Diversity in a Globalized World

Lecture 2: Globalization, Populism, and Democratic Erosion

Bogdan G. Popescu
bgpopescu@tec.mx

Tecnológico de Monterrey

Where Monday left off

  • The shock landed on particular towns, not on the country
  • Ten years later the jobs were gone and the people were still there
  • Autor, Dorn and Hanson followed those places. Then they followed the votes

So today’s question is: what did that do to their politics?

The same places, and how they voted

Figure 1

What that picture shows

  • Sort the 722 places into four groups by exposure
  • Least exposed: +4 points to the Republican candidate
  • Most exposed: +10 points — more than twice as much
  • Same unit as Monday, same measure. Only the outcome changed

This plot is descriptive. The paper isolates the Chinese shock and controls for what each place already looked like — we are not doing that today.

Exercise 1 — What else could explain it?

The places that lost the most factory jobs swung hardest to the right. The obvious story: people who lost work voted against the party in power.

In pairs: name two other things that could produce exactly the same picture.

Then take one of them: what would you look at to tell it apart from the job-loss story?

Possible Answers

  • It was already going — these places were declining before China arrived
  • Immigration — the same towns received migrants: about neighbours, not jobs
  • Who lives there — older, whiter, less urban, less educated; each predicts the swing on its own
  • The candidate — 2016 was Trump, not an average Republican
  • The campaigns — both parties poured effort into exactly these states

Every one of these produces the same scatterplot.

Telling them apart

What you want is a comparison the two stories disagree about:

  • Same trade shock, no immigration — does the swing survive?
  • Same demographics, no shock — does the swing disappear?
  • The swing measured before 2016 — is it still there without Trump on the ballot?

I. Two Different Problems

Two Phenomena, Often Confused

  • Competitive authoritarianism (Levitsky & Way, 2010): a regime type
    • Elections are real but the playing field is tilted
    • These regimes were never fully democratic
  • Democratic backsliding: a process
    • Consolidated democracies erode incrementally
    • No clean rupture — legal, step-by-step decline
  • Conflating these is the most common error in casual commentary

Regime Type vs. Process

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flowchart LR
    A["<b>Competitive<br/>Authoritarianism</b><br/><i>Regime type</i><br/>Never fully democratic"] --- C["<b>Both involve<br/>elections +<br/>unfair competition</b>"]
    B["<b>Democratic<br/>Backsliding</b><br/><i>Process</i><br/>Was democratic,<br/>now eroding"] --- C
    C --> D["<b>But the starting<br/>point differs</b>"]
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    style B fill:#e8f5e9,stroke:#4a7c6f,stroke-width:2px
    style C fill:#f9fafb,stroke:#334155,stroke-width:2px
    style D fill:#fff3e0,stroke:#b7943a,stroke-width:2px

How democracies die now

Today’s reading, Bermeo (2016), makes the case:

  • Backsliding is incremental, not sudden
  • The usual form is executive aggrandizement — elected leaders weakening the checks on themselves
  • Each step is defensible; the cumulative effect is not
  • This lecture: what logic makes those steps possible?

Bombing of La Moneda, Santiago, 1973 — how democracies used to die. Source: Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile (CC BY 3.0 CL).

Cases at a Glance

  • Competitive authoritarianism: Russia under Putin, Singapore, Cambodia
    • Elections exist but were never free and fair
  • Democratic backsliding: Hungary, Poland, Turkey, Venezuela
    • Democracies that eroded after consolidation
  • Promissory coups: Thailand (2014), Egypt (2013), Myanmar (2021)
    • Military seizure with “restoration” rhetoric
  • Most dangerous today: backsliding — hardest to detect

Which is it?

The three labels, in plain terms:

  • Competitive authoritarianism — elections are real, the field was never level
  • Democratic backsliding — a real democracy, eroding step by step
  • Promissory coup — seized by force, with a promise to hand it back

Which one fits each case?

  1. A country has held free, competitive elections for thirty years. Its government now rewrites the electoral law so the opposition can no longer win a majority.
  2. The very same law — but in this country, the opposition has never once been allowed to win.
  3. The army removes an elected president, suspends the constitution, and promises elections within the year.

The answers

  • 1 — democratic backsliding. A working democracy is dismantling itself
  • 2 — competitive authoritarianism. Nothing is being lost; it was never there
  • 3 — promissory coup. The rhetoric of restoration, the machinery of seizure

Cases 1 and 2 are the same law. All that changed was where the country started — and that is the distinction commentary gets wrong most often.

