Democracy and state capture in Moldova

Tudoroiu, Theodor

doi:10.1080/13510347.2013.868438

Cited by 39 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…The concentration of economic and media power has received less attention in the literature on backsliding than the concentration of political power. However, comparative researchers on economic oligarchies suggest that, even if legal, the interventions of super-rich individuals in politics skew public policy, distort the quality of democratic representation, and sap public trust in democracy (Winters 2011;West 2014) in ways which parallel the impacts of state capture (Tudoroiu 2015).…”

Section: Ano and Patterns Of Power Concentrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the illiberal turn: democratic backsliding in the Czech Republic

Hanley

Vachudová

2018

East European Politics

239

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Democratic backsliding in Central Europe has so far been most acute in Hungary and Poland, states once considered frontrunners in democratisation. In this paper, we explore to what extent developments in another key frontrunner, the Czech Republic, fit initial patterns of Hungarian/Polish backsliding. Our analysis centres on the populist anti-corruption ANO movement, led by the billionaire Andrej Babiš, which became the largest Czech party in October 2017 after winning parliamentary elections. We find that while ANO has more limited electoral support than illiberal governing parties in Poland and Hungary and lacks a powerful nationalist narrative, common tactics and forms of concentrating power can be identified, albeit with crucial differences of timing and sequencing. ARTICLE HISTORY

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Section: Ano and Patterns Of Power Concentrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the illiberal turn: democratic backsliding in the Czech Republic

Hanley

Vachudová

2018

East European Politics

239

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“…There is, to be sure, broad agreement that they are detrimental to democracy in multiple ways. As Dimitrova (this collection; see also Tudoroiu (2015)) notes, state capture " … subverts the very fabric of young democracies, undermining both input legitimacy (political representation) and output legitimacy (effective public policies/universal provision of public goods) … ". This, she argues, may aid backsliding by prompting public withdrawal from politics or lending credibility to illiberal and authoritarian discourses.…”

Section: Bringing In Illiberal Socio-economic Structuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking “democratic backsliding” in Central and Eastern Europe – looking beyond Hungary and Poland

Cianetti

Dawson

Hanley

2018

East European Politics

193

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This essay introduces contributions to a special issue of East European Politics on "Rethinking democratic backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe", which seeks to expand the study of democratic regression in CEE beyond the paradigmatic cases of Hungary and Poland. Reviewing these contributions, we identify several directions for research: 1) the need to critique "democratic backsliding", not simply as a label, but also as an assumed regional trend; 2) a need to better integrate the role of illiberal socio-economic structures such as oligarchical structures or corrupt networks; and 3) a need to (re-)examine the trade-offs between democratic stability and democratic quality. We also note how insights developed researching post-communist regions such as Western Balkans or the post-Soviet space could usefully inform work on CEE backsliding. We conclude by calling for the study of CEE democracy to become more genuinely interdisciplinary, moving beyond some narrowly institutionalist comparative political science assumptions. ARTICLE HISTORYOver the past decade, a scholarly consensus has emerged that that democracy in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is deteriorating (Kochenov 2008; Sedelmeier 2014), a trend often subsumed under the label "backsliding". 1 However, this emergent paradigm has focused disproportionately on the two most dramatic cases: Hungary and Poland (Müller 2014; Herman 2016; Kelemen and Orenstein 2016) and on the symptomsexecutive aggrandisement and illiberal nationalismthat are most characteristic of the trajectories of those states. In bringing together contributions in this special issue, we attempt to correct for the empirical and thematic biases of this paradigm by examining democratic trajectories through the prism of cases other than Hungary and Poland in both Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and in nearby postcommunist regions, the West Balkans and the former Soviet Union (FSU). We use the term CEE as a matter of convention, to refer to post-communist states that are EU members, whichpartly in consequence of EU accessionhad been considered to be among the post-communist world's more successful and stable democracies. 2 The CEE sub-region has been one of the main focuses of the "backsliding" agenda, as democratic deterioration was unexpected and is weakly explained by existing

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“…This revealed the extremely high levels of corruption among the Moldovan ruling elite. For a substantial part of Moldovan society, in the last few years Moldova has become the 'captured state' in which public institutions are subordinated to local politicians and oligarchs (Całus, 2014;Tudoroiu, 2014). It became clear that Moldovan politicians were interested in securing their own private businesses, rather than focusing on the modernisation of the country.…”

Section: The European Union and Its Members: Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relations between Moldova and the European Union

Całus¹,

Kosienkowski²

2018

The European Union and Its Eastern Neighbourhood

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This chapter examines relations between Moldova and the European Union since the beginning of the 1990s. What is important for these relationships is that Moldova has expressed the intention of joining the EU since the second half of the 1990s. However, despite its pro-European inclinations, it can be defined as a country that is torn between the West and the East. On the one hand, Moldova is a country with linguistic, cultural and historical ties with Romania, a Latin country which has been a member of the EU since 2007. On the other hand, it is a country with strong links with its Soviet past and Russia that perceives the whole post-Soviet area as its sphere of influences. This chapter traces the evolution of relations between Moldova and the EU: from the strangers in the 1990s to the new neighbours in the 2000s to the (alleged) partners in the 2010s. In each of these periods motivations and obstacles to cooperation between Moldova's governments and the EU as well as the attitudes of the Moldovan population toward European integration are analysed. A balance of cooperation is also presented.

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Democracy and state capture in Moldova

Cited by 39 publications

References 8 publications

Understanding the illiberal turn: democratic backsliding in the Czech Republic

Understanding the illiberal turn: democratic backsliding in the Czech Republic

Rethinking “democratic backsliding” in Central and Eastern Europe – looking beyond Hungary and Poland

Relations between Moldova and the European Union

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