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Rashid Tazitdinovich Mukhaev, Elena Evgenievna Prokopenko, Sergey Alexandrovich Barkov,
Dmitry Nikolaevich Zemliakov y Ilya Viktorovich Okhotnikov
The impact of anti-democratic values on the deconsolidation of liberal democracy in Western
Europe: an empirical analysis
the implementation of the roles and functions of institutions and increases
the predictability of decisions based on competition-cooperation relations.
Markers of consolidation quantication are as follows: the internalization
of democratic norms by various groups of elites (Linz, Stepan, 1996), the
role of civil society organizations in the political process (Paxton, 2002),
the distribution of post-material (Inglehart, 1997) or emancipative (Welzel,
2013) values in society, etc.
Despite dierent approaches, the common thing that unites all the
authors is that the eective functioning of democratic institutions is possible
only if there are indispensable conditions. Their suciency excludes the
subsequent erosion of institutions and the possible deconsolidation of
liberal democracies.
The hypothesis about the relationship between the deconsolidation of
democracy and the growth of anti-democratic values requires a theoretical
reection on the “democracy” term that has no clear denition in modern
political science. To distinguish between democracies and non-democracies,
we used the matrix of R. Dahl who understood it as a political regime that
meets two criteria: a) fair, competitive, and inclusive elections; b) the
observance of civil and political rights (Dahl, 2010).
R. Dahl called all the regimes that meet procedural and civil-legal criteria
“polyarchies” or democracies. Thus, liberal democracy is a political regime,
whose functioning is based on the fair, competitive, and inclusive elections
of government bodies that guarantee the observance of civil and political
rights of individuals.
Modern democracies ensure the integration of society thanks to the
institutional order based on: the separation of powers and the system of
checks and balances, free and fair elections, inclusive surage, the rule
of law, the freedom of opinion, alternative sources of information, the
protection of minority rights, etc. Some scholars call these institutions
inclusive (Acemoglu, Robinson, 2012), while the others refer to them as an
“open access order” (North, Wallis, Weingast, 2009).
The functioning of democratic institutions is ensured by a set of
dispositions conditioned by values and cultural norms of generalized
reciprocity. Culture usually embraces the values and beliefs of various ethnic,
religious, or social groups passed down from generation to generation in a
relatively unchanged form (Alesina, Giuliano, 2015).
Within the political-cultural approach, any consolidated political
regime is the result of a balance between cultural patterns and institutional
practices at the current moment (Almond, Verba, 1963). The divergence of
cultural patterns and institutional practices leads to the deconsolidation of
any regime. It is worth mentioning that deconsolidation is a process, not a
result of certain changes within the political system.