Transitions within Democracy: Institutions, Interests, and Accountability

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I completed one important component of this research project which is a global analysis of the causes of democratic backsliding in 98 democratic countries between 1970 and 2020. The analysis is based on matching methods to infer the causal effects of several ideological and institutional factors related to executives. The findings demonstrate that populist orientations of executives increase, on average, the amount of democratic backsliding. While case studies and regional analyses have previously pointed to populism’s determinantal effect on democracy, this is the first global analysis to support these claims with rigorous empirical evidence.Based on this research, I co-authored a research paper titled “Who’s to blame for democratic backsliding: populists, presidents or dominant executives?” with my research collaborator, Antonio Benasaglio Berlucchi (Graduate School of Political Science, Waseda University). I presented this paper at the Midwest Political Science Association meeting in April 2022 and at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law in May 2022. We submitted the paper for review in August 2022 to the journal Democratization and it was accepted for publication in March 2023. Democratization has an impact factor of 3.339 and is known among scholars and practitioners as a leading outlet for current research on democratic backsliding.