The Constitutional Convergence: How Democratic Backsliding Arrives Without a Coup, The Mauritius Case
In 2016, Nancy Bermeo published "On Democratic Backsliding" in the Journal of Democracy. She identified six forms through which democracies die: coups d'état, executive coups, promissory coups, election day vote fraud, strategic electoral manipulation, and executive aggrandisement. She considered the last the most dangerous, not because it is the most violent, but because it is the most difficult to see. It looks like normal politics. It uses legal instruments. It happens in full public view. It is only recognisable as backsliding retrospectively, when the accumulated effect of individually justifiable steps becomes an irreversible institutional condition. This article applies the Bermeo framework, specifically the executive aggrandisement typology developed empirically by Melis Laebens in V-Dem Working Paper 54 (2023), to the constitutional, legal, fiscal, and institutional events in Mauritius between November 2024 and July 2026. It presents the evidence. It names the questions the evidence raises. The reader reaches the verdict.
A methodology note before the analysis begins, because this article is unusual and its methodology matters. The Meridian does not assert that Mauritius is backsliding. It asserts that the Bermeo-Laebens framework for identifying executive aggrandisement is the correct analytical tool for examining the specific cluster of events that have occurred in Mauritius since November 2024, and that applying the framework to the evidence produces findings that Mauritians deserve to examine for themselves. The framework does not require malice. It does not require a plan. It requires only that we observe whether the documented events, taken together, fit the pattern that political science has identified in 26 cases of executive aggrandisement across 30 years of global democratic history, and whether Mauritius's specific institutional context makes the fit significant or incidental. We apply the framework. We report the findings. We reach no verdict. That is not epistemic cowardice. It is the correct analytical posture toward a sovereign democratic society examining its own condition.
Laebens (2023) defines executive aggrandisement as "an attempt by a democratically elected leader to more or less simultaneously weaken both horizontal and vertical accountability mechanisms." Horizontal accountability refers to the constraints imposed on the executive by other branches of the state, the judiciary, the legislature, prosecutorial institutions, oversight bodies. Vertical accountability refers to the constraints imposed by electoral competition, media freedom, civil society, and the right of voters to hold the government accountable through democratic means.
To identify executive aggrandisement, Laebens uses five horizontal accountability indicators: high court independence, high court compliance, judicial purges, legislature investigates in practice, and executive oversight. She uses seven vertical accountability indicators: harassment of journalists, government censorship of media, CSO repression, election management body capacity, election management body autonomy, election voter registry integrity, and government election intimidation.
A country registers as a potential case of executive aggrandisement when at least one indicator in each dimension, horizontal and vertical, registers a statistically significant decline within a five-year period. The key insight is that it is the simultaneity of both dimensions declining that constitutes the diagnostic signal. Declining horizontal accountability alone may reflect institutional reform. Declining vertical accountability alone may reflect political contestation. When both decline simultaneously, the pattern suggests a coordinated attempt to reduce the constraints on executive power.
Of the 26 cases identified from 1989 to 2019, six ended in full incumbent takeover, Hungary, Turkey, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Serbia, and Benin. Eleven ended in institutionally enforced exit, the aggrandising incumbent was voted out or reached a term limit. Five ended in other forms of exit. The framework's most important finding for our purposes: executive aggrandisement is not always fatal to democracy. It is always a signal worth reading.
The Mauritius context requires three additional notes before we apply the framework. First, Mauritius is not Turkey or Hungary. It is a small island state with a population of 1.3 million, a Westminster-derived constitutional architecture, an independent judiciary that retains the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London as its final court of appeal, a free press, a competitive multi-party system, and a record of peaceful democratic alternation across six decades of independence. These institutional conditions represent genuine structural resilience. Second, the events this article examines occurred within a single government's first twenty months in office, following an election won by a substantial margin on 10 November 2024. The government has a democratic mandate. The question the framework asks is not whether the mandate is legitimate, it clearly is, but whether the use of that mandate is producing institutional changes that, taken together, fit the pattern. Third, the framework explicitly acknowledges that "two observers might reasonably disagree as to whether or not some actions taken by the incumbent constitute a democratizing corrective to institutions, or a subversive manipulation hostile to democracy." That is the honest condition of applying comparative political science to a specific case. We proceed with that honesty as our epistemological foundation.
