January 2017, Volume 28, Number 1 $13.00
Britain After Brexit
Anne Applebaum Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin
Tom Gallagher Adrian Guelke
The Three Regions of the Old Soviet Bloc
Anders Åslund
Turkey: How the Coup Failed
Berk Esen and Sebnem Gumuscu
Monica Marks on Comparing Islamists
Mona Lena Krook on Political Violence Against Women
M. Steven Fish and Michael Seeberg on Mongolia
Malte Philipp Kaeding on Hong Kong
Oisín Tansey on the Anti-Coup Norm
Srdjan Darmanoviæ on Elections in the Balkans
The Signs of Deconsolidation
Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk
The Signs of Deconsolidation
Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk
Roberto Stefan Foa is a lecturer in politics at the University of Melbourne,
a principal investigator of the World Values Survey, and a fellow
of the Laboratory for Comparative Social Research. Yascha Mounk
is a lecturer in political theory at Harvard, a postdoctoral fellow at the
Transatlantic Academy, and a fellow in the Political Reform program
at New America. His book The Age of Responsibility: Luck, Choice,
and the Welfare State will be published by Harvard University Press in
2017. He is now at work on a book about the crisis of liberal democracy,
also to be published by Harvard University Press.
Americans have long been growing dissatisfied with the state of their
political system. As survey researchers have chronicled over recent
decades, an overwhelming majority of citizens now believes that the
United States is “headed in the wrong direction.” Trust in such major
institutions as Congress and the presidency has fallen markedly. Engagement
in formal political institutions has ebbed. The media are more
mistrusted than ever. Even so, most scholars have given these findings a
stubbornly optimistic spin: U.S. citizens, they claim, have simply come
to have higher expectations of their government.
As we showed in an essay in the July 2016 Journal of Democracy, that
interpretation is untenable.1
American citizens are not just dissatisfied
with the performance of particular governments; they are increasingly
critical of liberal democracy itself. Among young Americans polled in
2011, for example, a record high of 24 percent stated that democracy is a
“bad” or “very bad” way of running the country—a sharp increase both
from prior polls and compared to older respondents. Meanwhile, the
proportion of Americans expressing approval for “army rule” has risen
from 1 in 16 in 1995 to 1 in 6 in the most recent survey.2
Americans’ dissatisfaction with the democratic system is part of a
much larger global pattern. It is not just that the proportion of Americans
who state that it is “essential” to live in a democracy, which stands at 72
Journal of Democracy Volume 28, Number 1 January 2017
© 2017 National Endowment for Democracy and Johns Hopkins University Press
6 Journal of Democracy
percent among those born before World War II, has fallen to 30 percent
among millennials. It is also that, contrary to Ronald Inglehart’s response
to our earlier essay in these pages,3
a similar cohort pattern is found across
all longstanding democracies, including Great Britain, the Netherlands,
Sweden, Australia, and New Zealand (see Figure 1). In virtually all cases,
the generation gap is striking, with the proportion of younger citizens who
believe it is essential to live in a democracy falling to a minority.
What is more, this disaffection with the democratic form of government
is accompanied by a wider skepticism toward liberal institutions.
Citizens are growing more disaffected with established political parties,
representative institutions, and minority rights. Tellingly, they are also
increasingly open to authoritarian interpretations of democracy. The
share of citizens who approve of “having a strong leader who does not
have to bother with parliament or elections,” for example, has gone up
Figure 1—aCross the globe,
the Young are less invested in deMoCraCY
Source: European and World Values Surveys, combined data from Waves 5 and 6 (2005–7
and 2010–14). Percentage of respondents rating it “essential” (a rating of 10 on a 10-point
scale) to “live in a country that is governed democratically.”
Note: Confidence intervals appear in gray.
United StatesNetherlands Sweden
“Essential”toLiveinaDemocracy
Great BritainAustralia New Zealand
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
20%
40%
60%
80%
Decade of Birth
7Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk
markedly in most of the countries where the World Values Survey asked
the question—including such varied places as Germany, the United
States, Spain, Turkey, and Russia (see Figure 2).
