The global wave of democratic backsliding has questioned the ascendancy of democracy in the twenty-first century. A purported decline in political trust and satisfaction with democracy, alongside the rise of high-performing autocracies, has sparked conjectures that popular support for the democratic project is eroding in favor of new, more authoritarian alternatives. Part of this discussion concerns the extent to which service delivery and outcomes matter for the legitimacy and stability of democracy. We argue that delivery for citizens is crucial to rebuilding the social contract and hence support for democracy alongside thwarting backsliding. We reflect on infrastructure as a public good for exposition.
Over the last two decades, a wave of democratic backsliding has reached all corners of the globe, calling into question democracy’s ascendancy. Among the best-known cases today are Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey, and El Salvador under Nayib Bukele, as well as Brazil and the Philippines during the presidencies of Jair Bolsonaro and Rodrigo Duterte, respectively. Scholars and policymakers alike have been trying to understand what has caused this phenomenon and how to defend democracy against it.1
Most approaches fall into one of two camps: “Supply-side” explanations focus on elite behavior and how democracies are eroded from “within” — that is, the piecemeal dismantling of democratic institutions once an illiberal leader is elected, which are then turned against democracy itself.2 “Demand-side” theories, in contrast, focus on citizens’ support, or lack thereof, for democracy, placing more emphasis on democratic performance. To what extent does the perception that democracy is not delivering fuel popular demand for alternative political systems and candidates that appear to provide better results?
In the recent Journal of Democracy essay “Misunderstanding Democratic Backsliding,” Thomas Carothers and Brendan Hartnett probe this very question. Based on a sample of twelve countries where democracy has weakened, the authors contend that delivery, using GDP growth and inequality as proxies, has limited power in explaining the onset of backsliding.3 Take India and Poland. Carothers and Hartnett argue that both were outstanding economic performers before their quality of democracy began to decline.
As surveys from across the world are finding satisfaction with democracy flagging,4 Carothers and Hartnett do well to appraise the oft-claimed nexus between delivery and backsliding. This helps us to move past debates about the merits of leading democracy indexes in measuring democratic backsliding, such as Freedom House, Polity and the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project.5 Yet the authors’ broad conclusion that delivery has limited relevance in explaining democratic erosion requires more nuance. Focusing only on cases where backsliding has occurred — that is, “selection of cases for study on the basis of outcomes on the dependent variable”6 — naturally produces a bias. To determine whether performance is an antecedent condition with no genuine effect, a study would have to also include countries where no backsliding has occurred.
This consequently invites a broader analysis of the extent to which delivery does matter for the stability and legitimacy of democracy. Moreover, there is growing anxiety that even strong democracies are underperforming relative to some autocracies, especially in the provision of large-scale public goods such as infrastructure and the capacity to deliver economic growth, reduce poverty and unemployment, and improve security.7
The Pew Research Center survey data indicate that global dissatisfaction with democracy is connected to economic discontent. And organizations including the Edelman Trust Barometer find that trust in government is low in established democracies such as France, Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom, but is stronger in authoritarian countries that are growing and investing rapidly, such as China, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates. Together, these trends suggest that citizens are increasingly doubting democracy’s ability to deliver for them.
Delivery and the Social Contract
To understand why delivery is so important for democratic legitimacy, we must understand the core principle of the social contract, explained most famously in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651) and John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government (1690): Citizens acquiesce to being ruled by a sovereign, and that sovereign, in turn, wields political power to the benefit of the citizenry. As Margaret Levi recently wrote, “Establishing credibility requires that government uphold its side of its implicit contract with citizens and subjects, that is: the provision of goods and services, fair processes in policy-determination and implementation (given the norms of place and time), and a demonstrable administrative capacity.”8
Public-service delivery is not the only way that governments can build trust among their citizens — the political class should also be honest and dedicated, or at least perceived to be, to the common good. Government policy decisions, however, can have large, tangible, and direct impacts on individual livelihoods. So when poor economic management leads to major crises, the public often loses faith in incumbents and the political system as a whole, sometimes manifesting in widespread protest and unrest, or in voting for anti-institutional outsiders who promise an alternative to a sclerotic political class.
