ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a first preliminary assessment of the reverse process in the contemporary period. It presents some findings on the reverse phenomenon, starting with an explanation of the criteria used for case selection. The analysis will compare the findings obtained using three of the most popular and used democracy indices in the scientific literature: the Freedom in the World index by Freedom House, the Polity index by the Polity IV project of the Center for Systemic Peace, and the Electoral Democracy index by the V-DEM Varieties of Democracy project. Polity IV produces two distinct sub-indices of democracy and autocracy, based on the same six dimensions: regulation of chief executive recruitment, competitiveness of executive recruitment, openness of executive recruitment, constraints on chief executive, regulation of participation, and competitiveness of participation. The phenomenon of negative changes within democracy is rising, mainly because of problems in maintaining stability of new democratic institutions.