The stark picture painted by the World Values Survey is echoed in
the findings of a large number of national polls conducted in recent
months. In a German survey, a large majority endorsed democracy “as
an idea,” but only about half approved of “democracy as it works in the
Federal Republic of Germany today,” and more than a fifth endorsed the
view that “what Germany now needs is a single, strong party that represents
the people.”4
In France, two-fifths of respondents in a 2015 survey
believed that the country should be put in the hands of “an authoritarian
government” free from democratic constraints, while fully two-thirds
were willing to delegate the task of enacting “unpopular but necessary
reforms” to “unelected experts.”5
Meanwhile, in the United States, 46
percent of respondents in an October 2016 survey reported that they
either “never had” or had “lost” faith in U.S. democracy.6
Figure 2—Global Rise in Share of Citizens Wishing for a Strong
Leader “Who Does Not Have to Bother with Elections”
Source: European and World Values Surveys.
*Sample contains all countries included in both Wave 3 (1995–97) and Wave 6 (2010–14)
of the surveys, and in which respondents were asked whether “having a strong leader who
does not have to bother with parliament and elections” would be a “fairly good” or “very
good” way to “run this country.”
Percentage of respondents
answering that “a strong
leader who does not have
to bother with parliament
and elections” is a “good”
way to “run this country”
(shift from European and
World Values Surveys
Wave 3 [1995–97] to
Wave 6 [2010–14]).*
8 Journal of Democracy
These changes in opinion are worrying in and of themselves. What
is all the more striking is that they are increasingly reflected in actual
political behavior. In recent years, parties and candidates that blame
an allegedly corrupt political establishment for most problems, seek to
concentrate power in the executive, and challenge key norms of democratic
politics have achieved unprecedented successes in a large number
of liberal democracies across the globe: In addition to Donald Trump in
the United States, they range from Viktor Orbán in Hungary to Rodrigo
Duterte in the Philippines, and from Marine Le Pen in France to the late
Hugo Chávez in Venezuela.
In many countries, populists are still far from having an outright majority.
But their ascent does not appear to have any inbuilt limits: In the
United States, a populist has just been elected president, and in Austria
and France, populists have come within striking distance of the presidency.
In Poland, Hungary, Greece, and Venezuela, populist parties
have been in power for some time now. What is more, these latter examples
suggest that such parties continue to take their radical message
seriously once they are elected. In Hungary, constitutional reform under
the Fidesz government has removed checks and balances in various areas,
including the judiciary, the supervision of elections, and the media.7
In Poland, the Law and Justice government has challenged the independence
of the country’s constitutional tribunal, taken control of the state
broadcasting corporation, and undermined civil society organizations
that might serve to hold the government accountable.8
In Greece, Prime
Minister Alexis Tsipras has appointed party allies to key positions in
tax offices, state enterprises, and private banks; raided the home of the
governor of the central bank; and revoked the licenses of eight privatesector
television broadcasters.9
The success of Donald Trump and his fellow populists, then, is not
a temporary or geographic aberration. Nor is it certain to trigger selfcorrecting
mechanisms that will return the political system to the stability
of a bygone era. On the contrary, it calls into doubt the confidence
that social scientists have for many decades expressed in the stability of
supposedly “consolidated” liberal democracies. It is high time to think
about the circumstances under which consolidated democracies could
fail—and to be on the lookout for the signs which indicate that a major
systemic transformation might be under way.
An Early-Warning System
Political scientists have long assumed that what they call “democratic
consolidation” is a one-way street: Once democracy in a particular
country has been consolidated, the political system is safe, and liberal
democracy is here to stay. Historically, this has indeed been the case.
So far, democracy has not collapsed in any wealthy country that has ex-
9Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk
perienced at least two government turnovers as a result of free and fair
elections. But a large part of the reason that liberal democracy proved
to be so stable in the past was its ability to persuade voters of its advantages.