Building trust in government thus further connects to notions of legitimacy. Seymour Martin Lipset famously called this the “moral title to rule.”9 As Larry Diamond has written, a “long record of effective performance — in delivering economic growth and opportunity, reducing poverty and inequality, providing social services, controlling corruption, and maintaining political order and security — fills a reservoir of legitimacy.”10
But it is important to recognize that trust in government and legitimacy through performance are not exclusive to democratic systems. Various empirical studies have connected service delivery to winning the “hearts and minds” of citizens across different types of regimes. A recent study using a dataset of 2.8 million people across the world finds a strong nexus between trust in government and economic growth: Societies with the most political trust also have some of the highest GDP growth rates, including authoritarian countries such as China, Qatar, Rwanda, and Vietnam; those with the least political trust are often economic laggards and include democracies such as Greece, Italy, Japan, and Spain.11
Over the past decade, Latin American democracies have experienced a significant decline in public trust in government and support for democratic governance, largely due to poor performance. The end of the commodity boom in the mid-2010s marked the beginning of a new “lost decade” in which economic stagnation reversed earlier progress in reducing poverty and income inequality. Persistently high homicide rates and widespread insecurity in the region have further undermined public confidence in government institutions and the democratic system as a whole.
To probe these trends further, we collected data on support for democracy by harmonizing waves of the Afrobarometer, Arab Barometer, Asian Barometer, South Asia Barometer, and Latinobarómetro, the European Social Survey, European Values Study, Life in Transition Survey, World Values Survey, and the Gallup World Poll. This covers approximately 650,000 respondents across countries that have always been democratic or have experienced regime shifts since 1990. We used questions related to “satisfaction with democracy,” which is typically measured by asking respondents whether they are satisfied with democracy along a scale of very dissatisfied to very satisfied.
Taking ten-year national averages of survey responses and aggregate economic performance over a similar period, Figure 1 reveals a striking positive relationship.12 On average, citizens in societies with greater economic performance clearly express stronger satisfaction with democracy. This holds not only in countries that have always been democratic since the end of the Cold War (Figure 1a), but also among “switchers” — countries that have experienced institutional heterogeneity since 1990 (Figure 1b). As with all cross-national correlations, there is noise in the data. Yet, even though the evidence is purely descriptive, there is a clear connection between democratic support and delivery, as proxied for with economic growth.
Beyond cross-national variation, satisfaction with democracy in certain developing democracies is also correlated with economic growth. Argentina and Brazil are two prominent Latin American countries that have experienced major economic slowdowns. Figure 2 shows that in both countries satisfaction with democracy trends in a similar fashion over time with the national growth rate.
In Argentina, satisfaction with democracy plummeted during the country’s 2001 economic and political collapse — a crisis marked by a debt default, banking freeze, and widespread unrest. Although a recovery began under Néstor Kirchner in 2003, aided by high commodity prices, the crisis deeply scarred the nation’s confidence in institutions and signaled a chronic incapacity to deliver welfare and development for its citizens. Argentina’s current president, the right-wing populist Javier Milei, has polarized opinions since his election in 2023, with critics warning of democratic backsliding but supporters defending his efforts to combat corruption and correct the fiscal mismanagement of previous administrations.
In Brazil, satisfaction with democracy rose during the first administration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003–10) when the commodity boom enabled sustained economic growth and innovative social policies reduced poverty. Yet, following the 2013–15 economic recession, satisfaction with democracy fell dramatically, and Brazil soon experienced a period of democratic backsliding under far-right president Jair Bolsonaro (2019–22). Ultimately, however, the country’s institutions were resilient.
The dynamic correlation between satisfaction with democracy and economic performance also holds across more developed democracies that have experienced crises, such as Greece and Spain, as shown in Figure 3. In Greece, democratic satisfaction sharply declined by the late 2000s during the global financial and sovereign-debt crises, which were marked by severe economic contraction, high unemployment, and strict austerity measures. While growth began recovering by 2015, satisfaction with democracy has yet to fully rebound. Similarly, in Spain, the financial crisis triggered a housing-market collapse, soaring unemployment, and stagnant growth. Despite a reasonable economic recovery, satisfaction with democracy remains persistently low.
