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Marginal Effect of Traditional, Authoritarian and Nationalist (TAN) and Green, Alternative and Liberal (GAL-TAN) Position on the Predicted Emphasis on Democratic Backsliding.
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The governments of Hungary and Poland have been accused of sliding toward semi‐authoritarianism. Systematic analyses of the responses of political actors at the EU level to these instances of alleged democratic backsliding are scarce, however. This article therefore investigates the responses of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to the issu...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... Poland (model A2), the GAL-TAN variable also shows a negative effect -albeit with a smaller substantive effect as a higher value on the GAL-TAN variable induces an 8 per cent drop in the expected issue emphasis. To facilitate a substantive interpretation of these results we also visualize the marginal effect of the GAL-TAN variable on the emphasis demo- cratic backsliding in Figure 1. Figure 1 clearly shows that, while for both Hungary and Poland there is a negative effect of GAL-TAN position, the effect is substantively smaller in the Polish case. ...
Context 2
... facilitate a substantive interpretation of these results we also visualize the marginal effect of the GAL-TAN variable on the emphasis demo- cratic backsliding in Figure 1. Figure 1 clearly shows that, while for both Hungary and Poland there is a negative effect of GAL-TAN position, the effect is substantively smaller in the Polish case. Nevertheless, these findings allow us to accept H1 in both cases. ...
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Citations
... Ideological positioning in the Council plays a crucial role in decision-making and the overall legislative output (Hagemann & De Clerck-Sachsse, 2007;Hosli et al., 2018), with left-wing governments showing a more pro-integration and cooperative stance, and right-wing ones exhibiting higher degrees of autonomy and confrontation (Aspinwall, 2007;Hooghe et al., 2002;Mattila, 2004). Research has shown that Euroscepticism and an authoritarian position on the GAL-TAN scale strongly predict opposition to RoL enforcement in the EP (Herman et al., 2021;Meijers & van der Veer, 2019). Closa (2021) argued that ideology influences RoL support in the Council due to convergence of views and interests on forms of state organisation. ...
... Kelemen's (2020) explanation focused on the 'half-baked' partisan politics in the European Parliament (EP) that prevented the European People's Party (EPP) from taking a more forceful stance against its member Fidesz. Analyses of voting patterns in the EP confirmed ideology as a key motive driving MEPs' support for or opposition to resolutions on the rule of law (Avdagic & Sedelmeier, 2019;Meijers & van der Veer, 2019;Sedelmeier, 2014Sedelmeier, , 2016, with parties' GAL-TAN positions as a strong predictor of their inclination to sanction democratic backsliding. An analysis of a more extensive sample of rollcall votes pointed to a gradual decline of the EPP's cohesion on rule of law matters that foreshadowed a more decisive turn towards supporting effective action on the rule of law by the EP (Herman et al., 2021). ...
... Eurosceptic dissensus seems to be highest in policy areas that touch on cultural and constituent issues (Börzel et al., 2023, p. 2) and lowest on redistributive policies, where contestation is curbed by national interests (Börzel et al., 2023, p. 15). As far as the concrete impact of populist parties on decision-making is concerned, scholars have examined the voting behaviour of the members of the EP on specific policy areas, including the EU's attempt to prevent democratic backsliding (Chiru & Wunsch, 2021;Meijers & van der Veer, 2019), showing, for instance, the role of the European People's Party (EPP) in shielding the Hungarian Fidesz (Kelemen, 2020) and the role of partisanship in voting resolutions pertaining to democratic backsliding and rule of law (Coman, 2022). ...
Populist governments aim to fundamentally challenge the EU, raising the question of when and how backsliding populist governments disrupt decision-making in the Council of the EU (hereafter Council). Due to their anti-elite and strong anti-EU stance, along with their opposition to core values of liberal democracy, I argue that these governments are more inclined to resort to unpolitics , understood as “unsettlement.” Analysing the behaviour of the Hungarian Fidesz government in the Council, the article demonstrates that populist governments resort to unpolitics but use an à la carte approach. Populist backsliding governments selectively oppose the Council’s formal and informal decision-making rules. Looking at the voting behaviour in the Council since 2009, the article shows that the Fidesz government preserves the norm of consensus. However, over time, it has become the government that has most often broken with this norm. Conversely, when it comes to “backsliding-inhibiting competences,” the Fidesz government challenges both formal and informal rules through a wide range of strategies, i.e., systematically contesting the legality of procedures and decisions, embracing a confrontational approach and diplomacy, self-victimisation, bending the truth, and accusatory rhetoric. To illustrate them, the article focuses on decisions related to the dismantlement of the rule of law in the country, such as Article 7 TEU, the application of Regulation 2020/2092, and the disbursement of Cohesion funds.
