The Domestic Threat to the LIO: Assessing International Cooperation in the Era of Democratic Recession

As the breakdown of democratic institutions commonly known as "democratic backsliding" accelerates, scholars are left to wonder what its impact will be on the international institutions that form the backbone of the liberal international order (LIO). Existing work has documented some actions backsliders have taken, assessing how backsliding states obstruct action in international organizations (IOs), form coalitions to contest norms, and create competing organizations to counter the order more generally. However, scholars frequently conflate backsliding states with illiberal and autocratic regimes, effectively denoting backsliding as simply a means for states to become less democratic, rather than attempting to understand if this process creates novel effects. This paper aims to understand not only if backsliding states are different from their entrenched counterparts, but also how international cooperation has changed in the era of democratic recession more generally. In doing so, I create a typology of regime types based on their levels of democracy and changes therein and find that states' voting and rhetorical behaviors align more closely with overall levels of democracy, not backsliding status. Overall, autocracies vote in favor of resolutions less frequently and will utilize normative language favoring non-interference in internal affairs. However, specific voting and rhetorical behaviors are more inconsistent, indicating a focus on self-interest rather than any categorical rejection of the LIO and its values.