding in Bolivia under Morales and the MAS. It finds a strong relevance in the institutional-ideological approach of democratic backsliding advanced in this book. The chapter examines Bolivia’s democratization based on four key elements of the institutional-ideological approach. The analysis of context demonstrates that the year 2005 was the inflection point when Bolivia’s democracy began backsliding. Heightened political polarization and a series of political crises, surrounding the issues such as the new constitution and the demand for regional autonomy of the eastern regions, e.g., the Media Luna, paved the way for Bolivia’s democracy to begin backsliding. The legalistic autocrat, Evo Morales, led the process of backsliding, transforming Bolivia from an electoral democracy to a competitive authoritarian state. As per its institutional strategy, the

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regime’s first target was to change the rules of the game. It was done by creating a new constitution that left enormous powers in the hands of the executive and paved the way for the autocrat to remain in office for three consecutive terms. The regime then captured the referees, e.g., the courts, through legislative control and court-packing, while it silenced opposition parties, the media, and civic organizations using legal and extralegal means. The regime’s institutional strategy was concurrently fortified by its ideological strategy of using populism. Populist narratives and discourses remained dominant in the public sphere that were used to provide a legitimate cover for the government’s actions and policies. Finally, the Bolivian audience was supportive of Morales in his first and second term but reduced their support in his third term. Though Morales resigned in 2019 in the face of massive anti-MAS protests due to the allegations of electoral fraud, Bolivia’s democratic future remains uncertain.

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Peters, Colin. 2009. “‘The Government Considers the Press an Enemy’ Says the Head of Bolivian Media Freedom Organization.” International Press Institute, 4 December. https://ipi.media/the-government-considers-the-press-anenemy-says-head-of-bolivian-media-freedom-organisation/. Political Database of the Americas. 2008. Republic of Bolivia: Political Constitution of 1967 . https://pdba.georgetown.edu/Constitutions/Bolivia/bolivi a1967.html. Political Database of the Americas. 2011. Republic of Bolivia: 2009 Constitution. https://pdba.georgetown.edu/Constitutions/Bolivia/bolivia09.html. Postero, Nancy G. 2006. Now We Are Citizens: Indigenous Politics in Postmulticultural Bolivia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Postero, Nancy G. 2010. “Morales’s MAS Government: Building Indigenous Popular Hegemony in Bolivia.” Latin American Perspectives 37 (3): 18–34. Quintanilla, Victor. 2014. “Clashing Powers in Bolivia: The Tensions Between Evo Morales’s Government and the Private Media.” In Media Systems and Communication Politics in Latin America, edited by Manuel A. Guerrero and Mireya Marquez-Ramirez. Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Reporters Without Borders (RSF). 2006. “The World Press Freedom Index 2006.” https://rsf.org/en/index?year=2006. Reporters Without Borders (RSF). 2019. “The World Press Freedom Index 2019.” https://rsf.org/en/index?year=2019. Rivera, Soledad V. 2019. Political Networks and Social Movements: Bolivian StateSociety Relations Under Evo Morales, 2006–2016. New York: Berghahn Books. Sanchez-Sibony, Omar. 2021. “Competitive Authoritarianism in Morales’ Bolivia: Skewing Arenas of Competition.” Latin American Politics and Society 63 (1): 118–144. Seligson, Mitchell A., and Amy E. Smith. 2010. “Political Culture of Democracy, 2010—Democratic Consolidation in the Americas in Hard Times: Report on the Americas.” The Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP), Conducted by the Vanderbilt University, Funded by The United States Aid for International Development (USAID). Seligson, Mitchell A., Abby B. Cordova, Juan C. Donoso, Daniel M. Morales, Diana Orces, and Vivian S. Blum. 2006. “Democracy Audit: Bolivia 2006 Report.” The Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP), Conducted by the Vanderbilt University, Funded by The United States Aid for International Development (USAID). Singer, Matthew. 2016. “Elite Polarization and the Electoral Impact of LeftRight Placements: Evidence from Latin America, 1995–2009.” Journal of Democracy 51 (2): 174–194.

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Verdugo, Sergio. 2019. “The Fall of the Constitution’s Political Insurance: How the Morales Regime Eliminated the Insurance of the 2009 Bolivian Constitution.” International Journal of Constitutional Law 17 (4): 1098–1124. Webber, Jeffery R. 2010. “Carlos Mesa, Evo Morales, and a Divided Bolivia (2003–2005).” Latin American Perspectives 37 (3): 51–70. Webber, Jeffery R. 2016. “Evo Morales and the Political Economy of Passive Revolution in Bolivia, 2006–15.” Third World Quarterly 37 (10): 1855– 1876. Wolff, Jonas. 2012. “New Constitutions and the Transformation of Democracy in Bolivia and Ecuador.” In New Constitutionalism in Latin America: Promises and Practices, edited by Detlef Nolte and Almut Schilling-Vacaflor. Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate Publishing. Wolff, Jonas. 2018. “Political Incorporation in Measures of Democracy: A Missing Dimension (and the Case of Bolivia).” Democratization 24 (4): 692–708. Wolff, Jonas. 2020. “The Turbulent End of an Era in Bolivia: Contested Elections, the Ouster of Evo Morales, and the Beginning of a Transition Towards an Uncertain Future.” Political Science Journal 40 (2): 163–186. Zechmeister, Elizabeth. 2014. “The Political Culture of Democracy in the Latin Americas, 2014: Democratic Governance Across 10 Years of the Americas Barometer.” The Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP), Conducted by the Vanderbilt University, Funded by The United States Aid for International Development (USAID).

CHAPTER 7

Hungary: The Perfect Autocracy?

In the April 2022 parliamentary election, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban scored another landslide victory for his fourth consecutive term and secured the mandate to rule for another four years. Since Orban’s arrival to office in 2010, Hungary’s dwindling democracy has remained at the center of attention to international media. His widely reported speech of 2014, declaring his intention to build Hungary as “an illiberal state” (Bogaards 2018, 1487), came as a shock to Western liberal democracies. By 2022, Hungary, once celebrated as a liberal democracy that emerged out of the shackles of decades-long communist rule in Eastern Europe, has the lowest Freedom House democracy score of any member state of the European Union (EU). According to Freedom House data, Hungary’s democracy is now much poorer than that of Ghana and South Africa. Based on its consistent democratic decline under Orban, Hungary is likely to be the first country transforming from a liberal democracy to a closed autocracy, as the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) reports insist. Scholars have, therefore, identified Hungary as a classic case of democratic backsliding. But how has Hungarian democracy reached its current state? What factors have contributed to such development? And what steps have Orban undertaken to reach his desired outcome? These questions have remained a subject of scholarly debate. The current chapter aims to address these questions to shed light on the debate by explaining the process and sequence of democratic backsliding. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 A. Riaz and Md S. Rana, How Autocrats Rise, Global Political Transitions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-7580-8_7

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However, to understand the recent episodes of Hungarian rhapsodies, it is helpful to begin with a brief history of its democratization.

The Rise and Fall of Hungarian Democracy In the aftermath of WWI, Hungary received full independence from the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1918. Between the 1920s and 1960s, Hungary experienced almost four decades of communist rule, and a series of violent events such as the Nazi attack of 1944, and the bloody revolution of 1956. The decades of communist rule led to the development of an elitist, oligarchy-prone, and over-centralized state structure in Hungary (Rupnik and Jeilonka 2013). With the degrees of state control of the economy gradually reduced in the 1970s, the Hungarian authority then introduced limited reforms toward political pluralism and electoral democracy in the late 1980s such as the abolition of the one-party system, the legalization of political parties, and the promise of holding democratic elections (Gabriel 2016, 6). These reforms facilitated the establishment of several left-oriented political parties such as FIDESZ (the Alliance of Young Democrats, later known as the Hungarian Civic Union) in 1988 by Viktor Orban, and MSZP (the Hungarian Socialist Party) in 1989 by the reform-minded communist elites of the old ruling party (Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party). With these developments, Hungary finally managed to make an orderly transition to democracy in 1990 holding its first multiparty election. Between 1990 and 2010, free elections were held at regular intervals, though political institutions came under strain, and constitutional issues were key subjects of debate between political parties. During this period, Hungary became involved in the international community joining NATO in 1999 and EU in 2004, supposedly aiming to lock itself with Western liberal democracies (Scheiring 2020, 5). These developments led many scholars to identify Hungary as a consolidated democracy (Vachudova 2010), but democracy was never fully consolidated (Agh 2015). Throughout the 1990s–2010s, Hungary suffered from a widening gap between formal institutional designs and actual political practices (Rupnik and Jeilonka 2013). Oligarchization intensified in almost all sectors of the country, resulting from the efforts of successive governments for quick economic recovery and fast integration into the democratic world that proved to be counterproductive (Wilkin 2016). Politics was mainly dominated by the left parties, especially the coalition of MSZP and the

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Hungarian Liberal Party that ruled the country for twelve out of twenty years. Though Orban-led FIDESZ came to power in 1998, it lost in the 2002 and 2006 elections, in which the MSZP-led coalition formed the government and ruled for eight years. Since its failure in 2002, FIDESZ has fully converted itself from its initial left-oriented position to a nationalist, conservative, and right-wing populist party (Oltay 2012). This shift significantly contributed to FIDESZ’s victory in 2010 that allowed Orban to establish an authoritarian system by monopolizing all political power and capturing all state institutions.

Democratic Backsliding: Process and Sequences Scholars have described Hungary as “an exemplary case” (Bogaards 2018), “a textbook case” (Batory 2022), and “a paradigmatic case” (Scheppele 2018), for understanding democratic backsliding. The purpose of this section is to diagnose this prominent case using four elements of our institutional-ideological approach—context, agent, strategy, and audience—to explain the process of Hungarian dedemocratization.

Context Hungary maintained a Freedom House democracy score of 92 in 2005– 2009 that began falling in 2010. As Fig. 7.1 indicates, a score of 91 in 2010 continued dropping and fell to 69 in 2022, a score that puts Hungary around countries like Senegal and Sierra Leone in terms of democracy and freedom. Figure 7.2, using V-Dem’s Liberal Democracy Index, presents an entire democratic trajectory of Hungary since 1989 and clearly shows that the country’s democracy began eroding since 2010 and currently treading toward a score that it had in 1990. The year 2010 is, therefore, an inflection point, from when Hungary’s democracy began backsliding and it shows no sign of returning to its original position. Instead, it is gradually moving toward the authoritarian direction. What happened in 2010 in Hungary that caused its democracy to begin backsliding? The aim of this section is to explain the factors, accounting for the beginning of de-democratization in Hungary. The beginning of democratic backsliding in 2010 resulted from a combined effect of at least three significant factors. First, the global financial crisis of 2007–2009, that pushed the EU economy to enter the

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100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022

Fig. 7.1 The State of Democracy in Hungary, 2007–2022 (Source Freedom House annual reports, 2007–2022)

Fig. 7.2 Liberal democracy score of Hungary (1989–2021) (Source V-Dem)

steepest downturn since the 1930s, caused severe negative impacts on small, open economies like Hungary. The crisis broke Hungarian Forint (HUF)’s stability by depreciating its value by 23%, pushed thousands

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of households to insolvency, increased unemployment, caused industrial production to decline by 17%, and led to the decline of GDP by 6.7% in 2008–2009 (Egedy 2012, 163–164). Compared to other EU countries, the negative impacts of the financial crisis multiplied in Hungary, due to structural problems such as low competitiveness, scarce resources, small size of the domestic market, and unscrupulous and risky financial solutions of successive governments to increase popularity and secure office. On the one hand, because of the structural problems, every international financial crisis over the past thirty years has visited Hungary (Andor 2009, 287). On the other hand, the risky fiscal policies enormously increased fiscal deficits and public debt, as it did by the MSZP’s promise of a 50% raise in public sector wages and 13-month pension during the 2002 election (Gyorffy 2020, 800). The financial crisis increased public debt, unraveled numerous irrational neoliberal policies and practices by successive governments, and highlighted divisions and cleavages in society between debtors and creditors (e.g., banks) as well as between the ordinary people and the elites. These effects, in turn, resulted in heightening public frustration and social fragmentation that were conducive to and exploited by right-wing populist political parties, whose vehement advocacy for aggressive debtorfriendly policies attracted increased support from the voters. Conversely, public frustration proved to be a major factor in the landslide defeat of MSZP-SZDSZ alliance in the 2010 election. For instance, between 2006 and 2010 elections, the vote shares dropped from around 50% to about 20% for the left parties, e.g., MSZP-SZDSZ, while they enormously increased from 2.2% to around 17% for the far-right parties, e.g., Jobbik, and rose from about 42% to around 53% for the center-right parties, e.g., FIDESZ (Gyongyosi and Verner 2022, 2481). The point is that the financial crisis opened a window of opportunity for right-wing populist political parties to broaden and deepen their political support in the Hungarian society. Thus, after assuming power in 2010, FIDESZ and Orban immediately utilized this window to embody an illiberal form of politics by bringing rapid and drastic changes to the country’s political economy, taking control of key institutions, and consolidating their grip on power. Moreover, the financial crisis aggravated the pre-existing polarized divide in Hungarian society, that is the second significant factor in the current section. Following the late 1990s, a division between two camps—left and right, began appearing in the political spectrum. Between the 1990s and 2000s, this division, between the left camp (represented

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by the Socialist MSZP and the liberal SZDSZ) and the right camp (represented by conservative and nationalist FIDESZ, MDF, Jobbik, and FKGP), fomented a bipolar political structure, leading to party polarization. While the left, comprising socialist, internationalist, and cosmopolitan, fostered liberal economic policies and human rights, the right claimed to be preserving the nation and the traditional values of religion, morality, and ethno-nationalism (Palonen 2009, 321–322). Each began accusing the other in Manichean terms: we are the good ones, and they are the evil ones. This polarized divide took more visible and concrete form since the 2002 election and surged substantially following the 2006 election. After taking office in 2006, the MSZP-government introduced an austerity package containing a series of harsh economic measures that met with strong criticisms and street demonstrations demanding its withdrawal. A month later, a recorded speech of the socialist Prime Minister Gyurcsany was leaked in the media, in which “the PM admitted to having lied in the morning, at noon, and at night, about the true state of Hungarian economy to win elections” (Vegetti 2019, 89). The event was particularly sensible for the masses, considering harsh economic measures and polarized political context, thus, the leaked speech was received as a betrayal to the nation. Consequently, demonstrations were called by FIDESZ and other right-wing parties, demanding the resignation of the lying PM, who finally stepped down in 2009 leaving power to a caretaker government. The right camp craftily utilized this opportunity because a lying PM in the left camp fit very well for the right’s consistent questioning of their integrity, national commitment, and legitimacy. Meanwhile, several corruption scandals of the MSZP-SZDSZ officials and economic mismanagement of the government came to the front amid the financial crisis. Since the winner-take-all-logic in the Hungarian system makes elections a do-or-die affair, FIDESZ and right-wing parties capitalized on these events and exploited all means at hand to spread polarized and populist narratives on a mass scale signifying the division based on “us versus them” and “elites versus masses”. The situation continued through the 2010 parliamentary election, in which the election campaigns were filled with hostile, divisive, and accusatory languages and narratives that, in turn, intensified and deepened polarization and delivered a landslide victory to FIDESZ (Arbatli and Rosenberg 2021, 298). Thus, it explains why political polarization began increasing since 2006 and scored significantly higher in 2010. It can be further confirmed by the V-Dem data,

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showing that political polarization (measured on a 0–4 scale, low to high) in Hungary increased from a score of 0.58 in 2006 to 2.39 in 2010. In 2010, the FIDESZ-KDNP (Christian Democratic People’s Party) alliance won 53% of the popular vote and bagged 263 out of 386 seats (almost 68%) in the unicameral parliament. With a supermajority in parliament, Orban and FIDESZ installed drastic changes in Hungary’s constitution and political system to centralize political power and to weaken checks and balances. Together these changes formulate the third significant factor in the current discussion. The series of changes ranged from the state and the economy to culture, leading to a full society capture that explains why “the big reverse wave began in 2010” (Agh 2022, 3–4). Sitter (2011, 249) described these changes in the following words: “Never in the history of the European Union has an election in a member state resulted in political, legal, economic, and administrative changes of this magnitude in such a short period”. For others, the series of changes was tantamount to a “constitutional coup” (Agh 2013; Bozóki 2015). While FIDESZ avoided mentioning its plan for such massive changes during the 2010 election campaigns (Agh 2022, 4), the systemic changes are partly attributed to the election year as “the perfect storm”, suggesting a unique constellation of forces including political polarization, the financial crisis, public dissatisfaction, corruption, and antiincumbency effect (Bogaards 2018, 1490). More importantly, the landslide victory provided FIDESZ with an impressive mandate that opened a macro window for reform. As John T. S. Keeler (1993, 436–437) argued, “The achievement of an impressive mandate – a landslide electoral victory, that through a large swing in votes and seats reflecting a shift in national mood, makes a new government appear authorized and empowered by the public to implement its program. Such an electoral uprising may amount, if not to revolution, to its functional equivalent”, which later came to be known as Keeler’s model for extraordinary policymaking. However, the size of the government mandate and the unprecedented degree of change in Hungary have certainly gone way past anything that Keeler’s model could imagine (Bogaards 2018, 1491). Orban, however, described this unusual degree of changes as a “revolution through the ballot box” (Lendvai 2017, 87). Therefore, the three factors, e.g., public frustration, heightened political polarization, and Orban-led drastic changes, converged together in

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2010 to create an environment conducive to begin democratic backsliding in Hungary.

