Near Misses: Avoiding Constitutional Retrogression

There has been a good deal of attention to constitutional backsliding and erosion in many democracies around the work, including established democracies like the United States, Israel and Japan. Several newer democracies have failed completely. Understanding the processes by which backsliding occurs also draws our attention to cases in which it does not. What explains near-misses: countries that seemed to be losing constitutional democracy but saved themselves? This paper identifies several such cases and explains their trajectories.