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

Abstract

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

Caesarean politics in Hungary and Poland

“…Both countries were once considered poster students of democratisation, pluralism and rule of law. Yet, the two countries present now the largest and sharpest drops in levels of democracy in CEE (Cianetti, Dawson, and Hanley 2018), dismantling the very institutions that made them models to emulate. Both Orbán and Kaczyński have abandoned liberal democracy, which they frame as a failure if not a treachery of the Hungarian and Polish people, although both were participants of the 1989 roundtable talks (Zgut et al 2018).…”

The EU’s ‘actions-without-sanctions’? The politics of the rule of law crisis in many Europes

“…Dismantling the RoL and fundamental rights, Hungary and Poland currently represent the sharpest decline in democracy in Central and Eastern Europe (Cianetti et al, 2018). The erosion of the RoL took place in Hungary after Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz (Hungarian Civic Alliance) came back to power in 2010.…”

Podziały przestrzeni Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej

“…Funkcjonowanie życia politycznego w tych państwach warunkowane jest wieloma czynnikami, których skutkiem jest zjawisko democratic backsliding grożące odwróceniem tendencji w kierunku autorytaryzmu. Za szczególne przykłady tego procesu uważane są Polska i Węgry 13 . Formułowana jest jednak opinia, że przypadki Polski i Węgier pokazują tendencję, ale nie odzwierciedlają zmian w regionie Europy Środkowej i Wschodniej.…”