Comparative Political Studies, 59(6): 1191-1225
https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414024131210
The threat of democratic backsliding has prompted growing interest in “hardball,” the pursuit of legal and constitutional changes with the intended purpose of biasing outcomes in favor of one party over others. Such actions can be allowed under existing constitutional and legal rules, but are in tension with norms that these rules ought to be insulated from the contest for power. This paper provides a new definition of what I call democracy-reinforcing hardball, and a framework for thinking about when it might be successful. I show how the averting-backsliding literature’s injunction against hardball limits the feasibility of its suggested reforms. I categorize various hardball scenarios, highlighting conditions under which it might be democracy-reinforcing, and describe three cases in terms of this concept. I conclude by arguing that future research should study the conditions under which hardball might help stabilize a democratic political order over the long-term.
*The subtitle for this article is from Julia Azari (2018). The citation, as well as the accompanying acknowledgments, were unintentionally removed when preparing the article for publication, and noticed too late. CPS editors suggested instead I post the pre-publication version with the citation and acknowledgements on this site (see below). Making matters worse, the original post was on FiveThirtyEight, whose substantial body of posts were all deleted by abc.com in an act of pique. The archived version on the Wayback Machine can be found here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180524153050/https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/forget-norms-our-democracy-depends-on-values/
https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414024131210
The threat of democratic backsliding has prompted growing interest in “hardball,” the pursuit of legal and constitutional changes with the intended purpose of biasing outcomes in favor of one party over others. Such actions can be allowed under existing constitutional and legal rules, but are in tension with norms that these rules ought to be insulated from the contest for power. This paper provides a new definition of what I call democracy-reinforcing hardball, and a framework for thinking about when it might be successful. I show how the averting-backsliding literature’s injunction against hardball limits the feasibility of its suggested reforms. I categorize various hardball scenarios, highlighting conditions under which it might be democracy-reinforcing, and describe three cases in terms of this concept. I conclude by arguing that future research should study the conditions under which hardball might help stabilize a democratic political order over the long-term.
*The subtitle for this article is from Julia Azari (2018). The citation, as well as the accompanying acknowledgments, were unintentionally removed when preparing the article for publication, and noticed too late. CPS editors suggested instead I post the pre-publication version with the citation and acknowledgements on this site (see below). Making matters worse, the original post was on FiveThirtyEight, whose substantial body of posts were all deleted by abc.com in an act of pique. The archived version on the Wayback Machine can be found here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180524153050/https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/forget-norms-our-democracy-depends-on-values/
| democracy-reinforcing-hardball-pre-publication.pdf |