The Question for This Lecture

  • Not asking: why do regimes hold fake elections?
  • We are asking: Why do some democracies dismantle themselves?
  • What political logic makes this possible?
  • One influential answer: populism

II. What Is Populism?

Not a Policy — A Logic

Mudde & Kaltwasser (2017): Populism is a thin ideology.

  • Society divided into two homogeneous, antagonistic groups
  • “The pure people” vs. “the corrupt elite”
  • Politics should express the volonté générale of the people
  • A claim about legitimate authority, not policy
  • Compatible with left and right

Left and Right Populism

  • Left populism: people = dispossessed; elite = oligarchy
    • Chávez, Morales, Podemos, AMLO
  • Right populism: people = native majority; elite = cosmopolitans
    • Orbán, Trump, Le Pen, Salvini
  • Same structure, different content
  • Thin ideology attaches to thicker host ideologies

Populism vs. Pluralism

The real contrast is not left/right but populism vs. pluralism:

Source: Adapted from Mudde & Kaltwasser (2017).
Populism Pluralism
Society One people, one will Multiple legitimate interests
Opposition Enemies of the people Legitimate competitors
Institutions Obstacles if they constrain Necessary checks on power
Compromise Betrayal Essential to governance
Mandate Absolute — elections settle everything Partial — rights constrain majorities

Why Populism Is Not Just “Angry Voters”

  • Economic grievance ≠ populism
  • You can be economically frustrated and still accept pluralism
  • Populism = political logic attaching to many grievances
  • What matters here: a logic that can put it in tension with pluralist constraints

Why the courts become the enemy

Three steps. Each one sounds reasonable on its own.

  1. The people have one will — the election revealed it
  2. I speak for the people — that is what winning means
  3. So anyone who blocks me is blocking the people

Nothing about the court has changed. What changed is what it is called.

Careful: this is a tendency, not a definition. If we define populism as “rejecting checks,” then “populism erodes checks” is true by construction — and therefore untestable. The claim only has content if populism is defined independently, as Mudde does.

The same institution, renamed

What it was What it is called
An independent court “Activist judges blocking the people’s will”
A free press “Fake news serving elite interests”
An electoral commission “A deep state undermining democracy”

Now removing the check is the democratic act — and defending it is the elite one. That inversion is the whole danger.

Populist Logic → Erosion Feedback Cycle

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flowchart LR
    A["<b>Electoral victory</b><br/>claimed as<br/>the people's mandate"] --> B["<b>Institutions framed</b><br/>as elite obstacles"]
    B --> C["<b>Constraints weakened</b><br/>courts packed, media<br/>pressured, rules changed"]
    C --> D["<b>Opposition disadvantaged</b><br/>playing field tilted"]
    D --> E["<b>Next victory larger</b><br/>mandate 'confirmed'"]
    E --> A
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    style B fill:#fff3e0,stroke:#b7943a,stroke-width:2px
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    style D fill:#fbe9e7,stroke:#b44527,stroke-width:2px
    style E fill:#e8f5e9,stroke:#4a7c6f,stroke-width:2px

The Populist Redefinition of Institutions

  • Pluralism: checks protect everyone, including minorities
  • Populism: checks protect elites from the people
  • Same institutions, opposite interpretations
  • Legitimacy only from popular mandate
  • Judicial independence, press freedom → suspect
  • “I am finally making democracy real”
  • Populism and erosion: logically connected

III. Why Now?

The Populist Wave

  • Populist surge across democracies in the 2010s
  • Not one region, ideology, or grievance
  • Europe, Latin America, Asia, the US
  • Why did this happen when it did?
  • Four explanations compete; none has won

European Parliament hemicycle, Strasbourg. Source: Diliff, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Populist Vote Share in Europe

Figure 2: Mean populist party vote share across European democracies. Source: Timbro Authoritarian Populism Index (2024).

Four Competing Explanations

Compare these with the list you made in Exercise 1.

