This article assesses two next-level questions in the study of democratic backsliding: democratic resilience and political polarization. It first advances a set of methodological decision points to improve clarity in contemporary debates surrounding democratic backsliding measurement and the possibility of identifying moments of democratic recovery. It then moves to a theoretical and empirical assessment of pathways by which democratic backsliding takes place, under what conditions, which specific actors are involved, and what opportunities exist for democratic recovery given sources of resilience and strategies of resistance. The authors examine the role of political polarization in backsliding and highlight the combined importance of political agency and institutional levers for regime outcomes. The authors argue that regime outcomes are not predetermined by antecedent conditions, and particularly not by the level of development.

Abstract Although South America has a long history of pendular swings between authoritarianism and democracy, the region shifted decisively toward democracy in the 1980s, and has largely maintained democratic rule since. Over time, however, the institutional fragilities and social deficits of democratic regimes have left them susceptible to destabilizing forms of social mobilization and political polarization. In that context, authoritarian currents of varied political persuasions have reemerged, on both the left and right flanks of national political orders. In contrast to historical patterns of military coups and revolutionary armed struggle, contemporary manifestations of authoritarianism often compete in the democratic arena and make populist appeals to disenchanted mass publics to circumvent or dismantle the institutional checks and balances of democratic regimes. South America, therefore, despite its achievements during the Third Wave of democratization, is not immune to the patterns of democratic backsliding seen across much of the world in recent times.

We provide an analytical framework that identifies three distinct institutional pathways for democratic backsliding that culminate in executive aggrandizement: legislative capture, plebiscitary override, and executive power grabs. We also identify a fourth pathway of elite collusion that erodes democracy without necessarily concentrating powers in the executive. These four pathways reflect different combinations of ruling and opposition party strength, institutional legitimacy, and levels of popular support and political mobilization. The pathways also open and close different institutional and societal arenas where opposition forces can counter backsliding, and they create different opportunities, challenges, and dilemmas for democratic actors. The 15 case studies featured in this volume illustrate how backsliding occurs along these pathways, and how democratic actors achieved partial reversal in some cases. The cases also suggest focal points of resistance and institutional and programmatic reform that may be helpful to policymakers and advocates working to defend democracy.

ABSTRACT Mounting evidence suggests that Latin American democracies are characterized by politics and societies becoming more divisive, confrontational, and polarized. This process, which we define here as the “new polarization” in Latin America, seems to weaken the ability of democratic institutions to manage and resolve social and political conflicts. Although recent scholarship suggests that polarization is integral to contemporary patterns of democratic “backsliding” seen in much of the world, this new polarization in the region has not yet received systematic scholarly attention. Aiming to address this gap in the literature, the different contributions in this special issue revise the conceptualization, measurement, and theory of a multidimensional phenomenon such as polarization, including both its ideological and affective dimensions, as well as perspectives at the elite and mass levels of analysis. Findings shed light on the phenomenon of polarization as both a dependent and an independent variable, contributing to comparative literature on polarization and its relationship to democratic governance.

Abstract Social movements and political parties are often studied in isolation from each other in separate branches of the social sciences, but this divide is artificial and counterproductive. Movements and parties are both collective actors that offer citizens “voice” in the public sphere, and there are numerous points of intersection between them. Indeed, movements and parties can be mutually constitutive, and they reciprocally structure, and sometimes de-structure, mass political representation. The Latin American experience provides numerous examples of this reciprocal structuring, both historically and in the contemporary period. Party systems have often shaped the political opportunity structure for social movements, while mass protest has played a major role in configuring, realigning, and sometimes breaking down party systems. Understanding political representation in the region requires close attention to the interaction between parties and movements and their reciprocal structuring of popular collective subjects.

Polarization may be the most consistent effect of populism, as it is integral to the logic of constructing populist subjects. This article distinguishes between constitutive, spatial and institutional dimensions of polarization, adopting a cross-regional comparative perspective on different subtypes of populism in Europe, Latin America and the US. It explains why populism typically arises in contexts of low political polarization (the US being a major, if partial, outlier), but has the effect of sharply increasing polarization by constructing an anti-establishment political frontier, politicizing new policy or issue dimensions, and contesting democracy's institutional and procedural norms. Populism places new issues on the political agenda and realigns partisan and electoral competition along new programmatic divides or political cleavages. Its polarizing effects, however, raise the stakes of political competition and intensify conflict over the control of key institutional sites.

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Recent patterns of democratic “backsliding” around the world have followed in the wake of a generalized weakening of organized labor under the modern, globalized variant of capitalism. Scholars have long debated whether and how labor contributes to the construction of democratic regimes and the expansion of social citizenship rights, but the current period makes it abundantly clear that democratic advances are always subject to reversal. As such, it is imperative to interrogate labor’s role in the defense of democratic rights and liberties, and not merely the introduction or expansion of those rights. These questions call for a multi-dimensional approach to the study of labor’s relationship to democracy, one that explores labor’s role in (1) constructing democratic regimes, (2) “deepening” democracy by expanding social citizenship rights, and (3) defending democracy against its adversaries and authoritarian currents in society.

