DEMOCRACY, CRISIS AND DESTABILIZATION

In the last decades, democracies have been in decline. They have suffered for a long time from the rise of populism and nationalism and are lately struggling with the consequences of the global pandemic, COVID-19. The pandemic has highlighted the importance of defending and preserving democracies under the threat of both external and internal destabilizing factors that can lead to regime changes. It has had a significant impact on democratic freedoms and rights. Moreover, it has also raised concerns in terms of countries’ abilities to face the challenges that come as a result of the pandemic and which threaten the existence of liberal democracies. In this paper, we argue that when individual liberties are threatened and negatively impacted by a crisis, consolidated democracies which embody such liberties, may experience a shift back to semi-consolidated, autocratic regimes and so on. In addition to that, the presence of a crisis in the equation between individual liberties and collective good, will result in the latter outweighing the former, with the potential to trigger regime change.