Restoring democratic stability: A backcasting wheel approach

Abstract

This paper performs a backcasting wheel analysis of the issue of democratic backsliding. It identifies an interacting set of proximate causes of democratic backsliding, and then a set of complementary strategies for addressing the root causes of each of these. It takes an interdisciplinary systems-based approach throughout. The paper is grounded in an extensive survey of several literatures in multiple disciplines. It shows how the backcasting wheel complements other methods employed in anticipation and future studies more generally.