#Democratic Backsliding
Podcasts
The “Backsliders” and What We Can Do About Them – In Conversation with Susan Stokes
In a recent article in the Journal of Democracy, Susan Stokes examines several questions that arise from this phenomenon: Why is there an increase in democratic erosion at this point in history? What factors leave some countries more at risk than others? And, perhaps most importantly, what can be done to counter these developments?
14.05.2026
News
The Mythological Democratic Citizen: Why Identity and Resilience in the Public Sphere Are Political Science’s Blind Spot
Understanding democratic resilience requires studying how political identities are built but it is a question the backsliding literature has left largely unasked.
13.05.2026
Podcasts
Abandoning Democracy for the Nation –In Conversation with Filip Milačić
Today, in almost the whole world, processes of democratic backsliding, autocratization, and a rise of the far-right can be observed. Again, nationalism is said to play an important role in this. In this conversation, Filip Milačić considers the influence of nationalism on current processes of democratic backsliding and proposes counterstrategies.
7.05.2026
News
New Order’s Authoritarian Legacies and Indonesia’s Democratic Decline: A Reassessment
By 2025, Indonesia has been a electorally democratic polity for over a quarter of a century since the collapse of the authoritarian New Order regime (1966-1998) in 1998. Yet, rather than consolidating democratic institutions, the country has entered a slow but discernible trajectory of democratic backsliding—what scholars of comparative politics term a process of “autocratization.” This democratic regression has been most visible during the latter years of President Joko Widodo’s administration and the state’s repressive handling of recent civil society protests in major Indonesian cities is one of its manifestation.
3.03.2026
Book Reviews
Five Books on Democracy and Culture in 2025
In 2025, our book coverage aimed to explain the long historical processes behind today’s anxieties: environmental breakdown, wars, revolutions and democratic backsliding. These books revisit settled historical narratives and brought into sight systemic invisibilities. They show how crises rarely arrive unannounced. Instead, they accumulate quietly, sustained by myths and convenient misunderstandings.
7.01.2026
News
Flexible Illiberalism: How Democracy Survives Illiberally in Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia shows how democracy’s openness can be weaponized. Flexible illiberalism—the art of using democratic institutions to pursue illiberal ends—reveals how democracy endures not by collapsing, but by changing hands.
4.11.2025
