Scholars increasingly point to polarization as a central threat to democracy—and identify
technology platforms as key contributors to polarization. In contrast, we argue that …

How has populism transformed party systems in Europe? I survey the varieties of populism,
the sources of their support and the different ways that they appeal to voters. I use data from …

How do duly elected rulers weaken checks on executive power, curtail civil and political
liberties, and undermine the integrity of the electoral process? Drawing on sixteen cases of …

Why do voters vote for undemocratic politicians in a democracy? My chief contention is that
affective polarization has become a primary factor driving support for undemocratic …

This article analyses the state of democracy around the world in 2021. The level of
democracy enjoyed by the average global citizen in 2021 was down to 1989 levels. In 2021 …

A culture of trust is usually claimed to have many public benefits--by lubricating markets,
managing organizations, legitimating governments, and facilitating collective action. Any …

This article provides a new conceptualization of regime transformation that allows scholars
to address democratization and autocratization as related but obverse processes. We …

Despite the general narrative that the world is in a period of democratic decline, there have
been surprisingly few empirical studies that assess whether this is systematically true. Most …

With widespread democratic backsliding globally, people's support for democracy-eroding
leaders is receiving overdue attention. But existing studies have difficulty disentangling …

This article presents the state of democracy in the world in 2022 using the most recent
Varieties of Democracy dataset (V13). There are four main findings. First, the level of …