DOI: 10.53557/elecciones
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La sorprendente resiliencia de la democracia

Democracy's surprising resilience

Authors

  • Steven Levitsky
    Harvard Univeristy
  • Lucan A. Way Orcid
    University of Toronto
  • DOI:
    https://doi.org/10.53557/Elecciones.2024.v23n27.01

    • Abstract

    Against widespread perceptions, the authors argue that democracy has proven remarkably resilient in the twenty-first century. Fears of a “reverse wave” or a global “authoritarian resurgence” have yet to be borne out. The vast majority of “third wave” democracies—those that adopted democratic institutions between 1975 and 2000—have long outlived the favorable global conditions that enabled their creation. The authors attribute the resilience of third-wave democracies after the demise of the liberal West's post–Cold War hegemony to economic development and urbanization, and also to the difficulty of consolidating and sustaining an emergent authoritarian regime under competitive political conditions.

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    • Author Biographies

    Steven Levitsky, Harvard Univeristy

    Steven Levitsky is the David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government at Harvard University. He is also director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard. His research focuses on democratization and authoritarianism, political parties, and weak and informal institutions, with special attention to Latin America. He is co-author (with Daniel Ziblatt) of How Democracies Die (Crown, 2018), which was a New York Times bestseller and published in 25 languages. He has written or edited 11 other books on these topics.

    Lucan A. Way, University of Toronto

    Lucan Ahmad Way is Distinguished Professor of Democracy at the University of Toronto, co-director of the Petro Jacyk Program for the Study of Ukraine, and co-chair of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Democracy. His research focuses on global patterns of democracy and dictatorship. His most recent book published co-authored with Steven Levitsky, Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism (Princeton University Press) offers a comparative historical explanation of the extraordinary durability of autocracies (China, Cuba, USSR) born of a violent social revolution. Additionally, he has published the books Pluralism by Default: Weak Autocrats and the Rise of Competitive Politics (Johns Hopkins, 2015) and Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War, co-authored with Steven Levitsky (Cambridge University Press, 2010).