How to Protect Liberal Democracy? Domestic and International Strategies
Liberal democracy is under pressure on a global scale. Accounts concur in stating a global decline of democratizations vis-à-vis the trend of autocratization. Some consider this a “new wave of autocratization” (Lührmann & Lindberg 2019), others “democratic regression” (Diamond 2021). A highly troubling phenomenon is that democratic backsliding or democratic erosion does not only refer to weakly institutionalized democracies and/or low-income countries but also to liberal and affluent democracies such as Venezuela, Brazil, Hungary, Poland, India, or at one time competitive democracies such as Turkey, Philippines, and South Africa, and even democracies considered immune like the USA (Diamond 2024). Even members of the EU are affected (see Hungary and Poland until 2023, Slovenia, Croatia until 2019, most recently Slovakia). More than that: the (re)election of Donald Trump shows that even if episodes of democratic erosion once could be stopped, this does not prevent the danger of a renewed episode of erosion.
A further concern refers to the international implications: the global distribution of liberal democracies and autocracies has aggravated the competition between regime alternatives on a global scale (Cooley & Nexon 2021, Youngs 2022). Moreover, governments of eroding democracies prove to challenge the liberal international order by increasingly renouncing multilateral approaches and pursuing counter-hegemonic strategies, withdrawing from international institutions or not joining international agreements (Kneuer 2022). Finally, the Russian war against the Ukraine has raised a new security concern and a new sensibility of democracies towards their dependencies on autocracies.
This panel brings together excellent experts to discuss the internal and external threats to liberal democracy and how it can be protected.
