This chapter reflects upon the functioning of the EU and the way it can be evaluated by using the comparative politics approach. Recent crises have increased the EU’s involvement in many policy areas, begging questions as to where the EU now stands as a political organization. Moreover, the greater involvement of the EU in policymaking also brings to the fore important questions about the democratic quality of the EU. The chapter first highlights the hybrid nature of the EU, combining features of an international organization with those of a state. It next discusses the debate about the democratic deficit, concerning the extent to which citizens can determine the EU’s policies and keep the EU accountable. The chapter subsequently discusses the rule of law crisis and the commitment of all EU member states to safeguard fundamental rights and values common to all the EU member states and enumerated in the Treaties. Concerns about democratic backsliding in some EU member states have resulted in procedures against member states to address the risk of breaching these values. As these procedures are highly political, tackling such breaches in this way is fraught with difficulties.

After coming to power in 2002, the AKP in Turkey took the country on a roller coaster from democratic reforms to authoritarian retreat. Starting off as a “conservative democratic” party with liberal tendencies, the AKP pivoted back to majoritarianism over the years. This chapter aims to make sense of this drastic shift and offers an account of the AKP’s swing from liberalism to electoralism. It discusses the AKP’s origins, its trajectory in government, and how it has taken a hegemonic direction despite its branding in its inception as a conservative party with an explicitly democratic agenda. To explain this transformation, the chapter identifies major forces inside the AKP, their diverging understandings of democracy, and describes how one wing prevailed over the other to take the party into a majoritarian direction. A key part of this process involves the rise of a dominant coalition under Tayyip Erdoğan’s leadership. His growing command over organizational resources weakened his rivals with more liberal democratic orientations. This chapter traces these processes and their political consequences for Turkish democracy, with specific focus on Erdoğan’s righteous majoritarianism.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this book, the erosion of democracy has become pervasive. Countries in Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa have seen the rise of executives with hegemonic aspirations. The threat of antisystemic populist outsiders has even spread to developed democracies in Europe and North America. In this chapter, I assess the theory outlined in the book in some of these cases. Doing so allows me to evaluate if, when, and how does the argument of this book work outside Colombia and Venezuela.

In this chapter, I develop a theory that focuses on the opposition’s strategic choices to fight the erosion of democracy. I define democratic erosion as a type of regime transition that happens over time, giving the opposition ample opportunity to respond, even after a leader willing to circumvent democracy has attained power. The strategies the opposition chooses and the goals it uses them for, I argue, are critical to understanding why some executives with hegemonic aspirations successfully erode democracy and others do not.

The erosion of democracy has become globally pervasive. New and old democracies around the world are now led by executives willing to undermine democratic institutions in order to achieve their policy goals. The booming literature on democratic backsliding has, for the most part, focused on the factors that drive these executives with hegemonic aspirations to power (Handlin 2017b; Norris and Inglehart 2019b) or the resources they have available to successfully undermine democratic institutions (Corrales 2018b; Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018b; Ginsburg and Huq 2019b; Weyland and Madrid 2019b). The underlying assumption of these theories is that popular and economically solvent heads of government in institutionally weak countries are almost always going to erode democracy, while their less popular and economically solvent counterparts in institutionally strong countries are almost always going to fail.

Up until the 1990s, Venezuela was one of the longest-running and most stable uninterrupted liberal democracies in Latin America. Today, it is an authoritarian regime. In nineteen years, Hugo Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, managed to destroy the system of checks and balances, end free and fair elections, and terminate political rights and civil liberties. The government has delayed and canceled elections, circumvented the authority of the elected legislature, imprisoned political opponents without trial, used lethal force against protesters, and banned opposition parties. How is it that Venezuela, historically one of the most robust democracies in the region, turned into the second most authoritarian country in Latin America?

In the previous chapter, I showed how the Venezuelan opposition’s strategic choices helped Hugo Chávez erode democracy. In this chapter, I develop the other part of my argument by highlighting the role of the Colombian opposition in preventing democratic erosion. Between 2002 and 2010, Alvaro Uribe tried to erode democracy in Colombia. Like Hugo Chávez (1999–2013) in Venezuela, he introduced several reforms that sought to reduce the checks on the executive and extend his time in office beyond a second term. He was polarizing, and willing to push as far as he could to increase the powers of the presidency and stay in office beyond a second term. His government harassed opposition members, journalists, and members of the courts and worked in tandem with illegal armed actors to systemically undermine those who criticized the president. Contrary to Chávez, however, Uribe was not able to turn Colombia’s democracy into a competitive authoritarian regime. Despite his attempts to undermine the independence of the courts and the fairness of elections, Colombia’s constitutional order remained fairly strong, and Uribe had to step down after his second term.

In the past two decades, several democracies have slipped into democratic recession. Faced with economic or security crises, democratically elected executives in Latin America, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Africa have used their popularity to push for legislation – particularly constitutional amendments – that, over time, destroys systems of checks and balances, hinders free and fair elections, and erodes political rights and civil liberties. Across the world, these heads of government have found ways to subvert democratic norms while simultaneously maintaining a democratic façade. Using and abusing elections and institutional reform, they are turning new and old democracies alike into competitive authoritarian regimes.

This chapter introduces the Indonesian case and the empirical puzzle, outlines the argument, discusses the book’s contributions to the study of Indonesian politics and representation in young democracies, presents data sources and methods, and introduces the structure of the book.

This chapter concludes the book. It summarizes the findings and discusses their implications for democracy in Indonesia and elsewhere. In addition, it addresses some open questions that intersect with the argument, most importantly with regard to democratic representation, participation and accountability.