Democratic consolidation

Democratic consolidation is the process by which a new democracy matures, in a way that it becomes unlikely to revert to authoritarianism without an external shock, and is regarded as the only available system of government within a country.^[1][2] A country can be described as consolidated when the current democratic system becomes “the only game in town”,^[3] meaning no one in the country is trying to act outside of the set institutions.^[4] This is the case when no significant political group seriously attempts to overthrow the democratic regime, the democratic system is regarded as the most appropriate way to govern by the vast majority of the public, and all political actors are accustomed to the fact that conflicts are resolved through established political and constitutional rules.^[5][6]

Since 1992 the number of democratic countries has been greater than the number of dictatorships, and this number continues to grow as countries go through the process of consolidation.^[7] The notion of democratic consolidation is contested because it is not clear that there is anything substantive that happens to new democracies that secures their continuation, beyond those factors that simply make it 'more likely' that they continue as democracies. Many scholars have attempted to explain the factors that are responsible for democracies consolidating, which has led to the emergence of different ‘consolidation theories’ in political science. Unconsolidated democracies often suffer from formalized but intermittent elections and clientelism.^[8]