![]() IDEA’s (International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance) 2017 report “The Global State of Democracy: Exploring Democracy’s Resilience” highlighted that many such “third wave” democracies have problems with re-consolidation and democratic backsliding. Today it can be seen that the quality of democracy is declining in many countries due to both internal and external influences. 4 Thus, it is safe to say that “third wave” democracies are very different in terms of the quality of their democracy. Leonardo Morlino defined them as “hybrid regimes”, 2 Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way as “competitive authoritarian regimes” 3 and Thomas Carothers as “gray-zone countries”. 1 Even though many of those new democracies took hold, a number of “third wave” democracies remained essentially unfree. Samuel Huntington described it in 1991 as a “third wave” of democratisation that started in 1974. This seemed to confirm that democracy would soon become the main form of governance. Liberal Democracy in CrisisĪfter the collapse of the Soviet Union, many new democratic countries stepped onto the world stage. This raises the questions whether liberal democracy is capable of facing down the challenges of today: how can we define, evaluate and measure its resilience? what makes some democracies more durable than others? and why do some countries experience the erosion of democratic qualities, backsliding from democracy, or even its total failure? By understanding these issues we can consider the fragility of liberal democracy better and increase its resilience to adapt to today’s changes, challenges and crises. The future of liberal democracy seems to be getting bleaker with every passing year. ![]() We are witnessing decreasing support for democratic states, human and civil rights, and the principles of the rule of law and the increasing popularity of illiberal populism and nationalism and the growing strength of authoritarian regimes around the world. It seems that in recent years the success of liberal democracy has come to halt and it has started going into decline while authoritarian regimes are emerging, both in established Western democracies and the world in general. As we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, it would be fitting to assess the current state of liberal democracy on a global level in order to understand in what direction the world is evolving.
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