Indeed, while political
scientists have offered many divergent
definitions of democratic
consolidation, they mostly agree
on this key insight. In the classic
formulation of Juan Linz and Alfred
Stepan, for example, “democratic
consolidation” refers to
the extent to which democracy is
the “only game in town.”10
Consolidated
democracies are stable,
Linz and Stepan argue, because
their citizens have come to believe
that democratic forms of
government possess unique legitimacy and that authoritarian alternatives
are unacceptable. This raises a question that might have seemed
to be of merely theoretical interest until a few years ago: What happens
to the stability of wealthy liberal democracies when many of their
citizens no longer believe that their system of government is especially
legitimate or even go so far as to express open support for authoritarian
regime forms?
To answer this question, we need to conceive of the possibility that
democratic consolidation might not be a one-way street after all. Democracy
comes to be the only game in town when an overwhelming majority
of a country’s citizens embraces democratic values, reject authoritarian
alternatives, and support candidates or parties that are committed
to upholding the core norms and institutions of liberal democracy. By
the same token, it can cease to be the only game in town when, at some
later point, a sizable minority of citizens loses its belief in democratic
values, becomes attracted to authoritarian alternatives, and starts voting
for “antisystem” parties, candidates, or movements that flout or oppose
constitutive elements of liberal democracy. Democracy may then be said
to be deconsolidating.
The phenomenon of democratic deconsolidation is conceptually distinct
from assessments of the extent to which a country is governed
democratically at a particular moment in time. An important research
program in political science has attempted to measure the degree to
which a country allows free and fair elections, or affords its citizens
such basic rights as freedom of speech; the two most influential efforts
at doing this are the Polity and the Freedom House measures. These
indices are very good at assessing the current state of democratic rule
in a particular country. But the question of democratic consolidation or
What happens to the
stability of wealthy liberal
democracies when many
of their citizens no longer
believe that their system
of government is especially
legitimate or even go so far
as to express open support for
authoritarian regime forms?
10 Journal of Democracy
deconsolidation is concerned not with the extent of democratic rule but
rather with the durability of democratic rule. When citizens grow disaffected
with democracy and antisystem parties gain a significant share
of the vote, this may not be enough to undermine the rule of law or to
impede free and fair elections in the short run. As a result, such developments,
worrying though they might be, would not necessarily register
on the Freedom House or Polity indices. Yet they may provide good
reason for concern that those same rights and freedoms have become
more brittle than they were in the past, and that core aspects of liberal
democracy have become less likely to persist into the future. A useful
measure of democratic deconsolidation would therefore have to take
these factors into account.
Case Studies in Deconsolidation
Democratic deconsolidation is an unexplored area of the conceptual
map, a territory that has long seemed so barren that cartographers have
not seen the need to color it in. How urgent is the need to explore this
terrain? Is the terra incognita that we describe merely of academic interest,
something to be registered and catalogued for the sake of scholarly
completeness, even though democratic deconsolidation is unlikely to
have major effects? Or does it hide a dangerous fault line, requiring an
early-warning system that might give some notice of an unprecedented
democratic regression that could affect even countries in which democracy
is now considered unshakeable?
Preliminary evidence suggests that the latter interpretation is closer
to the mark. While the ascent of populist parties and movements is relatively
new in North America and Western Europe, other regions show
how democratic deconsolidation can signal a real danger for the stability
of democratic governance, even in countries that appear to be doing very
well according to more traditional measures.
By the 1980s, for example, Venezuela was widely considered a stable
two-party democracy with a long record of free and fair elections. “Venezuela’s
political life after 1959,” Richard Haggerty and Howard Blutstein
wrote in the early 1990s, “was defined by uninterrupted civilian
constitutional rule.” Successive peaceful turnovers of power testified to
“Venezuela’s rapidly maturing democracy.”11
What is more, the country
was on the verge of counting as a developed democracy, with a per
capita income comparable to that of Israel or Ireland. For many students
of the region, “Venezuelan democracy became the political model to be
imitated in Latin America, comparing favorably with the dictatorships
of the left and right that prevailed in those years.”12
In short, according
to most scholars the country seemed to have advanced far along the oneway
street of democratic consolidation.