Agent Viktor Orban, as a legalistic autocratic, has been the agent of Hungary’s democratic backsliding. He has successfully made his place among the Strongmen of the modern age such as Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Donald Trump, and Narendra Modi. Throughout his political career, Orban’s “black-and-white positioning” mentality and “innovative ideologist” attitude served as his key strength (Palonen 2009). Orban has transformed his party “from the position of the anti-elitist, anti-communist youth party in the early 1990s to the leading national centre-right party since 1993 to the European progressive nationally minded civic party in 1998–2002, to the statist-conservative force from 2006” (Palonen 2009, 329). From 2010, once again, Orban shifted his party position toward the right-wing populist force. Like other Strongmen, Orban has always had an unbridled lust for power. In every electoral defeat, he questioned the election results. After losing in 2002, Orban “hardly visited the parliament” and refused to be the leader of opposition in parliament, arguing that “the nation cannot be in opposition”, and after losing in 2006, he organized “violent protests to challenge the election results” (Bogaards 2018, 1491). After two consecutive defeats, when Orban finally managed to secure a landslide victory in 2010, he aggressively assumed the leadership role and became the sole powerful leader in the party and the government. A key reason behind this was that the highest offices of the country—the president, the prime minister, and the speaker of the national assembly—were, respectively, held by three old friends, namely Janos Ader, Viktor Orban, and Laszlo Kover. Moreover, key positions in government, bureaucracy, and economy were filled by a group of friends who have been loyal to Orban for decades. The core power of the Hungarian state has been captured by a band of friends, as Lendvai (2017, 10) wrote, “nowhere in the world, is there a democratic country in which a small group of ten to twenty former students, who have known each other for about thirty years, occupies to such a degree so many key positions of power”. Orban, therefore, created a network of cronies and allies and placed them in key positions of power in exchange for their unreserved loyalty, who in turn, helped Orban stay in office.

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Furthermore, using his constitution-making power, Orban has completely altered the political system and the rules of the game within his first three terms, that are described by Agh (2022) as “dedemocratization”, “autocratization”, and “de-Europeanization” period, respectively. During his first term (2010–2014), Orban has weakened checks and balances, installed a pre-programmed fake electoral system, and captured political power in formal and informal institutions. Describing Hungary as “the perfect autocracy”, Agh (2022) demonstrated that the “economy capture” was done during the second term (2014–2018) by occupying all chief positions of power, while the process of “society capture” in cultural life and the attacks on EU rules and values were undergone during the third term (2018–2022). Whether there is anything left to capture, Orban is aiming for ten legislative periods, or at least thirty years in power (Lendvai 2017, 94). So long as Orban is in power, Hungarian democracy is highly unlikely to be on the mend.

Institutional Strategy Changing the Rules of the Game Democracy in Hungary has long been guarded by its constitutional institutions, so Orban’s first step was to change the rules of the game. Soon after taking office, Orban abolished the safeguard clause, requiring any preparation for a new constitution to be approved by four-fifths of the parliament members. With this threshold clause removed, FIDESZ using its two-thirds majority can pass a law and publish it in the official gazette within forty-eight hours. It explains how FIDESZ could institute twelve constitutional amendments only in 2010–2013 that, in turn, resulted in 728 acts, which further received 466 amendments (Agh 2015, 17). Together these changes were equivalent to a constitutional coup (Bozóki 2015). The constitutional changes and the related cardinal laws allowed the government to pass a series of electoral laws to bring fundamental changes to the electoral system. These electoral laws were further amended in 2013 before the 2014 election. Two such laws are worth mentioning: the Act CCIII of 2011 on the Elections of Members of Parliament and Act XXXVI of 2013 on Election Procedure. The effect of these new electoral laws is manifold. First, these laws for the first time allowed for an election to be held in a single round instead of the usual

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two rounds (Legislation 2013; Venice Commission 2014). The singleround election system prevented the possibility for political parties to form coalitions after knowing the results of the first round. Second, these laws reduced the number of parliament members to 199 from 386 [Act CCIII, Section 3] (Venice Commission 2014). Of 199 parliamentary seats, 106 (instead of 176 based on the 1989 Constitution) will be elected in single-member constituencies and the rest, 93, will be elected from a regional list with a national threshold of 5% of votes. This change involved gerrymandering, a redrawing of boundaries of singlemember constituencies in a fashion that gave the ruling party more seats (Pap 2018, 24). For instance, in the new electoral districts, the FIDESZled alliance won 96 seats in 2014 and 91 seats in 2018 out of 106 singlemember constituencies (OSCE 2014, 2018). The gerrymandering was done using FIDESZ’s two-thirds majority in parliament without allowing the opposition to have any input (Scheppele 2014; OSCE 2014, 8). It, therefore, significantly helped FIDESZ by guaranteeing a parliamentary majority even with reduced popular votes (Mudde 2014). Third, by amending Act LV. 1993 on Hungarian Citizenship with Act XLIV of 2010, Orban allowed non-resident voters to cast their votes in elections. These are new Hungarian citizens from neighboring countries—people who do not live in Hungary but speak Hungarian, people who are of Hungarian descent but are now foreign citizens, and people who mostly live in the territories that Hungary lost after WWI. Of the nearly 200,000 registered non-resident voters, almost 95.5% voted for the FIDESZ-KDNP alliance in 2014 (Mudde 2014). The non-resident votes have significantly benefitted the ruling regime by adding one additional seat to make 133 seats for FIDESZ, exactly the number necessary to secure a supermajority (Scheppele 2014; Mudde 2014). Fourth, the new laws allowed the winners to utilize unused votes won by the losing candidates to add to the winning parties’ total votes when calculating the party-list mandates. The unused votes in a constituency are calculated based on the difference between a winner’s votes and the second-place candidate’s votes (minus one). The utilization of unused votes allowed FIDESZ to get six parliamentary seats, without which, the supermajority would not have been possible (Scheppele 2014). Thus, it can be clearly argued that the new rules were strategically designed to ensure a supermajority for FIDESZ. Fifth, the new electoral laws helped FIDESZ to capture the National Election Commission (NVB). In the old electoral system, of ten NVB

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members, five were filled by party delegates (one from each parliamentary party) and the other five non-delegate members were filled by mutual agreement between the ruling and the opposition parties. Conversely, new electoral laws allowed the incumbent to prematurely terminate all nondelegate members, and their positions were immediately filled with proFIDESZ members (Bankuti et al. 2015, 39). Consequently, it declined NVB’s autonomy and gave rise to a politicized electoral authority that favored FIDESZ, for instance, in election monitoring in 2014 and 2018 elections, while arbitrarily dropping the opposition parties’ complaints without considering their substantive merits (OSCE 2014, 2018). All these legal changes single-handedly favored FIDESZ to have political control in all institutions necessary for democratic elections, making it impossible for any other party to come to power. It has been proven in the elections of 2014, 2018, and 2022. With only 44% (in 2014) and 49% (in 2018) of votes, the ruling regime won 133 out of 199 seats (66.83% of parliamentary seats) in both elections and secured two-thirds majority in parliament. Similarly, the incumbent regime won 53.7% of votes and 135 out of 199 seats in 2022, thereby, again securing a twothirds majority. Therefore, the fortified electoral structure brought about by carefully crafted legal changes was meant to keep Orban in power. It is no coincidence that Orban’s infamous remark is quoted so often: “We have only to win once, then properly” (Lendvai 2017, 94). Capturing the Referees of the State Orban’s second step to capture the referees of the state is linked with the first step since the process started with changing the rules of the game. The most important referee—the Constitutional Court, has been serving as an important check on the executive since the 1990s (Antal 2019). In 2010–2013, the Court struck down a series of problematic laws by declaring them unconstitutional (Halmai 2019). Orban, therefore, targeted the Court by passing a series of Acts that were formalized through the fourth amendment in 2013. The new amendment approved all legal changes (which were struck down by the Court), significantly curbed the Court’s power, and limited the judiciary’s independence. Some examples are presented below. Unlike the 1989 Constitution, Article 24(5) of the new Constitution allows the Constitutional Court to only review the procedural requirements for making and promulgating the Fundamental Law or its

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amendments (The Constitute Project 2013). This change restricted the Court’s power to rule on the substance of the constitution. Similarly, Article 37 limited the Court’s jurisdiction in reviewing laws pertaining to state budgets and narrowed its ability to rule on the compatibility of laws that may affect human rights (Antal 2019). Moreover, Articles 25–28 led to the subsequent construction of several legal instruments such as Act CLXI on the Organization and Administration of Courts and Act CLXII on the Legal Status and Remuneration of Judges. Act CLXI (Section 66), as mentioned in Article 25(6) of the Fundamental Law, stipulated that the president of the National Judicial Office (NJO) of the Constitutional Court shall be elected by the parliament with a two-thirds majority for nine years (The Constitute Project 2013). It removed the provision of having a special parliamentary committee, where each political party had one vote to elect the president of NJO. As FIDESZ has a two-thirds majority in parliament, it can ensure the appointment of its chosen candidate (Gardos-Orosz 2018). The vice president is to be appointed by the president of NJO, hence giving an upper hand to FIDESZ. The current NJO president is a FIDESZ member and has close affiliation with FIDEZ, hence limiting the Constitutional Court’s independence. Using these Acts, Orban increased the number of Constitutional Court judges from 11 to 15, that allowed him to pack the Court with all favorable judges. A total of 12 out of 15 judges were already recruited by FIDESZ for a nine-year term (TOK 2018, 94), indicating politicization of the Court. Additionally, Act CLXI [Sections 65–77] authorized the president of NJO to oversee the administration of courts, appoint senior judges, temporarily transfer judges to other courts without their consent, and transfer cases from one court to another (Venice Commission 2012a, 2012b). Having control over the Constitutional Court, the ruling FIDESZ can have cases transferred for political reasons, as it did by transferring several politically sensitive cases from the Metropolitan Court of Budapest to courts in rural areas (Human Rights Watch 2013). Furthermore, Act CLXII [Section 230] lowered the retirement age of judges from 70 to 62, forcing 274 judges to retire early (Halmai 2017). After facing severe criticism, the regime passed a revision, insisting that the retirement age would be gradually lowered to 65 (instead of 62) for judges and prosecutors by 31 December 2022. This change did not make much difference because many of the vacant positions were immediately filled up by pro-FIDESZ judges. Therefore, through several legal changes

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and politicized appointments, Orban captured the Constitutional Court to ensure unchecked power at his hands. Silencing the Political Opponents Orban’s legal changes in the legislative, electoral, and judicial institutions have already handicapped the opposition political parties. Lendvai (2017, 91) observed this condition of opposition parties: “The bastion of power elaborately constructed since 2010 is, as far as it is humanly possible to tell, impregnable to external assault. The prospects of the opposition are bleak, and it is so hopelessly disunited that it offers no serious option for political change”. Nevertheless, several legal changes were made that served as preemptive repressive mechanisms, specifically targeting any sort of political opposition that might arise from political parties, civil society organizations, and media conglomerates. Some of them are discussed below. Hungary’s party structure is characterized by a cartel party system, in which political parties heavily depend on state finances rather than funding from party members or sponsors (Susanszky et al. 2020, 762). As the constitutional changes allowed the ruling FIDESZ to determine and distribute state budgets, without any interference from the Constitutional Court, it has been conditioning the state budgets to repress the opposition parties’ functionality by restricting their state subsidies. For instance, between 2014 and 2017, while FIDESZ received approximately HUF460,000 (US$1,294) to HUF670,000 (US$1,885) per year, the main opposition MSZP received only HUF61,000 (US$172) per year (Susanszky et al. 2020, 767). Conversely, the incumbent regime increased the subsidies for smaller parties. The Orban-led new electoral legislation encouraged the registration of many small parties that were called by observers as “phantom parties” or “splinter groups” or “camouflage parties” (Freedom House 2015, 297). These parties had neither websites nor any visible campaign presence, but their formation was encouraged by FIDESZ. During the 2014 election, six of these parties received public funding between HUF700,000 (US$1,968) and HUF2,100,000 (US$281) each, while they received fewer than ten thousand votes (Freedom House 2015, 297). Twelve such parties that participated in the 2018 election were created to take advantage of public funding, fragment the opposition votes, and confuse the voters (Freedom House 2019). In 2021, when the incumbent cut down state subsidies for political parties

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to be spent to fight Covid, it disproportionately affected the opposition parties’ functionality (Freedom House 2021). While the single-round electoral system forces the opposition parties to form uneasy alliances prior to elections (Varnagy and Ilonszki 2017, 11), the new campaign finance law insists on distributing public finance to a party in proportion to the number of candidates it has in an election. This campaign finance legislation encourages the parties to have as many candidates as possible, therefore, forcing them to compete among the parties within the alliance, apart from their competition against FIDESZ (Susanszky et al. 2020, 766). The point is that the opposition parties, which do not form alliances and play alone (therefore, will surely lose), are given more money from public finance, whereas the alliances are given less money. If a party decides to play alone to secure more financial resources, it not only loses an election but also benefits the ruling party. For instance, LMP’s decision to play alone in the 2014 election helped the ruling FIDESZ to win eleven additional seats (Lendvai 2017, 129). Moreover, the regime passed a law in 2018 that banned the owners of billboards from offering discounts to political parties. The State Audit Office (headed by a former FIDESZ member) fined six parties for violating this law during the 2018 election (Freedom House 2019). For instance, Jobbik, which became the second largest party in parliament since 2014, was fined a huge amount, that was equal to more than two-thirds of its annual state subsidy (Freedom House 2018, 416). These preemptive repressive mechanisms through legal changes have trapped the opposition parties and restricted their political activities. Their major dilemma included either participating in the political game, taking seats in the parliament, and accepting state subsidies or rejecting to play by the rules devised and dictated by FIDESZ. Playing in the game “unavoidably weakens their credibility and limits their chances to grow and gain supporters” because “they seem co-opted” and “they appear impotent” (Susanszky et al. 2020, 766). By playing, they also implicitly legitimize the Orban-led system that they severely criticize and contribute to the continuation of the cartel system. If not playing, they lose state finances affecting their political functionality and highlight their failure to fight government. Therefore, the incumbent’s preemptive repression led to a cartel party system that has ultimately co-opted the opposition parties by which they have very little or no chance to win. As several civil society organizations raised their voice and led social movements against Orban’s authoritarian rule (Kover 2015), the regime

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passed two laws in 2017 that significantly affected these organizations’ activities. The new higher education law requires that all foreign universities operating in Hungary must conduct their educational activities based on the Hungarian government’s preferences, not on the universities’ accreditation boards (Enyedi 2018). The law immediately took the name Lex CEU (Central European University) because it mostly affected the US-chartered CEU, that eventually moved to Vienna in 2018. The ulterior motive behind this law was to attack the CEU-founder and Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros-funded non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for allegedly serving foreign interests (Enyedi 2018). As per the second law of 2017, NGOs which receive more than $26,000 in funding annually from foreign sources, must identify themselves as “foreign-supported organizations” and disclose the identities of foreign donors, otherwise they will face sanctions (Freedom House 2018, 414). NGOs are now required to register with the interior ministry and their registration is contingent upon clearance from security agencies. The law further insists that any foreign funding, especially for migrationrelated activities, is subjected to 25% tax (Downes and Wai 2018). Using this law, the regime has been restricting mainstream NGOs including the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International Hungary. Conversely, the regime has been promoting government-funded NGOs, such as Civil Unity Forum (COF), that overwhelmingly circulated progovernment information during the election campaigns of 2014 and 2018 (OSCE 2014, 2018). To capture the media, the ruling FIDESZ has passed several legal instruments such as the Act on the Modification of Certain Acts Regulating the Media and Communications, the Act CIV on the Freedom of Press and Fundamental Rules on Media Content, and the Act on Media Services and Mass Media (known as Media Act or Multimedia Act). These acts specified content regulations, established new media regulatory bodies, and introduced sanctions if violated (Brouillette and Beek 2012), paving the way to establish FIDESZ’s control over the media environment, as clarified by the following examples. First, the new laws established a National Media and Infocommunications Authority (NMHH) (known as the Media Authority), headed by a Media Council, whose members have been elected for a nine-year term by FIDESZ (Bajomi-Lazar 2015, 60). The Media Council can impose provisions on content regulation, charge high fines for violation, control licensing,

