Description
In the 2010s, a wave of democratic backsliding inflicted various corners of the world. The exact mode and source of contemporary democratic backsliding are still debated. We argue that the rise of illiberal great powers, Russia and China, prompted two discrete waves of democratic backsliding. Both Russian and China fostered democratic erosion in foreign countries, exporting their own governance models through autocratic assistance. Thus, the democratic erosion over the past decade can be disaggregated into two modes, disseminating two different illiberal scripts. Furthermore, Russia and China accounted for democratic backsliding in discrete places during different time periods, driven by their foreign policy approaches. First, the Russian governance model of super-presidentialism diffused throughout the former Soviet bloc until 2014. On the other hand, the Chinese governance model based on digital authoritarianism has diffused at the margin of the US-led order since 2014. For large-N empirical analysis, we employ difference-in-differences models to account for the temporal heterogeneity of the two modes of democratic backsliding in the past decade. Extending the scope of foreign policy debates on the rise of China and Russia to domestic political contentions, this study shows that domestic political changes are, in part, grounded in great power politics.
