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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Democratic backsliding

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Particularly per the scholarly sources found by Timothyjosephwood. No consensus for a merge to backsliding since that's a specific "technical term" of its own, as it were. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 14:38, 18 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Democratic backsliding

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Democratic backsliding (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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Wikipedia is not a collection of Neologisms. Article itself says it's a recent term. Whispering 01:47, 4 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 02:08, 4 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge into Backsliding. The general concept of reverting to bad old ways is the same. bd2412 T 02:48, 4 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge-sounds like the best idea. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:19, 4 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete (Change iVote to Withdraw , ceding this to the poli sci dept.) Fails WP:NEO, and although it may simply be WP:TOOSOON, it is also the case that these two common English words used in conjunction convey precisely the same meaning that this NEO allegedly conveys as a term of art in poli sci. And democratic backsliding is as old as democratic government, why, I remember my great, grand-uncle telling me about a debate in the agora in which Thucydides complained about the democratic backsliding by.... The two words have been used in this ordinary way for decades - my ngram search [1] shows the term in heavy use around 1960, and I wouldn't be surprised to find that someone used it during the the Lincoln administration. Frankly, for a political science prof to write a 2016 article defining these two words used in juxtaposition by their common English meaning and claim that they have coined a term of art is a bit arrogant. And certainly not sufficient to pass WP:NEO. (It may be mere PROMO, note that article was crated by a user with a total of 44 edits, and then expanded enthusiastically by user User:Democratic Backsliding) But be that as it may, it fails WP:NEO.E.M.Gregory (talk) 11:40, 4 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just fyi, "backsliding" is a word coined during the Reformation, according to the OED, by John Knox. We could expand that article with later uses, but it stars life and spends several centuries as a specificially Chirstian and theological term.E.M.Gregory (talk) 23:03, 6 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - I know scholarly searches sometimes fall through the cracks on the BEFORE, but I'm seeing more than a thousand hits on Google Scholar: Journal of Democracy, Journal of Politics, American Journal of Political Science. I'm no expert, but seems a lot like this is a fairly commonly used concept in political science. Although the Trump name dropping seems a little editorially out in the weeds and is probably not appropriate. TimothyJosephWood 15:53, 4 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per TJW: this concept, described by this term, appears to be quite current in political science. Google Books shows many more uses, in primary literature and textbooks alike, including explicit definitions such as this one. A list of a dozen relevant works can be found in footnote 4 here. Agree that Trump-related content is TOOSOON or at least needs a better source.
This concept doesn't seem to have anything to do with backsliding in the religious sense, and I highly doubt adequate sources could be found treating them together. FourViolas (talk) 20:52, 4 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. "Democratic backsliding" is an accepted term in political science, and a key term in research on democracy. The term has nothing to do with the general term "backsliding" (per bd2412) and is a recognized precise term in political science scholarship (per EM Gregory, whose comment I'm struggling to understand). One could make the argument that "democratic backsliding" should be added as a section in the article on "Democracy", but I think the concept is important enough and studied sufficiently to warrant a large comprehensive article of its own on it. It would be no problem at all for someone interested in contributing to this article to find scholarship in the best political science journals on this exact topic. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 12:58, 5 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep -- a sufficiently notable concept, per sources already present in the article. K.e.coffman (talk) 03:38, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, TheSandDoctor (talk) 06:33, 10 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete I revisited, making time to read more of the books and journal articles. Most of the hits on this term fail to support notability or meet WP:NEO because they merely use two common, English words in their commonly understood sense in the course of discussion the failure or perceived threat of failure of specific democratic institutions due to a variety of proposed causes. Also, the article in Democracy Digest is a mere report of the Huq & Gisburg article in Vox; even though it is used as though it was a 2nd, independent source to support the POV of this phenomenon taken by this brief page. The only 2 sources we have offering WP:SIGCOV of this term as a term are Bormeo and Huq & Gisburg. (ping me if you find more) That's not a lot on which to base a WP:NEO article. So here is Bormeo (2016) on the history and definition of this term: "The term democratic backsliding is frequently used but rarely analyzed. This explains why a careful recent survey concluded “we know very little” about it. Part of the problem is the term’s extraordinary breadth. At its most basic, it denotes the state-led debilitation or elimination of any of the political institutions that sustain an existing democracy. Since the political institutions that sustain democracy are myriad (including all the institutions that enable people to formulate and signify preferences and then have them weighed by their elected representatives), the term embraces multiple processes. Since the state actors who might initiate backsliding are themselves diverse (ranging from monarchs to presidents to military men), the term embraces multiple agents. Insum, the concept has so many referents that it needs immediate specification to have practical meaning. Like an old steamer trunk, it is opaque and unwieldy but yields much that proves useful when it is unpacked." Boromeo then goes on to list 6 types of democratic backsliding: classic coups d’état; executive coups; election day vote fraud; promissory coups (essentially, running on a restore-democracy platform;) Executive aggrandizement; and Manipulating elections strategically. This page, unfortunately, is written as though Huq & Gisburg definiton was a consensus view of this topic, when, in fact, it presents a particular concept quite different form that presented by Bormeo. This is problematic, but it could be improved by editing. However, the reason I am arguing for deletion is that there is too little serious analysis of this two-word-phrase as a term of art to pass WP:NEO. Democratic backsliding is, at present, a simple juxtaposition of common English words used ot describe a range of phenomena. Like republican virtue, or a good mother it fails because WP:NOTDICTIONARY and sources do not support the proposition that "democratic backsliding' is a term of art with a specific meaning or set of meanings like deliberative democracy or democratic socialism.E.M.Gregory (talk) 17:05, 10 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The term democratic backsliding is frequently used but rarely analyzed ... Like an old steamer trunk, it is opaque and unwieldy but yields much that proves useful when it is unpacked. This... looks like an argument against NEO... somehow used as an argument in favor of NEO. TJWtalk 20:12, 10 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sorry, Tim. I often edit WP:Neo on political and other topics, and failed to realize that other editors may not be familiar with the actual language at WP:NEO, which both warns against creating and against using neologisms in an unconsidered manner, and defines what sort of source an article on neologism must have. I am arguing that while these two words have meaning, there is insufficient sourcing to support an article. I think this article fails WP:NEO: "To support an article about a particular term or concept, we must cite what reliable secondary sources, such as books and papers, say about the term or concept, not books and papers that use the term. An editor's personal observations and research (e.g. finding blogs, books, and articles that use the term rather than are about the term) are insufficient to support articles on neologisms because this may require analysis and synthesis of primary source material to advance a position, which is explicitly prohibited by the original research policy." E.M.Gregory (talk) 21:04, 10 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Umm... EMG, this seems like pretty in depth coverage, to the point of statistically operationalizing it. I read this after commenting originally, and actually decided that it was too in-depth and too statistical for inclusion in the article. TJWtalk 21:57, 10 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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