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transfer cases to rural areas, and enforce many other restrictions. The politicized Council fined sixty-six media outlets with HUF80 million (US$360,000) in 2012 alone, that led others to self-censor their content (Human Rights Watch 2013). Additionally, Article 13 of Act CIV requires that the media outlets publish “balanced information” (i.e., the information that serves the interests of the public and the Hungarian nation), and any infringement will result in high fines and court cases. With no clear definition of “balanced information”, it has created widespread fear and confusion among journalists and reporters (Scheppele 2014; OSCE 2014, 2018). Additionally, the Council has been authorized to control the licensing of media outlets and even make the court rule for licensing invalid (NMHH 2010). The Council’s decisions for licensing private media remain arbitrary and benefit only pro-government broadcasters (Dragomir 2017a). Within its first two years, the Council has provided eighteen licenses to pro-government radio stations, while refusing to renew the license of the long-standing left-liberal radio, Klubradio, based on irrational grounds, forcing it to engage in court battles causing huge financial loss (Bajomi-Lazar 2015, 72). Second, the new laws created a Public Service Foundation to manage the public institutions such as Hungarian Television (MTV), Hungarian Radio (MR), Danube Television (Duna TV), and the Hungarian News Agency (MTI). The Foundation, headed by a chairperson chosen by the Media Council, has been authorized to interfere in the editorial content of public media platforms and several instances of such interference have been reported. Refusal of such interferences often leads to the dismissal of journalists and editors, as occurred for Hungarian Television (MTVA), in which approximately 1,100–1,600 employees were dismissed (Human Rights Watch 2013). Through the Foundation, the government has been providing huge funding to the state-led media outlets, giving financial incentives to pro-FIDESZ journalists (Bajomi-Lazar 2015, 75). Facing pressure and incentives, the public media outlets have been subordinated to the government, serving FIDESZ’s propaganda purposes (Bozóki and Hegedus, 2018). Beyond the legal mechanisms, FIDESZ has been conditioning public advertising funds, by sending them to only pro-government private media outlets, while seeking to financially disable critical media outlets (Sata and Karolewski 2020, 212). For instance, the left-leaning, Klubradio and

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the national daily, Nepszava, faced a huge decline in government advertising, followed by private advertising (Human Rights Watch 2013). The Nepszava was later closed due to financial constraints. The control of advertising funds has been done through a large patronal network, led by FIDESZ loyalist business tycoons. Orban’s closest allies have been running almost all media outlets of the country (Sata and Karolewski 2020, 213). According to one estimate, by 2017, a staggering 90% of all media in Hungary belonged to either the state or a FIDESZ ally (Dragomir 2017b). While the owners of these media and business enterprises avoid giving advertising funds outside of their own media outlets, private firms seeking to maintain good relations with the government refrain from advertising with the critical media (Kornai 2015). Therefore, the survival of critical independent media has been at stake. The declining media freedom in Hungary is further evident in the World Press Freedom Index in which Hungary’s rank of 56 out of 180 countries in 2013 has deteriorated to 92 in 2021 (RSF 2021). Thus, Orban, altering rules and exploiting legal and parliamentary mandates, has carefully designed an electoral system that ensures his repeated electoral victories, while capturing the referees, e.g., Constitutional Court by seriously curbing its authority and by court-packing. Orban’s strategic preemptive mechanisms have handicapped the opposition parties, severely shrunk civil society’s space, and captured the media landscape. However, these institutional and legal moves have been buttressed by carefully constructed ideological narratives, to justify the regime’s policies and actions, as discussed in the next section.

Ideological Strategy Orban’s institutional strategy has been accompanying his ideological strategy to provide a legitimate cover for his policies and backsliding moves. His ideological narratives have contributed to constructing the enemies of the state and the sources of prevailing political problems. Orban’s diverse ideological narratives centered on populism can be classified into three categories—traditional conservatism, anti-elitism, and nativism—that have been frequently transmitted through political rhetoric and discourse. As Berlin (1988, 477) states, “a rhetoric can never be innocent, can never be a disinterested arbiter of ideological claims, because it is always already serving certain ideological claims”. Therefore, analyzing political rhetoric, spread through speeches, statements, and media, helps

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explain how Orban’s ideological strategy accompanies his institutional policies and actions. Traditional conservatism emphasizes the view that political problems are, at the bottom, religious and moral problems rather than the other way around, as Russell Kirk described in his seminal book, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot (1953). Similarly, the Orban government views that “the problems of Europe can be traced back to the denial of Christian roots” and is committed to establishing a “Christian democracy” in Hungary and to “making families great again” (Walker 2019). Consequently, traditional conservatism has been a guide for the regime’s many policies that are contradictory with the notion of individual liberty and liberal democracy. The Orban regime began its rule with the phrase “God is the Lord of history” by containing it in the preamble of a new law of 2010 that was passed shortly after taking office to declare Fourth of June as the “Day of National Solidarity” (Lendvai 2017, 90). The new constitution of 2011 added several references to God, Christianity, and family values. It defined family in traditionalist terms, a heterosexual married couple with children, which is later redefined as “based on marriage and the parent– child relation, where the mother is a woman, and the father is a man” (Barry 2022). The Orban regime categorically presented LGBTQ and homosexual gender categories as the “enemies” of family values and children’s wellbeing, thereby preventing the wellbeing of Hungarian families (Szikra and Oktem 2022, 8). Orban, who was an atheist in 1980s, turned to his Calvinist roots in the 1990s and claimed to be a defender of Christianity in the 2010s, believes that “defending Christianity is intimately tied to defending the Hungarian nation” (Dreher 2022). The Orban regime has, thus, turned “a defense of Christian civilization into an official state doctrine” and presented itself as a “political wing of conservative Catholicism” (Steinmetz-Zenkins and Jager 2019). Alongside the narratives of Christianity, Orban has primed the pump through financial assistance to religious institutions and Christian Churches, through regular meetings with Catholic leaders and organizing religious events highlighting religious themes, e.g., the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. Amid the Coronavirus pandemic, Orban spent more money on Christian Churches than Hungary’s struggling health care system (Barry 2022). The result is support for Orban and FIDESZ from Catholic leaders, Christian Churches, and devoted Christians.

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The reiterated narratives of Christianity and related activities insist on white conservative Christians. In Hungary, about 80% of the population identify themselves as Christians [half of them considers themselves as Catholic] and Christianity is glued to the country’s cultural identity. Orban has, therefore, been invoking and pulling the common thread, Christianity, to get the support of Christian communities. He seeks to connect the nation’s Christianness to his Christian identification to secure votes and legitimize his political views and policies by claiming that they are tantamount to Christianity (Chitwood 2022). Orban’s strategic use of Christianity serves as a nodal point to “shape a negative and antagonistic discourse, strategically adjusted to his audience”, to ground key ideological pillars such as populism, nativism, and authoritarianism, and to organize a hegemonic struggle against dominant left-wing political forces (Lamour 2022, 317). Peter Wilkin, in his Hungary’s Crisis of Democracy: The Road to Serfdom (2016), notes that the left-wing politicians have failed to deliver the promised goods and are considered as a bunch of “traitors” by the underclass or unemployed people. They, hence, have failed to represent the interests of the ordinary people. Orban exploited this opportunity to create a division based on “us versus them” (Wilkin 2016, 54). He has presented himself as “the man in the street”, “a village boy”, who grew up “in the countryside”, played “football”, went to “law school”, and “acting according to the wishes of the people”, while he described the established socialist politicians of the MSZP-led alliance as “the elites” (TOK 2018, 92–93). Orban often portrays the socialist elites as “the corrupt elites”, and “outcasts” who have “acted against the nation’s interests” and colluded with external actors to entangle Hungary in economic disaster and huge debt crisis (Feledy 2017). This anti-elitist and “us vs. them” rhetoric has been dominating Hungarian politics throughout the Orban era, though it sharply rose during the 2014 election. After the 2014 election, the Orban regime faced an anti-government protest for increasing corruption, rising authoritarianism, and moving away from the EU toward Russia. Following months of the protest, thousands of refugees were trying to enter Hungary due to the international refugee crisis, that provided the government with an opportunity to turn the attention away from the protest. The Orban regime, thus, then shifted toward anti-refugee and anti-immigration narratives to spread waves of nativist claims. The core principle of nativism suggests that “a given territory should be peopled by a native and homogenous group protected

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from alien populations and ideas” (Lamour 2022, 319). In a similar vein, the government identified refugees and migrants as “foreign elements”, posing an “existential threat” to Hungary’s culture, economy, and security (TOK 2018). Such identification constructed fear among the ordinary Hungarians, and Orban did everything in his power to keep this fear alive (Kenes 2020). Describing refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants as “poison” and “not needed” (The Guardian 2016), Orban invoked a sense of crisis, insecurity, and emergency, requiring strict policies and measures that allowed him to utilize his power and authority under extraordinary circumstances. Such rhetoric dominated the public discussion and was broadcast in the media in a routinized manner. The incumbent carried out a monthslong public campaign against the refugee quota plan introduced by the European Commission that served to spark anti-migrant sentiments by circulating misleading messages associating refugees with terrorism and sexual assault (The Guardian 2016). The regime’s campaign was broadcast continuously and consistently on the state-owned media channels to arouse public support for Orban’s stance. Orban declared that “migration only brings trouble and dangers to the European people, therefore it has to be stopped” (TOK 2018, 99). Following Orban, the ruling party members referred to the refugees as “thieves”, “arsonists”, “criminals”, and “the source of diseases” (TOK 2018, 99). The anti-immigration narratives were also infused with Christianity. Declaring his vision to build a “Christian democracy”, Orban claimed that the reason why Christianity today is under threat is because of immigration, globalism, and liberalism (Walker 2019). Similarly, several Catholic leaders shared the same view as Orban, such as the bishop of Szeged, who expressed to the media that “the more immigrants that come, the more Christian values will be watered down” (Walker 2019). As part of the anti-immigrant campaign, Orban launched the National Consultation on Immigration and Terrorism survey to understand public opinion on the matter. In the survey description and questionnaire, refugees and immigrants were identified as “economic immigrants” and “profiteering immigrants” who “cross the border illegally pretending to be refugees” seeking “social allowances and jobs”, hence are “threat to Hungarians’ jobs and livelihoods” (Simonovits and Bernat 2016; Bocskor 2018), indicating a clear anti-immigrant bias. In the survey questions, Hungarians were warned of “shocking acts of ISIS”, “bloodshed in France”, the possibility of Hungary to be the “target of an act of

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terror” and were urged to support the defense of Hungary “against illegal bordering” (Simonovits and Bernat 2016; TOK 2018, 99). According to Hungary’s leading sociologists, the structure and content of the survey and the self-selection method of the questionnaire increased the probability that large-scale support would go in favor of the regime’s stance (Balogh 2017). Similarly, a large majority of around one million respondents extended their support to Orban’s stance that not only strengthened Orban’s populist claim of acting according to the wishes of the people, but also served to legitimize his strict anti-migration policies. Apart from the survey, the ruling regime placed billboards and posters around the country carrying messages such as: “if you come to Hungary, you have to respect our laws” and “if you come to Hungary, don’t take jobs of Hungarians” (Thorpe 2015). The regime also sent millions of booklets to households posing questions such as: “did you know that the Parisian terror attacks were committed by immigrants?” and “did you know that since the beginning of the immigration crisis, the harassment of women has risen sharply in Europe?” (Balogh 2017). It is important to note that Orban’s populist approach aimed to construct the consent of the people in favor of his anti-immigration stance by highlighting a cultural clash between Christianity and Islam. As majority of the refugees and migrants were Muslims, Orban insisted on protecting the Christian values against the threats emanating from “Islamization” of Hungary and Europe and the Western ideology of multiculturalism (Kreko et al. 2019). Orban further presented the migration influx in Hungary as a conspiracy of hostile foreigners and corrupt elites. This was reflected when the EU urged its members to implement the refugee quota plan. Orban declared that “the most bizarre coalition in world history has arisen, one colluded among human smugglers and human rights activists, and (the other) Europe’s top politicians to deliver here millions of migrants. Brussels must be stopped” (Lendvai 2019). Orban then launched a countrywide “Stop Brussels” campaign highlighting that EU wanted to settle the migrants in Hungary (Kenes 2020). Orban later added “Stop Soros” in his campaigns portraying that Soros masterminded the refugee quota plan (Magyar 2019; Kenes 2020). These narratives dominated the campaigns during the 2018 election. Two election campaign billboards are worth mentioning that were hung together around the country. While in one billboard with a picture of Orban included “For us, Hungary is the first”, another billboard with a picture of four leaders of the four opposition parties and George Soros stated that these five people

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would “demolish the border fence” (Szabo 2019; Kenes 2020). The messages from the billboards were clear that Orban presented himself as the protector and the guarantor of Hungary’s unity and security, while highlighting the opposition leaders as elites who allegedly caused insecurity and instability in Hungary and allowed external forces, e.g., Soros and Soros-affiliated organizations, to take control of the country’s power (Szabo 2019). The repeated and wide media coverage of these narratives significantly benefitted the regime, as reflected in its impressive electoral margins. Thus, it can be reasonably argued that since 2010, a key strategy of Orban has been to continuously search for new enemies, be it antiChristians, traditional political and business elites, the Soros, LGBTQ communities, and refugees and migrants. Orban then uses relevant populist narratives to uncover the enemies and to legitimize his policies and actions to neutralize those enemies. The result is the winning of tacit acquiescence from the ordinary Hungarians for Orban and FIDESZ.

Audience The Hungarian audience has been generally supportive to the Orban regime, contributing to Orban’s project of autocratization. Even though elections were “structurally rigged whose outcomes were foreordained” (Scheppele 2022, 46), still, no autocrat can win elections without a good deal of support base and votes. On average, a majority of Hungarians support Orban and FIDESZ, as the opinion polls show. In the Global Attitudes Survey of 2016, conducted by Pew Research Center (PRC), about 82% of Hungarian respondents (of total 1,005) opined that refugees were a burden as they take up jobs and social benefits, while 76% expressed that refugees would increase the likelihood of terrorism in the country (Manevich 2016). And 71% of the respondents approved the way Orban handled the refugee issue. In the same survey, Hungarians were found to be much more likely to hold negative views of minority groups than other Europeans, 72% held negative views of Muslims, 64% of Roma communities, and 32% of Jewish communities. There is no doubt that the Orban government’s narratives on anti-refugee, anti-gender equality, and traditional conservatism played a big part in shaping this sort of attitudes among average Hungarians. Similarly, the 2017 Gallup World Poll found that 40% of the respondents (of total 1,000) approved of the country’s leadership under Orban (Ray 2018). The Poll concluded that

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“Orban’s approval ratings have been gaining ground in recent years”, as the percentage rose from 20 in 2012 to 40 in 2017 (Ray 2018). Like the PRC’s attitude survey, the Poll also ranked Hungary lowest among EU countries in terms of tolerance of refugees and migrants, with a score of 1.69 in the Migrant Acceptance Index (on a scale of 1–9). The reason behind the present attitude of the Hungarian audience is partly because “Hungarians are risk-averse and short-term thinkers” (Hockenos 2022), and their level of non-electoral political participation is relatively low compared to West-European countries. Generally, FIDESZ voters feel that they are in safe hands with Orban, “who will do whatever it takes to shield them from external evils in a turbulent world” (Hockenos 2022). About 27% of Hungarians live in rural areas who are mostly conservative Christians, thereby support Orban. Moreover, Hungarians’ satisfaction with representative democracy was relatively low in the first two decades since independence (that was mostly ruled by the left-alliance), as the Hungarian dream of having a strong middle class and economic success never came true, that created an appeal for change and triggered a tendency to be persuaded by right-wing populist narratives, hence lending support to Orban and FIDESZ. Taken together these matters explain why the Orban regime has not confronted strong enough protests and movements that could upset the government. It does not mean that the government has not faced protests from Hungarians. Several protests took place in the past decade such as in 2014 (due to internet tax, corruption, and authoritarianism), in 2017, and in 2018 (due to government’s stance against CEU and EU leadership, respectively), and in 2022 (due to an amendment of labor law and increased inflation). These protests either comprised mainly the left-coalition supporters or failed to be capitalized by the opponents or neutralized by the government through the strategic adjustment to the protesters’ demands or were not powerful enough to topple the government. The consequence is tacit support for the government. Furthermore, the supportive attitude of the Hungarian audience is partly linked to the absence of a viable political alternative and the manipulated media and information environment. On the one hand, the main opposition, MSZP, has been repressed so deeply, politically, financially, and ideologically, that it finds itself reliant on other political parties and no serious political maneuver to challenge the government. MSZP’s stance on coordinating with the government during the refugee crisis, despite severe anti-refugee narratives, confused the audience to distinguish the

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party’s policy stance compared to that of FIDESZ’s (TOK 2018). On the other hand, Orban stole several ideas of the Jobbik, which is a (radical) right-wing populist party, hence it cannot challenge the ruling right-wing, FIDESZ, ideologically. Though a faction of the Jobbik, after forming a new party, joined the MSZP-led alliance in the 2022 election, most of the Jobbik voters ended up casting their votes for Orban due to his stance on immigration, gay rights, and liberal values (Scheppele 2022, 49). Moreover, Orban’s dominance over the media landscape makes sure that the media outlets relentlessly telecast the regime’s success stories of attractive financial schemes, messages for peace and security, strong stance for Christianity and conservative values, whereas they provide fuzzy coverage of the image of the opposition parties and traditional elites. Overall, the manipulated media and information environment, which has been manufactured to pull the audience, especially the undecided voters, toward Orban and FIDESZ, generate a likewise tendency. The result is more support from the audience for the incumbent.

