Unpacking Democratic Backsliding: a Dynamic Analysis of Democratic Regression in Eastern Europe

Democracy has come under pressure worldwide. Initial enthusiasm in the wake of the ‘third wave of democratisation’ has given way to growing concern over an apparent reverse trend of ‘autocratisation’ or ‘democratic backsliding’ at the global level. Yet whereas there is a growing body of conceptual literature dealing with the phenomenon of reverse democratisation, the precise empirical nature of the phenomenon remains blurry. This paper unpacks the process of democratic backsliding from an empirical perspective. Drawing on recent advances in sequence analysis, it adopts a dynamic perspective that examines in which order and whether all specific dimensions of democracy come under attack by a dominant executive. Its findings contribute to a clarification of the nature of democratic backsliding and the variation in its expression in different empirical contexts.