Democratic Decay: Examining Sri Lanka under the Rajapaksa Government

Featured image from the Sunday Leader

DINITHI DE ALWIS- 07/30/2018

The phenomenon of democratic decay has gained attention around the world by various different academics, especially in light of countries such as Poland, Hungary and the United States. Scholars such as Tom Daly, have understood ‘democratic decay’ as an overarching umbrella term for the general decline in the quality of democracy of younger and long-established democracies, which do not qualify as full democratic breakdowns. I believe that this framework is an important way to analyse how post-war, Rajapaksa executed a hybrid-playbook narrative, consisting of both legal changes and explicit manipulations of practice to deliberately undermine democratic institutions. This particular time frame illuminates how in comparison to any other period in Sri Lanka, the Rajapaksa regime, exacerbated decay.

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