Conclusion The chapter finds that the process of Hungarian democratic backsliding shows a strong relevance of our institutional-ideological approach. The discussion of context reveals that a constellation of forces such as political polarization, the financial crisis, and drastic legal changes by FIDESZ came together to create an environment that initiated de-democratization since 2010. The legalistic autocrat, Orban, being the agent of backsliding, created a network of cronies and allies and placed them in key positions of power in government, administration, and the economy, that smoothed the journey toward autocratization. The regime’s first step was to change the rules of the game that partly informs the second and the third step of capturing the referees of the state and silencing the political opponents, respectively. The regime’s ideological strategy has been centered on populist narratives based on traditional conservatism, anti-elitism, and nativism. Finally, the Hungarian audience has been roughly supportive of Orban and FIDESZ, contributing to the process of democratic backsliding. Ruling for the fourth consecutive term, Orban has been leading the country to the edge of becoming a closed autocracy. With no term limits for the prime minister in the Hungarian constitution, the country’s democratic future is sealed as long as Orban is in power.

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CHAPTER 8

Turkey: Becoming a Closed Autocracy?

In May 2023, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan scored another electoral victory stretching his rule into a third decade. Since taking office in 2003, Erdogan has not only converted Turkey’s parliamentary system into a presidential one, but also radically transformed the country’s electoral democracy into a hegemonic electoral authoritarianism, currently heading fast to a closed autocracy. Once celebrated as a model for Muslim democracy, Turkey under Erdogan has become a perfect example of the contemporary trend of democratic backsliding, as Freedom House annual reports have consistently identified Turkey as one of the top ten countries with the largest democratic decline in the past decade. But how Turkey has arrived at this stage, when its democracy began backsliding, what steps Erdogan has undertaken to reverse the country’s democracy, have remained a central subject in scholarly debates and international media. The aim of this chapter is to address these questions and contribute to the existing debates on democratic backsliding in Turkey. The chapter employs the institutional-ideological approach, advanced in this book, to answer these questions by explaining the process of de-democratization in Turkey. However, to explain the ongoing episodes of democratic backsliding, it is important to understand the historical trajectory of democratization in Turkey. The following section, therefore, discusses a brief political history of democratization in Turkey.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 A. Riaz and Md S. Rana, How Autocrats Rise, Global Political Transitions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-7580-8_8

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The Rise and Fall of Turkish Democracy Turkey was formally established as a Republic in 1923 after a decade of war and violent conflicts, including the First World War (1914–1918) and the struggle for independence (1918–1923). Since its independence, the country had witnessed the rule of three republics: the First Turkish Republic (1923–1960), the Second Turkish Republic (1960–1980), and the Third Turkish Republic (1980–present). The founder president of the First Turkish Republic was Mustafa Kemal, who established the Republican People’s Party (CHP) in 1924 and ruled Turkey as a one-party authoritarian state until his death in 1938. After the Second World War (1939–1945), the Turkish leadership faced widespread discontent and socio-economic pressures from the public demanding change, while also receiving external pressures for democratization from the allied powers such as the United States. The domestic and external pressures resulted in a transition toward democratization in 1946 when the first national elections were held. The beginning of a multiparty democracy in Turkey led to the rise of new political parties such as the Democratic Party (DP) and the Freedom Party (FP), though politics was largely dominated by the DP and the CHP between 1946 and 1960. Since the election of 1950, the DP introduced several political and economic reforms and remained in power through 1960. However, a growing economic crisis and factions within the ruling elites, especially the military and the intellectuals, sufficiently declined the popularity of the DP in the late 1950s (Zurcher 2017, 226) that paved the way for Turkish armed forces to stage a military coup in May 1960. Following the coup, Turkish armed forces had taken over the country’s administration, introducing the Second Turkish Republic that lasted through 1980. On the one hand, the coup makers blamed the DP for colluding with forces opposed to the secular principles of Kemal’s revolution and arrested the parliamentary deputies of the DP (Howard 2016, 136). On the other hand, they promised to hold free elections and return power to the winning candidates. To meet the stated objectives as well as due to the fear of counter coups from the military, the ruling regime initiated several structural reforms in the Second Republic such as passing a new constitution in 1961 introducing a bicameral legislature and establishing the constitutional court. Between the national elections of 1961 and 1977, political power was alternated between two major parties— the CHP and the Justice Party (JP) (often viewed as the continuation of

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the DP). However, throughout the 1970s, Turkish politics was marred by economic crisis, political violence, increasing law and order problems, Islamic fundamentalism, and Kurdish separatism that led the Turkish army to take power again in 1980. At the beginning of the Third Turkish Republic, the military regime passed a new constitution through a lopsided referendum in 1982 that restricted civil liberties, enhanced the power of the state over citizens, and anchored the tutelary power of the military (Arat and Pamuk 2019, 55–56). Through the general elections of 1983, political power was transferred to the civilian authority. Between 1983 and 1995, civilian governments made progress toward democratization such as the proliferation of civil society organizations and the expansion of media outlets, but democracy was never consolidated in Turkey (Sarfati 2017, 398). Meanwhile, many Sunni networks and conservative Islamist political parties such as the Welfare Party (RP) emerged in Turkish politics that formed government in 1995. Following the 1997 soft military coup that led to the collapse of the RP-led government, the then mayor of Istanbul, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of RP, organized conservative Islamists and reformists of RP and formed the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2001. Through the parliamentary general elections of 2002 that delivered the AKP 363 seats out of 550, Erdogan began his rule in 2003. Since then, Erdogan has been ruling the country, first as prime minister (2003–2013) and then as president (2014–present). Under Erdogan, Turkey has transformed from an electoral democracy to an electoral authoritarian regime. Some argued that the regime is now treading toward full authoritarianism (Caliskan 2018). Since the process of democratization began and the multiparty elections were first held in 1946, democracy was never consolidated in Turkey. Though the initial years of Erdogan reflected some characteristics of electoral democracy, Erdogan followed a piecemeal approach to gradually move toward hegemonic electoral authoritarianism.

Democratic Backsliding: Process and Sequences Turkey is often considered a “theory-busting specimen” of a democracy going authoritarian (Sarfati 2017). Scholars do not disagree on the gradual and incremental nature of this transition, but they disagree on the exact turning point and causal mechanisms that led to the current state. While several scholars describe the 2013 Gezi Park protests as

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the genesis of Turkey’s authoritarian turn, from when it was frequently referred in the literature as a competitive or electoral authoritarian regime (Somer 2014; Esen and Gumuscu 2016), we argue that the country’s de-democratization began in the post-2007 election, when it showed clear signs of an interrupted path toward democratization. The following sections elucidate this argument by analyzing the context, the role of the agent, the strategies adopted by the agent, and understanding the reactions from the audience.

Context The AKP won a majority of seats in parliament in the November 2002 election (363 seats out of 550), enabling it to form the country’s first majority government since the 1980s. During the first term (2002–2007), the AKP-led government introduced several liberal political and economic reforms, challenging the privileged position of the Kemalist secularists and the military; committed itself to pursuing EU membership; and emphasized openness, tolerance, and transparency in government (Gunter and Yavuz 2007). As a result, the state of Turkish democracy began showing promises and was on the mend. As Fig. 8.1 demonstrates, the Freedom House democracy score of Turkey rose from 53 in 2003 to 66 in 2008. However, Turkish democracy began backsliding since 2008 and continued its path toward autocratization, as Fig. 8.1 shows. Therefore, as per the theoretical contention of this book, the year 2008 is the inflection point from when Turkish democracy began backsliding and it never returned to its original position. Analyzing the social and political environment in the pre-2008 period helps explore critical factors that account for Turkey’s democratic breakdown from the inflection point. We argue that a series of factors worked in tandem surrounding the inflection point, causing Turkish democracy to backslide from 2008. First, the threat of military intervention is a constant factor in Turkish politics, as the military intervened four times since 1960, two of them forced change of elected governments. While there were accusations of plotting a coup in the 2003–2004 period, the military intervention in the 2007 presidential election was straightforward and occurred during “one of the worst periods of the civil-military tensions” (Barkey and Congar 2007, 64). During the 2007 presidential election crisis, the then chief of staff of the military opposed Abdullah Gul—a founding member and a

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70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022

Fig. 8.1 The State of Democracy in Turkey, 2003–2022 (Source Freedom House annual reports, 2003–2022)

veteran politician of AKP—to become president, but the AKP-led government ignored the warning and nominated Gul anyway. This incident, known as the so-called e-coup, was followed by a series of political and legal maneuvers such as the boycott of first round of vote by the opposition—CHP, the order of the Constitutional Court (a central institution of Kemalist state) to put an end to the presidential selection process, and the attempt to ban AKP and its 71 members including Erdogan and Gul. In 2008, the Court’s verdict opted to strip AKP of state funding and implied that the party was guilty of anti-secularism, but not sufficient support to justify a closure (Tait 2008). Though AKP leaders declared the verdict as a victory for democracy, the party experienced incessant pressure for months as it avoided closure by the narrowest of margins. These events heightened the AKP elites’ “existential insecurity”, as Yenigun (2021, 844) described. In turn, Erdogan and AKP took an increasingly tougher stance against opponents to avoid similar existential threats in the future that contributed to “the emergence of a power vacuum and the lopsided and asymmetrical distribution of political power” in the Turkish political system (Onis 2013, 114), causing its democracy to begin to backslide. Second, unlike in the 2002 general election that delivered AKP 34% of the vote, the 2007 election increased AKP’s share of vote to 47%, making

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AKP the first political party with an Islamic background that came to power with almost half of the electorate behind it. Back to power with more electoral support than ever before, the AKP-led government tried to eliminate the secularist opposition CHP, a party of members of armed forces, businessmen, bureaucrats, judges, and academics, that circumscribed its power and threatened its existence (Akkoyunlu and Oktem 2016). However, the process of containing the secularist opposition and elites initiated a slide into authoritarianism. The incremental decline of democracy began as the AKP-led government began eroding the separation of powers between the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary; containing the politically intrusive military; and attacking and weakening the media to prevent criticism of the government (Arat and Pamuk 2019, 104). In this regard, Bakiner (2017, 21) argued that the signs of gradual erosion of democracy were present since 2007. As the author wrote, a downward trend in the deterioration of basic human rights can be observed since 2007 due to an upsurge of police violence against political protest (Bakiner 2017, 29). Moreover, a series of prosecutions was initiated since 2007 to prosecute the civilians and the military officers who were allegedly plotting to overthrow the AKP-led government, but the coup trials ended up eroding social and political cohesion between conservatives and secularists in Turkish society. These instances, therefore, provide further evidence of why democracy in Turkey began declining since 2008. Third, there is widespread consensus among scholars that Turkish politics and society are highly polarized, especially along secular-conservative cleavage lines. Drawing on the perspective of the cultural war narrative (Sobel and Mouw 2001), it can be described that Turkish politics is extremely divided into two camps: cultural progressives with a secular view and cultural conservatives with a religious view of morality. This division clearly indicates the existence of an ideological distance, which is the first and foremost driver of polarization (Sartori 2005), thus, providing a rich ground for political polarization in Turkey. However, the more important question is when this division became so extreme in Turkey. Some scholars insisted that political polarization began widening and deepening when AKP came to power in 2002 and became the dominant party in Turkish politics (Somer 2014). The signs of polarization started showing themselves since 2003 when the secularist president of the time, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, and several armed forces’ commanders did not attend the reception event of the newly established government

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to give the honor of opening the parliament (Ertugay 2022, 38). Sezer’s opposition of several proposed laws initiated by the AKP-led government including the lifting of the political ban of Erdogan clearly demonstrated the secularist-conservative divide in the new government. However, the centrality of this divide increased significantly since the 2007 election (Aydin-Duzgit and Balta 2017, 7), owing to the occurrence of the presidential election crisis, military intervention, and the Court’s closure case against AKP about the same time. This was because these events put the conservatives and the secularists face to face with a relatively equal force for the first time in history (Ertugay 2022, 37). It, therefore, clearly shows why polarization has sharply increased since 2007–2008, which explains why Turkish democracy began backsliding about the same time. Increasing polarization not only significantly helped Erdogan to consolidate his constituency and secure successive electoral victories, it also transformed Turkey as a divided or fragmented society (Keyman 2014, 29). There exists a broader consensus among scholars that polarization hurts democracy deeply and the same effect can be observed in Turkey. Arbatli and Rosenberg (2021, 294) explained how polarization led to the collapse of Turkey’s electoral democracy, describing Turkey as “a textbook example of the detrimental effects of polarization on democratic regimes”. Thus, it is evident that the military intervention (so-called e-coup) in the 2007 presidential election, the repeated electoral victory for AKP in the 2007 general election with the first ever highest electoral margin for any political party with an Islamic background, and heightened political polarization, converged together to create an environment, causing Turkey’s democracy to begin backsliding in the post-2007 general election. Along with the pre-existing polarized political context, the e-coup highlighted the existential crisis of AKP leading it to tighten its control over opposing forces, while the repeated electoral victory led Erdogan to introduce massive reforms to eliminate institutional checks on the executive, throwing the country’s democracy toward authoritarian paths.

Agent As per our theoretical approach, the agent is Recep Tayyip Erdogan who was democratically elected and has been the legalistic autocrat of Turkish democratic backsliding. As a legalistic autocrat, Erdogan installed massive legal and institutional reforms that facilitated the regime’s move toward

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authoritarianism following a piecemeal approach. For instance, the regime gradually began abandoning liberal norms and showing signs of authoritarianism in the second term (2007–2011), completely ended liberal reforms by 2013, and moved toward authoritarianism at the end of the third term (2011–2014) (Bakiner 2017). Instead of consolidating democracy, Erdogan and the AKP focused on centralizing political power and capturing the state throughout the 2007–2013 period, which paved the way to transform the Turkish polity into an electoral authoritarian regime in 2014 (Somer 2017). The role of Erdogan as a legalistic autocrat of Turkey’s backsliding began in the post-2007 general election. It was because, contrary to his previous tenure, the post-2007 Erdogan became the sole leader of the party and the government. One of the key reasons behind this was an imbalance in the power configuration inside the party as well as the government. In the 2002–2007 cabinet, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul wielded almost equal power and acted as a balancing and moderating force on Erdogan (Cornell 2014). Bulent Arinc, the Speaker of the parliament and perhaps the most outspoken Islamist in the ruling party, played a similar role. Again, during the 2002–2007 term, Ahmet Necdet Sezer was the president of the Republic who was a vehement secularist and took a strong stance against Erdogan and AKP on several occasions. The point is that the secularist President Sezer was able to wield power against the conservative Prime Minister Erdogan, resulting in a balance of power in the government. On the other hand, in the 2007–2012 tenure, AKP’s Gul was elected as president of the Republic and Koksal Toptan replaced Arinc as Speaker. This change in presidency and the speaker provided a huge leverage for Erdogan. Having the President, the Prime Minister, and the Speaker from the same party, led to the AKP’s rise as the sole political power center, allowing Erdogan to wield undivided power at all levels of the government and the state. The new Speaker was a close ally of Erdogan, while the new president was removed from day-to-day political matters, paving the way for Erdogan to hold the sole political authority. Therefore, Erdogan’s re-election in 2007 served as a key milestone which not only put Erdogan in the hub of power and but also accentuated the decline of Turkey’s democracy.

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Institutional Strategy Changing the Rules of the Game The fact that Erdogan’s first step was to change the rules of the game, could be observed by over a dozen amendments to the constitution under his rule. The discussion of the amendments of 2007, 2010, and 2017 elucidates this point. In Turkey, the first step—the constitutional amendments—also largely served the purpose of the second step—capturing the referees of the state. With 47% of the vote and more than 60% of seats in the parliament in 2007, Erdogan targeted the constitution to consolidate power in his hand. As the power of the President could serve as a major obstacle for Prime Minister Erdogan, the major changes in the 2007 constitutional amendments targeted the Presidency. As opposed to the seven-year one-term limit of the president in the 1982 Constitution, the 2007 amendment lowered the term limit to five years but extended the limit to two terms (The Constitute Project 2011, 2019). Additionally, according to the 1982 Constitution, the procedures to elect a president included a two-thirds majority in the parliament in the first two rounds and a simple majority in the second two rounds (The Constitute Project 2011). In contrast, the constitution fixed a direct election of the president in the first two rounds by popular votes (The Constitute Project 2019). These changes significantly benefited Erdogan who became president in 2014 through the country’s first direct presidential election and is now serving his second term through 2023. Arat and Pamuk (2019, 103) described the authoritarian implications of the speedily introduced constitutional change on Presidency. In their words, The change had long-term consequences for Turkey’s fragile democracy. When both the prime minister and the president were elected by the popular vote in a parliamentary system where the president was constitutionally expected to play a primarily symbolic role, he could claim more power because a popular vote would confer a legitimacy to his office. The parliamentary system was structurally impaired by this constitutional amendment, which created a dual legitimacy problem. The authoritarian implications of this constitutional change manifested themselves after the 2014 presidential elections, when the President began to overstep the authority granted to him by the constitution.

