On Wednesday, December 6, Larry Diamond, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), delivered the twentieth annual Seymour Martin Lipset Lecture on Democracy in the World on “Power, Performance, and Legitimacy: Renewing Global Democratic Momentum” in Washington, D.C.

The Lipset Lecture was inaugurated in 2004 by the International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the Munk School for Global Affairs at the University of Toronto as an important new forum for discourse on democracy and its progress worldwide. It is also co-sponsored by the Embassy of Canada to the United States.

The lecture was followed by a conversation between Diamond and Democratic Leader of Belarus Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, moderated by NED’s vice president for studies and analysis, Christopher Walker. A recording of both is available below, and the lecture will also be featured in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Democracy.

How serious is the threat to democracy in the United States and around the world? In a CDDRL/TEC REDS Seminar talk, Daniel Treisman argued that claims of a global democratic decline and authoritarian backsliding are exaggerated and lack empirical evidence.

Treisman, who is a professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, questioned the assertion that the proportion of democracies in the world has been decreasing, showing, that, according to Polity data, it stands at an all-time high. At worst, the proportion has been plateauing, according to V-Dem ratings. Indeed, V-Dem’s liberal democracy rating and Freedom House’s “free state” rating have downscored a number of countries in recent years. Yet, Treisman indicated, inconsistencies across the two lists of downgraded countries suggest that the evidence is unclear and the assessments behind these trends are subjective. Although the momentum of democratization has slowed down in recent times, Treisman added, we have not entered a period of total decline. 

How much of the recent trend in democratic breakdown was expected? Treisman’s analysis shows that a country’s level of economic development and democratic history were strong predictors of decline, which is consistent with prior theoretical expectations. Most countries that democratized during the third wave were poorer than the average democracies worldwide. They were also – by definition – newer. These two factors made them prone to backsliding, and according to the model, the breakdowns that we have observed can be attributed to these two factors.

Treisman also challenged proliferating claims that the United States faces a serious risk of a democratic breakdown. Based on its income level and long democratic experience, the odds of breakdown are extremely low. That said, erosion in the quality of democracy is still quite plausible. 

Finally, Triesman questioned the notion that falling public support for democracy and erosion of elite norms have been driving observed incidents of democratic decline. Popular support for democracy seemed relatively high in backsliding democracies. Given how difficult it is to quantify shifts in elite norms, there has yet to be clear cross-national evidence showing an association between elite norms and democratic backsliding.

While Treisman believes there is no evidence to justify extreme alarmism around the issue of global democratic decline, the possibility of chaos and unfairness at the margins of established democracies warrants much attention and vigilance.

In an era marked by profound societal transformations, identity, democracy, and justice have become central to the discourse on shaping fair and inclusive societies. Recognizing the imperative to delve into these complex issues, political scientist Hakeem Jefferson is launching a new research initiative at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. The Program on Identity, Democracy, and Justice (IDJ) serves as a nexus for researchers committed to unraveling the multifaceted dimensions of identity and informing tangible steps toward a more equitable future.

Against the backdrop of diverse topics such as racial and ethnic identity, gender and sexuality, religion, class, and citizenship, the IDJ program emerges as a hub for interdisciplinary collaboration. Its reach extends beyond academic circles, bringing together researchers and organizations who are thinking about how to build fairer, more inclusive societies.

“Hakeem's work on race and politics in America is an important part of the Center's expanding work on the quality of American democracy,” shared Kathryn Stoner, Mosbacher Director of CDDRL. “We are thrilled to launch this new program on such a crucial issue at CDDRL.”

"This program is the embodiment of years of hard work by Hakeem Jefferson in building an innovative research agenda and a vibrant scholarly community attentive to pressing questions on struggles for recognition, inclusion, and social justice,” added Hesham Sallam, the Center’s Associate Director for Research. “I look forward to seeing the program flourish and grow while contributing to intellectual life at CDDRL and Stanford at large."

How and why do armed actors intervene in democratic politics? In a CDDRL seminar series talk, postdoctoral fellow Andres Uribe presented a multifaceted theory explaining the strategies violent groups adopt to influence democratic processes. The talk drew on Uribe’s research on Colombia and Peru.

Uribe shows that armed groups face a choice between co-opting or undermining democracy. More specifically, groups pursuing co-optation try to influence the existing political process through either “corruption” or “capture.” Corruption entails the use of positive inducement to shape the behavior of elected officials or voters, whereas capture entails the use of the threat of force to achieve similar goals.

Those groups seeking to attack democracy do so through two different strategies. The first is “delegitimization,” which could involve attacks on elections and voting sites. The second is “displacement” or the violent removal of the democratic system and its replacement with an entirely different political order.

What determines a given armed group’s choice of strategies (i.e., corruption, capture, delegitimization, or displacement)? The answer, according to Uribe, is determined by the group’s ideological compatibility with democracy and its coercive capacity. Among groups professing ideologies compatible with democracy, they are likely to engage in corruption under low levels of coercive capacity, and capture under higher levels. As for groups whose aims are incompatible with the democratic process, they tend to pursue delegitimization when their coercive capacity is low, and displacement at higher levels of coercive capacity.

Uribe tested his theory based on a paired comparison of Peru’s Sendero Luminioso (SL) and Colombia’s FARC. To characterize each group’s relative ideological compatibility with democratic politics, he drew on a corpus of 7500 documents spanning 21 Latin American countries. He found FARC to be more compatible with democracy than the average armed actor, while SL was less compatible.

To measure coercive capacity, Uribe used data on coca production and cocaine retail pricing in the US as reflective of SL’s and FARC’s military finances. Using casualties in attacks against democracy as an indicator, he found that when FARC possessed a high coercive capacity, there was a slight increase in the number of victims, whereas a similar increase in Sendero’s capacity yielded a 15-fold increase in the number of deaths.

Uribe’s analysis shows that during electoral contests, FARC attempted to reduce the conservative vote share, whereas SL attempted to reduce overall turnout. These outcomes are consistent with Uribe’s theory — FARC’s compatibility with democracy pushes them to work within the system, focusing their attacks on the other party. Sendero, conversely, attempts to prevent all participation in the democratic process.

Uribe’s findings suggest the importance of ideology in understanding how armed actors behave and emphasizes that they do not all share the same motivations. His work also highlights the way some groups play the democratic game using violence, a choice previously seen as mutually exclusive.