Introduction

This chapter first introduces the five questions about democracy and autocracy that structure this book. They concern concepts, currents, causes, consequences, and challenges. We then demonstrate that democracy for a long period was laden with negative connotations, while today it is generally praised – and often misused. After a brief overview of how the literature has developed historically, we direct the reader’s attention towards some of the impulses that have contributed to stimulating interest in democratization and autocratization: the increasing number and diversity of democracies, the democratic zeitgeist which became dominant by 1989, and most recently, the strengthening of autocracy around the world. These developments have sparked both an interest in different types of democracy and a renewed focus on autocratization and autocratic subtypes.

The great problem of our time is the organisation and establishment of democracy. (Tocqueville 1988 [1835]: 311)