ABSTRACT
Countries that have experienced democratic declines since 2006 include Armenia, Bangladesh, Ecuador, Guinea, Mauritania, and Russia, among others. Two causes emerge as the most common for democratic retrenchment: military coups and manipulation of electoral systems by parties in power. Democratic reversals in Armenia, Ecuador, and Russia were all due to the activities of ruling parties to limit political competition and/or popular participation in politics. The Polity Project scores all independent countries of the world with a population of at least 500,000 on autocratic and democratic features, resulting in a 21-point scale going from -10 to 10 to measure regime type. Polity categorizes all regimes as autocracies, anocracies, or democracies, based on Polity scores. Anocracies are hybrid regimes, with both authoritarian and democratic institutional features. The overall trend is one of increasing political inclusion of ethnic minorities.
