Chapter 18th is dedicated to a critical study of “democratic erosion”, an expression that became common among political scientists, in order to describe a political pathology of our era. The idea is that, in our time, democracies no longer “die” in one fell swoop, but rather slowly, “by a thousand cuts”: instead of succumbing from one day to the next after massive riots or a military coup, democracies nowadays are commonly dismantled piece by piece from within. I explain the importance but also the limits of this approach and the alternatives that are proposed as a remedy.