It has been well established in the literature on democracy that a severe economic recession puts poor democracies under strain and often leads to a democratic breakdown. However, previous studies have paid far less attention to how such a recession affects medium-income and richer democracies. This is not surprising, as before 2008 affluent democracies were never hit by severe recessions of the scale of the Great Depression (1932-1936). As the current economic crisis severely hit (and hits) precisely such democracies, it presents an unprecedented opportunity to examine the impact of economic downturns on more affluent democracies. Though recently a lot of research efforts have been put into examining the impact of the economic crisis on such topics as welfare state reform; protest mobilisation; economic voting; European integration and the fate of populist parties, to date the more fundamental impact of the crisis on our core democratic institutions has largely been unexamined. This paper will outline a theoretical framework on the matter and analyse the impact of the direct consequences of the ongoing economic recessions on democracy by means of event history analysis.