Yet Venezuelan democracy has fared very poorly since Hugo
11Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk
Chávez’s surprise election to the presidency in 1998. The rule of law
has been hollowed out, the press has been muzzled, critics have been
imprisoned, and the opposition suppressed. According to Freedom
House, which assigns countries a “Freedom Rating Score” on a 1-to-7
scale (with 1 being the most free and 7 being the least free), Venezuela
dropped from being a Free country in the 1980s (1 on political rights
and 2 or 3 on civil liberties) to barely being Partly Free today (5 on both
measures). What can explain this puzzling transformation?
Survey data show that, well before Chávez’s election, a steady process
of democratic deconsolidation was already underway: Public skepticism
about the value and performance of democracy was rising. Citizens
were increasingly open to authoritarian alternatives such as military
rule. Antisystem parties and movements celebrated important victories.
All of this is reflected in data that were available at the time. When the
Latinobarometer surveys first asked Venezuelans in 1995 whether they
preferred “democracy” or “authoritarian government,” 22.5 percent of
respondents said that they would prefer the latter; another 13.9 percent
were indifferent. Levels of expressed dissatisfaction with democratic
performance were also high: In 1995, 46.3 percent agreed that democracy
“does not solve the problems of the country,” while an astonishing
81.3 percent said that they would welcome a strongman leader (mano
dura). Finally, levels of confidence in politicians and political institutions
were consistently low throughout this period. In the year Chávez
took power, only 20.2 percent of the population expressed confidence
in Parliament. Attention to the indicators of democratic deconsolidation
might, therefore, have been able to foretell real danger to Venezuela’s
democratic system long before the standard indicators now used by political
scientists registered a decline in democratic governance.
The same goes for many other countries. Poland, for example, has
long been touted as the single greatest success story of postcommunist
transition to liberal democracy. Since 1990, free and fair elections have
led to four changes of government in the country. Polish civil society
has long been very robust, with a rich landscape of associations and
NGOs, effective independent-media outlets scrutinizing the government,
and academics and journalists freely criticizing officeholders.13
At the same time, Poland enjoyed remarkable economic success; from
1991 to 2014, per capita income increased more than sixfold.14
All in
all, it is little wonder that numerous scholars began calling Poland a
“consolidated democracy.”15
But as in Venezuela, so too in Poland indicators of democratic deconsolidation
have been painting a more pessimistic picture all along.
As early as 2005, 15.7 percent of Polish respondents, a comparatively
high portion of the population, stated that “having a democratic political
system” was a “fairly bad” or “very bad” way of running the country.
By 2012, this had notched up to 16.6 percent, the second-highest level
12 Journal of Democracy
ever recorded by a postcommunist member state of the European Union.
Meanwhile, support for having the “army rule” was expressed by 22
percent of respondents, compared to a European Union average of 9
percent. As in other countries, this shift in public opinion was quickly
reflected in political practice: A changing parade of antisystem parties,
from the Self-Defense of the Republic of Poland to the League of Polish
Families and the more recent Palikot’s Movement, have long enjoyed a
significant foothold in the country’s electoral landscape.
All of this helps to explain Poland’s backsliding from liberal democratic
norms over the past year. After Jaros³aw Kaczyñski’s Law and Justice party
won both presidential and parliamentary elections in 2015, it quickly moved
to muzzle the free media and to undermine the independence of liberal institutions
such as the constitutional court. Today, the rights of Polish citizens
are in real danger, and it would seem fanciful to call Polish democracy fully
consolidated. “The measures Warsaw is taking,” said Guy Verhofstadt, the
prime minister of Belgium at the time of Poland’s admission to the European
Union in 2004, are “anti-democratic and contrary to the principles of
the rule of law signed by Poland upon its EU accession. It is clear that if an
accession agreement was to be sought now, it would fail.”16
In both Poland and Venezuela, a focus on our core indicators of democratic
deconsolidation would have painted a more nuanced picture of
the prospects of democracy than the measures to which most political
scientists have traditionally devoted their attention. It would therefore
have been much better able to predict where those countries were headed.