Poor economic performance and declining satisfaction with democracy across advanced democracies conforms with an emerging literature that connects limited service delivery and hardship to voting for far-right parties, especially in Europe. This has manifested in populist, anti-austerity rhetoric and blaming immigrants for economic downturns.13
Again, these are purely descriptive patterns in the raw data. But the results suggest a strong correlation between performance and support for democracy. It remains an open area of research as to how political dissatisfaction manifests and shifts from specific actors and outputs to the entire system. When does dissatisfaction with policy performance or specific incumbents transform into skepticism of the entire democratic project, potentially in favor of more authoritarian alternatives?
Process versus Performance Legitimacy
In contrast to autocracy, the legitimacy of democracy is said to rest on both performance and the presence of procedural fairness. Even if outcomes are not deemed welfare-enhancing, the democratic process is said to validate policy decisions because it aggregates diverse preferences and expands citizen voice through opportunities for participation.14 The 2016 Brexit referendum ending the United Kingdom’s European Union membership is arguably an example of a suboptimal outcome justified by a legitimating procedure.
But claims for democracy’s ascendancy based on its procedural merits may lack the resonance they once had. Although previous “waves” of democratization may have tapped into citizens’ hearts and minds through enfranchisement and the unprecedented acquisition of new rights, these vehicles of legitimacy have potentially reached their limit.15 In poor-performing democracies, citizens increasingly show dissatisfaction with the political system by turning out infrequently at elections, protesting, and supporting anti-institutional or even openly antidemocratic candidates at the polls. Mass protests have exploded in democracies from Argentina, India, and Nigeria to Germany and the United States in recent years over economic, legislative, and social issues. Anti-establishment parties and candidates are also winning or gaining in popularity in a number of established democracies, including France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
A recent article coauthored by Nobel Prize–winning economist Daron Acemoglu shows that support for democracy is strongly predicted by a citizen’s experience of successful episodes of democracy as opposed to one’s overall lifetime experience with democracy.16 Success here is measured by strong economic growth, political stability, low income inequality, and the provision of public goods (as measured by government expenditure as a share of GDP).
Notwithstanding media manipulation, the strong performance of some backsliders and autocracies is indisputable. China’s consistent economic growth has undeniably lifted millions out of poverty. Living standards have increased substantially in Turkey since the Justice and Development Party (AKP) emerged in 2002 with Erdoğan. And Rwanda under Paul Kagame, who has ruthlessly silenced his opposition, is among the world’s fastest-growing economies and has been hailed for using “homegrown solutions” to rebuild trust in a once-fragile state.
These examples by no means justify authoritarianism; a record of delivery does not excuse abuses of democratic ideals, such as the protection of individual rights and liberties. Moreover, not every autocracy performs well. While some autocratic regimes achieve economic success, most others persist in power despite poor economic outcomes and the impoverishment of their citizens. The survival of such regimes often hinges on systematic repression and harsh tactics including intimidation, surveillance, and cooptation. Leaders such as Nicolás Maduro (2013–present) in Venezuela, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe (1987–2017), and Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire (1971–97; now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), exemplify this model. All three exploited resources, enriched their inner circles, and suppressed opposition amid widespread suffering and economic decline in order to stay in power.
Democracy, however, cannot rest on its laurels. As Larry Diamond observes, “belief in the legitimacy of democracy may be shaped by culture and history, but it is also driven by economic development and the performance of present versus past regimes.”17 This is an especially salient point at a time when several nondemocracies and backsliders are gaining legitimacy and proving they can deliver, or at least appear to do so, despite imperfect political processes.
