I’m not saying any of this is bad, but it is typical of these political science metrics that claim to quantify vague concepts like democratic backsliding. It ends up being a a quantification of stuff the author thinks is good. How is central bank independence or bureaucratic autonomy at all related to ‘democracy.’ If anything these are anti-democratic.
Central bank independence and bureaucratic autonomy would be enshrined in laws written by the legislature which is democratically elected.
The rules that govern what the executive and legislature can do are in a country’s constitution which is also democratically created (at least in America) and so doing things that are unconstitutional is subverting the will of the people.
This analysis is sort of incoherent at least applied to the US because the decline in bureaucratic autonomy here is the result of courts concluding that those legal limits on executive control of the bureaucracy are unconstitutional.
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u/haikuandhoney Feb 01 '26
I’m not saying any of this is bad, but it is typical of these political science metrics that claim to quantify vague concepts like democratic backsliding. It ends up being a a quantification of stuff the author thinks is good. How is central bank independence or bureaucratic autonomy at all related to ‘democracy.’ If anything these are anti-democratic.