This suggests that close attention to the signs of deconsolidation can
indeed function as an early warning system, alerting careful observers
to the kind of deep-seated discontent with democratic institutions that is
liable to prove deeply destabilizing before long.
The Consequences of Deconsolidation
Donald Trump’s election to the presidency of the United States has
given renewed urgency to questions about the stability of supposedly
consolidated liberal democracies. Should the growing disenchantment of
citizens in the United States be seen as a warning sign that democracy
may begin to founder even in countries where historically it has been
extraordinarily stable? And does the electoral success of parties and candidates
that attack key democratic norms during their campaigns suggest
that their supporters will remain loyal to them even if they start to undermine
the rule of law?
It is not yet possible to answer these questions in full. For one, a more
systematic analysis is needed to test whether past instances of deconsolidation
have reliably predicted subsequent deteriorations in the quality
of elections and the rule of law. For another, democratic deconsolidation
in countries such as the United States and France remains at an incipient
13Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk
stage; it would be premature to exclude the possibility that, in countries
where it is deeply entrenched, democracy can weather a much larger degree
of civic withdrawal and discontent. Perhaps longstanding democracies
have sufficient systemic resources to turn the growing anger of
their citizens into a force for democratic reform, as occurred in France
under Charles de Gaulle or in the
United States during the Progressive
Era. Or perhaps their vigorous civil
societies will manage to resist any
attacks on the rule of law, reawakening
a long-lost enthusiasm for the
core principles of liberal democracy.
But despite all the uncertainty involved
in analyzing developments
that have no clear historical precedent,
there are strong indicators that
the consequences of democratic deconsolidation
may turn out to be just as serious in the heartland of liberal
democracy as they have been in its periphery. As Jan-Werner Müller has
cautioned, populists define the “real people” whom they seek to represent
very narrowly.17
Embracing only those who share the origins and values
of the majority, populists exclude minority ethnic and religious groups.18
The core of the populist appeal thus sets populists in opposition to a
pluralist vision of democracy in which groups holding disparate views
and opinions must resolve their differences through channels of democratic
dialogue and compromise. Instead, populism fosters an illiberal
politics that uses the power of the majority to confront perceived or actual
elites in the media, courts, and the civil service; disregards the rights of
unpopular minorities; and attacks institutional roadblocks such as independent
courts as illegitimate impediments to the popular will. When a
populist movement takes on an antisystem hue—as it now does not only
in countries such as Poland or Hungary but also in much of Western Europe
and North America—it is poised to do real damage to the integrity of
liberal-democratic institutions.
In countries where populists have not yet taken power, radical reforms
are needed to counteract the social and economic drivers of
democratic deconsolidation. Establishment politicians with a real
commitment to liberal democracy may be more likely to undertake
these reforms—and to disregard the protestations of interest groups
that oppose them—when they are afraid that antisystem parties are
about to take power. In that sense, the dangerous age of populism may
harbor an opportunity for righting the ship of state after all. Yet when
politicians finally muster the will to enact far-reaching reforms, they
need to know what it is that they should do. So far, however, there
is no consensus on what the drivers of populism are, or on how pubThere
are strong indicators
that the consequences of
democratic deconsolidation
may turn out to be just as
serious in the heartland of
liberal democracy as they
have been in its periphery.
14 Journal of Democracy
lic policy might effectively combat them. That makes it all the more
urgent for political scientists to study both the origins of democratic
deconsolidation and the public policies that may potentially provide
an antidote to it.
