Updated 2026-08-28hard
Duolingo English Test Interactive Writing Practice #13 — Hard Level
Free DET (Duolingo English Test) Interactive Writing practice #13 — Hard level. Just DET Writing questions, no grading — solve it yourself and check the answer or model response.
How to practice: This set collects only the Interactive Writing question type from the real DET (Duolingo English Test) — DET Writing questions. No grading, no timer — solve it yourself, then tap each question to reveal the answer or model response.
The past two decades have witnessed a global resurgence of authoritarian governance that defies earlier predictions of democracy's inevitable triumph. Scholars describe this phenomenon not as a return to classical autocracy — sudden military coups eliminating elections overnight — but as a more insidious process of 'democratic backsliding,' in which elected leaders systematically dismantle the institutional constraints designed to check their power while maintaining the outward appearances of democratic legitimacy.
This backsliding typically proceeds through a sequence of incremental encroachments: the subordination of independent judiciaries to executive control, the colonization of public broadcasters and regulatory agencies with loyalists, the selective application of legal instruments to harass political opponents, and the introduction of electoral rules that favor incumbent parties. Because each individual step can be framed as a routine exercise of legitimate governmental authority, the cumulative erosion of democratic norms occurs in a political environment where meaningful resistance is difficult to coordinate.
Where democratic institutions have proven most resilient, scholars attribute this resilience to a combination of factors: a robust and independent civil society capable of sustaining public pressure; a fragmented opposition that nonetheless maintains sufficient electoral competitiveness to deny the incumbent a dominant legislative majority; and international linkages — to democratic alliances, multilateral trade arrangements, and global civil society networks — that impose reputational and material costs on authoritarian overreach. The interaction of these factors, rather than any single variable, appears to be decisive.
Part 1
Based on the reading passage, write about the most significant threats that the process of 'democratic backsliding' poses to democratic institutions. Use evidence from the passage and your own knowledge to develop your argument. (5 minutes)
Useful Expressions
democratic backsliding · institutional constraints · judicial independence · civil society resilience
Show Model Answer
The reading passage identifies democratic backsliding as a particularly insidious threat precisely because it subverts democratic institutions from within the framework of formal legality, making it far more difficult to identify, name, and resist than outright authoritarian seizure. The most significant threat lies in the capture of the judiciary, since an independent judiciary represents the primary institutional mechanism through which executive overreach can be restrained and electoral rules enforced impartially. Once judicial independence is compromised, the remaining institutional constraints — legislative oversight, administrative accountability — are deprived of their ultimate enforcement backstop. The systematic colonization of media and regulatory bodies compounds this threat by eliminating the informational conditions necessary for democratic accountability to function: citizens cannot hold governments accountable for actions they are not accurately informed about. Taken together, these encroachments produce what the passage aptly characterizes as a political environment in which resistance is difficult to coordinate, because the erosion is incremental, each step individually ambiguous.
Part 2
The reading describes civil society as one of the key factors in democratic resilience. Do you believe that civil society organizations can realistically counteract the process of democratic backsliding described in the passage? What limitations might they face? (3 minutes)
Show Model Answer
Civil society organizations possess genuine capacity to resist democratic backsliding, but their effectiveness is subject to serious structural constraints. Their principal advantage is their ability to sustain mobilization outside formal institutional channels — filling the accountability vacuum created when state institutions are captured. However, this capacity is contingent on the very freedoms — of assembly, of expression, of association — that backsliding governments typically erode early in the process. Furthermore, civil society organizations in many contexts are financially dependent on international donors, rendering them vulnerable to legal restrictions on foreign funding, a tactic increasingly deployed by backsliding governments to delegitimize domestic advocacy. The passage's observation that international linkages impose reputational costs on authoritarian overreach suggests that transnational civil society networks may ultimately be more consequential than domestic organizations operating in isolation.
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