Our next guest of speaker series of Institute for Political Science is Andrea Cassani (Università degli Studi di Milano) with the presentation entitled:

Beyond the illiberal trend: Autocratization in the early XXI century

"Given the growing concern about the crisis of liberal democracy, I analyze the possible risks that contemporary democratic regimes face. How widespread is the phenomenon throughout the world? Most importantly, is the crisis of liberal democracy a passing disease, or could it represent the first stage of a longer-term process of institutional transformation towards autocracy? To address these questions, I re-examine the ongoing “illiberal trend” in light of the outright processes of democratization occurred in various world region since the beginning of the new century. The analysis highlights bad news and good news. On one hand, the backsliding towards “defective” forms of democracy does represent a threat, as defective democracies are more fragile and likely candidates to suffer more radical processes of autocratization. On the other hand, some cases show that these regime changes could be reversed, and (at least partial) re-democratization could occur."