What is the best way to resist democratic backsliding? This question is more important than ever, in an era of pressing authoritarian trends globally, including in countries traditionally considered stable democracies.
Enter Laura Gamboa's excellent milestone work. Resisting Backsliding is her first book monograph, building on years of research on the characteristics, dynamics and consequences of democratic erosion, and what opposition movements do in the face of surging authoritarian projects. In prior research – most notably in her 2017 article ‘Opposition at the Margins: Strategies against the Erosion of Democracy in Colombia and Venezuela’ (Comparative Politics, 49: 4) – Gamboa began arguing for paying attention to strategic opposition choices when facing authoritarian projects, such as those espoused by ‘populist’ leaders in polarised contexts, comparing the cases of Colombia under Álvaro Uribe Vélez and Hugo Chávez Frías in Venezuela. Gamboa's argument then was that opposition strategies helped explain the country's eventual regime trajectory. Whilst the Colombian opposition used institutional tools to counter Uribe Vélez's attempts to erode democracy, ‘the Venezuelan opposition forsook that leverage and chose extra-institutional strategies … instead. The latter cost them the institutional resources they had and helped Chávez advance more radical reforms’ (‘Opposition at the Margins’, p. 458). Gamboa's work was extremely well received in the field, and was one of the first to force scholars to look beyond more established explanations of democratic deterioration (such as executive leadership, ruling party politics, among a host of institutional, structural and economic factors), challenge linear explanations, and consider the complex opposition responses and subsequent dynamics between the government and its opponents to explain disparate regime trajectories in comparative perspective. Ever since, Gamboa's trendsetting work has been an important reference for burgeoning scholarship analysing erosion/backsliding trajectories, and particularly democratic resistance (see, for example, Matthew Cleary and Aykut Öztürk's 2022 article ‘When Does Backsliding Lead to Breakdown? Uncertainty and Opposition Strategies in Democracies at Risk’, Perspectives on Politics, 20: 1; Maryhen Jiménez's 2023 article ‘Contesting Autocracy: Repression and Opposition Coordination in Venezuela’, Political Studies, 71: 1; Murat Somer, Jennifer McCoy and Russell Luke's 2023 chapter ‘Pernicious Polarization, Autocratization and Opposition Strategies’, in Anna Lührmann and Wolfgang Merkel (eds.), Resilience of Democracy: Responses to Illiberal and Authoritarian Challenges, Routledge).
In Resisting Backsliding, Gamboa builds on this work and develops a comprehensive, well-crafted, meticulously researched comparative analysis of opposition strategies in democratic erosion processes. She further develops her argument, assessing the erosion of democracy in two (independent) stages: first, ‘the likelihood that a country elects a potential autocrat’, and the ‘regressive’ phase, i.e. ‘why some of the executives successfully erode democracy whilst others fail’ (Resisting Backsliding, p. 4). Again, she assesses the role of the opposition and the use of institutional and extrainstitutional resources against the incumbent, and how and why the opposition uses these resources in different cases and to disparate effect. In addition to an expansion and further development of her theoretical framework (Chapters 1 and 2), Gamboa deploys a thorough comparative analysis of the conditions under which leaders with hegemonic aspirations are elected (Chapter 3, pp. 50–76), finding that ‘countries with low state capacity and weakly institutionalized party systems are more likely to see the rise of presidents with hegemonic aspirations’ (p. 76), and critiquing the extent to which other variables help explain this phenomenon. Next, Gamboa proceeds to offer a novel empirical analysis of the ‘effect of state capacity and performance, trust on institutions … party system institutionalization, and institutional weakness in the erosion of democracy’, finding that ‘most of these variables have little influence on a president's ability to erode democracy’ (ibid.).
The scene is now set for a more thorough analysis of the role of opposition strategies in democratic erosion, which takes place over the course of the next two chapters, looking at institutional and extrainstitutional strategies in Venezuela during the onset of Chavismo (Chapter 4) and Colombia under Uribismo (Chapter 5). Section 4.1, entitled ‘The “Slow Death of Democracy” in Venezuela’, offers a narrative outlining ‘the mechanisms by which radical extrainstitutional strategies helped Hugo Chávez augment his powers and extend his time in office’ (p. 126), with the main problem identified as the radical goals espoused by the opposition. Thus, ‘had the opposition resorted to institutional strategies or extrainstitutional strategies with moderate goals, it might have been able to stop Chávez sooner, or at least slow him down enough to have a better shot at fighting more serious reforms down the road’ (p. 127). By 2006, when the opposition changed tactics and goals, it was already facing an undemocratic context, which is becoming increasingly autocratic. On the other hand, in Uribismo in Colombia, Gamboa analyses how the choices of the opposition, avoiding extrainstitutional strategies with radical goals, and (using) mostly institutional and extrainstitutional strategies with moderate goals, allowed it to protect its institutional resources, and fight a wide range of antidemocratic initiatives. Whilst the opposition was not always successful against Uribe's actions, it was able to keep using institutional resources effectively and counter Uribe's desires to expand his powers and stay in office beyond a second term.
In Chapter 6, Gamboa offers a comparative assessment of her theory in other cases of democratic erosion, focusing on the cases of Evo Morales in Bolivia, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, the Law and Justice Party in Poland, and Viktor Orbán in Hungary. This is a very interesting chapter that opens lines of comparison within and outside Latin America. Whilst her analysis is not as thorough as in the other cases discussed in her book, Gamboa finds that her theory holds here as well, with the exception of Hungary under Orbán, where he was ‘able to erode democracy despite the opposition strategic choices because he did so quickly and without concern for his democratic façade’ (p. 236). This chapter serves as a really good starting point for the development of additional case studies and cross-national exercises to critique and refine Gamboa's theoretical framework.
Having read – and thoroughly enjoyed – Resisting Backsliding, I strongly recommend it as a critical resource for understanding democratic resistance, especially at a time when authoritarian trends are continuing to rise globally. Gamboa's book is an excellent read for students of democratic politics as well, and as such can be very valuable in postgraduate courses in comparative politics, political theory, Latin American politics and other fields. This book is a fantastic introduction to broader conversations about democratic resistance, and to the different tools available in different circumstances.
