The world currently has been in the throes of a twin process of ‘democratic backsliding’ and ‘democratic backlash. How would you explain this paradox?
How the answer moves
The flow snapshot — the routes in, the body, the counter-view and the routes out.
Route 1 democracy more championed than ever, yet more eroding than in decades → the paradox stated
Route 2 Held: nations embrace democracy just as the nation-state’s efficacy is questioned → read as globalisation’s double edge
define backsliding (erosion of executive constraints) + backlash (nationalist reaction against openness), advancing together → two vectors of backsliding: charismatic populism (Erdoğan, Orbán, Trump, Chávez) + partisan degradation (party abandons rules, captures courts / checks / election machinery) → backsliding globalised via transnational networks (parties, think tanks, media; autocratic backing) → same networks seed parochial backlash against the openness that enabled them → Global State of Democracy Report (43% declined over five years; 70% under non-democratic/backsliding rule; Hungary, Philippines, Brazil, India, USA)
erosion is not terminal → recovery routes remain: defend institutional intermediaries, preserve bulwark institutions, contest subnational offices even where national ones are captured
Route 1 the paradox = globalisation’s double edge: it spreads both democracy and the tools that erode it
Route 2 openness is at once democracy’s vehicle and its vulnerability → the “twin process” is one phenomenon, not two
Model answer
Handwritten, in the form it would be written in the examination hall.