Why Delivery in Democracies Is Hard
With performance legitimacy in mind, several autocracies and backsliders in recent times have used infrastructure projects to signal competence given that they are highly visible, growth-inducing, tangible public goods that citizens can benefit from and internalize.18 Although China is a notable example, especially with its Belt and Road Initiative, several other nondemocracies have followed suit, including Kazakhstan with its Nurly Zhol (Bright Path) road construction program. Among democratic backsliders, evidence suggests that Turkey’s transportation and social infrastructure investments have increased support for the ruling AKP.19
In contrast, some of the world’s most-established democracies, including the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany, have struggled just to maintain existing infrastructure. The United States, notably, has gained a reputation for its crumbling infrastructure and white elephant projects, exemplified by the 2024 collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge and the snaillike progress on the California High-Speed Rail project, approved by the state’s voters in 2008. The United Kingdom, meanwhile, canceled a major national transportation project in 2023 to the frustration of many. High Speed 2, conceived in 2010, was supposed to connect major cities across the country to the capital and reinvigorate growth in northern England. In Germany, continued delays and overcrowding on the national rail system, widely attributed to underinvestment in infrastructure maintenance, have exasperated voters. Even more salient is the long-awaited opening of the Berlin Brandenburg Airport, which finally became operational in 2020 after nearly a decade of delays, and the still-incomplete Stuttgart 21 rail project that has been in the works for more than thirty years.
There are some obvious reasons why democracies cannot deliver as quickly as autocracies on state-led, welfare-enhancing projects such as infrastructure. For one, the due diligence necessary for environmental, social, and governance arrangements can slow down projects, albeit with the good intention of preventing harm to the natural world. Perhaps more important, most established democracies built their infrastructure decades ago, so new investments often go to maintaining old stocks rather than new construction.
Additionally, property rights and eminent-domain considerations may prevent the state from easily building large projects that transect existing communities without due process. Autocracies face no such constraints. For example, in constructing the smart-city megaproject The Line, Saudi Arabia’s government has permitted a “shoot on sight” policy against tribespeople and villagers who refuse to vacate their homes for land clearing.20
Ultimately, service delivery is simply harder in democratic political environments, where there are formal and informal veto players, emphasis on procedure and excessive mechanisms for citizen participation in public projects, an always-evolving ecosystem of independent media and information and communications technologies, political time horizons, and general skepticism of government benevolence.
Veto players. Systems that must manage competing interests and preferences, ideally achieving some consensus among them, often make only slow and piecemeal progress on policy outputs. Incorporating voices from multiple constituencies and branches of government can also yield forms of “vetocracy.” In other words, having a number of veto players across and at different levels of government can make delivering on infrastructure a near-impossible task. Moreover, when the visible and tangible impacts of a project are highly concentrated among groups of voters, “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) opposition may emerge, delaying construction and driving up costs.21
Proceduralism and public participation. Also impeding fast and efficient democratic delivery are policymaking processes bogged down in layers of procedures that can sometimes keep projects — from new housing developments to road and bridge improvements — from even starting. Strict procedural rules to legitimate policy decisions and prevent the capture of government agencies motivate the proliferation of these processes (what Nicholas Bagley has dubbed a “procedure fetish”22). Yet, it is unclear whether such emphasis on administrative procedures, frequently at the expense of delivery itself, works as intended.
Take transparency. In democracies, enhancing transparency — through mechanisms such as freedom of information laws, for example — is typically considered a good practice that helps to legitimate decisionmaking. In terms of service delivery, reducing corruption is often a central goal of transparency efforts. Yet, unlike most individual voters, who rarely attend public hearings to raise concerns about projects, highly vested interest groups typically wage lengthy political battles that prevent or delay governments from moving forward on a policy. Determining how best to enable and encourage transparency and other means of public participation without undermining delivery remains a challenge for most democracies.
Media and technology. A free media environment is undoubtedly a fundamental source of accountability in democratic societies, ensuring responsiveness to citizen needs and electoral consequences for poorly performing incumbents. Yet there are trade-offs, as with all checks on power, and a government’s ability to deliver fast and effectively may suffer when its actions are under sharp scrutiny. The rise of social media, in particular, and advent of new information and communications technologies, in the words of former CIA analyst Martin Gurri, “places governments on a razor’s edge, where any mistake, any untoward event, can draw a networked public into the streets.”23
Such technologies can also lead to a disconnect between real versus perceived delivery. The recent puzzling mismatch between strong growth under the Biden Administration and consumer sentiment has been partially attributed to negatively biased news sources on the economy, which has burgeoned since the end of the 2010s.24
Although social media and other technologies that serve as platforms for increased transparency can sometimes constrain authoritarians, their control and suppression of the media ensures that incumbents do not suffer setbacks due to public outcry stirred by negative news coverage or unfavorable stories spreading on social media. Many of today’s autocrats, rather than deriving legitimacy through broad ideological appeals following a cult of personality, instead use the media to control or manipulate information to convince citizens of the government’s competence.25
Time horizons. Electoral cycles and the distortions they sometimes produce are another factor affecting performance in democratic systems. Policy goals that do not align with the electoral cycle may severely undermine a government’s commitment to implement policies aimed at tackling long-term problems, such as infrastructure investments or climate action.26 Moreover, no politician or policymaker wants an investment they initiated to be credited to a successor if it materialized after they left office.
