With democracy becoming the global norm, the field of democratization studies has boomed in the last quarter of a century. While early research focused on transitions, over time scholars have begun to pay closer attention to the performance of emerging democracies. Arguably, the major empirical finding of this latter research has been that, while the majority of these new regimes exhibit democratic features such as free and fair elections, a significant number of them deviate from standards and practices that are inherent in the very idea of democratic rule.
About the Authors
Hector E. Schamis
Hector E. Schamis teaches in the School of International Service at American University in Washington, D.C. He has written on democratization and market reform in Latin America and ex-communist countries. His current research is on the construction of democratic citizenship in old and new democracies.
Like the “transition paradigm” before it, the concept of democratic backsliding threatens to flatten our perceptions of complex political realities. Examples from East-Central Europe illustrate the ambiguous dynamics at play…
Emerging from one of the world’s most notorious failed states, Somaliland has become an oasis of relative democratic stability in the troubled Horn of Africa. What does its story teach…
Since the early 1990s, many African countries have undergone political liberalization, and so far this trend has been accompanied by a significant drop in the incidence of military coups.
