Are there examples where term extensions led to democratic backsliding or strengthened institutions?

1. How scholars link term changes to backsliding: the mechanism

Political scientists emphasize that backsliding often proceeds via institutional legalism — leaders use constitutional amendments, legislative maneuvers, or crises to alter rules governing tenure and checks on power, and these changes can disable independent courts and oversight that constrain executives ^{[2] [3]}. The Journal of Democracy frames modern backsliding as “executive aggrandizement” and “promissory” or legalistic tactics rather than overt coups; changing term limits or abolishing them fits that pattern because it is legitimated by institutions even as it weakens their constraining role ^[2].

2. Clear cases mentioned in reporting and analysis

Comparative analysts point to concrete episodes where executives leveraged formal pathways to entrench control. The Carnegie Endowment notes El Salvador’s president used his legislative majority to enact judiciary-weakening changes and, later, constitutional amendments that abolished presidential term limits — an explicit example where term-limit abolition accompanied broader institutional weakening ^[3]. The same source groups Ecuador under Correa as a case where constitutional routes were used to reshape legislatures and oversight in ways that restricted investigative institutions and civil-society space ^[3]. These are cited as emblematic of how term and constitutional changes can be part of a broader backsliding strategy ^[3].

3. Variation across cases — not all term changes equal

Scholars and practitioners caution against lumping every alteration of tenure rules together. IFES and other analysts argue for nuance: backsliding ranges from erosion to autocratic deepening, and institutional redesigns can have different origins and effects; some countries have “bounced back” after short episodes while others (e.g., Hungary) show prolonged, stabilized degradation of democracy despite procedural electoral elements remaining ^{[1] [4]}. The Journal of Democracy emphasizes that contemporary backsliding is often subtler and more reversible than older coups, implying context matters when assessing the impact of a term extension ^[2].

4. Where evidence is thin or contested

Available sources do not provide many unequivocal examples where extending terms alone — absent other institutional changes — strengthened democratic governance. Most accounts tie term-limit removals to simultaneous measures (court capture, media restrictions, legislative dominance) that together produce backsliding; isolating the causal effect of term extensions alone is not well documented in the provided materials (not found in current reporting). Several authors warn that measuring backsliding requires attention to which institutions are being weakened and that focusing only on tenure rules risks missing other erosive tactics ^[5].

5. Alternative viewpoints and implicit agendas in the literature

Some analyses implicitly foreground democracy promotion and institutional resilience as remedies, which can bias interpretation toward seeing constitutional reversals as intrinsically negative; IFES urges tailoring support to local actors and recognizes movement between backsliding and recovery ^[1]. The Carnegie Endowment’s comparative piece frames term-limit removals in the context of populist executives who enjoy high popularity even as they erode constraints — signaling an implicit tension in the literature between popular legitimacy and institutional health ^{[6] [7]}. Readers should note these framing choices when interpreting claims about term extensions.

6. What this means for practitioners and citizens

Practitioners studying resilience stress that democracies can be designed to “weather” attacks on rules but must anticipate that leaders may pursue legalistic paths to aggrandize power ^[1]. The scholarship repeatedly shows that when term changes come with weakening of courts, oversight, and civil society — as in El Salvador and Ecuador examples — the risk of durable backsliding rises ^[3]. Conversely, short-lived or contested changes can be reversed; the literature documents countries that have improved after brief backsliding episodes ^[4].

7. Bottom line — cautious, evidence-based takeaway

The available reporting and scholarship link term-limit removals or extensions to democratic backsliding when they occur alongside other institutional captures ^{[3] [2]}. There is little in the provided sources that treats standalone term extensions as a proven route to strengthening democracy; rather, the pattern in the literature is that tenure changes are often one element in a broader strategy of executive aggrandizement ^{[2] [1]}.