Political parties have played an ambivalent role in regard to democratic backsliding. On the one hand, the literature has noted how in the EP, the European People’s Party (EPP) and (to a lesser extent) the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), backed by some of their constituent domestic parties, have undermined EU efforts by other parties in the EP as well as the European Commission to address democratic backsliding in Hungary and Poland ( Kelemen, 2017 ; Kelemen and Pech, 2019 ; Meijers and van der Veer, 2019 ; Herman et al, 2021 ). On the other
Recent developments in Hungary and Poland have pushed the issue of democratic backsliding to the centre of political and academic debates about the nature and future of the EU. Democratic backsliding consists of a retreat by an incumbent government from democratic values and practices with the intention of curtailing criticism and inhibiting democratic opposition. As such, it involves a shift from democracy towards autocracy. A number of commentators have argued that the demoicratic and flexible view of the EU advocated here cannot provide an adequate response
17 1 An Era of Autocratization? Are We Experiencing an Era of Democratic Backsliding? Introduction The Brazilian presidential election in late October 2018 saw a run-off between right-wing authoritarian candidate Jair Bolsonaro and former São Paulo mayor Fernando Haddad. Bolsonaro’s campaign rhetoric targeted minorities, gay people and women, and exposed his nostalgia for a return to military rule. Bolsonaro had gained attention in a radio interview in 2016, in which he said that the Brazilian military dictatorship’s one mistake was torturing but not
-equality policies, the core dimensions challenged by processes of backsliding are implementation and accountability. We argue that backsliding affects the legitimacy and effectiveness of existing laws and undermines democracy. Key words gender-equality policies • democracy • democratic backsliding • Central and Eastern Europe Key message • The paper examines the implications of democratic backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe for gender equality policies and arrangements. To cite this article: Roggeband, C. and Krizsán, A. (2018) Reversing gender policy progress
important theoretical question: how can we best understand and conceptualise democratic resilience against rising opposition to gender equality? As feminist scholars have persuasively argued, gender is a central component of recent trends towards autocratisation across the world, with recent research having focused on the emergence of anti-gender campaigns ( Kuhar and Paternotte, 2017 ; Verloo and Paternotte, 2018 ; Corrêa, 2021 ), on opposition to gender equality ( Verloo, 2018 ) and on democratic backsliding from a gender perspective ( Krizsán and Roggeband, 2019
European regions , Political Behavior . doi: 10.1007/s11109-024-09925-x Bermeo , N. ( 2016 ) On democratic backsliding , Journal of Democracy , 27 ( 1 ): 5 – 19 . doi: 10.1353/jod.2016.0012 Carey , J. , et al ( 2022 ) Who will defend democracy? Evaluating tradeoffs in candidate support among partisan donors and voters , Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties , 32 ( 1 ): 230 – 45 . doi: 10.1080/17457289.2020.1790577 Caughell , L.A. ( 2016 ) The Political Battle of the Sexes: Exploring the Sources of Gender Gaps in Policy Preferences
217 10 Assaults on Institutions Introduction More recent literature on democratic backsliding has shown increasing concern over executive aggrandizement. In the past, the process of undermining institutional checks and balances took place rapidly as the result of military coups.1 Since the Cold War ended, the risk of coups has decreased, while the accumulation of too much power in the hands of the executive is the biggest threat to democratic stability (Svolik, 2015). As this chapter will explain, democratic backsliding takes place because of the executive
frontline work in weak institutional settings for scholars that study the context of the Global North. Promising lines of inquiry include, for instance, understanding the institutional preconditions and vulnerabilities for frontline working conditions, analysing the consequences of democratic backsliding or a more politicised public administration on frontline work, and suggesting strategies for specific settings in the Global North that require a more flexible or personalised approach, such as dealing with heterogeneous population groups or with people that fall through
body of research on democratic backsliding and authoritarian resurgence within the context of contemporary global political and economic dynamics. In spite of this gloomy picture, the historical record demonstrates that democratic development has experienced many ups and downs, and nowhere is that more evident than in the late 2010s. As the previous chapter explained, 2019 was the year of the protest. There were over sixty protest movements worldwide in autocracies and democracies alike, against autocratization. Varieties of Democracy reported that 2019 had
considered the dominant examples of democratic backsliding and a turn towards authoritarian tendencies within European societies. These concerns are expressed mostly by liberal intellectuals, journalists and scholars. This chapter aims at more critical reflection on the ambiguous role played by the European Union itself in these processes. Commencing from a critical overview of the dominant institutionalist theories of enlargement Europeanisation, the chapter reassesses the EU’s impact on the internal politics of its current and prospective member states. Based on two case
