Summary of Analysis of the Democratic Backsliding Problem

The main root cause is low political truth literacy. Why this is so and how it can be raised are examined.

Our About pages begins with “Democracy faces an unprecedented threat from an authoritarian movement built on lies and contempt for the rule of law.” This is commonly known as the democratic backsliding problem. We have written up root cause analysis results of the problem in a paper undergoing submission. The paper is not yet published. Here we summarize the paper and make additional observations. Numerous references are omitted here but are in the paper. If you’d like to read it, please contact us.

The problem to solve

Democratic backsliding occurs when an elected government backslides from democracy to autocracy (authoritarianism) via the gradual erosion of the mechanisms of democracy, such as checks and balances, the rule of law and not men, and a free and fair election process.

The problem has occurred in three waves as shown above, with backsliding waves beginning in 1920, 1962, and 1994. The first two waves were almost entirely dominated by illegal transitions, such as coups and foreign invasion, or autogolpes, where a chief executive comes to power peacefully and suddenly abolishes key democratic mechanisms. But in the third wave (where we are now) autocrats rise to power mostly by peaceful elections and then gradually undermine democratic norms, one small corrosive step at a time.

In the third wave, graph line 1 tracks how many countries live under autocratization and is growing. Line 2 tracks countries undergoing democratization and is falling. Line 3 tracks countries backsliding from democracy to autocracy and is growing. The slope of all three lines is detrimental.

Examples of backsliding are:

1. Vladimir Putin’s conversion of Russia from a newly created, struggling democracy into a dictatorship after his election in 2000. This period is characterized “as a slide into authoritarianism with a strongman at its center.”

2. Beginning in 2013, Recep Erdoğan’s conversion of Turkey from “the beacon of democratic liberalism in the East” into the “prime example of democratic backsliding in the modern state” until the third example came along.

3. Most alarming of all is Donald Trump’s second ascent to the presidency in 2025, in the nation that invented modern democracy and up until now has been its leading promoter.

In his second term, aided by control of congress and the Supreme Court (due to appointing three Justices in his first term), Trump is rapidly implementing the “autocratic legal playbook,” where “his targets are well-established: capture the courts; erase internal pockets of independence within the public bureaucracy; silence sources of free thought and expression in universities, civil society, and the media; replace independent public prosecutors and government lawyers with loyalists; and disable legal resistance by co-opting law firms and the professional bar.”

Not mentioned in that list is elimination of free and fair elections, the most fundamental mechanism of democracy. This began in earnest on March 25, 2025 with an executive order titled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.” In fact, it does just the opposite. “It is a rambling document that asserts powers the president simply does not have. It would disenfranchise millions. It seeks to restrict what ballots states can count. It purports to give DOGE unspecified powers to review state run voter rolls.”

Current theories about the causes of backsliding

The backsliding problem has drawn “huge amounts of attention” from scholars. Despite this effort, “we lack theories to explain backsliding.” As a result, solutions have been largely ineffective.

We’re about to get a little geeky, but it’s a complex problem. Time to roll up our analytical activist sleeves!

Root cause analysis (RCA) is a very common tool in industry. It is the practice of finding and resolving the root causes of problems that arise from causes. For example, what is the root cause of this patient’s illness?

A theory based on RCA must identify a problem’s essential causal structure (ECS). This is the minimum amount of causal structure needed to analyze and solve a causal problem. At a minimum, it must include symptoms, intermediate causes, and root causes. Using this concept, we reviewed the literature and created summary causal diagrams for a total of nine theory families (Figure 1).

The key take home is none of the theories used RCA, so none identify ECS or contain well-explained root causes. Instead, all are collections of plausible causes and factors loosely connected by long descriptions. Because the root causes are unknown, all make various guesses at what solutions would work.

This results in nine totally different diagrams, even though all try to explain the same problem. This suggests a considerable amount of guessing. Why? Because political scientists are not trained in RCA, but in statistical analysis, comparative analysis, and experimentation. If they used RCA, all would find approximately the same root causes.

