Caught in the crossfire: Children’s rights under backsliding and backlash

This article examines the link between democratic backsliding and the protection of children’s rights. Previous research on children’s rights gives reasons to hypothesize that democratic backsliding will have different impacts on various categories of children’s rights and that erosion of different aspects of democracy will have distinct outcomes. Regression analysis shows that, whereas the erosion of liberal democracy is linked with less protection for children’s rights, backsliding on the egalitarian democracy dimension is associated with slight improvements in children’s social and economic rights (SER). The article then shows that countries that are backsliding on the liberal dimension respond negatively to shaming from the Committee on the Rights of the Child at a statistically significant level and distinguishable from nonbacksliding countries. These findings yield conceptual conclusions regarding children’s rights, democratic backsliding, and backlash.