Source: Framework draws on Inglehart & Norris (2016), Mudde & Kaltwasser (2017).
Explanation Mechanism Key prediction
Economic insecurity Globalization losers, deindustrialization, 2008 crisis Populist support concentrated among economically displaced
Cultural backlash Status threat from immigration, value change, secularism Strongest among older, culturally traditional voters
Elite failure Party convergence, cartelization, no meaningful choice Strongest where mainstream parties most similar
Media ecology Algorithmic amplification, epistemic fragmentation Correlates with social media penetration

A Provisional Thesis

  • Dominant debate: economic vs. cultural — but either/or misleads
  • There is credible evidence for both channels
  • Their relative weight appears to vary by setting
  • How much, and where, is not settled
  • Next two slides: one careful study on each side

Trying to Disentangle: Two Key Studies

  • Colantone & Stanig (2018): import shock → populist vote
    • Economic channel confirmed in periphery
  • Mutz (2018): status threat predicts Trump support (panel data)
    • Cultural channel confirmed in wealthy democracies
  • Not contradictory — different contexts

Brexit referendum results (2016). Blue = Remain, gold = Leave. Deindustrialized regions voted Leave. Source: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

The Identification Problem

Figure 3: Conceptual illustration: economic and cultural explanations predict overlapping populations.

Why the Cause Matters for Policy

  • If economic → redistribute and the populist wave recedes
  • If cultural → redistribution alone will not suffice
  • Both channels are real; neither explains every case
  • Trade shocks do visible work in deindustrialised regions
  • Status threat shows up strongly in survey panels
  • No single policy lever — that is the finding
  • Wrong cause → wrong policy

IV. Populism and Institutional Erosion

Ginsburg & Huq: Constitutional Retrogression

Ginsburg & Huq (2018): three pillars of liberal democracy under attack:

  1. Competitive elections — gerrymandering, media capture, electoral rule changes
  2. Liberal rights — press freedom curtailed, civil society squeezed, minority rights eroded
  3. Rule of law — court packing, prosecutorial independence eliminated, constitutional amendments
  • Retrogression = systematic degradation across all three
  • Each step is individually small and legal

Three Pillars Under Attack

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flowchart LR
    A["<b>Liberal Democracy</b>"] --> B["<b>Competitive Elections</b>"]
    A --> C["<b>Liberal Rights</b>"]
    A --> D["<b>Rule of Law</b>"]
    B --> B1["Gerrymandering"]
    B --> B2["Media capture"]
    B --> B3["Electoral rule changes"]
    C --> C1["Press freedom curtailed"]
    C --> C2["Civil society squeezed"]
    C --> C3["Minority rights eroded"]
    D --> D1["Court packing"]
    D --> D2["Prosecutors politicized"]
    D --> D3["Constitutional rewrites"]
    style A fill:#e8f5e9,stroke:#4a7c6f,stroke-width:3px
    style B fill:#fff3e0,stroke:#b7943a,stroke-width:2px
    style C fill:#fff3e0,stroke:#b7943a,stroke-width:2px
    style D fill:#fff3e0,stroke:#b7943a,stroke-width:2px
    style B1 fill:#fbe9e7,stroke:#b44527,stroke-width:1px
    style B2 fill:#fbe9e7,stroke:#b44527,stroke-width:1px
    style B3 fill:#fbe9e7,stroke:#b44527,stroke-width:1px
    style C1 fill:#fbe9e7,stroke:#b44527,stroke-width:1px
    style C2 fill:#fbe9e7,stroke:#b44527,stroke-width:1px
    style C3 fill:#fbe9e7,stroke:#b44527,stroke-width:1px
    style D1 fill:#fbe9e7,stroke:#b44527,stroke-width:1px
    style D2 fill:#fbe9e7,stroke:#b44527,stroke-width:1px
    style D3 fill:#fbe9e7,stroke:#b44527,stroke-width:1px

Applying the Framework: Hungary

Bermeo’s incremental steps, in the Ginsburg & Huq frame:

  • Elections: rules redrawn (2014); media captured
  • Rights: NGO law (2017); CEU forced out
  • Rule of law: court packed (2012–13); new constitution
  • All three pillars degraded — textbook retrogression

Hungarian Parliament, Budapest. Source: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

V-Dem Liberal Democracy Index

Figure 4: V-Dem Liberal Democracy Index (v2x_libdem, 0–1). Source: V-Dem Institute, Dataset v14.