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Apart from the presidency, the 2007 amendment lowered the parliamentary quorum to 184 out of 550 for all legislative matters, that would allow a small number of legislators to make decisions on consequential issues for the entire country. These changes, therefore, not only concentrated power in the hands of the Erdogan-led government, but also reflected its authoritarian tendencies to subvert democracy. In Turkey, the judiciary and the military are considered as key elements of the Kemalist bureaucracy and the secularist opposition. These two were, therefore, the key targets of Erdogan’s 2010 constitutional amendment. The amendment amended at least 26 articles that largely affected the structure of the judiciary and courts, extending parliamentary control over the judicial system while reducing checks and balances on the executive (Yegen 2017, 80). Under the amendment, the number of judges in the Constitutional Court was increased from eleven to seventeen, of which fourteen will be appointed by the president and the rest by the parliament (The Constitute Project 2011, 2019). Likewise, the 2010 amendment has increased the number of High Council Judges and Prosecutors from twelve to thirty-four, of which, four will be appointed by the president (The Constitute Project 2011, 2019). Besides, twelve other members will be appointed by the Minister of Justice, his undersecretary, the government-controlled Academy of Justice, and the chief administrator of the Council, which gave Erdogan and AKP enormous power and opportunity to fill the Council with a politicized bench and undermine the authority of the Council (Cagaptay 2010). These changes authorized the incumbent to reorganize the Constitutional Court and the High Council of Judges and Prosecutors to bring them under the government’s control (Yilmaz and Bashirov 2018, 1816; Yegen 2017, 80). Additionally, the amendment reduced the power of the military by restricting its privilege and curtailing the authority of the military courts to interfere in social affairs. The amendment, therefore, not only expanded the executive’s control over the judicial system, but also reduced the check on the executive’s power from the judiciary and the military, paving the way for Erdogan to hold enormous power and to become an authoritarian incumbent. The 2017 amendment included eighteen changes affecting seventytwo articles of the constitution that converted the parliamentary system into a presidential one (Caliskan 2018, 22). The creation of an executive presidency (Article 104) is the most significant change in the history of Turkey since the 1950s. Under the new constitution, the president

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is both the head of state and the executive, with no separate office for the prime minister. The president is directly elected for five years by a majority vote in popular elections, can serve two terms with a possibility for a third term, and has the authority to appoint and dismiss any ministers or deputies without parliamentary oversight with several other additional powers (Esen and Gumuscu 2017b). The 2017 Constitution abolished the post of the prime minister, reduced parliamentary oversight over the executive, including not allowing members of the parliament to question the president (Human Rights Watch 2017). Additionally, the new constitution allowed the president to retain direct affiliation with his party, to set the state budget, and to maintain broader authority over high council judges and prosecutors (Bora 2017). While the constitution does not authorize the parliament to place a no-confidence vote against the president, the president with his control over the parliament can call for an election to dissolve and reinstate the parliament at his will (Bora 2017). The nature of these changes leaves no doubt that Erdogan has formalized a presidential authoritarian regime that keeps all sources of power in his hands. Thus, Erdogan, while being prime minister, changed presidential term limits and presidential election procedures through the 2007 amendment and managed to give the president broader control over the procedure and composition of constitutional courts, the high council, and to reduce control of the military through the 2010 amendment. After being president in 2014, Erdogan used the 2017 amendment to convert the parliamentary system into a presidential system with enhanced power and authority for the president, and thus pushed the country toward an authoritarian drift. Capturing the Referees of the State As mentioned above, the first step of changing the rules of the game has also served the purpose of capturing the referees of the state in the context of Turkey. The aim is to establish complete control over the important institutions and bodies of the state. The previous section shows that Erdogan created the legal mandate through the 2010 constitutional amendment to capture the referees such as the constitutional court, the military, and the high council, to fill the powerful posts of these referees with politicized and partisan appointments, and to purge the dissents. Erdogan and AKP implemented this crucial task by making

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an unlikely alliance, often referred to as a marriage of convenience, with the Gulen Movement (the GM), a transnational para-political movement led by exiled Turkish cleric Fetullah Gulen (Watmough 2019). Despite deep ideological differences between the GM and the AKP, they originally allied themselves as a formidable force against the dominant Kemalist military-judicial-bureaucratic establishment (Yavuz and Koc 2016, 139). The alliance with the GM enabled Erdogan and AKP to place partisan members in the leading positions of the judiciary, the military, the police force, internal security services, and other regulatory organizations (Ocakli 2022, 156). Yavuz and Koc (2016, 136) described the making of the AKP-GM alliance as “Erdogan’s most effective strategy” that enabled him to control and transform state institutions, “to govern the country, and to closely monitor the military with the help of the police force”. The AKP–Gulen alliance further helped to significantly weaken the military when the Gulenist prosecutors launched two court cases: Ergenekon and Balyoz, between 2008 and 2010, “purged, as well as put to trial, tens of high-ranking generals who were accused of plotting to overthrow the government” (Bashirov and Lancaster 2018, 1216). The court indictments later targeted several secular military officers, politicians, academics, and journalists, who were given prison sentences and long jail terms. Overall, the AKP–Gulen alliance, as Ocakli (2022, 157) observed, “spelled the end of Kemalist dominance over the military”, while the constitutional amendments and additional legal changes “effectively ended not only the judiciary’s resistance to the AKP, but also any remnant of judicial autonomy from the executive branch”. It is, therefore, clear that Erdogan succeeded in institutional engineering using the alliance and the constitutional and legal changes. However, a fallout between the AKP and the GM became visible since 2012, but the government responded against the Gulenists with a massive purge of the GM-affiliated officers after the failed coup attempt of July 2016. However, to keep control over the state institutions, the government passed new legislation that increased its grip on the police force and the judiciary, on the one hand, and formed temporary alliances with the Perincek group and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) that maintained its influence over the bureaucracy and other parts of the state apparatus (Watmough 2019).

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Silencing the Political Opponents In the third step, Erdogan targeted and attacked the political opponents including opposition parties, media, and civil society organizations with the aim to silence all dissenting voices. To weaken opposition parties, civil society organizations (CSOs), academics, and intellectuals, Erdogan broadly used means such as repression and co-optation. Erdogan’s massive repressive actions resulted in arrests, imprisonment, torture, killing, dismissal, closing of private enterprises, etc. According to the Human Rights Association (IHD), between 2013 and 2019, over 490,000 people were imprisoned, while over 130,000 were prosecuted, over 90,000 were facing civil lawsuits, and over 4,000 were inhumanly tortured and ill-treated in prisons for their political voices and stance (IHD 2020). Due to increased repression, it became extremely difficult for conventional political opposition actors to exercise their political rights. This was evident during the Gezi Park protests in 2013, which began as a non-violent resistance by a group of environmentalists objecting to the government’s decision to raze the park and to build in it a replica of an Ottoman era military barrack. The protesters also maintained a non-political appearance by refusing to be co-opted by conventional political parties. However, the government’s harsh response and crackdown on the protesters left at least eight people killed and hundreds injured and arrested (Yilmaz and Bashirov 2018, 1818). It reflected Erdogan’s intolerance for any form of resistance against the government. In 2014, Erdogan revived the defamation provision, as outlined in Article 299 of Turkey’s penal code, that enforces punitive actions against those who insult the president. According to Human Rights Watch (2018), the government filed criminal charges against at least seventy-six of CHP and over a dozen of HDP parliament members for insulting the president. Moreover, the incumbent passed a law in 2016 that stripped away the parliamentary immunities of the members of parliament if they are facing legal investigations. These legal changes were meant to marginalize and harass the opposition parliamentarians and opposition supporters. The failed coup attempt of 2016 further provided Erdogan with an opportunity to shut all kinds of dissent (Esen and Gumuscu 2017a). By imposing a state of emergency that lasted for two years, the government created a legal framework for comprehensive purges for all kinds of dissents, including those with minimal or no connection with the GM (as the Gulenist officers were involved in the coup attempt)

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(Akkoyunlu and Oktem 2016; Sarfati 2017). The emergency decrees led to the deaths and injuries of hundreds and the arbitrary dismissal, arrest, and imprisonment of a vast number of public servants, doctors, academics, and journalists (Castaldo 2018, 481; Human Rights Watch 2020). Beyond the Gulenists, the government also arrested and prosecuted hundreds of members of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), the third largest party, and the main opposition CHP, to marginalize these parties and to suppress their voices (Caliskan 2018, 22; Yeginsu and Timur 2016). Furthermore, a vast number of civil society groups and charity organizations, associated with the Hizmet movement, were either closed or confiscated by the state while thousands of their members were fired and prosecuted on terrorism charges (Sarfati 2017, 401–402). Beyond outright repression, the government co-opted several members and groups of the political opposition and CSOs. There were instances of some young popular leaders belonging to the center-right Democrat Party and the MHP who were co-opted by bringing them into AKP and providing powerful positions or persuading them not to contest (Yilmaz and Bashirov 2018, 1818). Several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were co-opted. For instance, the Sivil Dayanisma Platformu (Civil Solidarity Platform), a network of several small NGOs, whose costs were covered by the pro-AKP business associations, became eventually co-opted by the AKP, and was found to campaign in elections for the AKP (Esen and Gumuscu 2016, 1590). Similarly, with the financial benefits and the government’s patronization, a series of Islamic educational civil society organizations around the Imam Hatip schools, such as Ensar Foundation, Association of Imam Hatip Members, and Turkey Imam Hatip Members Foundation were co-opted by the government (Sarfati 2017, 404; Cevik 2019). Additionally, at least 142 Islamic civil society organizations formed the National Will Platform and committed to upholding the regime’s political ideology (Sarfati 2017, 405) which is another example of the government’s co-optation of civil society organizations. To silence the media, the government broadly used three mechanisms: control by ownership, control by advertising and sanctions, and arbitrary control by legal provisions and law enforcement agencies. First, several studies along with Reporters Without Borders (RSF) confirmed that an overwhelming 90% of the mainstream media in Turkey is under control of the AKP-led government, more precisely President Erdogan (Yanatma

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2021; RSF 2021). Four large pro-regime conglomerates (e.g., Demiroren group, Kalyon Group, Ciner group, and Dogan Group), have been dominating the Turkish media industry, though they mainly operate nonmedia businesses (Yanatma 2021, 4–5). These conglomerates are involved in sectors such as energy, mining, construction, and tourism, and seek to procure development projects from the government. The government delivers attractive projects to these conglomerates based on a patron– client business relationship in exchange for their loyalty and assurance of pro-government coverage (Tunc 2015). Noncompliance with the government’s demands leads to bankruptcy as it happened in the cases of Dogan group, Koc holdings, and Boydak holdings (Esen and Gumuscu 2018). Similarly, credits from state banks play a big role in keeping the conglomerates and their media outlets in line while also inducing media ownership changes. For instance, when the center-left Sabah-ATV was sold to Calik Holdings, where Erdogan’s son-in-law was the CEO, the company immediately received over $750 million credits from two state banks (Freedom House 2013). Afterward, the center-left Sabah-ATV rapidly turned proAKP. These instances of ownership structure indicate that the regime has been applying conglomerate pressure to silence the media outlets. Second, Erdogan and AKP established a government-controlled advertising regime to control the media outlets by conditioning the distribution of official announcements and advertisements by the state-owned enterprises and pro-regime private companies. Due to the AKP’s long-standing rule, the state has now emerged as the largest advertiser that provides huge financing to the captured media while punishing the critical media (Yanatma 2021). The survival of several media outlets is dependent on advertising revenues from public and private sources. Public advertising is controlled by the state-run Press Bulletin Authority (BIK) which follows a simple rule: the more pro-government the media outlets are, the more advertisements they receive (Coskun 2020; Yanatma 2021). Private advertising is controlled by a group of big companies, in which the Turkey Wealth Fund (TWF) is a shareholder (Yanatma 2021). Erdogan is the chair of TWF; hence he can easily influence the advertising distribution from private companies to punish the critical media. Third, the government’s use of legal provisions and law enforcement agencies to silence media outlets and attack media personnel have been arbitrary and random. Between 2011 and 2018, government controlled the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTUK), responsible for regulating radio and television broadcasts, imposed more than 16,000

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bans on the media and fined over US$45 million (Coskun 2020, 646), significantly restricting journalistic activities, and forcing them to publish biased and distorted information. After the 2016 failed coup, at least 150 media outlets (mostly left-wing and pro-Kurdish), and most of the media enterprises associated with the GM were closed, while hundreds of journalists were also arrested during the state of emergency (Castaldo 2018). Furthermore, the law enforcement agencies used a new anti-terror law to arrest journalists for allegedly disseminating statements and propaganda by terrorist groups (Esen and Gumuscu 2016, 1591). In 2019 alone, around two hundred people including journalists, editors, and reporters were imprisoned (IHD 2020, 18). According to the RSF, Turkey is now “the world’s biggest jailer of professional journalists” (RSF 2021). Besides the arrests and imprisonments, there were numerous instances of blocking websites, raiding offices of media outlets, and unprecedented levels of censorship in print and electronic media, indicating severe restriction of media freedom. For instance, between 2013 and 2018, the circulation of domestic newspapers has fallen almost 44% (O’Donohue et al. 2020). No wonder the World Press Freedom Index ranked Turkey 157 out of 180 countries in 2019, which is a sharp jump from 149 in 2015 (RSF 2021). It is evident that Erdogan and the AKP undertook massive efforts to change the rules of the game, capture the referees of the state, and silence political opponents. The first target of Erdogan being a legalistic autocrat was to change constitutional provisions, that also largely served the purpose of capturing the referees, especially from the legal point of view. The government then simultaneously implemented the legal mandate of capturing referees and its well-designed plan to silence the political opposition, civil society organizations, the media using legal and extralegal means. The combined effect of these steps resulted in the concentration of unlimited power in the hands of the executive, the establishment of complete control over state institutions, and the silencing of political, non-political, and media organizations. Altogether such an environment paved the way for Erdogan to tread toward autocratization.

Ideological Strategy The institutional steps discussed above were accompanied by ideological aspects that served the purpose of legitimation for Erdogan. While the institutional aspects were meant to hollow out state institutions and to silence political opponents, the ideological aspects were meant to justify

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these actions in the eyes of the masses. To meet that end, Erdogan broadly used populist ideological narratives based on anti-elitism and Islamism. Like all anti-elitist populist, Erdogan viewed that Turkish society is divided between “the people” and “the elite”, and more specifically, the “pure people” and “corrupt elite” (Yilmaz and Bashirov 2018, 1821). While Erdogan and AKP often described “the people” as faithful Turkish Muslims, they describe “the elites” as the Kemalist political establishment comprising the CHP, secularist military, bureaucracy, and judiciary (Aslan 2021; Gunay and Dzihic 2016). Erdogan presented himself as a “man of the people”, a “black Turk”, the “voice of the deprived real people”, and “the champion of their interests” (Yilmaz 2018). During the Gezi Park protests in 2013, Erdogan declared: “in this country, there are both White Turks and Black Turks, your brother Tayyip is a black Turk” (Ferguson 2013). On several occasions, Erdogan described his childhood as a “son of a low-income pious family”, “lad in the neighborhood”, attending “religious schools”, “selling lemonade in the street”, etc. (Aslan 2021). In a 2015 election rally, Erdogan declared, “My story is the story of this people” (Castaldo 2018, 8). Similarly, having his hair “cut in the poor neighborhood where he grew up” carried the message that being prime minister or president has not changed him (Yilmaz and Bashirov 2018, 1821). While Erdogan vowed to protect the interests of the masses from the established elites as the “national will” deriving from the people, he emphasized the “victimhood” of the majority at the hands of the repressive, secular, and Western-oriented elites (Yilmaz 2018). While emphasizing the “national will” and representing “the will of the people”, Erdogan also opposed the horizontal accountability structures of the judiciary and court (Yilmaz and Bashirov 2018, 1821). Erdogan and AKP elites’ elevation of the rhetoric of the “New Turkey” aiming to establish Turkey as a great power is a clear example of the regime’s nationalist position (Yilmaz et al. 2019). Erdogan portrayed himself as a “nationalist” and a “savior” of [Turkey] which embodies a glorious past and a progressive future, while the elites including the Gulenists and the Kurdish nationalists as the “enemies of the state” (Aslan 2021; Gunay and Dzihic 2016). The anti-elitist rhetoric of the regime clearly indicates Erdogan’s insistence of a populist division of Turkish society in “us vs. them” terms. Presenting himself as the man of the [common] people and promising to defend their interests against the established elites, Erdogan sought

