A Model of Democratic Backsliding

Luo and Przeworski (2019) present a model that analyses the gradual transition of countries towards a more autocratic regime, often called illiberal democracy. In this multi-stage model in each period the government chooses a level of political advantage, which corresponds to the difficulty to replace them during the elections. However, voters cannot observe this choice in advance, and must decide whether to vote for a possibly worse challenger or leave the incumbent in power. From the model two scenarios emerge – populism and polarisation, which eventually determine the equilibrium level of political advantage, which gives an acceptable security to the incumbent, yet is acceptable of the voters who fear losing democratic control.