Democratic resilience and re-democratisation

Abstract

Almost two decades into the current wave of autocratisation, regime scholars have been turning their attention to the potential for democracies to resist mounting authoritarian pressures and for democratic norms and institution to be restored after a period of decline. This article proposes a way of putting order into this emergent, and as yet fragmented, wave of scholarship on democratic resilience and re-democratisation. It advances three key readings–normative, temporal, and geographical–that help us identify the distinguishing features of the contemporary struggle for democracy in the age of autocratisation, and open crucial avenues for future research.