Backsliding has no single ideology. It has been led by socialists and nationalists, secular modernizers and religious conservatives, in Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa. What the cases share is less a set of beliefs than a method and, often, a story about who the real people are.

The populist frame

The political scientist Cas Mudde defined populism as a thin ideology that divides society into a pure people and a corrupt elite and holds that politics should express the general will of the people. It is "thin" because it attaches to fuller ideologies on the left or right. Populism is not the same as authoritarianism. Populist movements can energize excluded voters, expose real corruption and force complacent parties to listen. The risk comes from its logic: if one leader alone speaks for the true people, then opponents, courts and critical journalists look like enemies of the people rather than legitimate rivals, and checks on power look like obstacles to the popular will.

Venezuela: from the left

Hugo Chávez, a former army officer who had led a failed coup in 1992, won the presidency in December 1998 promising to break the grip of two old parties widely seen as corrupt. His supporters credit his governments with sharply cutting poverty during the oil boom and giving poor Venezuelans a political voice. A constituent assembly wrote a new constitution in 1999. After a short-lived coup removed Chávez for two days in April 2002, and a long opposition-led oil strike failed, his government tightened control. In 2004 a new law expanded Venezuela's Supreme Court from 20 to 32 justices, letting the government fill the new seats. In 2005 the opposition boycotted legislative elections, handing Chávez's allies every seat. A popular television network lost its license in 2007, and a 2009 referendum removed term limits.

Nicolás Maduro succeeded Chávez in 2013 by a narrow margin as oil prices fell and the economy collapsed. When the opposition won a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly in 2015, the Supreme Court stripped the assembly of its powers, and a constituent assembly elected in 2017 under rules the opposition boycotted took over its role. Millions of Venezuelans emigrated. After the July 2024 presidential election, the electoral council declared Maduro the winner without publishing detailed results, while the opposition published tally sheets from most polling stations showing its candidate, Edmundo González, well ahead.

Turkey: from the religious right

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) won power in 2002. Its early years brought economic growth, reforms aimed at joining the European Union, and a political voice for pious voters long excluded by a secular establishment that had banned headscarves in universities and that the army had repeatedly defended through coups. Over time, power concentrated. Mass trials of alleged coup plotters, later largely overturned, weakened the army's old guard. Large protests in 2013 that began over Istanbul's Gezi Park were met with force. After a failed coup attempt in July 2016, the government ruled under a state of emergency for two years and dismissed or detained well over 100,000 people it accused of links to the Gülen movement, which it blamed for the coup. In a 2017 referendum, about 51 percent of voters approved a change to a strong presidential system. Much of the media passed to government-friendly owners. In 2025 Istanbul's opposition mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, seen as Erdoğan's strongest rival, was arrested on corruption charges he denies, setting off mass protests.

What the cases share

Despite opposite ideologies, the cases follow a similar arc: an elected leader with real grievances to point to, a polarized society, a crisis or attempted coup that justifies extraordinary measures, then the capture of courts and media and the bending of electoral rules. In Venezuela, the opposition's own choices, a coup and a boycott, helped the government portray its rivals as the real threat to democracy.

Worked example

Suppose a classmate argues that Venezuela was a democracy under Chávez because he won many elections, some by large margins. How would you assess the claim with this course's tools? Start with the thin, electoral view: Chávez did win repeated votes, and international observers judged several of them broadly reflective of voter preferences, though held on an uneven field. Then apply the liberal view: by the late 2000s the Supreme Court was packed, a major broadcaster had been closed, state oil money flowed into the ruling party's campaigns, and the rules of competition had been rewritten. Next, ask Bermeo's question about direction: was each step making it harder for the government to lose? Finally, test consistency: would Chávez's supporters have accepted the same tools in the hands of the old parties?

A fair conclusion is that Venezuela moved from a flawed democracy toward a competitive and then a closed autocracy over about two decades, with no single day of rupture. That conclusion does not require denying the real exclusion and corruption that brought Chávez to power, the hostility of some opponents, or the social gains of his early years. In January 2026 United States forces seized Maduro and flew him to New York to face criminal charges, an act whose legality was widely disputed; what it means for Venezuelan democracy was unsettled at the time of writing.