This book explores democratic fragility, an underdeveloped concept in the analyses of contemporary political regimes. Diagnoses of fragility commonly occur when states are brought to the brink of the abyss. Democracy and Its Fragility: Mapping the Unstable Equilibrium builds on the premise that fragility is an inherent trait of democracy that expresses its exposure to disintegration yet does not foretell its death.

Employing a novel conceptual lens that seeks to scrutinize the stability of contemporary democratic regimes across the world, the book offers a twofold contribution that provides new leverage for analysis. Theoretically, it refines the notion of fragility, making it a complementary variable to the latest research on robustness and resilience. Empirically, the volume engages with an overview of fragility indicators featured in indices mapping the quality of democracy and an assessment of their limitations. What follows are in-depth qualitative case studies zooming into the struggles for democratic regime maintenance and response to a variety of unfavourable conditions in 13 countries across Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Southern Europe and the Americas.

Addressing issues that are both conceptually advanced and highly accessible, Democracy and Its Fragility: Mapping the Unstable Equilibrium will attract academics and students of democracy studies, politics and government, and comparative politics.

Monika Sawicka is Assistant Professor at the Institute of American Studies and Polish Diaspora, Jagiellonian University. Her research interests include Brazilian foreign policy, contemporary Brazilian politics, role theory and democratic fragility in Latin America. Her recent publications include the monograph Brazil’s International Activism. Roles of an Emerging Middle Power (Routledge 2023) and paper “The Curious Case of Vandals: Brazil’s Environmental and Regional Policies in the Bolsonaro Years” in Third World Quarterly (2024).

Artur Gruszczak is Professor of Social Sciences and Chair in National Security at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. His research areas include postmodern warfare, democratic governance, migration and internal security in the EU. His recent publications include the Routledge Handbook of the Future of Warfare (co-edited with Sebastian Kaempf, Routledge 2024), Technology, Ethics and the Protocols of Modern War (co-edited with Paweł Frankowski, Routledge 2018) and Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Regional and Global Security (co-edited with Paweł Frankowski, Palgrave Macmillan 2018).

Aleksandra Zdeb is Assistant Professor at the University of the National Education Commission in Krakow and Visiting Researcher at the Queen’s University Belfast. She holds a PhD in law and politics from the University of Graz and was a post-doc at the Queen’s University Belfast where she worked on topics of excluded groups and good governance in post-conflict societies. She is author of An Ordinary Demonstration of Power. On the Management of the Conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina (in Polish, Universitas 2022) and papers on post-conflict reconstruction and state-building processes in journals including Ethnopolitics, Nationalities Papers, Representation, Social Inclusion, Swiss Political Science Review.