From Election to Autocracy: Can Strategic Decentralization Bring Us Back?

Twenty years ago, Susan Rose-Ackerman (2005) was one of the lone voices highlighting the deep institutional weakness of the supposed democratic frontrunners in Eastern Europe: Hungary and Poland. History has proven her right. Since 2010, backsliding in both countries became the “leading indicator” for a global wave of right-wing authoritarianism engulfing democracies from Brazil, the Philippines, and Turkey to Italy, France, the UK, and the United States. However, this chapter argues that the central problem is not insufficient democratic accountability, as Rose-Ackerman (2005) suggested, but the inability of the emerging constitutional and administrative systems to manage deep political fault lines dividing these societies. Decentralization, mentioned by Rose-Ackerman (2005) as one pathway to a more deeply democratic government, holds the unique promise of contributing to a more stable democratic settlement. Alas, that settlement will come with painful costs, especially to the uniform and expanded application of policies aimed at ensuring far-reaching equality of rights and opportunities. In response to the challenge of modern right-wing authoritarianism, constitutional designers and reformers face deep, wrenching tradeoffs involving distinct benefits and risks of both centralized and decentralized constitutional solutions. This chapter makes that fundamental Decentralization Calculus explicit.