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popular legitimacy from the people for his actions. His “us vs. them” division helped him delegitimize the Gezi Park protest, describing it as a long arm of foreign powers. In 2014, Erdogan declared: “where is Pennsylvania or the media who supported them?” [pointing at Fetullah Gullen]; “the Turkish people do not need guardians or custodians” [indicating the Gulenists] who “marginalized our people and regarded us as ‘the other’ in society for years”; and the “New Turkey” will not give credit to any “mafia or gang organization” [indicating the Gulenists] (Daily News 2014). The identification of the Gulenists as outsiders or a gang organization fed into his anti-elitist narrative that he (Erdogan) belonged to the people, who were long marginalized at the hands of these elites. Erdogan’s repeated identification of the elites filling up the state institutions helped him to later legitimize his expansion of control over these institutions through constitutional changes and emergency decrees. Erdogan often declared that we “implemented the constitution word by word and performed huge democratic maturity” (Presidency of the Republic of Turkey 2021). His portrayal of the Kemalist, the Gulenist, and the Western-oriented elites as the enemies of the state aimed to legitimize his actions of purging and witch hunt of like-minded military officers, judges, academics, journalists, etc., after the failed coup attempt of 2016. Furthermore, such “us versus them” rhetoric undoubtedly contributed to heighten social and political polarization in Turkey that, in turn, hurt democracy severely. Beyond anti-elitist populist narratives, Erdogan relied on Islamism to legitimize his actions. Erdogan envisioned establishing a religiously inspired authoritarian republic. Arat and Pamuk (2019, 120) observed Erdogan’s vision: “He [Erdogan] aimed to dismantle or infiltrate the scientific, educational, and cultural institutions and replace them with new, religiously imbued ones….to uphold an authoritarian political culture”. With the root of conservative Islam, Erdogan imagines the glory of an Islamic past and longs for the glorification of TurkishOttoman history, which was mainly characterized by Sunni-Islamic values. In AKP’s view, these Sunni-Islamic values represent the core elements of the Turkish nation (Yilmaz and Bashirov 2018, 1821). Therefore, Erdogan and AKP envisioned creating a pious Turkish generation that would serve the ideological goals of the Turkish nation (Yilmaz 2018) under the leadership of the Diyanet (Directorate of Religious Affairs). His Islamist populist rhetoric was reflected in several speeches, in which,

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he described the pure people as “faithful Muslims”, the Turkish military forces as “the heroes of Mohammad’s army”, and the Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army as “jihadists who even intimidate and kill death itself” (Hussein 2019). As part of his broader goal to institute Islamism, Erdogan brought radical changes to the national education curriculum to capture the minds of the youth and shape their worldview. The education curriculum has increasingly been devoid of philosophy, secular principles, and Darwinism, while filled with religion, history, and Quranic courses that glorify jihad and martyrdom (Yilmaz 2018; Yilmaz and Bashirov 2018, 1183). Similarly, the number of Imam Hatip Schools has significantly increased and the government’s budget for these schools has doubled (Yilmaz 2018). These schools believe that “the Imam Hatip school generation is coming to rescue a youth who has forgotten its history, disrespected its national and human values, drowned in darkness, and has looked to the West for happiness”, as mentioned in the Imam Hatip School Generation inaugural issue notes (Diktas 1995, 18). Additionally, Erdogan put several regime-connected religious scholars in key positions to legitimize the regime’s policies through various Islamic fatwas. Some of these pro-regime religious scholars publicly supported the regime’s policies attacking women’s rights, abortion, and New Year’s celebration; while described the Gulenists and the Kurdish nationalists as “out of Islam” and “heretics” (Yilmaz and Bashirov 2018, 1823). During the 2017 constitutional referendum, one pro-regime religious preacher insisted that voting “yes” was a religious obligation, while those who cast “no” votes are “heretics” (Yilmaz and Bashirov 2018, 1823). These instances clearly reveal that Erdogan’s populist approach surrounding Islam aimed to legitimize his regime’s policies and activities. The populist narratives of Islamism targeting the wider Muslim population and the institution of Islamism in educational curricula for a greater Islamic Turkey presented Erdogan as a defender of Islam in Turkey and increased his popularity, therefore, serving as a legitimizing device (Gunay and Dzihic 2016). Pro-regime religious scholars’ fatwas to support AKP as part of religious responsibility were meant to invoke loyalty and legitimacy from the Muslim majority population for Erdogan and his regime.

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Audience How the audience, or the citizens, or the electorate, responds to the actions of the legalistic autocrat determines the fate of democracy. For decades, the ballot box was thought to be a precursor of the public perspective of a leader and a government, but that may not be the appropriate reflection in the contemporary world. As Nic Cheeseman and Brian Klaas, in their seminal book, How to Rig an Election (2018, 1) noted, “The greatest political paradox of our time is this: there are more elections than ever before, and yet the world is becoming less democratic”. In Turkey, the AKP secured 34% of popular votes in the election of 2002, 47% in 2007, 49.9% in 2011, 46.9% in 2015, 42.6% in 2018, and 49.5% in 2023. The repeated electoral victories of Erdogan and AKP might lead one to presume that the Turkish citizens strongly support the incumbent regime. However, such a straightforward presumption may not appropriately reflect public perception as the AKP government significantly “increased electoral malpractices including gerrymandering, malapportionment, and outright manipulation of the voting act” (Arbatli and Rosenberg 2021, 297). The V-Dem’s Clean Election Index score of Turkey declined from 0.89 (out of 1) in 2002 to 0.86 in 2007, 0.78 in 2011, 0.53 in 2015, 0.39 in 2018, and further down to 0.35 in 2022. Therefore, the results from these manipulated elections are not the appropriate measure for public opinion on the government. Important measures for the audience response are the public perception surveys. A 2014 survey of Pew Research Center (PRC) found that the Turkish population was almost evenly split in their opinion on Erdogan’s leadership (PRC 2014). According to the survey, about 51% of Turkish citizens were dissatisfied with Erdogan’s leadership and the way he was leading the nation, while 44% were satisfied. Among the observant Muslims who pray five times a day or more, 54% were satisfied with Erdogan’s leadership, while 30% were dissatisfied. While a majority (55%) disapproved of how Erdogan dealt with the Gezi Park protests, over 40% supported Erdogan’s ways to deal with the matter. When asked whether Erdogan had a positive influence on the country, 48% of the respondents held a positive view in 2014. Though almost half of the respondents held positive views on Erdogan’s leadership in 2014, it was a decline from 52% in 2010 and 63% in 2007. Moreover, a comparison of two waves of World Value Survey (WVS): 2010–2014 and 2017–2022, conducted in Turkey in 2011 and 2018,

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respectively, further demonstrates that the Turkish citizens are fairly divided in their opinion on the leadership of Erdogan and AKP. About 60% of the respondents had confidence in the government in 2011, which rose to 65% in 2018. Again, about 50% of the respondents thought that Turkey had a strong leader in 2011, that remained almost the same in 2018. When asked which party they would vote for if there were a national election tomorrow, the percentage of the respondents who answered AKP was 44% in 2011 and 46% in 2018. Therefore, these surveys indicate that the Turkish citizens are almost divided when it comes to Erdogan and AKP leading the country. The government, thus, has not faced a strong uprising or major opposition from the citizens in general, that served as a tacit consent for Erdogan’s autocratization efforts. This passive response from the citizens might be influenced by two factors. First, over 77% of the population lives in the urban areas in Turkey. In more than two decades of AKP rule, the regime has created a triangular dependency among AKP, business groups and enterprises, and urban voters, as Esen and Gumuscu (2021, 6) observed. In their words: The urban poor provides electoral support to the government needs to stay in power and injects democratic legitimacy to the system despite undemocratic character. In exchange for their political support, these voters receive selectively distributed social welfare goods, jobs, and charitable goods from the AKP and pro-AKP foundations.

The AKP’s social assistance programs, cash transfers, charities, and consumer items to urban voters are distributed in patron–client terms. The urban voters have become largely dependent on these assistance programs and benefits in the national economic conditions, as the country’s GDP growth rate has fallen from 8% in 2013 to 2% in 2020, thus, delivering political and electoral support to AKP. Second, in highly polarized Turkey, about 98% of the population is Muslim, predominantly Sunni. Erdogan and AKP, presenting themselves as defenders of Islam and Sunni values, have strongholds in Sunni-dominated civil society organizations, Islamic centers, universities, schools, dorms, etc. (Sarfati 2017). Erdogan’s vision of the New Turkey was designed around Sunni-based religious norms and cultures to seek consent from the majority Muslim population. In the deeply polarized context rooted in the secular-conservative divide, Erdogan’s anti-elitist narrative identifying secularists as the enemies of the state and religion

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and the caliphate might have influenced the devoted Muslim citizens not to side with the opposition representing the secularists.

Conclusion The chapter examines the process of democratic backsliding in Turkey by employing the institutional-ideological approach. It finds strong support for the approach in the Turkish context. The findings of the analysis can be summarized in five points. First, Turkish democracy began to backslide from 2008 which is the inflection point in this context. The threat of military intervention in 2007, a deeply polarized political environment, and the government’s efforts to contain the opposition caused Turkish democracy to begin to backslide from the inflection point. Second, the legalistic autocrat Erdogan emerged as the epitome of power inside the party and the government at the beginning of his second term (2007– 2011), allowing him to tread toward autocratization. Third, through massive institutional engineering, Erdogan concentrated enormous power in his hands, established complete control over state institutions, and silenced political opponents. Fourth, the institutional aspects were accompanied by ideological aspects as Erdogan used populist narratives based on anti-elitism and Islamism to legitimize his actions. Fifth, the audience was broadly divided in Turkey regarding Erdogan and his leadership, thus remaining passive against Erdogan’s undemocratic actions. Altogether, the context, the agent or legalistic autocrat, the institutional and the ideological strategy, and the audience shaped Turkey’s backsliding from an electoral democracy to a hegemonic electoral autocracy.

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CHAPTER 9

Conclusion: The Lessons Learned and the Way Forward

This book, against the backdrop of the continuing global crisis of democratic erosion, endeavors to explore the sequences of backsliding through four case studies and makes three contributions to the ongoing debates around democratic backsliding. These three contributions are closely interrelated; in some measures, one builds on the other. In this concluding chapter, we discuss these contributions, key takeaways from four cases of backsliding, and how to address the rise of modern autocrats. First, contrary to conventional wisdom, we argue that while institutional changes are the obvious markers of democratic erosion, these alone cannot explain the rise of autocrats. By this argument, we have underscored the need for taking an integrated approach to understand and examine the process of democratic backsliding. More specifically, we have emphasized the relevance and significance of multiple elements that are at play in the backsliding process. Undoubtedly, executive aggrandizement or, in other words, the chief executives’ attacks on various institutional aspects of accountability mechanisms, seeking to remove checks on the executive power and limit citizens’ participation in the democratic process, is the most palpable pattern of democratic backsliding. However, it is essential to understand that executive aggrandizement does not just emerge in a vacuum. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that there are other equally important aspects that drive the process of backsliding. In

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this backdrop, we have emphasized social and political contexts to identify the point of departure in a country’s democratization and locate the agent of backsliding. Unlike previous studies claiming that today’s democratic backsliding is almost imperceptible because “injuries to democracy can emerge almost undetectably” (Chou 2013, 60), we have shown that analyzing social and political contexts helps detect and explain a specific moment in time, an inflection point, or a point of departure, from when a democracy begins backsliding. We have demonstrated that analyzing social and political contexts in each case helps identify a series of important events and conditions, coalescing to create a conducive environment for democratic backsliding and to generate the inflection point. We have also shown that once a democracy begins backsliding from the inflection point, it has not returned to its original position. Apart from the inflection point, analyzing social and political contexts helps identify the agent of democratic backsliding. The agents or (chief) actors are civilian political leaders and legalistic autocrats, leading the backsliding process, primarily through legal maneuvering and political machination. We have argued that these agents, with a penchant for concentration of power, utilize the social and political contexts to bend the existing laws or introduce new laws to achieve their aim, throwing democracy into an authoritarian path. We have, therefore, insisted on social and political contexts to understand and examine the process of democratic backsliding. This is not to suggest that contexts in all backsliding cases are similar, and they originate from similar events and circumstances. We recognize the fact that each case is context-dependent and is likely to have its own distinctive features. At the same time, we have simply argued that a general pattern in the backsliding process, i.e., an inflection point, the role of a legalistic autocrat, social conditions (e.g., polarization), and political events (e.g., crisis, re-election, supermajority etc.), can be gauged from analyzing different case-contexts that bolster our understanding of a pathway in democratic backsliding. Second, we insist that the process of democratic backsliding has sequences, meaning that the incremental process moves through a pathway with specific mileposts. This is not to suggest that democratic backsliding is path-dependent; instead, we argue that one can disaggregate the elements and consequently follow early signs of the process. This is particularly important considering that we are looking at a phenomenon whose defining feature is incremental as opposed to sudden death. If there

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is an agreement among scholars on one aspect of democratic backsliding, that is the incremental nature of it—democratic backsliding takes place slowly; some features of the process come before others and some take place concurrently. The sequencing issue has been an integral part of democratization literature for a long time, especially whether social and/ or economic conditions precede institutions for democracy was debated among political scientists for decades. Yet, when it came to backsliding, save a handful of work, this issue has been largely avoided by scholars. Among those who have addressed the question of sequence, the works of Coppedge (2017), Jee et al. (2022), Maerz et al. (2020), Sato et al. (2022), and Wunsch and Blanchard (2023) are worth mentioning. Coppedge (2017) suggested two pathways of democratic erosion— attacks against civil liberties and the media, and horizontal accountability. Jee et al. (2022) identified three arenas as sites of backsliding—the electoral arena, the erosion of constraints on executive power, and challenges to democratic politics by powerful non-political actors. Maerz et al. (2020) insist on two steps—attacks on the media and civil society, followed by free and fair elections. Sato et al. (2022) center their argument on the erosion of accountability mechanisms and identify three steps of democratic breakdown—decline in diagonal accountability, decline in horizontal accountability, and decline in vertical accountability. Wunsch and Blanchard’s analysis of the third wave democracies takes an approach akin to Sato et al. (2022). They suggest that in democracies, there are three kinds of safeguards, they are—“vertical safeguards relate to the formal electoral process and electoral turnout; diagonal safeguards comprise freedom of expression and association, and free media; and horizontal safeguards encompass an independent parliament and judiciary” (Wunsch and Blanchard 2023, 279). They conclude that there is “no universal template for backsliding” (295). However, they suggest that “diagonal safeguards are most susceptible to erosion and remain vulnerable, even where they were strongly present over a longer period” (295). In this book, we have departed from these lines of arguments and demonstrated that there is a pattern in how democratic backsliding occurs. This pattern is noticeable both in countries with a relatively long tradition of democratic practices and in those which have embarked on democratization during the third wave. We have suggested that there are distinct mileposts in the backsliding process that takes place as a country witnesses an incremental journey toward autocratization.

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Following the above two arguments, our third contribution is the identification of mileposts in the pathway to the rise of autocracy. It is our contention that the slow and incremental process of debilitation of state institutions, which is a top-down process, must be understood as a combination of institutional and non-institutional aspects of politics. Delving into the existing literature on the processes of democratic backsliding, which we have divided into four broad categories—structural, strategic, institutional, and regime-specific approaches, we identified the institutional bias of these works. In other words, while these studies have immensely contributed to our understanding of how the process unfolds, they have disproportionately focused on institutions. The deliberate enfeeblement of institutions such as the constitution, legislative mechanisms, and the judiciary is important, but equally important are context, actor, and the legitimation mechanism. The latter ensure the rise and survival of autocrats, even in countries which were previously democratic. It is in this regard we have located three non-institutional elements in the proposed institutional-ideological approach—the actor or the legalistic autocrat as the agent of backsliding, ideology as a tool of legitimation, and the citizens, or the electorate as the audience. Overall, our institutional-ideological approach of democratic backsliding includes four elements—context, agent, strategy (e.g., institutional, ideological), and audience. It is important to note that despite a stack of research and writings on democratic backsliding in the past decade, the role or the response of the audience has remained largely overlooked. We have, however, emphasized that the reaction or the response of the audience plays an important role in the backsliding process, especially in the nature and pace of the strategies. More importantly, we have argued that these four elements interactively work to shape the pathway of backsliding. The process begins with the context that enables the rise of the autocratic agent or the legalistic autocrat, who then devises and implements two-pronged strategies—institutional and ideological. Institutional strategy, i.e., changing rules of the game, capturing the referees, and controlling political opposition, media, and civil society, dismantles the checks and balances on the executive and silences all dissenting voices. Ideological strategy, e.g., promoting Manichean narratives and delegitimating opposing ideologies and policies, provides legitimacy to the actions of the actor. While devising and implementing the strategies, the legalistic autocrats tend to be cognizant of the

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reactions and responses of the audience. In large measure, this is a twoway interaction as the autocrats want to keep the veneer of democracy and show that it has the support of citizens. The ideological strategy involves delegitimizing the opponents. Any resistance to the disassembling process is portrayed as unpatriotic, even anti-state. In the cases of the selected countries, the sequence with these mileposts is clearly identifiable. Bangladesh’s journey to democracy began quite auspiciously in 1991, but fragility of institutions, acrimonious politics, and lack of trust created a situation that enabled a thinly veiled military intervention in 2007. When the Hasina regime took office in 2009, hopes soared that it would be another opportunity for the country to move toward liberal democracy. However, amid the fractious nature of politics, the regime’s decision to remove the caretaker government (CTG) system in 2011 provided the context that paved the path for dedemocratization. In the case of Bolivia, with Evo Morales as the country’s first democratically elected indigenous president taking office in 2006, severe crises unfolded surrounding a series of issues that provided the context to begin democratic backsliding. A new political fragmentation, with left-leaning forces in power and neoliberal economic elites in the opposition, the government’s nationalization of oil and gas fields, and the establishment of a left-dominated Constituent Assembly, led to a series of violent protests and heightened polarization more than ever since 1993. These circumstances provided the social and political origins of democratic backsliding in Bolivia. In Hungary, the financial crisis of 2007–2009 heightened political polarization, and the Orban government’s drastic changes in the political system provided the context for de-democratization. The financial crisis not only broke the Hungarian Forint and mounted public frustration, but also aggravated polarization and led to the impressive rise of right-wing forces such as FIDESZ and the Jobbik. The Orban regime, capitalizing on the extraordinary circumstances and exploiting its supermajority in the parliament, brought massive systemic changes in 2010, undermining the country’s democracy. In the case of Turkey, the re-election of Erdogan and the AKP in the 2007 general election, the military intervention in the 2007 presidential election, and heightened political polarization, provided the context, causing the country’s democracy to backslide since 2008. The military intervention and the re-election of the conservative AKP with increased electoral support led the Erdogan regime to remove institutional checks on the executive and to take tougher measures