In countries where populists are already in power, by contrast, those
citizens who retain a deep commitment to the core values of liberal
democracy must recognize that their countries’ past stability is no reason
for complacency. The power now wielded by antisystem parties
and movements is unprecedented. So is the deep disenchantment with
democracy they exploit so shrewdly. As a result, the survival of liberal
democracy may now depend on the will of citizens to defend it effectively
against attacks. That makes it all the more urgent for political
scientists to recollect the insights that they have gleaned from studying
how democracies have broken down in the past—and to turn these
insights into clear lessons on how to monitor and resist attacks on the
integrity of democratic institutions.
The process of deconsolidation now taking place across most liberal
democracies is a very serious warning sign. But neither fate nor destiny
decrees that democracy will falter. For now, the window for political
agency remains open. Whether democratic deconsolidation will one day
be seen as the beginning of the end for liberal democracy depends in
good part on the ability of democracy’s defenders to heed the warning
and to mount a coherent response.
NOTES
1. Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk, “The Danger of Deconsolidation: The Democratic
Disconnect,” Journal of Democracy 27 (July 2016): 5–17.
2. Foa and Mounk, “Democratic Disconnect,” 8 and 12.
3. Ronald F. Inglehart, “The Danger of Deconsolidation: How Much Should We Worry?”
Journal of Democracy 27 (July 2016): 18–23.
4. Oliver Decker, Johannes Kiess, and Elmar Brähler, Die enthemmte Mitte: Autoritäre
und rechtsextreme Einstellung in Deutschland (Leipzig: Psychosozial-Verlag, 2016), 30
and 52.
5. Ifop, “L’attirance des Français pour un gouvernement technocratique ou autoritaire,”
7 and 5, http://ifop.fr/media/poll/3185-1-study_file.pdf.
6. Nathaniel Persily and Jon Cohen, “Americans Are Losing Faith in Democracy—And
in Each Other,” Washington Post, 14 October 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/
americans-are-losing-faith-in-democracy--and-in-each-other/2016/10/14/b35234ea-
90c6-11e6-9c52-0b10449e33c4_story.html?utm_term=.39bbc43865ec.
7. European Commission for Democracy Through Law (Venice Commission), “Opinion
on the New Constitution of Hungary,” lapa.princeton.edu/hosteddocs/hungary/venice
commission hungarian constitution.pdf.
15Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk
8. European Commission for Democracy Through Law (Venice Commission), “Opinion
on Amendments to the Act of 25 June 2015 on the Constitutional Tribunal of Poland,”
www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/?pdf=CDL-AD(2016)001-e.
9. Polina Popova, “In Greece, Syriza Jeopardizes Freedom of the Press,” Fair Observer,
2 September 2016.
10. Juan J. Linz and Alfred C. Stepan, “Toward Consolidated Democracies,” Journal
of Democracy 7 (April 1996): 14–33.
11. Richard A. Haggerty and Howard I. Blutstein, Venezuela: A Country Study (Washington,
D.C.: Library of Congress, 1993).
12. Gustavo Coronel, “The Corruption of Democracy in Venezuela,” USA Today Magazine,
March 2008.
13. Grzegorz Ekiert and Jan Kubik, Rebellious Civil Society: Popular Protest and
Democratic Consolidation in Poland, 1989–1993 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 2001).
14. World Bank, World Development Indicators, available at data.worldbank.org/
data-catalog/world-development-indicators.
15. Daniel Treisman, “Lessons from 25 Years of Post-Communism: The Importance
of Reform, Democracy, and Geography,” Washington Post, Monkey Cage blog, 10 June
2014.
16. “Is Poland a Failing Democracy?” Politico, 13 January 2016.
17. Jan-Werner Müller, What Is Populism? (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2016). See also the similar definition of populism in Yascha Mounk, “Pitchfork
Politics: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy,” Foreign Affairs 93 (September–October
2014): 27–36.
18. As Giovanni Sartori noted already in the 1980s, populist parties refer to “the”
people in the singular, rather than the plural: “le” peuple or “das” Volk.