ABSTRACT This article analyses bureaucratic militarization in Brazil under the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro as illiberal transformation from within, constituting a specific modus of democratic backsliding. Quantitative data about the presence of military members in civil organizations over time and qualitative data from interviews with civil servants directed by “military men” show how military networks infiltrated the Brazilian civil service and how they increased their power over time, thus creating an illiberal alliance with the populist presidency. The article contributes to the debate about authoritarian populists in government and the perils of autocratization by identifying bureaucratic militarization as a particular mode of democratic backsliding to which young democracies appear especially vulnerable.

ABSTRACT The past decade has witnessed worldwide backsliding on democracy, and the COVID-19 pandemic might have exacerbated this trend. This study examined popular confidence in democracy in China, Japan, and South Korea, which represented authoritarian and democratic contexts. The results show that Chinese citizens had a negative perception of the capacity of democracy to control the outbreak of COVID-19 and achieve economic growth, with an unfavourable evaluation of democracy as a better political system than alternatives. Although Japanese and South Korean citizens had more favourable evaluations of democracy than their Chinese counterparts, such positive evaluations were lukewarm in the former two countries. Confidence in the home political system in South Korea did not correlate with confidence in the capability of democracy to address economic challenges, as observed in Japan. The COVID-19 pandemic prompted ordinary people to seek a strong leader, reinforcing Chinese citizens’ beliefs in the superiority of their authoritarian political system. Simultaneously, it weakened South Korean citizens’ confidence in the effectiveness of their home political system. However, it had no discernible impact on Japanese citizens’ belief in the superiority of their political system.

ABSTRACT As artificial intelligence (AI) technologies spread worldwide, international discussions have increasingly focused on their consequences for democracy, human rights, fundamental freedoms, security, and economic and social development. In this context, UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, adopted in November 2021, has emerged as the first global normative framework for AI development and deployment. The intense negotiations of every detail of the document brought forth numerous controversies among UNESCO member states. Drawing on a unique set of primary sources, including written positions and recorded deliberations, this article explains the achievement of global compromise on AI regulation despite the multiplicity of UNESCO member-state positions representing a variety of liberal and sovereignist preferences. Building upon Boltanski’s pragmatic sociology, it conceptualizes the practice of multilateral negotiations and attributes the multilateral fragile agreements to two embedded therein compromises: Structural normative hybridity and situated normative ambiguity allowed to accomplish a compromise by linking macro-normative structures with situated debates of multilateral negotiations.

ABSTRACT The current research on deliberative-participatory democratic innovations conducted by state administration agencies exhibits empirical eclecticism and is dominated by a deliberative paradigm. However, this paradigm tends to conflate normative prescription with analytical description. In contrast, this article proposes a comprehensive re-conceptualization of such innovations, drawing from Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory. It outlines the specific problem these innovations address (function), how they operate in tackling this problem (functioning) and the problems they inevitably raise (dysfunctions). In addition, my re-conceptualization retains the possibility to critically compare these (and other) experiments regarding their capability to address emerging challenges within the modern democratic political system.

ABSTRACT Previous research on delegative democracy has predominantly emphasized its structural aspects, leaving the individual-level determinants of support for this governance relatively unexplored. While some studies have investigated the association between trust in the president and delegative democratic attitudes (DDA), the connection between technocratic beliefs, DDA, and the context of national emergencies has been minimally addressed. This study aims to fill this research gap by examining the correlation between technocratic beliefs and DDA, specifically focusing on how emergencies influence this relationship. Analysing data from the Asian Barometer Survey and the World Values Survey, the results indicate a robust connection between individuals’ technocratic beliefs and DDA. Moreover, this correlation exhibits greater strength as a country’s level of emergency escalates. These results may provide valuable insights into our understanding of both individual and structural factors associated with public support for delegative democracy.

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ABSTRACT What is the relationship between the type of electoral system and the degree of party fragmentation in electoral autocracies? According to Duverger’s hypothesis, proportional representation (PR) is positively associated with party fragmentation. This study investigates whether this hypothesis holds true in non-democratic political systems that hold elections. I propose that, unlike in democracies, PR is negatively correlated with the level of party fragmentation in electoral autocracies. To test this hypothesis, I utilize panel data encompassing 37 non-democratic nations that held elections from 1975 to 2010. The results demonstrate that PR is inversely linked to both the number and size of political parties. The effective number of parties (ENP) is employed as a measure of party fragmentation, estimating the weighted size and quantity of political parties.

ABSTRACT China built internment camps officially referred to as training centres within the scope of a policy for countering extremism and terrorism in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in 2017. While the repression imposed by China on Uyghurs in these camps has attracted the response of the international community, there has been neither a public protest nor a meaningful government response to China in Turkey, despite it having been the voice of Uyghurs on international platforms before 2017. This study aims to identify the reasons for Turkey's silence on the persecution of Uyghurs by utilizing the legitimation and co-optation strategies of the authoritarian stability framework. The Turkish government’s legitimation strategies of “rallying around the flag” via anti-Americanism and the economic expectations of China to boost its performance-based legitimacy are evaluated as reasons for the government’s silence on the Uyghur cause. Moreover, it is also discussed how formal and informal co-optation strategies of the government with nationalist and Eurasianist parties are playing a role as a bolstering mechanism of its silence policy on Uyghurs.

ABSTRACT This study explores demand-side stories of democratic backsliding among citizens. We argue that individual job insecurity is associated with higher levels of support for strong leaders who are not committed to being subject to legislative checks and balances. Furthermore, we contend that this relationship is mitigated by higher asset levels and household income. In our analysis of Korea, we utilize data from the 2018 World Values Survey and the 2021 Korean General Social Survey. These results provide robust evidence for this hypothesis. Specifically, we find that assets as private alternatives to the welfare state moderate the effect of job insecurity on public support for undemocratic leaders. The findings from the Korean case have implications that can be generalized: enhancing job security and expanding public welfare provisions could bolster citizens’ democratic attitudes and behaviours.