... For example, evidence points to strategic incentives in the European Parliament. The European People's Party, under the leadership of conservative parties in Europe, was deeply concerned about what the expulsion of Hungary's Fidesz would mean for its ability to maintain majority status in the European Parliament (Herman et al., 2021;Kelemen, 2020;Meijers & Van Der Veer, 2019). ...
Illiberal regimes have become central players in international organizations. In this introduction to the special issue, we provide a unified framework for understanding their effects. We start by outlining the theoretical foundations of this work, focusing first on why regime type matters for international cooperation. We then show how differing memberships and decision-making processes within international organizations affect the influence illiberal regimes can wield, the activities they undertake, and the impact that they have on domestic political outcomes. Collectively and individually, the contributions to this special issue broaden the theoretical literature on illiberal regimes in international organizations and produce novel data about how they are implicated in the politics and operations of multilateral and regional IOs. This research has important implications for how democracies can and should cope with the challenges to global governance that arise from illiberal regimes.
... The extension of this line of inquiry to competitive/semi-authoritarian regimes remains relatively sparse in the existing literature. The governments of Hungary and Poland, in particular, have garnered attention for being accused of manifesting discernible trajectories toward semi-authoritarianism, as highlighted by Meijers and van der Veer (2019). Consequently, only a limited number of studies currently address this subject matter within the framework of the NAS model and they mostly cover Poland. ...
The aim of this study is to investigate the association between the media and the public network agendas concerning Syrian refugees in Türkiye, as an exemplar of a polarized media system within the context of a competitive authoritarian regime to gain insight into the cognitive effects of media in such a context internationally. Large-scale media and nationally representative mind-mapping survey data analysis show that the media’s network agenda is only significantly transferred to the pro-government individuals, while no significant effect was found on pro-opposition individuals from any media outlet regardless of their political stances. Implications are discussed.
... To the extent that this literature has endeavoured to explain why the EU has largely remained passive in the face of backsliding, it has focused on identifying obstacles to EU enforcement action, such as governments' general aversion against EU interference in domestic political systems (e.g. Closa 2021), partisan ties between backsliding governments and other member state governments and political groups in the European Parliament (Herman et al., 2021;Kelemen, 2017;Meijers and van der Veer, 2019;Sedelmeier, 2014), or the Commission's general preference for dialogue over confrontation and its anticipation of a (lack of) support for sanctions in the Council (e.g. Closa 2019). ...
... discourses among the Hungarian public. While there has been analysis of responses to democratic backsliding in the European parliament (Meijers & van der Veer, 2019), there is to this date no similar analysis for Hungary's own parliament. ...
How do democratic actors rhetorically politicize their own disempowerment? Autocratization as a gradual process not only erodes democracy, but also progressively reduces the power of domestic actors to oppose this erosion. Often, incumbent governments disable the institutions meant to hold them accountable, such as parliaments. Drawing on the case of Hungary, we study how (opposition) parties rhetorically politicize democracy within the institution of parliament. As a case of rapid autocratization, Hungary saw far-reaching changes, including the transformation or abolition of many democratic institutions over the past years. New laws also restricted the rights of parliament itself, thereby narrowing the opportunities for public debate around democratic procedures. We address two questions related to this: To which extent do opposition parties politicize democracy and its procedures in a context of autocratization? And how does the way they talk about democracy differ from that of the government? The paper uses text-as-data methods – namely a dictionary of democratic principles and a word-embedding-based analysis of democracy rhetoric – to study parliamentary debates between 2010 and 2022. We find that democracy is highly salient for both the government
... ne und in nationalen Parlamenten setzen können. 10 In der Tat lehnen rechte Parteien nicht nur Bemühungen der EU ab, die Demokratie und Rechtsstaatlichkeit in den Mitgliedstaa ten zu stützen. Vielmehr stellen sie auch das Rechtssystem der EU infrage, indem sie die Rolle der Kommission als Hüterin der Verträge, die Autorität des Gerichtshofs der EU (EuGH) und die Verbindlichkeit des EU-Rechts anzweifeln. ...
