The Autocrats Toolkit: What Do Would-be Autocrats Do When They Undermine Democracy?
Dec 16, 2024·,·
0 min read
Joep van Lit
Carolien Van Ham
Abstract
Since the 1990s, incumbent-led autocratization in democracies is increasingly common. However, there is surprisingly little systematic and comparative research into the actions would-be autocrats actually take when they undermine democracy. We combine the wealth of in-depth yet context-specific case studies with the case-selection strategies from the comparative literature to develop such an overview of autocratic actions inductively. This empirically-based autocrats toolkit encompasses about 400 unique autocratic actions which we classify into 7 overarching strategies: evasion, manipulation, infiltration, duplication, restriction, prohibition, and delegitimation. Would-be autocrats selectively use these different strategies in varying arenas of democracy to gradually erode democracy. The toolkit provides a starting-point to systematically study autocratization within and across different cases, enabling the identification of sequencing and diffusion patterns, and helping generate better understanding of when autocratization is successful.
Type
Publication
SSRN working paper