LIST OF PANELS

In recent years, a wave of illiberal populist leaders have taken office in several countries (i.e., the US, Brazil, Hungary, India, Poland, Turkey, the Philippines, and the UK) and, despite coming to power through the ballot vote, they have contributed to initiating or to further deepening processes of democratic backsliding. Unlike regime change, coups d’état, and total democratic breakdown, backsliding involves subtle, gradual, and often silent processes that corrode the foundations of democratic institutions. Waldner and Lust (2018) define democratic backsliding as “a deterioration of qualities associated with democratic governance within any regime” (p. 95). Haggard and Kaufman (2021) present a more detailed and operational definition, referring to “processes through which elected rulers weaken checks on executive power, curtail political and civil liberties, and undermine the integrity of the electoral system”. For countries that did not yet have a consolidated democracy, backsliding meant many steps backward in a journey that had taken decades to move forward and away from authoritarian pasts.

Although there has been burgeoning literature on the politics of democratic backsliding, the field of public policy has only recently begun to tackle the new policy dynamics emerging in contexts of democratic decline. The edited volume by Bauer et al. (2021) was the first to address questions about the impact of illiberal populist leaders on public administration and state bureaucracies. Bauer and Knill (2014) focused on developing analytical tools to identify and explain policy change processes that entail a 'reduction,' 'decrease,' or 'diminution' of existing policy arrangements, calling it 'policy dismantling.' However, such a framework was developed for contexts of stable democracies and well-institutionalized policies.

Following their seminal work, this panel will seek to convene authors dedicated to better understanding the new dynamics affecting the policy process and why, when, and how policies change in contexts of democratic backsliding.

The panel will entertain the following research questions:

-  What have been the nature and mechanics of policy change in contexts of democratic backsliding?

-  Do illiberal populist administrations alter the policy process? How?

-  How do backsliders or illiberal populists seek policy change?

-  In the existing public policy literature, what concepts and frameworks help us understand the policy process in democratic backsliding?

-  Do illiberal populists work with or against state bureaucracies? How?

-  Are there common patterns that can be identified across different countries?

-  What new concepts and frameworks are needed to capture policy change in those contexts?

It is expected that the ensemble of papers will allow for discussions around a new body of literature that can provide a conceptual and analytical framework for those addressing policy change in the context of democratic backsliding and illiberal populism.

Bibliography 

Bauer, M. W. & Christoph Knill (2014) A Conceptual Framework for the Comparative Analysis of Policy Change: Measurement, Explanation and Strategies of Policy Dismantling, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 16:1, 28-44, –OI: 10.1080/13876988.2014.885186.

Bauer, M. W., Peters, B. G., Pierre, J., Yesilkagit, K., & Becker, S. (Eds.). (2021). Democratic Backsliding and Public Administration: How Populists in Government Transform State Bureaucracies (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009023504

Haggard, S., & Kaufman, R. (2021). Backsliding: Democratic regress in the contemporary world. Cambridge University Press.

Waldner, D., & Lust, E. (2018). Unwelcome Change: Coming to Terms with Democratic Backsliding. Annual Review of Political Science, 21(1), 93–113. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-050517-114628

Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Donald Trump in the US, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Recep Erdogan in Turkey, to mention a few: what do these current and former leaders have in common? Most political analysts would point to their conservative agendas, their populist styles, and their embracement of an anti-pluralist agenda that, along with autocratic legalism (de Sa e Silva, 2022), erode the democratic principles of their countries. Analysts and scholars are still beginning to address how those leaders have profoundly affected the functioning of state institutions and the very public policies produced by their administrations (Bauer et al., 2021).

Existing frameworks in the public policy literature provide some helpful conceptual tools to take stock and analyze new policy dynamics emerging in those contexts: policy dismantling (Bauer & Knill, 2014), institutional resilience (Pierson, 1994), institutional change (Mahoney & Thelen, 2010), state and policy capacity (Wu et al., 2018), bureaucratic reactions (Bauer et al., 2021), among others. However, in some cases and contexts, existing frameworks might be insufficient and require conceptual innovations and adaptations.

To amass knowledge and new analytical approaches to the policy process in democratic backsliding, this panel will convene works that address one or more of the following questions:

-  What have been the nature and mechanics of policy change in contexts of democratic backsliding?

-  Do illiberal populist administrations alter the policy process? How?

-  How do backsliders or illiberal populists seek policy change?

-  In the existing public policy literature, what concepts and frameworks help us understand the policy process in democratic backsliding?

-  Do illiberal populists work with or against state bureaucracies? How?

-  Are there common patterns that can be identified across different countries?

-  What new concepts and frameworks are needed to capture policy change in those contexts?

The panel welcomes research presentations focused on various settings and addressing any policy field.

Bibliography

Bauer, M. W. & Christoph Knill (2014) A Conceptual Framework for the Comparative Analysis of Policy Change: Measurement, Explanation and Strategies of Policy Dismantling, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 16:1, 28-44, –OI: 10.1080/13876988.2014.885186.

Bauer, M. W., Peters, B. G., Pierre, J., Yesilkagit, K., & Becker, S. (Eds.). (2021). Democratic Backsliding and Public Administration: How Populists in Government Transform State Bureaucracies (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009023504

de Sa e Silva, F. (2022). Law and Illiberalism: A Sociolegal Review and Research Road Map. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 18(1), annurev-lawsocsci-110921-105921. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-110921-105921

Mahoney, J., & Thelen, K. (Eds.). (2010). Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity, Agency, and Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511806414.

Pierson, P. (1994). Dismantling the welfare state? Reagan, Thatcher, and the politics of retrenchment. Cambridge University Press.

Wu, X., Ramesh, M., & Howlett, M. (2018). Policy capacity: Conceptual framework and essential components. In Policy capacity and governance (pp. 1–25). Springer.