The European Union's authoritarian equilibrium

Containing Populism at the Cost of Democracy? Political vs. Economic Responses to Democratic Backsliding in the EU

“…Sometimes complicity in an act will contribute directly to the success of the project of autocratization -as has been argued is the case for Orban whose enduring popularity amongst some Hungarians is in part due to economic growth in Hungary, which in turn is in no small part tied to EU market integration and structural funds (Kelemen, 2020). But this need not be the case for the argument of complicity to have bite.…”

Democratic backsliding in the European Union: the role of the Hungarian-Polish coalition

“…Most of the studies examining backsliding focus on endogenous explanatory factors, e.g. political ideology, patterns of competition or state capture by elite coalitions (Greskovits 2015;Sadurski 2018;Dimitrova 2018;Vegetti 2019) or, alternatively, on the role of the EU, asking whether it has prevented or, conversely contributed to backsliding (Bozóki and Hegedűs 2018;Closa 2019;Halmai 2019;Kelemen 2017Kelemen , 2019Meijers and van der Veer 2019). We complement the existing accounts with an additional element: coalescence patterns of the political leadership orchestrating the backsliding.…”

The essence of democratic backsliding in the European Union: deliberation and rule of law

“…The European Union (EU) is witnessing declining commitment to its founding principles of democracy and the rule of law in several of its new member states. There is a consensus among political and legal scholars that democracy, and especially the rule of law, in this region is at risk (Kelemen, 2020;Kochenov, 2008;Pech & Scheppele, 2017;Sedelmeier, 2014). In response to these concerns, citing serious breaches against the rule of law, the European Commission invoked Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) against Poland in 2017.…”