Case: Venezuela Under Chávez

  • 1998: Chávez elected in a real democracy
  • 1999–2004: New constitution, court packed (20 → 32)
  • Media pressured; oil-funded patronage → dominance
  • By 2010: competitive authoritarianism

Capitolio Federal, Caracas — seat of the National Assembly. Source: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Venezuela: The Oil-Fueled Variant

  • Resource rents → no tax-based accountability
  • Patronage replaced party competition
  • Opposition boycotted 2005 elections → legitimacy gift
  • Under Maduro: full authoritarian consolidation
  • Same logic as Hungary + resource-curse dynamics
  • Populist erosion not confined to one ideology

Case: Mexico Under AMLO

  • 2018: AMLO wins with 53%; Morena supermajority 2024
  • Elections: INE budget cut, board politicized
  • Rights: military in civilian roles; press pressured
  • Rule of law: 2024 reform → judges elected by popular vote, June 2025
  • INAI (transparency body) left non-functional
  • Framed as “returning power to the people”

National Palace, Mexico City — seat of the executive. Source: Diego Delso, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Mexico, after the first judicial election

  • 1 June 2025: voters elected roughly 2,600 judges and magistrates
  • Among them, all nine Supreme Court justices
  • Turnout: about 13%
  • Every Supreme Court seat went to a candidate aligned with the governing party
  • The remaining federal judges are elected in 2027

We are no longer asking what the reform will do. We can ask what it did.

Source: INE turnout estimate (12.6–13.3%) and results reported June 2025.

Comparing the Cases

Hungary Venezuela Mexico
Populism of the right left left
How the courts fell constitution rewritten bench packed, paid for with oil judges put to a vote
How long it took about 2 years about 10 years 2024 law, 2025 election
Where it stands elections, but unfair no longer a democracy too early to say

The difference that matters: the first two packed their courts. Mexico elected its own — independence redefined as accountability.

Not a first: Bolivia has elected its high-court magistrates since 2011. Mexico’s novelty is the scale — the entire federal judiciary. Sources: Ginsburg & Huq (2018), Levitsky & Way (2010), V-Dem.

Exercise 2

Applying the Framework (7 min)

Using Ginsburg & Huq’s three pillars, evaluate Mexico under AMLO/Morena:

  1. Competitive elections: What changed? What was threatened?
  2. Liberal rights: Which rights or freedoms were affected?
  3. Rule of law: What happened to judicial independence?

Is this retrogression, democratic deepening, or something else?

The first judicial election has already happened. What can you observe now that you could not have observed in 2024 — and what would you still need?

V. Cause or Symptom?

Cause or Symptom? Why It Matters

  • Populism: cause or symptom of erosion?
  • Epiphenomenal: fix delivery → populism recedes
  • Causal: populist logic is itself a mechanism
  • If symptom → policy reform suffices
  • If causal → constitutional design matters directly
  • Different prescriptions; getting it wrong is costly

The Evidence — and What Sharpens It

  • Hungary: institutions worked before Fidesz → erosion was not inevitable
  • Venezuela: institutions were already weak before Chávez → more symptom than cause
  • Two cases chosen after the fact do not settle it
  • Poland adds a third kind of evidence — next slide

Poland: a reversal, not an experiment

  • 2015–2023: PiS packed the courts and captured public media
    • V-Dem liberal democracy: 0.78 → 0.42
  • 2023: Tusk’s coalition wins; courts and media partly restored
  • So erosion is not a one-way street — that much this case shows

The Democratic Recession in Numbers

Figure 5: Approximate global freedom status. Source: Simplified classification based on Freedom House (2024).

Conclusion

  • Competitive authoritarianism ≠ democratic backsliding
  • Populism = a thin ideology that can collide with pluralist checks
  • Evidence for both the economic and the cultural channel; the balance varies
  • Ginsburg & Huq: erosion attacks elections, rights, rule of law
  • Poland shows erosion can be reversed — not why it reversed
  • Mexico elects its judges: new in scale, not in kind (see Bolivia, 2011)

References

  • Autor, D.H., Dorn, D., Hanson, G.H. & Majlesi, K. (2020). Importing political polarization? The electoral consequences of rising trade exposure. American Economic Review, 110(10), 3139–3183.
  • Bermeo, N. (2016). On democratic backsliding. Journal of Democracy, 27(1), 5–19.
  • Colantone, I. & Stanig, P. (2018). The trade origins of economic nationalism: Import competition and voting behavior in Western Europe. American Journal of Political Science, 62(4), 936–953.
  • Ginsburg, T. & Huq, A.Z. (2018). How to Save a Constitutional Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Inglehart, R. & Norris, P. (2016). Trump, Brexit, and the rise of populism: Economic have-nots and cultural backlash. HKS Working Paper No. RWP16-026.
  • Levitsky, S. & Way, L.A. (2010). Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Mudde, C. & Kaltwasser, C.R. (2017). Populism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Mutz, D.C. (2018). Status threat, not economic hardship, explains the 2016 presidential vote. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(19), E4330–E4339.