Democratic Backsliding: Ethics, Politics and Law

Abstract

The last decade has witnessed considerable democratic backsliding globally as well as in Europe. This panel discusses the implications of this process for political theory, political ethics, and legal theory. First, it explores how normative and conceptual analyses can contribute to diagnoses of backsliding. What is special about democratic backsliding among the variety of phenomena that can be characterized as democratic failure? What are the conceptions of democracy that underlie claims of democratic backsliding, and which of these conceptions is (are) more helpful for the purposes of finding remedies to it? Papers in the panel make sense of the phenomenon by scrutinizing the conceptions of democracy underlying diagnoses of democratic backsliding, as well as by offering conceptual clarity to the notion of backsliding and investigating the significance of regime typologies for normative theories of political action. Second, papers in this panel draw the implications of democratic backsliding for the strategy and ethics of political action. Is there reason to believe democratic backsliding is reversible? If so, what are the rational and morally permissible strategies to resist backsliding and contribute to re-democratization? What is the role of mass political mobilizing, social transformative work and individual voting in these processes? In answering these questions, this panel lays out avenues for resisting backsliding as well as for re-democratization, and grapples with the moral challenges of these remedies at the level of both collective and individual action.

Title	Details
From Democratic Deficit to Democratic Backsliding: What Conception of Democracy for Europe?	View Paper Details
Democratic Regressions and Possibilities for Progress	View Paper Details
Voting as an Act of Resistance in Hybrid Regimes	View Paper Details
Generative Democracy and the Dynamics of Social Orders	View Paper Details