Discourse On Democratic Institutions

In the realm of discourses on democracy, competitive authoritarianism comes into use frequently in the contemporary world. Competitive authoritarianism denotes a type of regime in which meaningful democratic institutions coexist with serious abuse of institutions by the incumbent leaders or coterie of authority wielders. It upholds electoral competition but the polling is not always free and unfair. In almost all democratic countries tendencies to tilt to competitive authoritarianism do prevail. In almost all multiparty democracies where strong leaders wield power, they make a domineering push to move into competitive authoritarianism. There are some examples where competitive authoritarian democracies harden into full-blown authoritarianism while others glide back and forth between democracy and authoritarianism.