EROSION OF DEMOCRACY AND DEMOCRATIC RESILIENCE
ABSTRACT
Research on erosion of democracy has blossomed during the last decade. Much less scholarly attention has been devoted to the issue of democratic resilience. But how can we understand democratic resilience? How can we conceptualize it? What role do institutions, actors and structural factors play? I sketch three potential reactions of resilient democratic regimes to erosion of democracy: to withstand without changes, to adapt through internal changes, and to recover without losing the democratic character of its regime and its core institutions, organizations and procedures..
BIO
Wolfgang Merkel is Prof. of Political Science at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB) and Senior Scholar of the Democracy Institute at Central European University in Budapest. He is i.a. a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science and a Prof. em. At Humboldt University of Berlin.