Skepticism. It is not only the institutional architecture of democratic governments that makes service delivery hard. As the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume observed in Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary (1758), democracies often foster a skepticism of benevolent government among citizens. Although the case can be made that such distrust is “healthy,” as it promotes strong accountability mechanisms and discourages blind faith in state directives, its implications for delivery are more nuanced.27 In order to deliver public goods, governments must sometimes enact policies that require a sufficient threshold of trust, such as raising taxes to increase revenue. Yet, if citizens refuse to comply, thereby constraining the government’s ability to deliver, this in turn can further augment citizen distrust. The result is a vicious cycle of unsuccessful delivery and ever-increasing pessimism about democracy’s ability to perform.
In a 2024 interview, the then U.S. secretary of transportation Pete Buttigieg described this dynamic: “One of the reasons . . . [political trust has] declined has been a kind of a feedback loop between public institutions letting people down and people then hesitating to empower those public institutions to solve their problems.” With respect to infrastructure specifically, Buttigieg recognized that if the people are “looking around and . . . seeing crumbling infrastructure,” they “might think, oh, the government sucks at fixing these problems” and decide that funding the government with their tax dollars is a bad investment.28
How Democracies Can Deliver Again
The perception today that democracy is incapable of, or at least bad at, delivering for its citizens is widespread.29 Its reputation used to be better. The achievements of established democracies were once unparalleled: The United Kingdom opened the world’s first metro-rail system, the London Underground, in 1863. The United States under Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) built the Golden Gate Bridge, Oakland Bay Bridge, and Hoover Dam within a five-year span in the 1930s, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s passage of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 launched one of the twentieth century’s greatest public-works accomplishments, the Interstate Highway System. Permitting requirements alone would make such achievements impossible in the United States today. So what can democracies do to regain their ability to deliver effectively?
As highlighted above, citizens’ distrust of government and government’s failure to deliver public services feed into one another. To rebuild confidence in democracy, however, it will be up to governments to take the first steps and summon the political will necessary to pursue ambitious projects. Yet, for long-term investments such as infrastructure or climate-change solutions, incumbent governments will always fear that the opposition will one day claim credit for their policy initiatives. Overcoming these inevitable commitment issues to rebuild faith in democracy’s ability to deliver will require some broad consensus across political aisles.
Australia is one such example where there has been a deep bipartisan commitment to execute on major public works. The country has had an infrastructure boom over the last decade, constructing projects such as WestConnex, Australia’s largest road tunnel, and the Sydney Metro, another major transport investment. Notably, in Figure 1a, Australia appears toward the top right of the spectrum, showcasing both high growth and high satisfaction with democracy.
Even toward the lower end of the distribution in Figure 1a, progress has not been completely meager. Greece has begun a remarkable economic recovery since the eurozone crisis of 2011; the government’s success was bolstered by a project to rebuild the Port of Piraeus (although it is ironic that the project was carried out by Chinese contractors, succeeding in part by avoiding the use of unionized labor). In the United States, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro has been widely praised for rebuilding the I-95 Interstate, finding workarounds to the numerous permitting obstacles that apply to U.S. infrastructure projects.
