Insider: Erin Delaney
Democracy is under threat
We need new ways of finding common cause across the political divide, says Professor Erin Delaney – and the Global Centre for Democratic Constitutionalism is leading the charge.
Portico Magazine | Summer 2026
Last year – for the first time in two decades – autocracies outnumbered democracies. Today, three out of four people globally live in autocracies, where a single person or small group holds all the power. According to the V-Dem Institute, of the 27 democracies that had so-called ‘autocratisation episodes’, where societies that were previously democratic and open slide towards autocracy, only nine ultimately remained democratic. That’s a democracy fatality rate of 67 per cent.
"This is an ‘all-hands-on-deck' moment. I say it all the time. Constitutional democracy has fallen on hard times. We cannot afford to let it die."
We are in the midst of an epidemic of democratic decline, and we need to act now to stop it, says Professor Erin Delaney, the Leverhulme Professor of Comparative Constitutional Law and Inaugural Director of the Global Centre for Democratic Constitutionalism (GCDC), a research centre focused on constitutional resilience, recovery and renewal. “This is an ‘all-hands-on-deck’ moment. I say it all the time. Constitutional democracy has fallen on hard times. We cannot afford to let it die.”
This backsliding could be happening now because of increased wealth disparity or income inequality, says Professor Delaney – or a host of other factors. “Is it migration pressures? In Europe, did the eastern expansion of the EU play a part? In the US, did the courts go too far in protecting rights when people weren’t ready for that? Some causes are systemic, from issues connected to globalisation, and some are very localised and country-specific. There isn’t a clear linear story that covers everything.”
And it should matter to all of us because democratic decline, she points out, imperils all areas of public and social life – not least so-called ‘knowledge institutions’. These include universities and research centres, but also libraries, archives and museums, and independent media – a web of institutions and their personnel that uphold democracy and ensure that we, as political actors and voters, have access to reliable information, knowledge and history.
Whether it’s Hungary’s Central European University relocating from Budapest to Vienna after a legal battle with Viktor Orbán’s administration, or the firing last year of the commissioner of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, there is a trend, she says, for the hitherto non-political to become politicised.
“That is dangerous because it feeds our anxieties about disinformation, misinformation and fake news. And then we stop having confidence in the very project of learning and voting. If you think of democracy only at the thinnest level of understanding, as a majority vote, then you are completely missing out the ecosystem that supports it.”
Professor Erin Delaney. Credit: Joe McGorty.
Professor Erin Delaney. Credit: Joe McGorty.
And once democratic decline has been acknowledged, Professor Delaney says, we need to start thinking about what lies ahead. It was this realisation that spurred her on to join UCL’s bid for a Leverhulme International Professorship. These prestigious posts are commonly found in the sciences, where they enable not only the relocation of a researcher to the UK, but also the creation of a lab. But UCL and Professor Delaney had a different proposition. “Leverhulme is concerned with scientific breakthroughs and big questions such as climate change and migration. How could it expect that research to continue to have impact in an authoritarian world?”
Leverhulme agreed – and the GCDC was created. “It’s about being helpful in a world that doesn’t feel very positive right now,” says Professor Delaney. “Lots of people are working on diagnosing the cause of democratic decline. We’re trying to do something different.”
Professor Delaney is clear that resilience, recovery and renewal are not the same as retrieving a lost glory of some bygone age. “That’s an attractive sentiment in our world right now, but I think a misguided one. Bygone ages were never that ‘great’ for many living in them.” Instead, she says, the GCDC is dedicated to “thinking about and finding a way to make democratic constitutionalism better”.
Already, the centre has drawn visitors from across the world. Its research seminar series, the Sidney Seminars, invites experts to talk about constitutional resilience and democratic backsliding. So far, experts from Canada, Nepal, Romania, the US and Spain have shared their research on everything from Gen Z protests in post-conflict Nepal to immigration law in America. “It is hard to be an expert in every country,” says Professor Delaney. “That’s why we want to learn from the best people out there, from all over the world, and have the resources and the research to attract them.”
At a time when finding common cause across the political divide seems harder than ever, the centre aims to be truly interdisciplinary, bringing together everyone from government officials to artists, political scientists to archivists. Doing that doesn’t simply advance scholarship of constitutional resilience – it enacts and builds that resilience itself, Professor Delaney points out.
“In the US, many people don’t talk to each other anymore; people don’t have friends from different political viewpoints. When we talk about the phenomenon of democratic backsliding, we are often talking about a movement away from a population that cares about one another’s humanity and operates with empathy and is willing to negotiate and make compromises.
“If we lose shared values, there is a slippery slope to not just democratic backsliding, but an unpleasant and dangerous social dynamic. You see it in the dehumanisation of people, and in the lack of respect for the rule of law. Right now, we’re in a situation where it’s hard to find common cause.”
"If we lose shared values, there is a slippery slope to not just democratic backsliding, but an unpleasant and dangerous social dynamic."
The GCDC is already having an impact. Its State of the United States lecture series, with an inaugural address by Jack Smith, the former Special Counsel for the US Department of Justice, made headlines around the world and garnered 250,000 downloads. A second event paired the US National Archivist, Dr Colleen Shogan, with the Director of Oxford University Libraries, Richard Ovenden, to debate the safeguarding of knowledge in an age when memory is political.
The UK’s theory of government, Professor Delaney points out, rests largely on the ‘good chap’ theory: the notion that people are going to do the right thing. “So we should be reminding everyone at every possible moment what it means to be a good chap. It doesn’t matter if the heart of Parliament is beating if it’s unmoored from the body politic and the institutions that form its connective tissue.”
She says of the GCDC: “Our vision is to get people from around the world together to have the hard conversations. We have to hold the line against autocratisation – and build the resilience of constitutional democracy.”
Professor Erin Delaney. Credit: Joe McGorty.
Professor Erin Delaney. Credit: Joe McGorty.
Professor Erin F. Delaney is the inaugural Director of the Global Centre for Democratic Constitutionalism, based at the UCL Faculty of Laws, and the Leverhulme Professor of Comparative Constitutional Law.
Portico magazine features stories for and from the UCL community. If you have a story to tell or feedback to share, contact advancement@ucl.ac.uk
Editor: Lauren Cain
Editorial team: Ray Antwi, Rachel Henkels, Harry Latter, Chloe Lambdon, Bryony Merritt, Lucy Morrish, Alex Norton, Thrisha Sajeev
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