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Edited by Gero Erdmann and Marianne Kneuer, the special Issue of “Comparative Governance and Politics” (Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft) “Regression of Democracy?” was published in August 2011.

Back Cover Blurb:” Democratization since the implosion of the communist bloc displays a mixed balance. While the neo-democracies in Central Eastern European Countries can be seen as largely consolidated, many other processes of democratization in other parts of the world such as Africa, Asia and Latin America got stuck as unconsolidated or became defective democracies, some ‘regressed’ into hybrid regimes or were even turned into autocracies. While transitology dealt with the transition from authoritarian rule, the reverse process, the transition from democratic rule, remained almost completely outside the scholarly attention. This special issue will address the problems of the regression of democracy and aims at closing the gap between research on democracy and democratization on one side and the emergence of authoritarian regimes on the other. The contributions of this volume analyse the different phenomena in which decline of democracy fans out: the loss of quality, which means a silent regression; the backslide into hybrid regimes (hybridization); and the breakdown of democracy.”

My collegue Patricia Graf and I contributed one article on “Elections, Democratic Regression and Transitions to Autocracy: Lessons from Russia and Venezuela” which tries to illuminate the role and functions of elections in different systemic contexts and transitory regimes.  Also, democratic regression and transitions to autocracy are  topics I deal with since several years and have taught two seminars in 2010 and 2011. Even though there are lots of new insight, research still has to be done in this field. The volume presented above is one attempt to close some of the gaps…

• Erdmann, Gero / Kneuer, Marianne (eds.) Regression of Democracy? Comparative Governance and Politics, Special Issue 1/2011, Wiesbaden:VS-Verlag, ISBN 978-3-531-18216-2, 265 pages.