The starting point of Armin Schäfer and Michael Zürn’s The Democratic Regression is the observation that “when political developments happen more or less at the same time in similar format in many countries, places, and regions, it makes sense first of all to abandon the comparative perspective and take a look at the international context” (p. 37). By looking at the international context, the book seeks to be a canary in the coal mine: the democratic backlashes of the last decade are indications of deeper changes in the international system. Thus the “democratic regression” in the title refers to the property of “world society” and not of individual nations. It is a regression because the emerging global system becomes structurally less hospitable to the ideal of liberal democracy of yesteryear. The book offers a second-image reversed study of the ways deep-level transformations of the international system affect different dimensions of democracy. This review is too short to do justice to the complexity and richness of the argument. In particular, I will not describe or assess the rich empirical analysis of trends of democratic decline and their causes. Instead, I focus on what I take to be the general outline of the argument.

The book argues that the proliferation of democracies in the decades following World War II, what are known as the second and third waves of democratization, was not the result of any inherent and irreversible progress but the outcome of a “specific historical constellation” (p. 6) of “democracy-friendly” global order (p. 27). A central part of this constellation was the system of embedded liberalism: a global and international institutional environment that—by allowing nations room to create safety nets for hedging the uncertainties of open markets—supported welfare liberalism and democracy. It gave domestic democratic institutions enough flexibility to maintain a limited degree of popular sovereignty (and the “delusion” of a just political order, p. 4). With the end of the Cold War, and again for complex reasons, these conditions began to change. In particular, the intensification of economic integration and the corresponding increase in the global concentration of wealth created an international institutional environment that prioritizes the demands of economic openness over safety nets and popular sovereignty.

To explain how the international environment shapes the formation and development of political parties and the ideologies that underwrite their positions, the book builds on cleavage theory. Domestic politics of the post-war system was organized around the cleavage between labor and capital, with left and right parties and socialism and market liberalism as the major ideological contenders. The emerging globalized order creates a new social cleavage, orthogonal to the older ones, between those who benefit from open borders and those who do not. The ideological division that underwrites this cleavage is between cosmopolitanism and communitarianism, and it pitches authoritarian-populist parties against liberal-globalist ones.

But why do the “losers” from globalization turn to authoritarian populism instead of leftist parties? The book argues that it would be mistaken to focus exclusively on sociological answers that are based on economic or cultural dynamics. Rather, the answer must be focused on the way the political process responds to these dynamics (p. 10). I take the core of the argument to be that traditional leftist politics still operates within the framework of the left-right cleavage and is thus myopic to the more fundamental change that is going on: a shift of the locus of important decisions making away from representative institutions and to non-majoritarian institutions subject to the dictates of multinational bodies. The tensions between the technocratic logic of multinational bodies and the demands channeled to elected bodies lead to and reveal themselves in periodic crises, such as the 2008 financial crisis, the European refugee crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The book studies the dynamic of these crises to illustrate how significant decisions were delegated to non-majoritarian institutions and the popular resistance that came in response.

Put differently, the more the global system becomes interconnected and complex, the more it faces a “democratic dilemma” (p. 148) of likely mismatches between those who make decisions and those who are affected by them. The more we emphasize openness and the freedom to move and invest, the less room remains for local control, and vice versa. Global elites are often content with giving up popular control because non-majoritarian institutions combined with the freedom (and ability) to relocate themselves and their assets already work in their interest. Populist authoritarianism doubles down on popular sovereignty. But, given that the old order has already been significantly reshuffled, this doubling down ends up taking the form of a xenophobic nostalgia that is dangerous to the liberal foundations of democracy.

As the canary in the coal mine, the book sounds the alarm based on a belief that the threat to democracy can be averted. The final chapter offers ways to reverse the regression. The authors argue that “there is a kernel of truth” in the critique of authoritarian populists and therefore that supporters of liberal democracies should engage in a “critique of the status quo in our democracies” (p. 157). They offer a list of suggestions for strengthening the quality of democratic deliberations and decision-making so that they can work in less antagonistic ways when interacting with and when exercising oversight of technocratic bodies. They are seeking something comparable to the “historic compromise” (p. 29) for managing the cleavage between capital and labor in post-World War II Europe. For the new social cleavage, a comparable compromise would mean a new modus vivendi between the governance of complex issues through globally oriented technocratic non-majoritarian institutions and inwardly oriented elected assemblies. While they stress the need to explore ways to democratize the European Union, for normative and practical reasons they do not see a significant democratization of the global sphere as a viable option.

The book also makes a strong case for why defending a revised liberal-democratic order for our new age is important. It offers a very convincing account of the political explanation of the democratic regression: cultural and economic forces were able to undermine democracy only because democracy was weak in the first place. Liberal democrats cannot look at authoritarian populists and say that this is not of our making. Blaming supporters of authoritarian populism for their beliefs cannot be a full explanation. Undoubtedly, it is wrong to neglect the political causes of the democratic regression, and the book puts these causes front and center. Yet, it is less helpful in assessing the weight of political causes compared to other causes. Granted, the weakness of democracy and the myopia of liberals is part of the reason. But is it a significant part?

To be sure, the relationships between the political, economic, and cultural dynamics that brought us to this point are complex and the book takes this complexity into account. Nonetheless, to assess the viability of different reform proposals, it is necessary to explore the current constellation systemically. In regard to cultural forces, the book does not explore the question of whether the roots of the support for authoritarianism go deeper than a response to a loss of a sense of democratic control. In particular, during the same period, technology and social media became central in mediating how we interpret the world around us and interact with each other. Is it also a culprit in the democratic regression? The book does not discuss this question at all. Similarly, what about the role of economic forces? The book begins with a discussion of the significant growth in global economic inequality at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It makes a strong case that, democratic aspirations notwithstanding, the current political-economic order de facto works in the interest of the narrow group of winners from economic openness. But, if the democratic order is tilted towards the very rich, is it realistic to expect democracy to rehabilitate itself and create a more equal society? The proposal for reform offers a short subsection that discusses, almost in passing, “the need to create equal living conditions for all” (pp. 167–68).