Occasional Paper
By:
Katharina Liesenberg
Michael Lucas
Stefan Chavez-Norgaard
The democratic “recession” across the globe is emerging as a political hallmark of the 21st century. This is evidenced by the incremental breakdown of formal, political democratic practices and institutions among many nations, including in the North Atlantic states, as well as by the fear or anticipation of democratic erosion. This paper uses a pragmatist approach to demonstrate how, in the face of democratic breakdowns, resilient democratic practices are taking form in remarkably varied ways in the common structural context of settler-colonial nation-states that are nominally in stages of advanced democratic consolidation.
Katharina Liesenberg is a Democracy Visiting Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.
Michael Lucas is a Democracy Visiting Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.
Stefan Chavez-Norgaard is a Teaching Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Korbel School’s Douglas and Mary Scrivner Institute of Public Policy.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) alone and do not necessarily represent the positions of the Ash Center or its affiliates.
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