ABSTRACT
The literature on democratic subversion has been actor centric. It has laid much emphasis on the causal weight of actors. At the same time, it has been ignoring the perspective of actors themselves. In this chapter, I bring participant perspectives back into the picture by looking at democratic subversion. By putting ourselves in the shoes of actors, I propose, we can shed fresh light on some basic questions: What are the limits of structural approaches to the measurement and explanation of democratic subversion? How do we recognize a democratic crisis when we see one? How do we recognize processes of democratic subversion and their protagonists when we see them? And how should we think about resistance against democratic subversion?