The Laebens framework's primary horizontal accountability indicator is judicial independence. The evidence from Mauritius presents a specific configuration: the Afrobarometer survey data documents that public trust in the courts fell from 79 per cent in 2012 to 56 per cent in 2024, with 67 per cent of respondents perceiving corruption among judicial officers. This is a pre-existing condition, not a new development. The deterioration of public trust in the judiciary preceded the current government. What the current government has done, since taking office in November 2024, is initiate a process of constitutional and judicial reform whose scope and architecture raise questions the framework asks us to take seriously.
The Constitutional Review Commission Bill No. VI of 2026 was tabled in May 2026. Its object: to empower the President of the Republic to appoint a commission responsible for examining and making recommendations on constitutional reforms, including the protection of fundamental rights and the consolidation of democracy and institutions.
The Commission was formally composed on 3 July 2026. Chair: Mr Vinod Boolell. Vice-Chair: Mrs Ah Foon Chui Yew Cheong. Nine Commissioners, including Dr Milan J.N. Meetarbhan, Mrs Yanilla Moonshiram SC, and Mr Satyajit Boolell SC. Mandate: constitutional reform recommendations, including DPP independence, judicial appointments reform, and a new Court of Appeal. Electoral reforms explicitly excluded from the mandate; addressed separately.
The Commission operates under former Chief Justice Sik Yuen, described by the Mauritius Times as "a major institutional milestone for modern Mauritius." Administrative support: the Law Reform Commission.
Two observations follow from this evidence. The first is constructive. A Constitutional Review Commission established by statute, with a transparent composition, a published mandate, and expert membership drawn from the legal profession, is precisely the kind of institutional mechanism through which mature democracies undertake fundamental reform. The Mauritius Times editorial acknowledged that "many of the reforms now being examined by the Commission have been analysed for decades in the pages of this newspaper." The demand for DPP independence, judicial appointment reform, and a distinct Court of Appeal is not the invention of the current government. It is the culmination of decades of legitimate advocacy that this government has given institutional form. That is a democratic achievement.
The second observation is structural and requires more careful examination. The Constitutional Review Commission was established by a government whose Attorney General is Gavin Glover SC, a figure who, until 27 November 2024, was the leading counsel for the Prime Minister in the criminal proceedings in the coffres-forts case, in which Dr Ramgoolam faces 23 charges under the Financial Intelligence and Anti-Money Laundering Act arising from the seizure of approximately Rs 224 million in cash found at his residences in February 2015. Mr Glover became Attorney General on the same day the government took office. The Commission's mandate includes the constitutional independence of the DPP, the office whose conduct in the coffres-forts case is at the centre of the abuse of process application that resulted in the permanent stay of the proceedings on 8 June 2026.
The Laebens framework does not ask whether any individual action is legally improper. It asks whether the simultaneous occurrence of multiple institutional changes, each individually defensible, produces a pattern that is recognisable. The simultaneous occurrence of: an Attorney General who was the Prime Minister's personal criminal defence counsel; a stay of the criminal proceedings against the Prime Minister on grounds of abuse of process; and a Constitutional Review Commission with a mandate that includes reform of the DPP independence provisions whose application was central to those proceedings, this simultaneous occurrence is a pattern. Whether it is the pattern the framework diagnoses is the question the framework raises. It does not answer it. The framework requires the reader to hold the evidence and reason about its meaning.
