Building party resilience: improving party aid in an age of democratic decline

Following nearly a decade of democratization in the early 1990s, an authoritarian backlash appears to be in full swing. This has constrained political society and political pluralism in countries throughout the world. While most countries continue to hold elections at regular intervals, the level of democracy in many of them has precipitously declined. Electoral integrity, judicial independence, and media freedom have been threatened as a result. This special issue seeks to tease out the elements that have contributed to this state of affairs. Through examining various cases in detail in a series of seven scholarly articles on the theme (i.e. one large-N comparative study and six different case studies commissioned from country experts in Armenia, Georgia, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Philippines, and South Africa), the contributors aim to determine the causes that have led to chronic weakness in political parties as institutions. They also examine possible future assistance strategies to focus on elements of political party building that have traditionally been neglected as potentially remedy. Such a deep dive is crucial to formulate recommendations directed at improving the development of party aid programmes that want to deal with the issue of polarized electoral competition, political party crisis, and democratic backsliding.