Early in her career, Prof. Susan C. Stokes saw a wave of democratization. In Southern Europe, Latin America and the former Soviet Union, authoritarian regimes were tumbling.
But in this first quarter of the 21st century, the tides have changed. In her new book, The Backsliders: Why Leaders Undermine Their Own Democracies, the University of Chicago political scientist explores not just how we got here but also provides readers with tools to identify the rhetoric of a backsliding democracy and to push against it.
Stokes’s work began with a 2021 Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, which supported her research into how would-be autocrats attack democracy. That includes the core discovery in the book—that democracies with high levels of income inequality are more likely to experience democratic erosion. The finding, originally published in PNAS at the end of 2024, was based on a large cross-national statistical study that revealed a robust association between economic inequality and democratic erosion.
The data also showed that even wealthy and longstanding democracies are vulnerable to democratic backsliding if their citizens’ economic realities are highly unequal.
In her book, Stokes traces the connective tissue between inequality and democratic backsliding. The leaders who were coming into office and then eroding their democracies were those who relied on some degree of grievance, frustration or nihilism among the populace regarding “elite” institutions. Stokes connected income inequality with democratic backsliding through increased partisan polarization: Income inequality encourages partisan polarization, and a polarized public is more tolerant when their leaders attack the press, the courts and other institutions.
“There are enormous political costs to democratic backsliding. It is a terrible threat to individual rights protections, rule of law and economic stability,” said Stokes, the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Political Science.
“There's a lot at stake and income inequality is a cause of that,” she added. “It’s another reason to think about what we can do to make sure that there's a more equal distribution of the fruits of economic activity.”
The book explores the historical question of why some countries are more likely to fall into a pattern of democratic backsliding than others. Stokes also considers how to distinguish instances of backsliding from examples of presidents and prime ministers flexing their strength. She offers examples and comparisons of democracies she considers near-miss cases of backsliding, those who showed symptoms and those who fell to their leaders’ autocratic tendencies.
These comparative studies, Stokes said, underscore the crucial role of voters and the public to counter a backsliding democracy.
The book is careful to note the difference between politicians who attack democratic institutions and politicians who support policies that some dislike. Stokes also notes that backsliders aren’t relegated to one end of the political spectrum: They might be right-wing ethno-nationalists or left-wing populists.
But the book doesn’t end with analysis. Stokes was careful to offer her readers a range of tactics to counter democratic backsliding.
“We owe it to people to give them some sense of—if you favor democracy—what can be done to counter this,” Stokes said.
Stokes organizes this solutions-oriented portion of the book by actors. For example, those working in public policy or on a political campaign can consider how to address and counter polarization or institutional cynicism, which can arise in part because of income inequality and a loss of hope in the future. She also illustrates how journalists and professional organizations can hold backsliders to account, often by way of publicizing or otherwise highlighting a backsliding administration’s errors, scandals and other instances of underperformance, particularly economic.
Writing this book during the midst of a global period of democratic backsliding made Stokes’s work tricky, but perhaps more vital. Even recent literature on the topic began to age in real time.
Stokes acknowledges that finding effective responses to backsliding is also a moving target, but hopes her book is at least a place to start.
“I have the sense, when I've spoken to groups about this project—in particular, non-academic members of the public—they do find it reassuring that we can think about this and we can analyze it and we can figure it out,” she says. “It isn't just something inscrutable and inevitable and overwhelming that's happening to us.”
