The role of liberal democracies in the rise of illiberalism

Democracy is the most common regime which dominates the majority of today's international system. Up until now, democratic regimes have continuously changed and diversified both in terms of conceptual and practical terms. In this day and age, thanks to the economic developments, liberal democratic regimes come across as great powers while at the same time being role models for democratizing regimes due to their economic, political and military powers. However, new economic and political problems brought especially by the digital world have caused a clash between economic and political rights in liberal democracies eventually resulting economic interest taking priority. This situation led especially democratizing regimes of the international system to lean more towards economically free but politically oppressive regimes, defined as illiberal, instead of consolidating and widening already challenging political freedoms through institutional and constitutional foundations. As a result, while democracy is spreading through international system, it is not deepening. Within the international relations and political science literature, different reasons are given in order to explain the rise of illiberal regimes; yet, this thesis puts forward the changes brought to the international system especially by technological developments in information and communication sector and hence the role of liberal regimes in the rise of illiberalism.