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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Polit. Sci.

Sec. Peace and Democracy

Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpos.2025.1447925

This article is part of the Research Topic Non-Western Democracies – Theories, Conceptual Analyses, Case Studies View all 4 articles

Democratic resilience or retreat? -A cross-area analysis 1

Provisionally accepted
  • Institute of Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of Marburg, Marburg, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Forms of democratic backsliding can be observed in many parts of the world. Some conclusions are, however, too sweeping or alarmist. A detailed case-based and regional analysis reveals distinct patterns in this respect. This paper highlights some recent findings of a longitudinal international research project, the "Transformation Research Initiative "(TRI), now located at the Center for Research on Democracy (CREDO) at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. The project involves country and regional experts from all major world areas The results presented here are based on the "Varieties of Democracy "(V-Dem) data on the macro-level, "World Values Surveys "(WVS) data on the micro-level, and selected case studies. Only a few of the major findings can be presented here. For a detailed account see van Beek (ed., 2022).

    Keywords: Democratic resilience, democratic backsliding, Political support, Emancipative values, Good Governance, System competition

    Received: 12 Jun 2024; Accepted: 13 Feb 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Berg-Schlosser. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Dirk Berg-Schlosser, Institute of Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of Marburg, Marburg, Germany

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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