No dia 21 de novembro, Cristina Chiva (Universidade de Salford) será a oradora de um seminário do Grupo de Investigação RIGoP sobre Autocratization from Below: Illiberal Entrepreneurs in the Third Wave of Autocratization. A partir das 11h, online.

Significant advances in our understanding of the third wave of autocratization notwithstanding, extant scholarship continues to be predicated on the assumption that autocratization unfolds from the top down - that is, that it is driven by elected leaders in national positions of power. In this paper, I argue that the widespread presumption of ‘autocratization from above’ in extant literature on autocratization obscures a second, equally important, dimension of autocratization characteristic of the third wave. I conceptualize this ‘missing dimension’ as autocratization from below, understood as a process of democratic erosion that occurs from the bottom up rather than from the top down. The key actors in processes of autocratization from below are illiberal actors and movements seeking to undermine the democratic norms that enable marginalized groups such as ethnic minorities, women and LGBTQ+ groups to participate fully in social and political life, and doing so with increasing success in recent years. The principal goal of this paper is to flesh out the concept of autocratization from below and to outline the pathways to autocratization from below characteristic of the third wave. Substantively, the paper is organized in three sections. First, I outline the necessary and sufficient attributes for a parsimonious definition of the concept of autocratization from below, and specify the conditions under which we can expect to find the empirical phenomena that the concept applies to. Secondly, I conduct a plausibility probe with the aim of identifying ‘real world’ case studies that are best understood as cases of autocratization from below, finding relevant cases in the US, the UK, Croatia, Slovenia, Poland, and Bulgaria. Finally, I identify three main pathways to autocratization from below: strategic litigation, societal mobilization and institutional capture. The conclusions reflect on the consequences that the concept of autocratization has for current work on the erosion of democratic institutions across the world.