CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2023
| Author | Ivkovic, Aleksandar |
|---|---|
| Title | International Constraints on Democratic Backsliding |
| Summary | Recent studies of democratic backsliding have considered international influences as one of the factors that could explain its different outcomes across countries. However, few empirical studies have been carried out to confirm it. This thesis contributes to the literature on democratic backsliding by attempting to empirically test the assumption that international influences can affect the trajectory of democratic backsliding by constraining it. It uses the concepts originally created to explain the international democratization of authoritarian regimes, including linkage and leverage (Levitsky and Way 2006), to examine the effects the West (the U.S. and the EU) might have on the countries in which democracy is deteriorating. Due to the lack of previous empirical confirmation, it first uses process tracing to find the hypothesized causal mechanism in the most likely typical case (North Macedonia). It then proceeds with an attempt to find a statistically significant relationship between linkage and leverage and the outcomes of backsliding using regression analysis. Both parts of the research confirm that the international factors can indeed act as a constraint on democratic backsliding. Their relative importance compared to domestic factors has proven to be more challenging to determine. |
| Supervisor | Schneider, Carsten Q. |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2023/ivkovic_aleksandar.pdf |
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