This contribution analyses possible consequences of the expected gains of far-right parties in the election year of 2024 on the politics of the European Union (EU). It discusses what goals far-right parties pursue and whether they might gain influence because of the elections. The main argument is that far-right parties seek an authoritarian and institutionally fragile EU. Yet, the EU institutions will still have the majorities necessary to design policies without far-right parties. Therefore, the key question is rather how the institutional norms of the EU will develop. Here, the Parliament and the Council face different challenges: Will the cordon sanitaire in the Parliament hold? Should the consensus norm of the Council apply to far-right governments? The Commission must decide whether it should act more proactively against far-right actors and autocratization. In all institutions, continuity is the most likely outcome. However, the cordon sanitaire in the Parliament could come to an end.
... In contrast, the European Parliament has demanded EU action against democratic backsliding more consistently than the Commission and Council, especially after the center-right group severed ties with the Hungarian governing party after the 2019 elections. Moreover, some national parliaments have taken up the issue intermittently, albeit with governing parties often rejecting strong resolutions against backsliding (Chiru & Wunsch, 2023;Granat, 2023;Meijers & van der Veer, 2019). Yet, whether parliamentary accountability influences intergovernmental negotiations around democratic backsliding has remained unclear. ...
The European Union (EU) is a democratic organization but faces severe cases of democratic backsliding. The literature deems the EU a hospitable environment for and reluctant to reign in backsliding. This study focuses on the tactics that backsliding governments employ to preserve this hospitable environment and the conditions under which they succeed. I argue that backsliding governments seek to repurpose the practice of accommodation that permeates EU decision-making for the protection of their backsliding projects. Doing so promises backsliders an escape from their precarious bargaining position in a democratic organization but comes with constraints. Backsliders must limit opposition carefully to a subset of EU competences, backsliding-inhibiting competences, that threaten their backsliding projects the most. Moreover, they can only rely on accommodation in the Council if the democratic member states perceive opposition as justified and remain insulated from political accountability by Europe’s parliaments. I present evidence based on quantitative and qualitative analyses of bargaining positions, processes, and outcomes in EU decision-making. The results have implications for understanding the EU’s autocratic predicament, the opportunities of backsliding governments, and the role of autocracies in regional and international organizations.
... Yet it has a long history of protecting members that breach key democratic principles. Its long-standing unwillingness to censure Fidesz in the EP has been extensively documented (Kelemen 2017;Meijers and van der Veer 2019). It has been claimed that strategic considerationsa resolve to maintain Fidesz's seats within its ranksdominantly determined the EPP's responses to the unprecedented decline of democracy in Hungary (Kelemen 2020). ...
... There seems to be scholarly agreement that the EPP systematically ignored the undemocratic practices of its illiberal members, primarily its former Hungarian affiliate Fidesz. However, some scholars have also recently noticed 'a sharp increase' in the tendency of EPP MEPs to endorse EP resolutions condemning illiberal practices within their own ranks (Herman et al. 2021;Meijers and van der Veer 2019). ...
This article considers how the European People's Party (EPP) responded to democratic backsliding in Serbia that unfolded under the leadership of its affiliate, the Serbian Progressive Party. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of the European Parliament resolutions and the responses of EPP legislators, the article demonstrates that the EPP has systematically ignored increasingly non-democratic practices in Serbia. Seeking a wider pan-European sway, the EPP strove to protect its Serbian member driven by strategic concerns and the logic of partisan allegiance. While there was a high level of intra-party cohesion, a few EPP members consistently dissented and did not toe the party line. Their positions were fundamentally informed by contrasting normative commitments to liberal democratic principles and ideological proximity to the Serbian Progressive Party.
