The erosion of democracy

Abstract

| In view of the new wave of authoritarianism expanding throughout the world, it is essential to better understand the phenomenon and to devise appropriate strategies to analyze it. To this end, this article proposes three contributions. First, it discusses the moral cost of democratic deterioration. It is argued that the value of democracy is not only defined by its performance, but because it ensures that citizens can choose and control public power. Second, it proposes the concept of democratic erosion as an analytical tool that denotes a process of deterioration of the attributes of the political regime that puts its democratic nature at risk. Finally, two paths of democratic erosion are currently proposed. It is on this basis that recent contributions and pending agendas are discussed.