Weitere Beobachtungen zur demokratischen Regression und ihren Beobachtungen

The contribution responds to Manow’s critique of the „diagnosis of democratic regression“. It is concerned with three differences that can be worked out by contrasting Schmitt’s opposition to liberal and democratic ideas with the perspective of the equal originality of liberal and democratic principles. First, those who hold the rise of non-majoritarian institutions causally responsible for the rise of authoritarian populist parties need not hold the practice of these parties democratizing. Second, Iargue that the presumed „liberal bias“ of the V-Dem data does not exist in this way. Moreover, we do not test our core thesis in the democratic regression based on V-Dem data but on attitudinal data.Last we find some common ground with Manow’s argument. In our book,quite in line with Manow, we do not speak of a crisis of democracy, but of democratic regression, which is related to a constitutionalization push of democratic practice.