Authoritarianism is characterized by highly concentrated and centralized government power maintained by political repression and the exclusion of potential or supposed challengers by armed force. Friday, April 14, 2023The United States was designated a backslidingdemocracy in late 2021, when it appeared on a prominent European think tank’s annual glo... A “democraticbackslide” is underway in numerous countries, said Marko Bošnjak, president of the European Court of Human Rights, with the principles of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law being undermined by some elected governments. How democraciesbackslide into authoritarianism.Democracies are in recession for the last 20 years due to the rising alienation of voters into the political process. The voters in the average political process don't reflect their democratic interests and political choices. The number of democraciesbacksliding into authoritarianism has doubled in the past decade, including EU states Hungary, Poland and Slovenia, POLITICO reports Kagan’s comparisons to past eras are deliberate. He points to the 1930s as a period whendemocraticbacksliding went unchecked until it was too late. “The lesson of history is that democracies do not collapse overnight,” he wrote in a recent essay for The Washington Post. Despite the EU’s official commitment to democracy, it has allowed for the emergence of many ‘Competitive Authoritarian’ or ‘Illiberal Democracies’ to retain power and exist in the Union. The widely reported democraticbacksliding.