The Rise of Illiberalism: Conceptualizing and Measuring Democratic Backslide

International democracy promotion, often by international organizations (IOs) has been on the rise since the end of the Cold War. However, this increased emphasis on democracy promotion by IOs has been accompanied by rampant illiberalism and a sharp increase in cases of democratic backslide in multiple third wave democracies around the world. Why has democratic backslide been on the rise in an age of unprecedented international commitment to democracy promotion? Does the increased prevalence of backslide signal that there has been too little democracy promotion, or has democracy promotion by IOs and other international actors gone too far? This paper argues that democracy promotion by IOs not only fails to halt, but can even make democratic backslide more likely in developing democracies by focusing too heavily on elections, failing to support the development of domestic institutions that serve as important checks on executive power accumulation, and imbuing executives with excessive power. Part of the reason this relationship has been overlooked, however, is because democratic backslide continues to be a commonly used yet poorly understood concept that lacks a validated cross-national measure. This paper offers a theoretically-grounded definition of democratic back-slide and uses this to create a latent variable based cross-national indicator called the Democratic Institutional Strength (DIS) index. The indicator is then combined with panel data to quantitatively test the proposed link between IOs and democratic backslide. Preliminary results suggest that joining a democratically-committed IO may increase a state’s chances of subsequently experiencing democratic backslide.