A Critical Note on ‘The Rise of Illiberal Democracy’.md

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---
bibtex: @article{møller2008,
  title={A critical note on ‘the rise of illiberal democracy’},
  author={M⊘ller, J⊘rgen},
  journal={Australian Journal of Political Science},
  volume={43},
  number={3},
  pages={555--561},
  year={2008},
  publisher={Taylor \& Francis}
}
---

A Critical Note on ‘The Rise of Illiberal Democracy’

Zakaria argues that "Democracy is flourishing; constitutional liberalism is not" and later "Far from being a temporary or transitional stage, it appears that many countries are settling onto a form of government that mixes a substantial degree of democracy with a substantial degree of illiberalism"

Zakaria does this by combining Freedom House's Survey data on political rights and civil liberties into a single metric. But a single dimension cannot capture the full topography of a two axis conception.

Møller then re-analyses the Freedom House data using a Political Rights v Civil Liberties topography.

Results

During the period 1990 to 2005, the percentage of states that were liberal democracies grew from 30% to 41%.

Illiberal democracies (numbering only 7-26 states) fluctuated between 33% and 8% of all democracies, with a gradual downward trend after 2000.

"The bivariate correlation between ‘political rights’ and ‘civil liberties’ in 2005 finds expression in a Pearson’s r of no less than 0.951." p560

Illiberal non-democracies remained steady at 53-59% of all states.