In recent years the creeping deterioration of democratic rule worldwide has become a major preoccupation across a wide range of research fields and disciplines—especially public law and political science—as scholars struggle to understand the nature of evolving threats to a broad range of democratic systems. Many terms are now used to refer to the incremental degradation of democratic rule worldwide, or ‘democratic decay’. Abusive constitutionalism. Autocratic legalism. Populist constitutionalism. Bad faith constitutionalism. De-constitutionalism. Constitutional retrogression. Constitutional capture. Constitutional rot. Constitutional decay. Democratic deconsolidation. Democratic backsliding. Authoritarianisation. Authoritarian backsliding. Rule of law backsliding. Democratic erosion. Democratic recession. The list goes on. This article argues that conceiving of this scattered cross-disciplinary literature as a research field and providing an account of recent conceptual development can help to map a rapidly developing landscape, maximise the analytical utility of key concepts, identify resonances and duplication among concepts and across discrete literatures, and can help to ensure that this emerging quasi-field develops in a more coherent and rigorous manner.

中文翻译：

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民主衰落：概念化新兴研究领域

近年来，随着学者们努力了解对广泛民主制度不断演变的威胁的本质，全世界民主统治的日益恶化已成为各领域研究的主要关注点，尤其是公法和政治学。现在，许多术语用于指代世界范围内民主统治的逐步恶化，或“民主衰落”。滥用宪政。专制法制。民粹宪政。恶意立宪主义。违宪主义。宪法退步。宪政占领。宪法腐烂。体质衰减。民主解体。民主倒退。威权化。威权主义的后退。法治倒退。民主侵蚀。民主衰退。清单继续。