The Finance Bill No. XII of 2026, examined in detail in this edition's Article 18, contains provisions that are relevant to horizontal accountability in the fiscal domain. The Laebens framework includes "executive oversight", the ability of bodies other than the legislature to constrain executive action, as a horizontal accountability indicator. Two provisions in the Finance Bill are relevant here.
The first is the reclassification of pension liabilities as financial liabilities under the Public Debt Management Act. This is a genuine governance reform, it brings pension obligations within the scope of the Ministry of Finance's debt monitoring and reporting framework, increasing transparency about the full extent of the state's future payment obligations. The direction of this reform is toward greater disclosure, not less. Its horizontal accountability effect is ambiguous in the framework's terms: increased transparency is a constraint on the executive's ability to obscure the true fiscal position, but the mechanism of that transparency is concentrated in the Ministry itself.
The second is the Presidential approval requirement for certain categories of early retirement of public officers, inserted by Clause 13(a) of the Finance Bill. Article 18 of this edition documented this provision with statutory precision. The President of Mauritius acts on the advice of the Prime Minister. A provision requiring Presidential approval for public officer early retirement is, in constitutional practice, a provision requiring Prime Ministerial approval. Whether this constitutes a meaningful horizontal constraint, by subjecting individual early retirements to executive scrutiny, or whether it constitutes an extension of executive influence into the management of the civil service, depends on how it is exercised. The provision exists. The framework notes its existence. It does not characterise its direction until the pattern of its exercise becomes observable.
Democratic backsliding is not about bad intentions. Some of the most consequential examples in the historical record involved leaders who believed sincerely in the legitimacy and necessity of what they were doing. The framework asks not about intentions but about institutional effects. Effects are observable. Intentions are not.
The coffres-forts case is the most sensitive element of this article's evidence base, and it requires the most careful treatment. The evidence consists of documented facts. The interpretation of those facts is contested. The framework asks us to hold the facts and apply the diagnostic criteria without predetermining the conclusion.
February 2015: Rs 224 million (including 1.7 million USD) found in safes at Dr Ramgoolam's residences following a search conducted two months after his electoral defeat of December 2014. Dr Ramgoolam charged with 23 counts under FIAMLA.
November 2024: Dr Ramgoolam wins general election, becomes Prime Minister. Gavin Glover SC, his leading counsel in the coffres-forts case, appointed Attorney General the same day.
February 2025: A sworn affidavit from Simo Carevic and Thomas Galet, executives of the Dufry Group, alleges they were brought to the apartment of the then Attorney General in February 2015 where they were pressured to provide evidence of bribery against Dr Ramgoolam. This affidavit becomes central to the abuse of process application.
8 June 2026: The Financial Crimes Division of the Intermediate Court grants a permanent stay of proceedings on grounds of abuse of process, accepting that the prosecution arose from a political vendetta and that the police investigation was tainted. The DPP signals intention to appeal.
May–July 2026: The Constitutional Review Commission Bill is tabled, passed, and the Commission composed. Its mandate includes the constitutional independence of the DPP, the office whose actions the stay ruling found to be implicated in the abuse of process.
The Laebens framework, reading this sequence, would note two things. First, the stay of proceedings is a judicial act, the court found on the evidence that the prosecution was abusive. That finding strengthens horizontal accountability: an independent court constrained the state's prosecutorial power. This is the framework reading an event as institutionally positive. The DPP's announced intention to appeal further strengthens horizontal accountability: it means the stay is subject to appellate review by a higher court, not accepted as final by the prosecutorial office. Second, the simultaneous composition of a commission to review the constitutional position of the DPP, while the DPP's appeal of the stay is pending, is a structural observation the framework makes without characterising its direction. The DPP's institutional position is simultaneously the subject of criminal appellate proceedings and constitutional reform planning. The two processes are legally separate. Their simultaneous operation in relation to the same set of events is the observation the framework asks us to record.
