ABSTRACT
Democratic optimism flourished in the early 1990s, but it was not long before it was replaced by pessimism. In this chapter, we investigate two claims: (1) that beginning around 1989, the third wave had come to be characterized by an increasing gap between electoral and liberal democracy and (2) that in recent decades, we have witnessed a large-scale global wave of autocratization. Our investigation leads us to nuance both claims. First, while we do find a growing grey zone of thinner types of democracy and multi-party autocracies, this does not seem to be the result of a gap between electoral and liberal elements of democracy. Second, a recent decline in the global level and share of democracy can be registered, but it began later than conventional wisdom has it, its magnitude varies greatly depending how the data are presented, and most ways of looking at it indicate only moderate regression. We also demonstrate how the massive third wave of democratization has been much stronger in some regions than in others, and how we even find one region which the wave has largely passed by. This chapter concludes that the democratic gains of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s have proven relatively resilient.