Of course, infrastructure is by no means the only component of delivery in democracies. Government programs can address a host of social issues, including health, nutrition, education, and employment. FDR’s New Deal programs launched during the Great Depression (1929–40) illustrate how social spending can deliver such goods to citizens, and in so doing earn citizens’ trust and goodwill. For example, the Civilian Conservation Corps (1933–42), a federal work-relief program, increased lifetime earnings and improvements in health. Evidence also shows that such programs bolstered patriotism among recipients, who purchased more war bonds and volunteered more during WWII.30
In less developed democracies, an array of policies have proven effective in alleviating poverty while also gaining widespread popularity, making them politically advantageous for incumbents. Examples include conditional cash-transfer programs, such as Brazil’s Bolsa Família, that provide financial assistance to low-income households in exchange for meeting health and education requirements. Investments in basic infrastructure, such as clean water, sanitation, and reliable electricity, significantly improve health and quality of life. Similarly, initiatives including Thailand’s Universal Health Coverage have improved access to healthcare for millions. Such measures not only reduce poverty and enhance public well-being but also strengthen public support for the governments that implement them.
Good economic management and job creation are also key. This is especially important for young people, who report the most dissatisfaction with democracy. Younger cohorts maturing into the labor force in countries that have experienced “lost decades” from economic stagnation, such as Japan, Greece, and Spain, also highly distrust the government.31
But it is worth recognizing that infrastructure is one of the most visible forms of government delivery. This is especially relevant in those democracies where old projects have reached the end of their life cycles. When roads are pocked with potholes, bridges are collapsing, and major investment plans to revitalize local economies become white elephants, citizens will naturally question the value of democracy.
None of this implies that democracies should imitate authoritarian governments to increase the speed of progress. Critics of democracy must acknowledge a fundamental and defining distinction between democratic and authoritarian rule — the power of voters in democracies to hold leaders accountable. There is no such accountability in autocratic regimes, where citizens do not decide who ascends to power or who is removed from office. This fundamental difference underscores the unique advantage of democracies: their ability to course-correct and adapt to the needs and demands of society through the peaceful transition of power, when upheld.
But for all the virtues and vices of democracy, there reside internal contradictions that affect whether and how much progress governments can achieve on their policy agendas. Executive constraints and accountability structures imposed through competitive elections are necessary checks on power, but emphasis on democratic and administrative processes can inhibit progress on the things citizens want from government. Institutionalizing a maximalist approach to democracy via excessive proceduralism will, at best, result in delayed delivery, further undermining citizens’ faith in the democratic project. To restore their confidence, democracies must resolve these internal tensions — striking the right balance between delivery and accountability, while ensuring both.
NOTES
1. Nancy Bermeo, “On Democratic Backsliding,” Journal of Democracy 27 (January 2016): 5–19.
2. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (New York: Crown, 2018).
3. Thomas Carothers and Brendan Hartnett, “Misunderstanding Democratic Backsliding,” Journal of Democracy 35 (July 2024): 24–37. The countries in their study are Bangladesh, Brazil, El Salvador, Hungary, India, Mexico, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Poland, Tunisia, Turkey, and the United States.
4. Richard Wike, Laura Silver, and Alexandra Castillo, “Many Across the Globe Are Dissatisfied with How Democracy Is Working,” Pew Research Center, 29 April 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/04/29/many-across-the-globe-are-dissatisfied-with-how-democracy-is-working/.
5. Andrew T. Little and Anne Meng, “Measuring Democratic Backsliding,” PS: Political Science and Politics 57 (April 2024): 149–61; Andrew T. Little and Anne Meng, “What We Do and Do Not Know About Democratic Backsliding,” PS: Political Science and Politics 57 (April 2024): 224–29.
6. Barbara Geddes, “How the Cases You Choose Affect the Answers You Get: Selection Bias in Comparative Politics,” Political Analysis 2 (1990): 131–50.
7. Charles Dunst, Defeating the Dictators: How Democracy Can Prevail in the Age of the Strongman (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2023).
8. Margaret Levi, “Trustworthy Government: The Obligations of Government and the Responsibilities of the Governed,” Daedalus 151 (Fall 2022): 215.
9. Seymour Martin Lipset, “The Social Requisites of Democracy Revisited,” American Sociological Review 59 (February 1994): 1–22.
10. Larry Diamond, “Power, Performance, and Legitimacy,” Journal of Democracy 35 (April 2024): 5–22.
11. Timothy Besley, Chris Dann, and Sacha Dray, “Growth Experiences and Trust in Government,” LSE Working Paper (forthcoming).