The Laebens framework's vertical accountability indicators include harassment of journalists, government censorship of media, and CSO repression. On these indicators, The Meridian has no evidence that the current government has taken actions that the framework would diagnose as declining vertical accountability. The press in Mauritius remains free. L'Express, Le Mauricien, the Mauritius Times, and independent online platforms have reported the coffres-forts case, the Constitutional Review Commission, and the Finance Bill provisions with the specificity this article has drawn upon. Civil society has not faced documented repression. The electoral management architecture has not been altered.
This is a significant finding for the framework's application. Laebens is explicit: a country must register significant decline in at least one indicator in each dimension, horizontal and vertical, to meet the diagnostic threshold. On the vertical accountability dimension, the evidence from Mauritius in the period under examination does not reach that threshold. The press is free. Elections are not immediately pending. Civil society operates without documented restriction. The diagnostic signal the framework would identify requires simultaneous decline in both dimensions. On the current evidence, one dimension, horizontal accountability, presents observations that the framework asks us to examine. The other, vertical accountability, does not present the same pattern.
This does not mean the framework is inapplicable. It means the framework requires more time, more events, and more evidence before it can reach a conclusion about Mauritius that it can reach with confidence about Hungary in 2010 or Turkey in 2013. It also means that Mauritius's institutional resilience on vertical accountability, its free press, its competitive civil society, its independent media, is precisely the asset that the framework identifies as the primary constraint on the progression of executive aggrandisement from its early stages to the hegemonic phase where democratic institutions become structurally compromised. The Mauritius Times, L'Express, and Le Mauricien are not merely observing these events. They are, in the framework's terms, performing horizontal accountability functions through the vertical accountability mechanism of press freedom. That is the architecture that democratic resilience depends upon.
Of Laebens' 26 cases of executive aggrandisement identified between 1989 and 2019, six ended in full incumbent takeover. Eleven ended in institutionally enforced exit, the aggrandising incumbent was defeated at the ballot box or constrained by term limits. Five ended in other forms of exit. The framework's own descriptive conclusion: aggrandisement "did not always lead to democratic breakdown or even cause significant backsliding."
The most important finding for Mauritius is this: the cases that ended in institutionally enforced exit, where democracy survived, were precisely those where vertical accountability mechanisms remained functional throughout the aggrandisement period. A free press that reported the events. Civil society that organised around them. An electoral system that retained its integrity. These are the constraints that the framework identifies as resilience-producing, not because they are passive safeguards but because they are active institutional constraints that force the aggrandising incumbent to calculate the cost of continued accumulation against the risk of electoral and legal consequences.
Mauritius retains all three. The Privy Council in London retains its jurisdiction as the final court of appeal, an external legal constraint whose distance from domestic political pressure gives it a structural independence that no internal institution can match. The DPP has announced an appeal of the stay. The press has reported these events without restriction. The Constitutional Review Commission includes independent legal scholars whose public record is one of principled analysis. The framework says: watch whether these resilience mechanisms remain intact as the constitutional reform process proceeds. That is the diagnostic question for Mauritius in 2026 and 2027.
The Bermeo-Laebens framework, applied to the Mauritius evidence, does not produce a verdict. It produces a set of questions that the evidence makes it necessary to ask, and that Mauritians, voters, journalists, lawyers, civil society, and opposition politicians, have the sovereign right and the institutional capacity to address.
The first question is about the Constitutional Review Commission's scope and the simultaneity of its mandate with the pending DPP appeal. The Commission is examining DPP independence while the DPP is engaged in appellate proceedings that directly concern the exercise of prosecutorial independence against the current Prime Minister. The Commission's recommendations, if they result in constitutional amendments to the DPP's institutional position, will affect the institutional framework within which the appeal is conducted. This is a question about the architecture of separation of powers in a specific factual context. It deserves public examination. It is receiving some. It deserves more.
