Theories of Democratic Backsliding

We review recent contributions to the modeling of democratic backsliding. We organize these theories according to (a) the source of constraints on the executive (vertical or horizontal restrainers) and (b) the target of backsliding (electoral manipulation or executive aggrandizement), and then use these concepts to build a scaffold for a meta-model of democratic backsliding. This meta-model allows us to describe and compare the premises and insights of this scholarship. We further apply our two-dimensional classification to more than 30 empirical papers and show how these theories can guide research design. We conclude by highlighting open issues for future research.