Autocratisation from Below: Illiberal Norm Entrepreneurs in the Third Wave of Autocratisation

Significant advances in our understanding of the third wave of autocratisation notwithstanding, extant scholarship continues to be predicated on the largely unexamined assumption that autocratisation unfolds from the top down - that is, that it is driven by leaders in positions of power at the top of the political system. In this paper, I argue that the widespread presumption of ‘autocratisation from above’ in studies of the third wave of autocratisation obscures a second, equally important, dimension of autocratisation characteristic of the third wave. I conceptualize this ‘missing dimension’ as autocratisation from below, understood as a process of democratic erosion that occurs from the bottom up rather than from the top down. The key actors in processes of autocratisation from below are illiberal norm entrepreneurs seeking to undermine the democratic norms that enable marginalized groups such as ethnic minorities, women and LGBTQ+ groups to participate fully in social and political life. Recently, these actors have been increasingly successful in their efforts, thus actively driving processes of democratic erosion at the subnational, national and international levels. The principal aim of this paper is to flesh out the concept of autocratisation from below and to specify how it enriches our understanding of the third wave of autocratisation. Substantively, the paper is organized in three sections. First, I conduct a plausibility probe with respect to the concept of autocratisation from below, highlighting the existence of range of empirical instances where conservative movements have been successful in dismantling of pluralist democratic institutions from below. Secondly, I outline the necessary and sufficient attributes for a parsimonious definition of the concept of autocratisation from below, and specify the scope conditions under which we can expect to find the empirical phenomena that the concept applies to. Thirdly, I distinguish between three main modes of autocratisation from below characteristic of the third wave: (1) a legalistic-procedural mode; (2) elite capture and (3) institutional capture.