International Collaborative Research on Democratic Regress, Renewal, and Resilience

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This project aims to understand how democracy evolves over time in different countries around the world, with a particular emphasis on the comparison of democratic change in Latin American countries and East Asian countries.The co-PIs presented research at a workshop on “Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law in Southeast Asia” held at Stanford University on March 9, 2022, which was organized and co-chaired by the PI in collaboration with Stanford researchers. The research presented by the co-PIs revealed several findings that will inform our project going forward: monarchies play a crucial role in “autocratization” in Southeast Asia, presidential popularity strongly influences Philippine legislators’ policy positions, and the disintegration of the Philippine political party system accelerated during the democratic backsliding under Rodrigo Duterte.The PI published a research article that examines the causes of democratic backsliding across all democratic countries worldwide since 1970 and identifies populist executives as particularly dangerous for democracy, from a global perspective. Co-PI Yuko Kasuya published two articles related to this research: One article analyzes democratic backsliding and illiberal attitudes in the Philippines and another article examines how political institutions affect transitions from electoral authoritarianism to democracy. In addition, members of the research team presented working papers at academic conferences and invited talks.