Method of analysis

A causal problem is a problem where symptoms arise from causes, such as sickness or an umbrella that won’t open. Examples of non-causal problems are information search, math, scientific discovery, and puzzle solving. RCA is the only known process for reliably and efficiently solving difficult large-scale causal problems.

RCA is explained in more detail in another article. To use RCA, you start at problem symptoms and ask that occurs until the root cause(s) is found. The process is thus generic. It applies to all causal problems. For RCA to work on difficult problems, it must be wrapped in a process suitable for a particular class of problems. RCA was invented and applied to difficult large-scale business problems starting in the 1950s. Plenty of wrappers exist for business problems, like Six Sigma and lean. None exist for social problems, so we were forced to develop one.

The result was social force diagrams, a fill-in-the-blanks template that guides analysis (Figure 2).

Social force diagrams are explained at length in another article. The strategic feature to understand is that the diagram is organized into two main layers:

1. The superficial layer. Here intermediate causes are so easy to see they are mistakenly taken to be root causes.

2. The fundamental layer. By going deeper in your analysis, you can understand the problem’s deeper structure, where its elusive root causes may be found.

Without analysis of the fundamental layer, it will take a long time or forever to find the root causes, due to the horrendous complexity of large-scale social systems. Sadly, this is what has occurred on the democratic backsliding problem.

But we are analytical activists, so that can be changed!

Analysis results

Figure 3 is the highlight of the paper and summarizes analysis results. The diagram was created by asking starting at problem symptoms and asking a long series of WHY questions, with lots of iteration.

In the diagram, all four superficial solutions push on low leverage points. They are low leverage because superficial solution forces (S) are always less than root cause forces (R). Superficial solutions can never solve the problem, no matter how well managed or aggressively promoted, because they do nothing to resolve the root cause. Only fundamental solutions will work because fundamental solution forces (F) can exceed root cause forces (R). This is a key insight. Once you start thinking this way you are on the road to becoming an analytical activist.

1. The first WHY question

Problem symptoms are backsliding from democracy to authoritarianism. WHY do those symptoms occur? Because of backsliding decisions made by politicians. It’s would-be authoritarians like Putin, Erdogan, and Trump who deliberately make decisions to erode a nation’s democracy.

2. The second WHY question

Then we asked: WHY do backsliding decisions made by politicians occur? It used to be that dictators rose to power via illegal means, like military coups. But since 1991, 80% of backslides have been by elected leaders. Levitsky and Ziblatt, in How Democracies Die, describe this change: “Democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box.”

Thus, the main second intermediate cause of backsliding is election of politicians not working for the democratic common good. Too many citizens are voting instead for politicians working for the uncommon good of powerful special interests, such as authoritarians.

3. The third WHY question

Here we asked: WHY does election of politicians not working for the common good occur? The main reason is pernicious polarization of voters. Strong polarization occurs when a society divides into two groups who dislike and distrust each other. This encourages would-be authoritarians to fan the flames of polarization, use it to justify nondemocratic actions, and declare that a strong leader (themself) is needed to take strong and decisive action. The problem has grown particularly acute in the US:

While previously polarization was primarily seen only in issue-based terms, a new type of division has emerged in the mass public in recent years: Ordinary Americans increasingly dislike and distrust those from the other party. Democrats and Republicans both say that the other party’s members are hypocritical, selfish, and closed-minded, and they are unwilling to socialize across party lines.

4. The fourth WHY question

As you can see, root cause analysis digs down deeper and deeper. WHY does polarization occur, when there is really no good reason for two groups strongly disliking each other to appear?

The main reason is successful political deception. Deception is the best way to convince a majority to vote against their own best interests. Have you noticed how Hitler, Putin, Trump, and all authoritarians constantly tell (or told) lies to manipulate people? All authoritarians are 100% dependent on deceiving their population into false beliefs and unjustified emotions, especially fear and hate. Examples of Trump doing this, all in his Republican nomination acceptance speech in 2016, are:

• “Our Convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation. The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life. Any politician who does not grasp this danger is not fit to lead our country.”

