Latent territorial threat and democratic regime reversals
| Author | Jaroslav Tir,Douglas M Gibler,Johannes Karreth |
| Date | 01 March 2022 |
| Published date | 01 March 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/00223433211009770 |
| Subject Matter | Regular Articles |
Latent territorial threat and democratic
regime reversals
Johannes Karreth
Department of Politics and International Relations, Ursinus College
Jaroslav Tir
Department of Political Science, University of Colorado Boulder
Douglas M Gibler
Institute for Social Science Research, University of Alabama
Abstract
Why do some democracies revert to non-democratic forms of governance? We develop an explanation of democratic
reversals that emphasizes the influence of states’ external border relations on domestic politics. Latent threats to a
state’s territory encourage political centralization of authority in the executive to defend against danger to the
homeland. Latent territorial threat also facilitates the construction and maintenance of large land armies to fight
threatening neighbors. Combined, latent territorial threat increases leaders’ domestic power, weakens democratic
institutions, encourages other conditions threatening democratic survival, and, ultimately, leads to democratic
reversals. Synthesizing prior research on territorial conflict, we generate a quantitative, continuous measure of latent
territorial threat against all democracies with contiguous neighbors from 1946 to 2016, using Bayesian estimation.
Empirical tests accounting for measurement uncertainty and other common determinants of reversals as well as brief
reviews of individual cases of reversal provide robust evidence that democracy failed at higher rates in countries facing
high levels of threats to their territory from neighbors. Our study implies that a complete account of the development
of democratic institutions should emphasize that domestic factors alone fall short of explaining why democracies fail.
Keywords
democratic reversals, domestic politics, territorial threat
Why do democratic countries sometimes revert to auto-
cratic governance? Many scholars have pointed out that
democratic forms of government have an abundance of
desirable economic, social, and international conse-
quences.
1
As Mitchell (2012) argued, democracies had
become so common and commanded so many of the
world’s resources by the early 2000s that democratic
norms set standards of behavior for both democracies
and non-democracies alike.
Despite the putative benefits of democratic govern-
ance, however, democracies do not always survive once
established. Democracies revert to non-democratic forms
of governance with some regularity, with waves of demo-
cratization preceding ‘reverse waves’ of democratic back-
sliding (Waldner & Lust, 2018: 94). Why? Since World
War II, domestic movements, international organiza-
tions, foreign aid donors, and international norms have
facilitated transitions to democracy across the globe,
which makes reversals to non-democratic systems
Corresponding author:
jkarreth@ursinus.edu
1
Norris (2012) is representative for this large literature. A scholarly
literature search for ‘democratic advantage’ in international contexts
returns more than 1,600 results in early 2021.
Journal of Peace Research
2022, Vol. 59(2) 197–212
ªThe Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/00223433211009770
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puzzling since democratic systems and institutions
remain preferred by majority populations.
This articleargues that explanationsof reversion need to
account for the influence of democracies’ international
environment. A country’s latent threat environment – in
particularthe threat to its territorialintegrityfrom its neigh-
bors – is an importantbut overlookedfactor in determining
which form of governance a countryadopts and keeps (see
Gibler & Tir, 2010; Gibler, 2012). This argument builds
upon the longstanding logicthat only those countries exist-
ing in relatively safeand peaceful environments can afford
to democratize,while those living in threateningsituations
are likely to remain autocratic (Thompson, 1996; Tilly,
1985). We expand this logic to explain why democracies
fail. Ourargument suggests that countries with democratic
institutions in threatening environments will face greater
challenges to maintain these institutions and, conse-
quently, have a higher risk of reversal.
This logic supplants prior work on democratic rever-
sals. For example, just as democratic transitions are more
likely for countries in areas with more democratic neigh-
bors, democracies are less likely to survive in neighbor-
hoods with fewer democracies (Gleditsch, 2002).
Existing explanations for this clustering of democracies
mostly focus on the regional diffusion of democratic
norms (Elkins & Simmons, 2005) as well as the role of
international organizations (Pevehouse, 2002; Donno,
2010) in promoting norms or bolstering domestic dem-
ocratic institutions and processes. Conversely, in regions
without strong democratic norms or established
democracy-promoting organizations, reversals would be
more likely. While these explanations provide credible
theoretical and empirical accounts of regional patterns in
democratic reversals and their prevention, they omit ter-
ritorial threat as an important source of democratic rever-
sal that has a more fundamental impact on regional
environments.
A more complete understanding of obstacles to lasting
democratization is especially important because mixed
regimes – including those that democratized and then
reverted – are particularly fragile and prone to internal
violent conflict (Hegre et al., 2001). We show that
democratization efforts may be less fruitful in the long
run in countries facing latent territorial threat. We also
know that governments facing low popularity among the
public tend to ramp up diversionary territorial threats
toward neighbors (Tir, 2010). Our study therefore con-
tributes to the wider literature by showing that govern-
ments engaging in territorial diversion heighten the risk
of democratic breakdown in neighboring countries, lead-
ing to a ripple effect.
Unlike previous territorial conflict research, we
emphasize that territorial threat is a latent and slow-
moving concept and, therefore, we develop a latent mea-
sure of territorial threats to the state. Using the new
measure, and consistent with our argument, we show
that latent territorial threat is associated with democra-
cies sliding back into autocracy.
Why do democracies revert?
The literature on democratization and democratic con-
solidation has developed several explanations for demo-
cratic reversals. While acknowledging that the processes
driving democratic reversals are complex (cf. Waldner &
Lust, 2018), we briefly review a few key factors that
feature particularly prominently in this literature to show
that the impact of territorial threat on consolidation and
reversals should be considered in conjunction with, or
even prior to, existing explanations.
Domestic factors
Foundational for modernization theory, Lipset (1960)
argued democracies with poorly performing economies
are more likely to revert to autocratic institutions. Prze-
worski et al. (2000) found that wealthier democracies are
far less likely to transition back to autocracy. Acemoglu
& Robinson (2006) and others suggested that among
economic factors, inequality and the resulting demand
for redistribution are key drivers of both democratization
and new democratic institutions’ prospects for survival.
Although debates about the empirical support for this
conjecture persist (e.g. Freeman & Quinn, 2012), the
economy in broad terms, most commonly operationa-
lized as economic development, is typically identified as
one of the most powerful predictors of democratic sur-
vival (Gassebner, Lamla & Vreeland, 2013: 191).
Past experience with democratic transitions seems
crucial in explaining whether new democratic institu-
tions persist. Boix & Stokes (2003) found robust evi-
dence for a strong association between previous
democratic reversals and the increa sed odds of demo-
cratic breakdown. This association remains in the pres-
ence of economic variables (Boix & Stokes, 2003;
Gassebner, Lamla & Vreeland, 2013) and implies that
past reversals induce path-dependent patterns of future
reversals. That reversals to autocracy tend to occur
repeatedly within one country suggests an underlying
factor driving these repeated reversals. We maintain that
territorial threat is such an underlying factor, which can
be linked both directly to reversals and also to some of
the other domestic sources of reversals.
198 journal of PEACE RESEARCH 59(2)
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