Defending Democracy in Times of Autocratization

Democracies are currently facing a “wave of autocratizations” (Lührmann and Lindberg). Based on a systematic meta-review of explanations for autocratizations in the last two decades, the paper makes three claims. First, it will be argued that the nature of contestations has changed from a predominantly exogenous threat to a more endogenous one. Second, the paper argues that we observe the end of a package deal between liberalism, democracy, and constitutionalism. While the autocrats used to reject these three, the “new autocrats” (Scheppele) break up this compound. Instead, we observe combinations of illiberal democracies, electoral autocracies, and other hybrid forms. These hybrids are usually characterized by a discrepancy between normative justifications (be they liberal, democratic, or legal) and their subsequent actions (illiberal, authoritarian, or illegal). Third, this complicated picture of more amorphous, gradual, and endogenous threats makes it increasingly difficult for democracies to stem their weight against these autocratization processes. The old Loewenstein recipe of “militant democracy” that justified measures against anti-democratic, extremist forces seem to be more and more outdated – both empirically and normatively. Democracies appear to be almost helpless against current autocratization processes. Against such a background, new thinking about how democracies can and should defend themselves is needed.