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against political opponents and the secularists, heightening polarization and eroding democracy. These contexts, in each instance, had given rise to a legalistic autocrat, e.g., Sheikh Hasina, Evo Morales, Viktor Orban, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who used the electoral mandates to dismantle the very foundation of a democratic system—the constitution. Each of them enjoys enormous political power within the party and the government. In Bangladesh, Hasina, being the daughter of the founding president of the nation, the president of the party, and the chief executive of the government, utilized her supermajority in the parliament to bring a far-reaching amendment to the constitution in 2011, eroding democracy. She used the democratic hiatus between 2007 and 2008, and the mutiny of the border guards in 2009, as the justifications for further executive aggrandizement in Bangladesh. In terms of charisma and the ability to portray herself as the savior of the nation, Hasina is no different from other autocrats. In Bolivia, the leftist Morales’ eclectic ideological standing, his indigenous ethnicity in an indigenous-majority country, and his charismatic and risktaking personality traits served him well in his legal machination to meet autocratic aims. In the case of Hungary, Orban’s black-and-white positioning mentality and innovative ideologist attitude served as his key strengths in leading democratic backsliding. His declared vision to build Hungary as an illiberal state came to fruition with the help of cronies and allies in the government and with his constitution-making power. In Turkey, Erdogan’s re-election in 2007 allowed him to emerge as the sole leader of the party and the government. Unlike the 2002–2007 term, the president, the prime minister, and the speaker of parliament were all from the AKP in the 2007–2012 term, allowing Erdogan to wield undivided power at all levels of the government and the state. At the same time, Erdogan’s constitution-making power allowed him to implement massive constitutional and institutional reforms to concentrate power in his hands, throwing the country’s democracy in an authoritarian direction. Similar situations could have produced different kinds of leadership and could have charted these countries in a different direction, but these leaders’ emergence has pushed the country toward an autocratic pathway. It is a reminder that the actors matter in the backsliding process. The legalistic autocrats implement institutional and ideological strategy in the backsliding process. In the institutional domain, constitutional changes, which all these four countries have undergone since these leaders

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came to power, all seem to be a part of a larger strategy that weakened the accountability mechanisms. For example, the 15th Amendment in Bangladesh has ensured that the electoral system is under control of the incumbent. This is not the only measure but one of many juridico-legal measures to have complete control over the administrative system as well as the judiciary. Persecution of opposition and silencing critics have been the hallmarks of the regime. In Bolivia, the new constitution of 2009 relaxed the term limits for the president and the vice president that paved the way for Morales to stay in power for another decade. While legislative control and court-packing made the country’s judiciary subservient to the regime, the creation of draconian laws, financial control, and repression were meant to silence the opposing voices. In the case of Hungary, several episodes of constitutional amendments not only created an electoral system that ensured repeated electoral victory for FIDESZ, but also curtailed the power of the Constitutional Court, being filled with FIDESZ loyalists. Financial restrictions and preemptive legal repression against the opponents and the critics have smoothed the regime’s authoritarian journey. In Turkey, Erdogan implemented at least a dozen amendments to the constitution that transformed the country’s parliamentary democracy into a presidential dictatorship as well as reduced the power of the military and the Constitutional Court. Severe repression and persecution of opposition and critics, financial restrictions, and legal mechanisms have been used to silence any dissent. Through the application of ideological strategy, these regimes have continued to cultivate support for their respective actions using ideological narratives and justification. As such, ideological strategy is an integral part of the perpetuation of the rule. Coercion and persecution of opposition are justified as they have been identified as “enemy of the people”, of the nations. Invention and reinvention of identity politics, in various ways, have been defining features of all the regimes discussed. In Bangladesh, the regime has used the nebulous idea of “the spirit of liberation war” and economic development as twin pillars of its legitimacy claim. In Bolivia, the Morales regime used populist narratives along the lines of indigenous vs. non-indigenous, anti-capitalist vs. neoliberal, anti-imperialist vs. imperialist to legitimize its actions and policy choices. In the case of Hungary, the FIDESZ regime has been using traditional conservatism, populism, and nativism to justify its actions such as establishing a Christian democracy, implementing anti-immigration policies, and resisting Sorosaffiliated organizations. The Erdogan regime in Turkey relied on “us vs.

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them” narrative to create a division between Islamists and secularists, while using Islamism by portraying itself as the defender of Islam and promising to build a “New Turkey” on Islamic foundations. As our approach suggests, these regimes remain connected to the audience, and shape and reshape their tactics to gain support. But it is not a one-way street but reciprocal. The audience’s support, both tacit and explicit, out of acquiescence or fear, has been an important feature for all the backsliding cases studied. In some instances, for example, Bolivia, Evo Morales had popular support for his two terms, but it began to wane in the third term. The post-election demonstrations in 2019, which forced him to resign, clarify that support for the autocrats may not last an indefinite period. In Bangladesh, while the opinion polls ostensibly showed support for the regime and its policies, it also revealed that support was reflective of a culture of fear of retribution. On the other hand, evenly divided citizens and the absence of a viable opposition, help the regime sustain as Turkey’s experience suggests. The audience can also be generally supportive to the autocratic incumbent, as is the case in Hungary. One of the key objectives of identifying the pattern and sequence of democratic backsliding is to consider whether early signs of democratic backsliding can be recognized, and steps can be taken to prevent the reversal. As Ginsburg and Huq (2018, 28–29) have aptly noted, “there is no single magic institution that can be adopted to prevent democratic backsliding or to arrest it once it has begun”, but the choices made by political elites, judges, generals, and civil servants, can make a huge difference in the efforts to overcome the forces that are likely to catalyze backsliding and to regain democratic footing. Besides, preventing and, where necessary, reversing democratic backsliding requires the active participation of the citizens. More than five decades ago eminent political scientists Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba noted that “democracies are maintained by active citizen participation in civic affairs, by a high level of information about public affairs, and by a widespread sense of civic responsibility” (Almond and Verba 1963, 10). This is equally true today, as mentioned by Eisen et al. (2019) “Democracy’s fate rests in the hands of people, and securing it begins at home”. However, given the global nature of the phenomenon and the incentive to abandon democracy offered by some international actors, for example, China and Russia (Diamond 2019), the battle for preserving democracy need to have support from international actors as well. A combination of the

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endogenous and exogenous actors can work in unison as the early signs of democratic backsliding become palpable to stop the emergence of autocrats.

References Almond, Gabriel A., and Sidney Verba. 1963. The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations. Princeton: Princeton University of Press. Chou, Mark. 2013. Theorizing Democide: Why and How Democracies Fail. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Coppedge, Michael. 2017. “Eroding Regimes: What, Where, and When?” VDem Working Paper Series, No. 57. https://v-dem.net/media/publications/ v-dem_working_paper_2017_57.pdf. Diamond, Larry. 2019. Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition and American Complacency. New York; Penguin Books. Eisen, Norman, Andrew Kenealy, Susan Corke, Torrey Taussig, and Alina Polyakova. 2019. “The Democracy Playbook: Preventing and Reversing Democratic Backsliding.” The Brookings Institution. https://www.brooki ngs.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/The-Democracy-Playbook_Preven ting-and-Reversing-Democratic-Backsliding.pdf. Ginsburg, Tom, and Aziz Huq. 2018. “Democracy’s Near Misses.” Journal of Democracy 29 (4): 16–30. Jee, Haemin, Hans Lueders, and Rachel Myrick. 2022. “Towards a Unified Approach to Research on Democratic Backsliding.” Democratization 29 (4): 754–767. Maerz, Seraphine F., Anna Lührmann, Sebastian Hellmeier, Sandra Grahn, and Staffan I. Lindberg. 2020. “State of The World 2019: Autocratization Surges—Resistance Grows.” Democratization 27 (6): 1–19. Sato, Yuko, Martin Lundstedt, Kelly Morrison, Vanessa A. Boese, and Staffan I. Lindberg. 2022. “Institutional Order in Episodes of Autocratization.” V-Dem Working Paper Series, No. 133. https://v-dem.net/media/publications/WP_ 133.pdf. Wunsch, Natasha, and Philippe Blanchard. 2023. “Patterns of Democratic Backsliding in Third-Wave Democracies: A Sequence Analysis Perspective.” Democratization 30 (2): 278–301.

Index

A accountability democratic, 41 horizontal, 14, 29, 42, 159, 171 vertical, 14, 24, 42, 171 accountability mechanisms, 57, 61, 169, 171, 175 acrimony, 52, 56, 61, 75 actors, non-democratic, 76 administration, 6, 21, 66, 87, 91, 94, 97, 99, 100, 103, 124, 136, 144 civil, 53, 57, 69, 75 agenda, 22, 23, 60, 70, 72, 86, 87, 90 economic, 70 illiberal, 30 agents, 7, 16, 27, 29, 39, 41, 42, 56, 85, 115, 120, 136, 146, 149, 164, 170, 172 Agents of autocracy, 60 AKP, 146–150, 154, 156, 158, 160–163 AKP elites, 147, 159 AKP-Gulen alliance, 150, 154

AKP-led government, 146–149, 156 Amnesty International (AI), 22, 23, 49, 68 Appadurai, Arjun, 44 Applebaum, Anne, 7 approaches historical-institutional, 7 organizational, 7 strategic, 7, 27, 30, 33 Asia Foundation, 73, 74 assembly, 7, 14, 16, 51, 86, 88, 89, 92, 95, 103, 120 legislative, 85, 93–95, 103, 104 authoritarian, 2, 5–8, 16, 17, 25, 29, 33, 39, 41–45, 50, 57, 83, 90, 96, 101, 104, 115, 145, 146, 149, 151–153, 160 authoritarian behaviors, 53 authoritarianism competitive, 6, 50, 54, 63, 67, 85, 91, 104, 105, 107 constitutional, 52 electoral, 5, 6, 57, 143, 145 populist, 51

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 A. Riaz and Md S. Rana, How Autocrats Rise, Global Political Transitions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-7580-8

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180

INDEX

authoritarian regimes, 50 competitive, 83 electoral, 64, 146, 150 authoritarian rule, 2, 64, 126 authoritarian state one-party, 144 autocracy, 5, 8, 11, 72, 75, 76, 121, 172 closed, 113, 136, 143 personalistic, 55 autocratization, 21, 25, 27, 28, 121, 134, 136, 146, 158, 163, 164, 171 modes of, 29 autocratization process, 75 autocrats, 1, 8, 20, 26, 28, 30, 37, 39, 42–45, 56, 63, 66, 72, 90, 107, 134, 136, 164, 169, 170, 172, 174, 176, 177 modern, 41, 169 autonomy, judicial, 154 Awami League (AL), 56, 59, 62, 63, 70, 71

B backsliding, 2–5, 7, 8, 16, 17, 20–22, 24–32, 37, 38, 40–42, 44, 55, 60, 62, 70–72, 75, 83, 85, 89, 113, 115, 120, 129, 136, 143, 146, 149, 150, 169–174, 176 defined, 20 backsliding process, 8, 20, 27, 30–33, 37, 40, 169–172, 174 Bangladesh, 8, 29, 31, 45, 49–52, 55–57, 60–63, 65–76, 173–176 Bangladesh Awami League, 50, 52 Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), 51–56, 59–62, 64, 66, 67, 69, 70, 75 BBC, 67, 68, 96 Bentham, Jeremy, 5, 12, 13

Bermeo, Nancy, 4, 19, 20, 24, 27–29, 56 Bolivia, 8, 45, 83–87, 89–91, 96, 97, 99–103, 106–108, 173–176 border, 21, 61, 132, 134, 174 boycott, 54, 64, 147 Brazil, 2, 8 bureaucracy, 87, 120, 154, 159

C capitalism, 94 free-market, 86 caretaker government (CTG), 52, 54, 55, 61–65, 67, 75, 118 neutral, 55 caretaker government system, 53, 62, 64, 173 non-party, 53 Cassani, Andrea, 27, 29 Castillo, Alexandra, 4, 23 censorship, 25, 158 Chavez, Hugo, 101 China, 4, 23, 25, 176 Christianity, 130–133, 136 citizens, 4, 7, 14–16, 23, 25, 28, 29, 41, 42, 64, 69, 72–74, 84, 93, 106, 107, 122, 145, 162–164, 169, 172, 173, 176 civil liberties, 6, 20, 29, 41, 53, 127, 145, 171 restricted, 145 civil society organizations (CSOs), 99, 101, 125, 145, 155, 156, 158, 163 class new indigenous, 87 political, 75 strong middle, 135 cleavages, 117, 148 ethnic-political, 26 clientelism, 17

INDEX

community, international, 56, 64, 114 companies, foreign, 87, 88 Congress, 88, 89, 92, 93 conservatives, 115, 118, 120, 130, 131, 135, 145, 148–150, 160, 163, 173 constitution, 11, 30, 43, 45, 50–55, 59, 61–64, 66, 67, 88, 89, 91, 92, 94, 95, 97, 103–108, 119, 121, 124, 130, 136, 144, 145, 151–153, 160 constitutional court, 66, 91, 94–96, 104, 107, 123–125, 129, 144, 147, 152, 153, 175 constitutionality, 63, 66 control executive’s, 30, 57, 62, 69, 149, 152 financial, 175 judicial, 95 legislative, 94, 108, 175 corruption, 56, 67, 95, 118, 119, 131, 135 coups, 28, 29, 49, 51, 144 constitutional, 61, 119, 121 court-packing, 94, 108, 129, 175 courts high, 66, 67, 96 partisan, 96 subservient, 95, 96 crisis existential, 149 global, 1, 169 political, 85, 88, 89, 107 D debilitation, 4, 7, 17, 20, 49, 70, 172 decay, 19 democratic, 3, 27 de-democratization, 2, 3, 28, 83, 85, 105, 115, 121, 136, 143, 146, 173

181

defense, 13, 14, 28, 56, 90, 130, 133 delegitimization, 44 delegitimizing, 160, 173 democracy communitarian, 102 consolidated, 23, 114 consolidating, 150 defined, 15 eroding, 115, 148, 174 fragile, 151 multiparty, 144 parliamentary, 53 popular, 90 sustain, 4, 20, 76 undermining, 25, 86, 93, 97, 101, 173 western liberal, 113, 114 Democracy Summit, 11, 49 democratic breakdown, 4, 37, 38, 40, 146, 171 consolidation, 16, 84 institutions, 6, 16, 22, 23, 26–28, 42, 54, 57, 60, 61, 90, 93, 106 recession, 3, 19 democratic norms, 8, 22, 40, 60 liberal, 25, 93 democratic system, 12, 14, 16, 23, 75, 174 parliamentary, 16 democratic theory, 5 democratization, 1, 3, 4, 51, 52, 63, 70, 75, 83, 84, 107, 114, 143–146, 170, 171 democratization process, 4, 55, 56, 59 developments, 4, 14, 22, 24, 28, 50, 52, 54, 69, 70, 87, 91, 100, 106, 114, 157 Diamond, Larry, 5, 6, 8, 24, 25, 57, 64, 176 dictatorship, 6, 8, 21, 37 presidential, 175

182

INDEX

Digital Security Act, 68 disappearances, enforced, 69 discourses, 59, 70, 101, 102, 108, 129 academic, 5, 12 antagonistic, 131 dominance, 44, 63, 136, 154

E economic crises, 26, 84 economic development, 31, 62, 75, 175 economic policies, 50, 118 economic recession, 31 Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), 2, 38 economy, 105, 114, 115, 117–120, 132, 136 market, 59 Election Management Body (EMB), 85, 96, 97 elections engineered, 60, 76 free, 84, 114, 144 multi-party, 145 non-inclusive, 53, 71 electoral autocracy, 31, 164 electoral democracy, 6, 31, 50, 52, 59, 84, 91, 107, 114, 143, 145, 149, 164 electoral fraud, 29, 30, 63, 83, 85, 96, 107, 108 electoral irregularities, 30 electoral process, 20, 29, 51, 60, 171 electoral system, 30, 121, 122, 126, 129, 175 electoral victories, 103, 129, 149, 162 electorate, 41, 148, 162, 172 elites business, 134 economic, 102, 173

neoliberal, 104 political, 52, 176 ruling, 86, 144 traditional, 83, 87, 88, 136 Erdogan and AKP, 150, 152–154, 157, 159, 160, 162, 163 Erdogan, Recep Tayyip legalistic autocrat, 30, 41–43, 120, 149, 150, 158, 162, 164, 174 Erdogan regime, 173, 175 Erdogan’s leadership, 162 erosion, 7, 22, 25, 27, 29, 31, 49, 148, 171 democratic, 3, 4, 19, 20, 27, 169, 171 Ershad, Hussain Muhammad, 51 establishment, 14, 60, 90, 102, 114, 154, 158, 159, 173 Europe, 8, 29, 45, 113, 130, 133 European Union (EU), 113–115, 117, 119, 121, 131, 133, 135, 146 executive aggrandizement, 8, 28, 29, 41, 52, 169, 174 executive branch, 8, 30, 154 executive power, 13, 24, 25, 27, 28, 30, 41, 57, 93, 94, 101, 169, 171 executives, 5, 16, 17, 26, 27, 32, 38, 62, 66, 69, 92, 93, 95, 103, 104, 108, 123, 148, 149, 152, 153, 158, 169, 172–174 elected, 28 expression, freedom of, 5, 7, 14–16, 52, 67–69, 72, 97, 171 F Facebook, 23 FIDESZ, 114, 115, 117–119, 121–130, 134–136, 173, 175 favored, 123 ruling, 122–127

