Barbara F. Walter

We have trusted, for too long perhaps, that peace will always prevail. That our institutions are unshakable, that our nation is exceptional. We’ve learned that we cannot take our democracy for granted, that we must understand our power as citizens

anocracies”—they are neither full autocracies nor democracies but something in between.

Citizens receive
some elements of democratic rule—perhaps full voting rights—but they also live under leaders with extensive authoritarian powers and few checks and balances.

biggest civil wars raging today—in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen—were born from attempts to democratize

“illiberal democracies.” But you can also think of them as partial democracies, faux democracies, or hybrid regimes

Anocracies, particularly those with more democratic than autocratic features—what the task force called “partial democracies”—were twice as likely as autocracies to experience political instability or civil war, and three times as likely as democracies.

Rapid regime change—a six-point or more fluctuation in a country’s polity index score—almost always precedes instability, and civil wars are more likely to break out in the first two years after reform is attempted.

According to the V-Dem Institute, another research institute dedicated to tracking global democracy,[*] twenty-five countries are now severely affected by a wave of international autocratization, including Brazil, India, and the United States.

They persuade citizens that democracy as it has existed will lead to more corruption, more lies, and greater bungling of economic and social policy.

Within two years, a once-united Yugoslavia would violently disintegrate, and
the world would come to know the term “ethnic cleansing.”