12. These figures mirror findings in Besley, Dann, and Dray’s “Growth Experiences and Trust in Government.” We purged both variables of initial log GDP per capita from our dataset to ensure the results are not driven by differential income levels that codetermine satisfaction with democracy and growth performance; the axes thus plot fitted residuals.
13. See, for example, Leonardo Baccini and Thomas Sattler, “Austerity, Economic Vulnerability, and Populism,” American Journal of Political Science (forthcoming), https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12865; Camille Bedock and Pavlos Vasilopoulos, “Economic Hardship and Extreme Voting Under the Economic Crisis: A Comparison Between Italy and Greece,” Revue Européenne des Sciences Sociales 53, no. 1 (2015): 177–96.
14. Tom R. Tyler, Why People Obey the Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).
15. Samuel P. Huntington, “Democracy’s Third Wave,” Journal of Democracy 2 (Spring 1991): 12–34.
16. Daron Acemoglu et al., “(Successful) Democracies Breed Their Own Support,” Review of Economic Studies, 16 May 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/restud/rdae051.
17. Diamond, “Power, Performance, and Legitimacy,” 13.
18. Dunst, Defeating the Dictators.
19. Mevlude Akbulut-Yuksel, Dozie Okoye, and Belgi Turan, “Expressway to Votes: Infrastructure Projects and Voter Persuasion,” Economic Journal 134 (January 2024): 48–94; Melissa Marschall, Abdullah Aydogan, and Alper Bulut, “Does Housing Create Votes? Explaining the Electoral Success of the AKP in Turkey,” Electoral Studies 42 (June 2016): 201–12.
20. Merlyn Thomas and Lara El Gibaly, “Neom: Saudi Forces ‘Told to Kill’ to Clear Land for Eco-City,” BBC News, 9 May 2024, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68945445.
21. Francis Fukuyama, “Vetocracy: Too Much Law and Too Little Infrastructure,” American Interest 12 (January–February 2017), https://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/11/08/too-much-law-and-too-little-infrastructure/; Edward L. Glaeser and Giacomo A.M. Ponzetto, “The Political Economy of Transportation Investment,” Economics of Transportation 13 (March 2018): 4–26.
22. Nicholas Bagley, “The Procedure Fetish,” Michigan Law Review 118 (December 2019): 345–402.
23. Martin Gurri, The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium (San Francisco: Stripe Press, 2018), 90.
24. Ben Harris and Aaron Sojourner, “Why Are Americans So Displeased with the Economy? Measuring Whether Economic News Has Become More Negative,” Brookings, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-are-americans-so-displeased-with-the-economy/.
25. Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman, “Informational Autocrats,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 33 (Fall 2019): 100–27; Arturas Rozenas and Denis Stukal, “How Autocrats Manipulate Economic News: Evidence from Russia’s State-Controlled Television,” Journal of Politics 81 (July 2019): 982–96.
26. Timothy Besley and Torsten Persson, “The Political Economics of Green Transitions,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 138 (August 2023): 1863–906; Finn E. Kydland and Edward C. Prescott, “Rules Rather than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans,” Journal of Political Economy 85 (June 1977): 473–92.
27. William Mishler and Richard Rose, “Trust, Distrust, and Skepticism: Popular Evaluations of Civil and Political Institutions in Post-Communist Societies,” Journal of Politics 59 (May 1997): 418–51.
28. “What Pete Buttigieg Learned Playing JD Vance,” New York Times, The Ezra Klein Show, 24 September 2024, www.nytimes.com/2024/09/24/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-pete-buttigieg.html.
29. Carothers and Hartnett, “Misunderstanding Democratic Backsliding.”
30. Anna Aizer et al., “The Lifetime Impacts of the New Deal’s Youth Employment Program,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 139 (November 2024): 2579–635; Bruno Caprettini and Hans-Joachim Voth, “New Deal, New Patriots: How 1930s Government Spending Boosted Patriotism During World War II,” Quarterly Journal of Economics1 38 (February 2023): 465–513.
31. Wike, Silver, and Castillo, “Many Across the Globe Are Dissatisfied with How Democracy Is Working”; Besley, Dann, and Dray, “Growth Experiences and Trust in Government.”
Copyright © 2025 National Endowment for Democracy and Johns Hopkins University Press
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