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The Institutional Roots of Democratic Backsliding

The importance of political institutions for democracy governance is well founded. Institutions enable the aggregation of preferences. Agenda-setting powers in committees, legislatures, and political parties, for example, help prevent cycling among decision makers. Institutions also aid in the solution to the problem of time inconsistency.Without the institutional capacity to delegate or tie one’s hands, societies would be stuckwith suboptimal outcomes. Independent central banks and courts, for instance, enable leaders to make credible commitments. Institutions in democracies allow for the solution of a range of problems so that democracy can “run better.”Theproof is to be found in the fact that democracies, on average, produce better outcomes: higher economic growth, better welfare for citizens, and fewer wars (e.g., Russett 1994; Sen 1983). In short, institutions make democratic governance possible. Both the third wave of democratic transitions in southern Europe and Latin America in the late 1970s and the fourth wave in eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia after the fall of the Berlin Wall seemed to corroborate the scholarly consensus. As Fukuyama (1995) explained, “The normative assertion that liberal democracy is the best available regime depends . . . not simply on a theoretical view of the adequacy of its moral and political arrangements, but also on empirical verification