What Happens After Democratic Erosion? Conceptualizing and Analyzing Erosion Reversal and Post-erosion Democratic Reconstruction

While current work in the field of autocratization concentrates to explore democratic erosion, the post-erosion developments so far remain neglected. Hence, this project is interested in what happens if the democratic erosion in a country has come to an end. Post-erosion democratic reconstruction is one scenario, what other trajectories are possible? How does the return to democracy evolve after an erosion halted? And under what conditions is it successful, and why would it fail? The research objectives are: 1) Developing a so far not extant theoretical conceptual approach for the analysis of the reversal of democratic erosion and the consequent democratic reconstruction. 2) Providing the empirical exploration of the reversal of democratic erosion in an in-depth small-n comparative analysis. This project contributes insights on, which specific actors’ constellations, institutional factors, and mechanisms facilitate or hinder post erosion democratic reconstruction, a puzzle which is also highly relevant for practitioners.