A three-dimensional Conceptualization of Autocratization: How it started, how its going, and how we can systemize research on Democratic Breakdown and Survival

The so-called “third wave of autocratization” is characterized by the slow death of democratic institutions and regimes. Those processes are mostly not contingent but the result of deliberate actions by democratically elected government. Consequently, the term democratic backsliding became the buzzword in democracy research to capture those processes conceptually and is utilized in numerous empirical studies. Nonetheless,at least two crucial questions have not been (sufficiently) addressed so far: First, we lack theoretically as well as empirically sound yardsticks to distinguish between disruptive and gradual Episodes. Second, we are missing elaborated frameworks to distinguish and analyze those Episodes systematically. This contribution aims to gain new insights into the specifics of the slow and fast democratic decline ending up in a precise typologization of Episodes of Democratic Regression. I plead for a three-dimensional conceptualization that takes into account the point of departure, time and outcome of Autocratization Episodes. Based on this, referring to the Episodes of Regime Transformation Dataset (ERT) I prove the empirical evidence of this conceptualization and validate initial anchors for differentiating between rather fast and rather slow forms of democratic regression. Furthermore, I demonstrate the utility of the conceptualization for empirical analysis using the example of the debate on ‘autocratization changing its nature’. Finally, I venture an outlook on how the three-dimensional conceptualization of autocratization can be used profitably for future research on democratic regression and its causal conditions as well as mechanisms of democratic breakdown resilience.