• “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.”

• “On Monday, we heard from three parents whose children were killed by illegal immigrants: Mary Ann Mendoza, Sabine Durden, and my friend Jamiel Shaw.

  … Nothing has affected me more deeply than the time I have spent with the mothers and fathers who have lost their children to violence spilling across our border, which we can solve.”

5. The fifth WHY question

Here we reached a really hard question: WHY does successful political deception occur? A good answer stumped us for years. Finally we built a simulation model (Figure 4) that answered the question.

Figure 4. Causal loop diagram of the simulation model.

This models the left-right political spectrum, present in all democracies. The key structure is two opposing feedback loops “dueling” for the same Uncommitted Supporters. Politicians in the Race to the Bottom (the right) depend on deception to gain more uncommitted supporters. Meanwhile, politicians in the Race to the Top (the left) tell the truth about what’s best for the common good. Whoever attracts the most supporters wins elections. See the paper for how the model works.

Fundamental solutions “push” on high leverage points to resolve the root cause connected to the high leverage point. Building the model led to discovery of the main root cause and not one, but two high leverage points. These are tremendously insightful, so let’s take the time to understand them.

Truth literacy is the ability to spot deception and not be fooled. To model this behavior we created three variables ranging from zero to 100%:

1. Logical truth quotient (LTQ) is the ability of a person to logically tell if a claim is true. For example, five days after 911 President Bush said “You’re either with us or you’re against us in the fight against terror.” That’s false because it’s a false dilemma. You could also be undecided, neutral, or both for and against. You could be for standing with America against terrorism, but against getting overly emotional about terrorists to the point of taking irrational action, as soon occurred with the US invasion of Iraq.

2. Appropriate action quotient (AAQ) is the skill of being able to take appropriate action, given the perceived truth of a political claim. If a politician tells the truth, support them. If they lie, don’t support them. Do both strongly so it makes a difference. In the example, because you’ve been lied to you would strongly not support that politician.

3. Democratic truth quotient (DTQ) (also called political truth literacy) is the skill of taking correct democratic action (especially voting correctly) given a political claim.

The example shows how DTQ is a two step process. First a person determines the truth using their LTQ skill. Then using their AAQ skill, they decide what action to take. Because of the two steps, the variables are related by the equation DTQ = LTQ x AAQ. The higher a person’s DTQ, the more likely they are to vote correctly when faced with a mixture of lies and the truth.

Identification of the main root cause

The model uses memes to represent lies and truths. The term “meme” was coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976 in his bestseller book The Selfish Gene. A meme is copied information, such as what you hear and read. In the model a meme represents a something supporters are exposed to that is true or false.

Politicians lie to gain supporters. Deceptive (degenerate) politicians raise the attractive power of their statements by lying. On the model this is represented by a false meme size of greater than one. This gives The Race to the Bottom the advantage, but only if people’s logical truth quotient (LTQ) and appropriate action quotient (AAQ) are low. If they are medium or high, most lies are detected. This gives The Race to the Top the advantage.

The Race to the Bottom loop (the right) represents powerful special interests who ceaselessly pursue narrow self-interests, such as the wealthy, large for-profit corporations, and authoritarians. All are a very small minority.

The main ways a minority can get a majority to vote for them are by force, threats, rigged elections, voter suppression, favoritism, bribes, or deception. The first three are illegal. Voter suppression is mostly illegal. Favoritism doesn’t work on millions of people, since there’s not enough favors to give out, like jobs and contracts and special legislation. The same holds for bribes, since the rich lack the money to bribe millions of voters every time there’s an election. This leaves deception as the only workable strategy and is the reason why deception is the norm in right-wing appeals to voters.

From Cagle Cartoons. Published August 2, 2018.

Now we arrive at the key insight in the simulation model. It explains why the right has a huge advantage over the left.

