New Forms of Democratic Erosion in Latin America

This Element seeks to unpack the varied modalities of democratic erosion in Latin America by proposing a novel analytical framework that breaks down backsliding episodes into their constituent parts: (1) the actors that promote autocratization and those that resist it, (2) the strategies that autocratizers and oppositions employ, (3) the arenas of contention in which they struggle over democratic norms and institutions, and (4) the objectives that these different actors pursue in the promotion of or resistance to democratic erosion. This framework is applied to five contemporary cases that reflect a new, diversified wave of democratic erosion, including El Salvador, Mexico, Peru, Guatemala, and Honduras. Through comparative analysis, we derive preliminary insights on the kinds of strategies pursued by different constellations of autocratizers and opposition actors, in hopes of stimulating future avenues of research and contributing to scholar and practitioner efforts to reverse alarming autocratic trends in the region.