Abstract When and why do legislatures impeach presidents? We analyse six cases of attempted impeachment in Paraguay, Brazil and Peru to argue that intra-coalitional politics is central to impeachment outcomes. Presidents in Latin America often govern with multiparty, ideologically heterogeneous coalitions sustained by tenuous pacts. Coalitions are tested when crises, scandals or mass protests emerge, but presidents can withstand these threats if they tend to allies’ interests and maintain coalitions intact. Conversely, in the absence of major threats, presidents can be impeached if they fail to serve partners’ interests, inducing allies to support impeachment as acts of opportunism or self-preservation.

Although populist figures are often thought to thrive during crises that allow them to ‘perform’ decisive leadership, the US experience under Donald Trump during the COVID-19 crisis demonstrates that the opposite may sometimes occur. Despite its scientific and medical prowess, the US suffered more coronavirus cases and deaths than any other country in the world during the first year of the pandemic, and this abysmal performance was largely attributable to a failure of government. Fixated on the pandemic's economic effects and its potential political fallout, the Trump administration's framing of the crisis tried to minimize the public health emergency, externalize blame through a focus on the Chinese scapegoat and accuse the media and Democrats of hyping the pandemic to undermine Trump's presidency. In responding to the pandemic, Trump and his allies cast doubt on scientific and medical expertise that called for more aggressive testing, mask wearing and social-distancing measures. Trump delegated responsibility for crisis management to subnational governments and the private sector, and he politicized their efforts to regulate social behaviour in the public interest, intensifying partisan polarization.

A democracy is in trouble. even before the 2016 election, the united States had slipped in international democracy rankings, losing its long-held stature as a “full” democracy and joining the “flawed” democracies (economist Intelligence unit 2020; V-Dem Institute 2021). Scholars of democracy around the world have identified several key weaknesses in American democracy, such as an increasingly dysfunctional government and fraying social cohesion, that undermine the regime’s accountability and responsivness. For decades, political scientists have observed key threats to democracy that have been on the rise: political polarization; conflict—incited by racism and nativism—over the boundaries of American citizenship and the civic status of those in different social groups; soaring economic inequality; and executive aggrandizement (Mettler and Lieberman 2020). the confluence of these threats fueled the candidacy

Although Latin America’s inclusionary turn produced tangible benefits for lower-income citizens, these benefits remained partial and politically contingent. The new inclusion extended recognition, access, and resources to social sectors left behind or excluded from the historical process of labor incorporation, but it was noted more for its breadth than its depth, for pluralist as opposed to corporatist modes of interest representation, and for organizational diffuseness rather than density. These traits help explain why the new inclusionary turn was associated with an “easy stage” of redistributive politics in which politically innocuous, low-cost cash transfers could be made to large numbers of weakly or non-organized popular constituencies. They also help explain why the region struggled to advance toward a “higher stage” of redistributive politics requiring more expensive and politically contentious investments in public services and institutional reforms

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Undoubtedly, populist radical right parties (rpps) represent the largest family of populist parties. However, in the 18 countries that make up the South American subcontinent, only two leaders seem to fully embody this ideology: Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and José Antonio Kast in Chile. The aim of this article is to examine the reasons behind the scarce proliferation of PRRs in Latin America. In Western Europe the emergence of these parties is related to a sort of silent counter-revolution (Inglehart 1971; Ignazi 1992) in opposition to post-material values on which many traditional parties have converged in past decades. In contrast, in Latin America material values are still of vital importance due to the high levels of inequality in the region. Moreover, the article demonstrates that the simultaneous occurrence of three factors that combine the European experience and characteristics of the continent was the only reason one radical right-wing populist leader has been able to successfully rise to power in Latin America until today. First, the existence of a discourse that politicizes issues such as security and traditional values. Second, the nativist discourse, which unlike most PRR parties in Western Europe and the US —where the excluded are immigrants— is characterized by the fact that discrimination is mostly against native people. Finally, the third characteristic is the reliance on a negative identity against the left.

Politics in the United States has become more polarized in recent decades as both political elites and everyday citizens have been divided into rival and mutually antagonistic partisan camps. Increasingly, these rival camps question the political legitimacy and democratic commitments of the other side. Such polarization or “teamsmanship” can have a number of important political consequences: it can drive actors further apart, intensify political conflict, impede negotiation and compromise, and block the construction of bipartisan legislative and policymaking coalitions. Since polarization makes it difficult, if not impossible, to find common political ground, it can prevent democratic institutions from making important policy choices and responding to the critical issues of the day. Polarization, in short, can easily lead to democratic gridlock, paralysis, the decay of rights, and, in the extreme, violent conflict, as the Trump administration’s waning weeks so vividly demonstrated.

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