Reassessing the wave of autocratization hypothesis

While autocratization has attracted much scholarly attention over the past years, there is little agreement regarding how to meas- ure autocratization and, relatedly, the actual empirical relevance of this phenomenon. Some authors explicitly claim that we are in the middle of an outright global wave of autocratization, yet others are more sceptical. This paper aims to make three main contributions. First, it reconstructs the debate on the “wave of autocratization” hy- pothesis. Second, it reassesses empirically this hypothesis using alter- native measurement approaches, showing that, despite some differ- ences, autocratization always emerges as an empirically relevant phe- nomenon of this period. Third, based on a new measurement strategy that builds on and combines several existing indicators and indexes, the paper examines comparatively a sample of autocratization cases. Keywords: autocratization; democracy; autocracy; regime change; measurement.