WHY WE SHOULD THINK ABOUT DEMOCRATIC FRONTSLIDING AS WELL AS DEMOCRATIC BACKSLIDING

Abstract

For the ast decade or so, we have been worrying about democratic backsliding – movement toward autocratic rule in nations that we thought were stably democratic. Our attention to backsliding may have distracted us, though, from another im ortant henomenon – frontsliding, so to s eak. If backsliding is a move from democracy toward autocracy, frontsliding is a move from autocracy to democracy. Professors Dan Slater and Jose h Wong’s im ortant book From Development to Democracy offers an elegant argument that sometimes autocrats themselves initiate movement toward democracy even when they are not facing imminent colla se. They show how dominant olitical arties in South Korea, Taiwan, and Ja an gave u a seeming guarantee of remaining in ower through continuing re ression in order to remain in ower through reasonably free and fair elections instead. Their argument, which I outline in Part II, is that sometimes democracy occurs because the dominant arty is strong rather than weak and on the verge of colla se. That o ens u the ossibility of similar frontsliding transformations in other authoritarian, autocratic, or quasi-autocratic nations, including Singa ore and, most intriguingly, China. I examine this ossibility in Part III.