Subnational Strategies in Support of Democracy

In a context of increasing democratic recession at the national level, this chapter examines successful experiences in defending democracy at the subnational level. It discusses ideal types of subnational engagement, as well as empirical examples to illustrate what these possibilities look like on the ground. The chapter conceptualizes and then compares the different strategies that can be deployed at both the intermediate level of government (e.g. provinces and states that might be especially but not exclusively important in federal countries) and at the local level (e.g. cities, municipalities, and villages). In addition to examining these two main subnational levels, we are interested in two related but distinct kinds of subnational efforts: those that are targeted at resisting backsliding at the national level and those that seek primarily to preserve subnational democracy in the context of backsliding at the center. We argue that successful subnational democratic self-defense can happen both through active citizen participation and through the strengthening of subnational democratic institutions. The main implication of this argument is that while national autocratization may not be entirely reversed, subnational units can provide ideas for imagining a stronger democracy, and the empirical foundations for doing so.