Democratic backsliding^[a] is a process of regime change towards autocracy that makes the exercise of political power by the public more arbitrary and repressive.^[24][25][26] This process typically restricts the space for public contestation and political participation in the process of government selection.^[27][28] Democratic decline involves the weakening of democratic institutions, such as the peaceful transition of power or free and fair elections, or the violation of individual rights that underpin democracies, especially freedom of expression.^[29][30] Democratic backsliding is the opposite of democratization.

Proposed causes of democratic backsliding include economic inequality, culturally conservative reactions to societal changes, populist or personalist politics, and external influence from great power politics. During crises, backsliding can occur when leaders impose autocratic rules during states of emergency that are either disproportionate to the severity of the crisis or remain in place after the situation has improved.^[31]

While regime change through military coups has declined since the end of the Cold War, more subtle forms of backsliding have increased. During the third wave of democratization in the late twentieth century, many new, weakly institutionalized democracies were established; these regimes have been most vulnerable to democratic backsliding.^[32][30] The third wave of autocratization has been ongoing since 2010, when the number of liberal democracies was at an all-time high.^[33][34] One quarter of the world's population lives under democratically backsliding hybrid regimes as of 2021.^[35]

Democratization, or democratisation, is the structural government transition from an authoritarian government to a more democratic political regime, including substantive political changes moving in a democratic direction.^[36][37]

Whether and to what extent democratization occurs can be influenced by various factors, including economic development, historical legacies, civil society, and international processes. Some accounts of democratization emphasize how elites drove democratization, whereas other accounts emphasize grassroots bottom-up processes.^[38] How democratization occurs has also been used to explain other political phenomena, such as whether a country goes to a war or whether its economy grows.^[39]

The opposite process is known as democratic backsliding or autocratization.

Decolonization is the undoing of colonialism, the latter being the process whereby imperial nations establish and dominate foreign territories, often overseas.^[40] The meanings and applications of the term are disputed. Some scholars of decolonization focus especially on independence movements in the colonies and the collapse of global colonial empires.^[41][42] Other scholars extend the meaning to include economic, cultural and psychological aspects of the colonial experience.^[43][44]

Except for a few absolute monarchies, most post-colonial states are either republics or constitutional monarchies. These new states had to devise constitutions, electoral systems, and other institutions of representative democracy.

Democratic globalization is a social movement towards an institutional system of global democracy.^[45] One of its proponents is the British political thinker David Held. In the last decade, Held published a dozen books regarding the spread of democracy from territorially defined nation states to a system of global governance that encapsulates the entire world. For some, democratic mundialisation (from the French term mondialisation) is a variant of democratic globalisation stressing the need for the direct election of world leaders and members of global institutions by citizens worldwide; for others, it is just another name for democratic globalisation.^[46]

Democracy promotion, also referred to as democracy building, can be domestic policy to increase the quality of already existing democracy or a strand of foreign policy adopted by governments and international organizations that seek to support the spread of democracy as a system of government. Among the reasons for supporting democracy include the belief that countries with a democratic system of governance are less likely to go to war, are likely to be economically better off and socially more harmonious.^[47] In democracy building, the process includes the building and strengthening of democracy, in particular the consolidation of democratic institutions, including courts of law, police forces, and constitutions.^[48] Some critics have argued that the United States has used democracy promotion to justify military intervention abroad.^[49][50]

Democratic consolidation is the process by which a new democracy matures, in a way that it becomes unlikely to revert to authoritarianism without an external shock, and is regarded as the only available system of government within a country.^[51][52] A country can be described as consolidated when the current democratic system becomes “the only game in town”,^[53] meaning no one in the country is trying to act outside of the set institutions.^[54] This is the case when no significant political group seriously attempts to overthrow the democratic regime, the democratic system is regarded as the most appropriate way to govern by the vast majority of the public, and all political actors are accustomed to the fact that conflicts are resolved through established political and constitutional rules.^[55][56]

A hybrid regime^[b] is a type of political system often created as a result of an incomplete democratic transition from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one (or vice versa).^[c] Hybrid regimes are categorized as having a combination of autocratic features with democratic ones and can simultaneously hold political repressions and regular elections.^[c] Hybrid regimes are commonly found in developing countries with abundant natural resources such as petro-states.^[74][64][75] Although these regimes experience civil unrest, they may be relatively stable and tenacious for decades at a time.^[c] There has been a rise in hybrid regimes since the end of the Cold War.^[76][77]

The democracies indices differ in whether they are categorical, such as classifying countries into democracies, hybrid regimes, and autocracies,^[79][80] or continuous values.^[81] The qualitative nature of democracy indices enables data analytical approaches for studying causal mechanisms of regime transformation processes.

Democracy indices differ in scope and weighting of different aspects of democracy, including the breadth of core democratic institutions, competitiveness and inclusiveness of polyarchy, freedom of expression, various aspects of governance, democratic norm transgressions, co-option of opposition, electoral system manipulation, electoral fraud, and popular support of anti-democratic alternatives.^[82][83][84]