Luca Tomini

Despite their methodological differences and conceptual starting points, scholars and analysts of democracy have come to a common conclusion that can be termed as bleak: various forms of autocratiz...

To what extent are political regimes vulnerable to crises? Established research has explored in depth how crises can compromise regime stability, from Linz's foundational studies to contemporary investigations. Yet, such contributions remain scattered across unconnected concepts, methods, and applications, thus hindering cumulative knowledge. This article crafts a coherent examination of different crises and their impacts on regime instability, with a twofold contribution: first, it synthesizes the findings of such a large literature; second, it advances them through a single framework and an extensive empirical test of their external validity. Applying various indicators of economic, violent, and disaster-related crises, our global study implements a broad range of time-series cross-sectional regression models on direct and moderated effects on different types of regime instability (alteration in democracy levels, democratic upturns/downturns, democratization/autocratization episodes, and democratic breakdown/transition) in democracies and autocracies. The findings not only confirm but also unveil multiple crises-related pathways of regime change, especially for economic and violent crises, and a generally greater fragility of autocracies compared to democracies, both in the face of the impact of a single crisis and in the occurrence of simultaneous crises. This reassessment bridges previous examinations, offers important policy suggestions, and opens up ways for further inquiries.

Autocratization typically results from measures aiming at seizing, strengthening, and consolidating political power. However, it is not without risks: it may produce adverse reactions from multiple actors and possibly lead to the fall of its perpetrators from power. What makes autocratizing incumbents more capable of surviving during such a perilous process? We argue that the adoption of ideological legitimation strategies makes incumbents more capable of surviving during autocratization in democratic and electoral authoritarian regimes. We test our argument through survival analysis of incumbents in power during processes of autocratization from 1900 to 2024. Though relatively understudied in the context of autocratization, our study highlights ideology as a key factor in the process of transformation of a political regime toward autocracy.

This chapter investigates the European Union’s (EU) evolving engagement with dissensus over liberal democracy in its immediate neighbourhood, the region encompassing the Western Balkans, the Eastern Neighbourhood, and the Southern Neighbourhood. After charting the diverse ways in which dissensus over liberal democracy manifests in this area, we examine the EU’s formal strategies for promoting liberal democracy and addressing autocratisation in its neighbourhood. In practice, however, deeper democratisation remains elusive. By systematically reviewing how coherent action is undermined by various factors such as domestic drivers of dissensus, implementation failures in EU conditionality, competing global alliances, and the EU’s internal dissensus, the analysis reveals why stated objectives often fail to translate into real reforms. Ultimately, the chapter shows that, despite the EU’s rhetorical commitments and sophisticated policy instruments, structural factors at home and abroad—ranging from differing member state interests to alternative governance models offered by major powers—create a persistent gap between the EU’s liberal-democratic vision and the fractured, on-the-ground realities of its neighbouring regions.

1. The European Union (EU) has long positioned itself as a global champion of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, leveraging its soft, normative, and transformative power to promote these...

During the past few decades, Latin American governments’ recurrent attacks against journalists have contributed to the erosion of press freedom in the region and, relatedly, of the quality of democracy. Yet what pushes governments to harass journalists? We argue that governments are more likely to harass journalists when popular support for them drops. Due to the ability of journalists to influence public opinion, governments could perceive the harassment of journalists as a means to punish and silence those individuals who are seen as contributing to their decline in public support or as obstacles to regaining popularity. We test our argument on a sample of Latin American countries observed from 1990 to 2019. We find that declines in governments’ popular support lead to more harassment of journalists. Our research contributes to the debate on the determinants of press freedom and sheds further light on the current decline of democratic quality in Latin America.

Although term limit violation is a widely examined form of autocratisation in sub-Saharan Africa, this research focuses on the relatively understudied but increasingly frequent cases in which term limits prove resilient. We distinguish two forms of term limit resilience, namely, compliance and enforcement, and we offer the first regional-level study of its determinants using qualitative comparative analysis. We find democracy – that is, the factor that is often considered the strongest predictor of term limit resilience – to be decisive when term limits are threatened or likely to be threatened. However, other mechanisms resulting from the interplay of factors that can be present in both democratic and non-democratic regimes stand out for their explanatory power – most notably, path dependence, regime legacies and opposition. Conversely, factors such as the international promotion of democracy and military autonomy appear to play a secondary role, at least from a comparative viewpoint.