The second question is about the Attorney General's dual role. Gavin Glover SC is simultaneously the Attorney General of the Republic, the government's principal legal adviser, and the officer responsible for advising on the constitutionality of legislation including the Constitutional Review Commission Bill, and the former leading counsel for the Prime Minister in the criminal proceedings whose permanent stay he will have had an institutional interest in. His Wikipedia entry notes this dual role. His Wikipedia entry is not a legal finding. But the constitutional principle that no person should be a judge in their own cause, and its extension to the principle that a legal adviser should not advise on constitutional matters in which they have a personal interest, is a principle whose application to this configuration of roles deserves institutional examination. The Mauritius Bar Association has not publicly addressed it. The Constitutional Review Commission's mandate does not include it. The question persists.
The third question is about the direction of the constitutional reform process itself. The reforms the Commission is examining, DPP independence, judicial appointments by merit, a distinct Court of Appeal, are reforms that democratic advocates in Mauritius have demanded for decades. They are, in their substance, democratising. The question the framework asks is not whether the reforms are democratising in substance, but whether the process by which they are being designed, by a Commission constituted under executive authority, with a mandate defined by the executive, during a period when the executive has an active interest in the institutional configuration of the DPP, is procedurally consistent with the separation of powers that the reforms purport to strengthen. Process and substance can diverge. When they do, the framework asks us to notice.
I have been the Editor-in-Chief of The Meridian and a constituent of Rivière du Rempart for the whole of this government's tenure. I write this article as a Mauritian, as an economist, and as a journalist whose intellectual commitment is to the evidence and to the reader's right to assess it without editorial predetermination.
I do not assert that Mauritius is backsliding. I assert that the Bermeo-Laebens framework, applied rigorously to the documented events of November 2024 to July 2026, identifies a pattern on the horizontal accountability dimension that the framework asks us to take seriously, and that the framework simultaneously identifies on the vertical accountability dimension a set of resilience mechanisms that Mauritius retains and that, in the historical record of 26 comparable cases, have been the decisive variable in determining whether executive aggrandisement ends in institutional capture or in democratic survival.
The Constitutional Review Commission is a legitimate institution with a legitimate mandate. Gavin Glover SC is a distinguished lawyer and a lawfully appointed Attorney General. The stay of the coffres-forts proceedings was a judicial decision by an independent court on an independent assessment of the evidence. The Finance Bill's Presidential approval requirement for civil service early retirement is a statutory provision that will be applied by the institutions it creates. Each of these statements is true.
The question the framework asks, and the question this article leaves with the reader, is whether the simultaneous occurrence of these events, in this sequence, involving these institutional actors, in this constitutional moment, is coincidental or convergent. The framework has seen convergence before. It has seen it in Budapest and in Ankara and in Caracas and in Cotonou. It has also seen, in Bogotá and in Gaborone and in Dakar, the same pattern begin and then stop, because the press kept reporting, because the opposition kept competing, because the courts kept deciding, and because the voters kept watching.
Mauritius has all of those assets. The question for 2026 and 2027 is whether they are exercised. That question belongs to Mauritians. This article is a tool for thinking about it clearly. The verdict is yours.
Academic Sources: Bermeo, Nancy. "On Democratic Backsliding." Journal of Democracy 27, no.1 (2016): 5–19. Laebens, Melis G. "Beyond Democratic Backsliding: Executive Aggrandizement and its Outcomes." V-Dem Institute Working Paper Series 2023:54. University of Gothenburg. Mauritius Sources: Le Mauricien, L'Express, Mauritius Times, ION News (documented by date throughout). Constitutional Review Commission Bill No. VI of 2026. Finance Bill No. XII of 2026. Afrobarometer Survey, 2024. Cabinet Communiqué, 3 July 2026. Methodology note: This article applies a peer-reviewed academic framework to documented public events. It reaches no verdict on the constitutional character of the current government. All factual claims are sourced. The framework, not the author, raises the diagnostic questions.
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