The attractive power of a lie depends on its size. The bigger the lie, the more it’s likely to be believed, because it offers a more attractive alternate reality via benefits of some kind that don’t actually exist. This works up to a certain size of lie. Above that, a lie is so obviously false that diminishing returns set in and people believe it less and less. The models handles this behavior with the variable called false meme size and the concept of inflation.

The Race to the Bottom depends on inflating the attractive power of false memes via small lies, medium lies, and big lies. Inflation is used by deceptive politicians and parties to create fear while there is nothing to fear, doubt while there is nothing to doubt, a false promise of we can do this for you when we really can’t, a big flaw in an opponent when there is only a little flaw or none at all, an gigantic scary conspiracy theory when that conspiracy doesn’t really exist, and so on.

Now here’s the key insight in the model. While false memes can be more attractive due to inflation, the same does hold for true memes. Their size is always one. There is no such thing as a small truth, or a medium truth, or a big truth. There is only THE ONE TRUTH about the one reality we all live in.

If you look at the model, the Race to the Bottom has an undetected false memes node. The Race to the Top has no corresponding node, because there are undetected true memes to detect. Thus, the Race to the Bottom has an inherent advantage over the Race to the Top. That’s why political deception is the winning strategy. That’s why we so so much deception in politics. This inherent advantage is the main root cause of democratic backsliding. But it works only if political truth literacy (DTQ) is low. To keep things simple, we usually say low political truth literacy is the main root cause, which causes successful political deception.

Simulation shows that when LTQ and AAQ are raised from 20% (low) to 50% (medium), the problem is solved. Optimum false meme size becomes one, because so much deception is detected that the winning strategy is to tell the truth.

But instead of supporters abandoning the Race to the Bottom, as we expected, equal amounts of supporters stay in the left and right. The degenerates have become moderates. There will still be differences of opinion. But the left and right will now be able to work together for the common good of all, and a healthy democracy will prevail.

Identification of the main root cause and how the high leverage points work is a deep insight with large implications. But how true is it?

Evidence of the main root cause

If that’s the main root cause, we should see reliance on deception (propaganda) by all authoritarian governments and far-right politicians and parties. Evidence of that is overwhelming:

1. China, Russia, North Korea, Cuba, and all autocratic states are infamous for dependence on propaganda to control what their populations think.

2. In the US a well-financed “Right-Wing Propaganda Machine” has dominated political debate for decades, with Fox News leading the way.

3. Using a dataset of outcomes and behavior from 1970 to 2019 in 169 nations for 1,759 elections across 1,943 parties, Luhrmann and others identified four key characteristics of anti-democratic behavior. All four require political deception to implement.

4. Freelon and others found that “in the US and throughout the industrialized West… available evidence suggests that the right has invested far more than the left in disinformation and conspiracy theories as core components of its activist repertoire….”

5. In the US, the data shows Republicans lie much more frequently than Democrats.

Finally, there is evidence the Dueling Loops themselves exist. Benkler and others, in a study of the effect of political propaganda, analyzed four million media messages in the US. They found that America’s left-right spectrum has evolved into exactly what we see in the Dueling Loops of the Political Powerplace model. They found two opposing feedback loops. One is a right-wing “propaganda feedback loop” where politicians “compete on identity confirmation” regardless of the truth. The other is a centrist and left-wing “reality-check” feedback loop following “institutionalized truth-seeking norms,” which causes politicians to “compete on truth quality and the scoop”. We expect similar studies in other countries would find the same behavior, because that’s we we see in the news. This is strong confirmation of the existence of the Dueling Loops.

The ultimate test of a theory is the scientific method. In the social sciences the method relies on experimentation using a control group and one or more treatment groups, where subjects are randomly assigned to groups. Knowing this, we performed:

The Truth Literacy Training study

We designed a collection of solution elements for pushing on the high leverage point of raise political truth literacy from low to at least medium. The most promising one is Truth Literacy Training, since it offers the highest impact for the smallest investment. It is the core solution element. Truth Literacy Training teaches citizens to spot deception in political appeals they are likely to encounter, and to take appropriate action using their decision on how true political statement from a politican or party are.

