Would-be autocrats competing in democratic elections can employ a variety of strategies to convince voters to elect them. Autocrats have recently benefitted from a growing dissatisfaction with democracy among voters and have also manipulated social divides among their electorates to garner support.

How Autocrats Win Elections in Democracies

Autocrats primarily degrade democracy across three categories: by compromising the rule of law, attacking civil liberties, and violating the freeness and fairness of their countries’ elections. Autocrats can also violate democratic norms to change the culture of a country from a more democratic political culture to a more autocratic one. 

How Autocrats Degrade Democracy in Power

Democratic erosion occurs when a democratically elected government, typically led by an autocratic leader, attacks the institutions and norms of a country’s democracy, gradually decreasing the quality of their country’s democracy in the process. Agents of democratic erosion typically attack the freeness and fairness of democratic elections, basic civil rights and liberties, and checks on executive power/the rule of law.

Wesleyan University

Autocratization—sometimes known as de-democratization—is the process wherein a country’s political system becomes increasingly autocratic (or decreasingly democratic). Autocratization can occur suddenly with severe drops in the quality of a country’s democracy (such as through a dictator seizing power in a coup), or it can occur gradually (such as through the process of democratic erosion).

Autocratization

Haggard, S. & Kaufman, R. R. (2021). Backsliding: Democratic Regress in the Contemporary World. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Haggard & Kaufman (2021)

Democratic Erosion

There are now more people living in autocracies than in democracies around the world, reflecting a growing trend towards autocracy since the supposed victory of democracy after the fall of the Soviet Union. This trend towards autocracy has largely been driven by democratically elected autocrats practicing democratic erosion throughout the 2000s and 2010s, not by violent coups.

Recent Trends of Autocratization

A coup is a sudden and (usually) violent seizure of power that often results in a democracy rapidly switching to a dictatorship. An autocrat engaging in democratic erosion, by contrast, is typically elected in a legitimate, democratic election and spends years gradually transitioning their country from a democracy to a more authoritarian regime through subtle changes in the laws and political norms.

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