10 Facts About Illiberal democracy

An illiberal democracy describes a governing system in which, although elections take place, citizens are cut off from knowledge about the activities of those who exercise real power because of the lack of civil liberties; thus it does not constitute an open society.

Elections in an illiberal democracy are often manipulated or rigged, being used to legitimize and consolidate the incumbent rather than to choose the country's leaders and policies.

Some theorists say that illiberal democracy is fundamentally undemocratic and therefore prefer terms such as electoral authoritarianism, competitive authoritarianism, or soft authoritarianism.

Term illiberal democracy was used by Fareed Zakaria in a regularly cited 1997 article in the journal Foreign Affairs.

Illiberal democracy says that democracy without constitutional liberalism is producing centralized regimes, the erosion of liberty, ethnic competition, conflict, and war.

Related searches

Illiberal democracy first says that elections help leaders resolve threats from elites and from the masses by appeasing those capable of usurping power with money and securing the cooperation of the general public with political concessions.

In reality, the non-consolidation of democracy has led to the rise of hybrid regimes that possess "illiberal values".

An example of an illiberal democracy can be said to define Singapore, especially during the leadership of its first prime minister Lee Kuan Yew.

Levitsky and Way say that states such as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia under Slobodan Milosevic, Zimbabwe and post-Soviet Russia were never truly democratic and not developing toward Illiberal democracy, but were rather tending toward authoritarian behavior despite having elections, which were sometimes sharply contested.

Effects on health and education are as strong as those of Illiberal democracy and are significantly better than in non-electoral autocracy.