The root cause analysis contains two key hypotheses: (1) The main root cause exists and (2) It can be resolved by pushing on its high leverage point. To test these hypotheses, we performed the Truth Literacy Training experiment. 93 participants in the US were randomly assigned to these three treatment groups:

1. Control group – These subjects read about a neutral topic.

2. Claim training (LTQ) – These subjects received training on how to spot political deception by training on the Personal Truth Test, the Strong Evidence Rule, and six common fallacies.

3. Claim and vote training (LTQ and AAQ) – These subjects got the same training as group 2 plus given their perception of how true a claim is, how to vote correctly by using two rules: Penalize the Deceiver and Reward the Truth Teller.

Results confirmed the two hypotheses. Political truth literacy (DTQ) was measured at 2% for group 1, the control group who received no Truth Literacy Training. Due to small sample size, this measurement really says there’s a 95% probability that truth literacy is 10% or less.

With 60 minutes of full training, group 3’s DTQ shot up to 67%, in a 95% confidence interval of 47% to 87%. A second questionnaire 26 days later (these results are not shown) showed DTQ dropped 7 points, from 67% to 60%. 30 minutes of refresh training brought it up to 70%. This shows that occasional refresh training can work and is required. However, we expect that truth literacy behaves like reading and writing literacy. Once a person’s political truth literacy matures, becomes the reasoning default, and is used often enough, it will stay high enough for a person to be truth literate.

The 6% DTQ for group 2 was an astonishing discovery. We expected it to be low, but not that low. Even if a person has been trained on how to tell whether a political claim is true or false, they are unable to translate the truth or falsity of a claim into correct action.

This indicates the average voter currently does not penalize deceptive politicians, even it they know they are lying. Yet in a time when political deception is so rampant and the truth is so rare, why would anyone not want to strongly penalize deceivers? Why would anyone not want to strongly reward truth tellers? This behavior is required for democratic governments to work in the best interests of voters. We suspect the main reason for this dysfunctional behavior is that hardly anyone has received the equivalent of Truth Literacy Training and in particular vote training, which is amazing simple: Reward the Truth Teller and Penalize the Deceiver.

Since this was not a real-world experiment using real voters in an actual election, much further research is required. But it does confirm the two hypotheses on a preliminary basis. The main root cause appears to exist and can be resolved.

Further research

While Truth Literacy Training is the core solution element, multiple solution elements will be required for efficient full root cause resolution, such as:

1. Freedom from Falsehood

2. Continuing Truth Literacy Training in Journalism

3. Politician Truth Ratings

4. News Source Truth Ratings

5. Media Content Ratings

6. Instant Fact-Checking

7. Instant Personal Truth Test

We expect that AI will soon be able to do most of the work for elements 3 and up.

Conclusions

While these results are only an exploratory first iteration, they demonstrate that an RCA-based approach is likely capable of solving the backsliding problem in democratic nations where free and fair elections prevail. We cannot yet say the problem can be solved in a particular manner, since the research doesn’t show that. Rather, our intent has been to thoroughly illustrate an analytical problem-solving method that is far more likely to work than present methods.

The paper closes with one final insight.

The results presented here create an attractive opportunity. The high leverage point, raise political truth literacy from low to at least medium, has never been pushed on before with large-scale solution elements. Considering just Truth Literacy Training, no large education system has ever deeply educated students in political truth literacy, right alongside reading, writing, and math literacy. No large news organization has ever made continuing education of the public in political truth literacy part of its mission, via news and commentary that includes components of Truth Literacy Training. No major research organization has ever focused a project on developing and managing empirically based approaches to Truth Literacy Training and other solution elements for pushing on the high leverage point.

Until citizens of both democracies and autocracies can “read” the political truth for themselves, they are as blind as the prisoners in Plato’s Cave to the reality that lies outside what their senses can perceive.