No abstract

The countries of East-Central Europe (ECE) embarked on a democratic transition in 1989 were proclaimed consolidated democracies when they joined the European Union (EU) in 2004. Today most of the new democracies are experiencing “democratic fatigue” and some seem vulnerable to an authoritarian turn. The EU, seen as the guarantor of the post-1989 democratic changes, is experiencing an unprecedented economic, financial, and democratic crisis with the combined challenges of technocracy and populism. The article explores the different approaches to the study of democracies in ECE, their specific features and vulnerabilities, and tries to provide an interpretation of the premature crisis of democracy in ECE in a broader transeuropean context.

No abstract

Students of the Central and Eastern Europe long saw Hungary as a leading post-1989 “success story”—both because the country’s exit from communism was smoothly negotiated and because it appeared to have consolidated its democracy so quickly. Yet the “electoral revolution” unleashed by Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party following its April 2010 parliamentary-election victory—including the adoption of a new constitution and passage of some 350 bills that have profoundly affected the very foundations of the rule of law—has scholars of democratization in the region now considering the possibility of a transition away from democracy.

No abstract