INDEX

FIDESZ regime, 175 forbearance, 40, 41 forces armed, 144, 148 left-leaning, 173 right-wing, 120, 173 fragility, 53, 56, 57, 173 fragmentation, 22, 24, 87, 89, 117, 173 freedom, 2, 3, 14–16, 25 Freedom House, 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 38, 52, 57, 58 freedom of media, 27, 30, 68, 98

G Gandhi, Jennifer, 24, 25 GDP, 70, 88, 117, 163 Gerschewski, Johannes, 26, 27 Gezi Park, 145, 155, 159, 160, 162 Ginsburg, Tom, 27, 30, 31, 33, 40, 176 governance, 3, 5, 11, 15, 20, 30, 41, 49, 50, 57, 70, 74–76, 89, 93 government, 2, 12–15, 21, 23, 24, 28, 30–32, 38, 42–44, 49–51, 54–57, 64, 67–74, 86–91, 94, 96–100, 102–106, 108, 114, 117–121, 126–132, 134–136, 145, 146, 148–150, 152, 154–158, 161–164, 173, 174 civilian, 84 nonpartisan, 54 grievances, 26 economic, 88 groups, 4, 23, 40, 68, 70, 71, 74, 87, 89, 93, 97, 98, 101–103, 120, 131, 134, 154–158, 163 Gulenist, 154–156, 159–161 Gullen, Fetullah, 160

183

H Hasina, Sheikh, 49, 51, 54–57, 60–62, 65, 67, 75, 174 regime, 56, 57, 173 hegemonic, 64, 85, 104, 131, 143, 145, 164 hegemonic authoritarian system, 65 Hobbes, Thomas, 12 Human Rights Watch (HRW), 61, 94, 124, 128, 129, 153, 155, 156 Hungarian Forint (HUF), 116, 173 Hungary, 2, 8, 28, 31, 45, 113–117, 119–122, 125, 127, 129–135, 173–176 Huntington, Samuel, 3, 15, 51 hybrid regimes, 2, 50, 57

I ideological, 7, 39, 44, 56, 172 ideological claims, 129 ideological narratives, 7, 32, 33, 39, 43–45, 129, 159, 175 common, 44 ideological strategy, 70, 101, 104, 105, 108, 129, 130, 136, 164, 172–175 regime’s, 104, 175 ideologies dominant, 44 leftist, 91 political, 14, 90, 91, 101, 156 thin-centered, 101 Imam-Hatip Schools, 161 immigration, 132, 133, 136 imperialist, 90, 104, 175 independence, 50–52, 59, 60, 72, 84, 94, 96, 114, 123, 124, 135, 144 war of, 59, 71, 72 indigenous communities, 90, 93 indigenous groups, 88, 93, 98, 101 indigenous rights, 88, 90

184

INDEX

inequality, 27, 31 economic, 24 insecurity, 132, 134 epistemic, 70 existential, 147 institutional approach, 7, 27, 29–32 institutional bias, 38, 45, 172 institutional changes, 20, 28, 29, 32, 72, 169 institutional-ideological approach, 7, 8, 33, 39, 45, 50, 107, 115, 136, 143, 164, 172 institutional-ideological approach of democratic backsliding, 39, 45, 83, 107, 172 institutional mechanisms, 7, 39, 60 institutional strategy, 63, 91, 101, 104, 107, 108, 121, 129, 151, 172 adopted, 76 intellectuals, 30, 43, 144, 155 International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), 68 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), 68 International Crimes Tribunal, 59, 67 International Crisis Group (ICG), 61, 88, 89 International IDEA, 2, 20–22, 32, 38, 39, 50 International Labor Organization (ILO), 88 International Republican Institute (IRI), 73, 74 Iran, 23 Islam, 133, 161, 163, 176 conservative, 145, 150, 160 Islamism, 159–161, 164, 176 institute, 161 Islamists, 51, 55, 59, 68, 145, 150, 160, 176 Islamization, 133

J Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), 51, 59, 67 Jatiya Party (JP), 51, 69 journalists, 68, 75, 97–99, 128, 156, 158, 160 judiciary, 17, 25, 29, 43, 50, 51, 66, 75, 85, 93, 94, 96, 148, 152, 154, 159, 171, 172, 175 independent, 52, 171 K Karolewski, Ireneusz, 41, 42, 128, 129 Kaufmann, Robert, 27, 28 Kemalist, 147, 154, 159, 160 Kemalist bureaucracy, 152 Kemalist secularists, 146 Kemal, Mustafa, 144 L Latin America, 29, 83, 89, 90, 94, 99, 102 Latin American, 91, 96 laws, 14, 29, 30, 43, 57, 64, 67–70, 92, 94, 98, 100, 121, 126, 127, 135, 145, 155–158 amended, 67, 68 new, 122, 127, 128, 130, 170 leaders charismatic, 50 elected, 41, 72 populist, 60, 101, 102 leadership, 55, 60, 61, 75, 90, 95, 96, 120, 134, 135, 144, 160, 163, 164, 174 legislature, 17, 69, 93, 144, 148 legitimacy democratic, 57, 163 electoral, 57, 104 political, 62 popular, 103, 160

INDEX

legitimacy claim, 175 legitimation, 158, 172 Levitsky, Steven, 7, 19, 24, 27, 29–31, 33, 37, 40–43, 53, 54, 66, 85, 92, 97 liberal democracy, 6, 25, 50–52, 113, 116, 130, 173 Linz, Juan, 15, 43 Locke, John, 5, 12, 13 Lührmann, Anna, 20, 21, 25, 27, 28 Lust, Ellen, 3, 16, 19, 20, 24, 42

M machination, 75, 94, 170, 174 political, 170 majoritarianism, 38 manipulation, 28–30, 54, 162 Marxist, 90 mechanisms legal, 128, 175 legislative, 172 repressive, 125, 126 media, 6, 22, 23, 25, 28, 30, 31, 41, 43, 44, 49, 50, 52, 66, 68, 69, 72, 83, 97–99, 101, 108, 113, 118, 127–129, 132, 134, 136, 143, 145, 148, 155–158, 171, 172 manipulated, 135, 136 muzzling, 67 media conglomerates, 125 media environment, 85, 97, 99, 127 media landscape, 97, 101, 129, 136 media outlets critical, 43, 99, 128 private, 99, 128 public, 128 military, 16, 29, 38, 51, 55, 56, 144–146, 148, 152–155, 159, 175 military coups, 84, 144, 145

185

military regime, 145 Mill, James, 5, 12, 13 Mill, John Stuart, 5, 12, 13 Montesquieu, Baron de, 5, 12, 13 Morales administration, 99 Morales, Evo, 83–88, 90–103 longest-serving Bolivian President, 83 re-election of, 83, 95, 103, 106, 107 Morales regime, 84, 94–96, 104–106, 175 MSZP, 114, 115, 117, 118, 125, 131, 135, 136 government, 115, 118 Mudde, Cas, 44, 101, 122 Mujib, Sheikh, 50, 51, 72 Muslims, 133, 134, 143, 159, 161–164 N narratives, 25, 43, 44, 61, 72, 102, 104, 148, 160, 163, 176 anti-immigration, 131, 132 religious, 44 nation, 22, 44, 60, 61, 72, 75, 89, 118, 120, 128, 130, 131, 160, 162, 174 nationalism, 44, 90, 118 nationalist, 44, 90, 104, 115, 118, 159 nationalization, 85, 87, 88, 104, 106, 173 National Judicial Office (NJO), 124 nativism, 129, 131, 136, 175 neoliberal, 104, 173, 175 neoliberal policies, 85, 102, 117 irrational, 117 neopatrimonialism, 67 network, 14, 91, 97, 98, 120, 129, 136, 156 NGO activists, 100

186

INDEX

non-governmental organizations (NGOs), 99, 100, 104, 127, 156 O O’Donell, Guillermo, 19 opposition parliamentary, 6 political, 43, 67, 125, 155, 156, 158, 172 secularist, 148, 152 opposition leaders, 25, 66, 134 opposition parties, 64, 69, 70, 96, 97, 99, 103, 108, 123, 125, 126, 129, 133, 136, 155 silenced, 108 opposition politicians, 30, 43, 97, 98 Orban, Viktor, 113–115, 117, 119–126, 129–136, 173, 174 organizations civic, 99, 100, 104, 108 left, 103 social, 87, 104 OSCE, 122, 123, 127, 128 P parliament, 52–55, 57, 62, 64, 66, 76, 91, 103, 119–124, 126, 146, 149–153, 155, 171, 173, 174 elected, 64 parties, 15, 22, 28, 44, 51, 52, 55, 56, 59, 65, 71, 75, 90, 91, 96, 97, 117, 118, 122, 125, 126, 144, 156 left, 51, 114, 117 new, 50, 136 pathway of backsliding, 38, 172 pathways, 27, 30, 31, 40, 171 democratic, 56 Pew Research Center (PRC), 23, 134, 135, 162 pluralism, 6, 38, 104, 114

political, 6, 114 Poland, 2, 31 polarization, 22, 25, 27, 40, 42, 59, 60, 85–87, 89, 118, 148, 149 affective, 22 political institutions, 4, 7, 20, 24, 26, 29, 70, 76, 105, 114 political parties, 32, 50, 51, 59, 63, 84, 87, 93, 96, 97, 100–102, 114, 117, 122, 125, 126, 135, 144, 145, 155 political polarization, 28, 31, 86, 89, 107, 118, 119, 136, 148, 149, 160, 173 political rights, 7, 16, 17, 20, 27, 28, 96, 155 populism, 25, 44, 50, 101, 103, 104, 108, 129, 131, 175 social movement, 103 populist, 26, 32, 42, 51, 84, 90, 93, 101, 102, 104, 115, 117, 120, 133, 136, 159–161 populist narratives, 44, 103, 104, 108, 118, 134–136, 160, 161, 164, 175 right-wing, 115, 117, 135, 136 power executive’s, 13, 24, 25, 27, 28, 30, 41, 57, 93, 94, 101, 169, 171 tutelary, 145 unchecked, 50, 62, 125 unlimited, 42, 158 practices, democratic, 8, 50, 171 President, 52, 55, 61, 62, 66, 83, 84, 88, 90–95, 97–99, 101, 120, 124, 144, 145, 147, 148, 150–153, 155, 156, 159 President Erdogan, Recep Tayyip, 120, 143, 145, 147, 149–164 presidential election, 84, 146, 149, 151, 153, 173 presidential election crisis, 146, 149

INDEX

presidential system, 50, 52, 153 Prime Minister, 52, 62, 64, 72, 76, 113, 118, 120, 136, 145, 150, 151, 153, 159, 174 principles, normative, 5, 15 problems moral, 130 political, 129, 130 structural, 117 process of democratic backsliding, 7, 8, 20, 22, 24, 26, 32, 33, 39, 43, 45, 50, 85, 91, 104, 107, 136, 164, 169, 170 propaganda, 96, 128, 158 protesters, 86, 135, 155 protests, 83, 85, 86, 88, 100, 104, 106–108, 120, 131, 135, 145, 148, 155, 159, 160, 162, 173 Przeworski, Adam, 15, 16, 24, 25 public perception, 55, 73, 162 public sphere, 30, 101, 108 Putin, Vladimir, 120

R racism, 23 Rahman, Ziaur, 51, 72 Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), 49, 69 referees, 29, 42, 43, 45, 63, 66, 108, 123, 129, 136, 151, 153, 158, 172 referendum, 52, 64, 70, 89, 92, 95, 106, 107, 145, 161 reforms economic, 144, 146 liberal, 150 structural, 144 regime, 2, 3, 5, 6, 16, 20, 21, 23–25, 27, 29, 31–33, 37, 39, 42, 43, 45, 50, 54, 57, 60, 64, 66, 70, 85, 88, 89, 94–99, 103–106, 108, 123–127, 129–136, 145,

187

149, 153, 156, 157, 159, 161–163, 172, 173, 175, 176 democratic, 16, 21, 149 ruling, 100, 122, 123, 133, 144 regime-centric approach, 26, 31, 32 religion, 44, 59, 118, 161, 163 Reporters Without Borders (RSF), 69, 99, 129, 156–158 repression, 2, 57, 96, 97, 126, 155, 156, 175 increased, 155 preemptive, 175 Republic, 31, 144, 145, 150, 160 resistance, 154, 155, 173 non-violent, 155 restrictions, 2, 23, 29, 41, 50, 98–100, 128, 158, 175 rhetoric, 5, 22, 23, 44, 50, 60, 66, 99, 101, 129, 131, 132, 159, 160 rights, 12–15, 29, 32, 41, 49, 60, 69, 73, 90, 95, 102, 117, 118, 120, 124, 133, 136, 148, 161 civil, 16, 21, 25 fundamental, 21, 50 rule of law, 2, 6, 7, 16, 17, 92 rules democratic, 2, 6, 19, 28, 53, 102 electoral, 43, 45 personalist, 91, 104 Russia, 4, 23, 131, 176

S sanctions, 49, 69, 127, 156 Schedler, Andreas, 5, 19, 44, 57, 64 Schumpeter, Joseph, 5, 15, 16 seats, parliamentary, 6, 53, 122, 123 secular, 59, 144, 148, 154, 159, 161, 163 secularists, 68, 148–150, 152, 159, 163, 164, 174, 176

188

INDEX

silencing, 66, 96, 125, 136, 155, 158 silencing critics, 68, 175 social benefits, 134 social injustices, 102 socialist, 90, 118, 131 society, 7, 12, 23 civil, 6, 30, 50, 52, 63, 66, 99, 104, 126, 129, 156, 171, 172 Soros, George, 127, 133, 134, 175 South Asia, 8, 29, 45 stability, democratic, 31 state, 1, 5, 7, 12, 14, 16, 17, 20–23, 25, 26, 29, 30, 32, 40, 42–45, 50, 54, 55, 57, 59, 61, 63, 66–69, 73, 85, 87, 91, 94, 96, 98, 99, 105–107, 113–115, 118–120, 123–126, 128–130, 132, 133, 136, 144–147, 150, 151, 153–160, 163, 164, 172–174 state control, 114 strategies, 7, 27, 29, 33, 42, 56, 76, 83, 146, 172 structural approach, 26, 28, 32, 33 structure, 87, 92, 93, 97, 98, 103, 114, 118, 123, 125, 133, 152, 157 hierarchical, 90 socio-economic, 102 Sunni networks, 145 Sunni values, 163 supermajority, 94, 95, 119, 122, 170, 173, 174 Supreme Court, 54, 63, 64, 66, 91, 94, 95, 104 system caretaker, 57, 64 judicial, 94, 152 multi-party, 56 one-party, 114

T tactics, 2, 30, 42, 43, 92, 176 third wave, 3, 83, 171 threat, existential, 147 tolerance, 53, 135, 146, 155 transition, 24, 51, 54, 58, 114, 144, 145 Transparency International, 67 Trump, Donald, 4, 120 trust, 14, 28, 53, 55, 89, 105, 173

U United States, 2, 4, 31, 49, 94, 102, 144 uprising, 51, 163 electoral, 119 popular, 51 USAID, 74

V values conservative, 136 liberal, 136 traditional, 25, 118 Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), 21, 38, 50, 96, 97, 113, 115, 116, 118, 162 V-Dem Institute, 8, 21, 52 Venezuela, 28, 29, 31 violence, 53, 55, 145, 148 voters, 22, 28, 59, 65, 96, 107, 117, 122, 125, 135, 136, 163 votes, 13, 15, 16, 52, 54, 59, 62, 65, 74, 84, 89, 91, 92, 102, 106, 107, 117, 119, 122–125, 131, 134, 147, 151, 153, 161–163

W Waldner, David, 3, 16, 19, 20, 24, 42 Warburton, Eve, 24, 27, 31

INDEX

Webber, Jeffery, 86, 88 White House, 11, 49

189

Y Yilmaz, Ihsan, 152, 155, 156, 159–161

World Press Freedom Index, 129, 158 World Press Freedom (WPF), 99 World Value Survey (WVS), 73, 74, 162

Z Zia, Khaleda, 51, 52, 56, 61, 66, 67, 75 Ziblatt, Daniel, 7, 19, 27, 29–31, 33, 37, 40–43, 53