2.1 Predominant Theoretical Explanations

This necessity has been recognized by many scholars. The erosion of democracy prompted them to try to explain people’s simultaneous support for both democracy and those who subvert it. According to the polarization theoretical argument, in a political system characterized by toxic polarization, voters are willing to trade off democratic principles for partisan interests so that their side can win (Svolik Reference Svolik2019; Graham and Svolik Reference Graham and Svolik2020; Simonovits, McCoy and Littvay Reference Simonovits, McCoy and Littvay2022). Hence, it is argued that in a polarized environment, voters are willing to overlook violations of democratic rules in order to advance their ideological agenda and advantage their favorite party as well (Gidengil, Stolle and Bergeron-Boutin Reference Gidengil, Stolle and Bergeron-Boutin2021). Voters namely tolerate or even encourage policies that erode democratic norms because the opponent is not regarded as a legitimate adversary, but as an enemy to be kept out of office at all costs (McCoy, Somer and Luke Reference McCoy, Somer and Luke2021).

The polarization of society in Hungary, Poland, and Serbia did indeed increase after Fidesz, PiS, and SNS came to power, but even before that, these countries were marked by serious societal polarization (V-Dem Index) that did not lead to a deterioration of their democracies. In fact, according to the V-Dem indexes on liberal democracy and societal polarization, Serbia, Poland, and Hungary were characterized by serious polarization of their respective societies while their democracies were performing the best. In Poland, democracy flourished even as the country also endured serious political polarization. The same holds true for Turkey, which also recorded the highest democratic development in times of serious political polarization. Similarly, according to V-Dem data, Israel has been marked by a serious societal polarization for many years, without, however, this fact reflecting on the quality of its democracy. These examples tell us that serious polarization per se may not be sufficient to trigger democratic backsliding as there must be an actor willing to exploit the situation. Hence, rather than being a principal cause of democratic backsliding, polarization’s role should be seen as an important facilitator of political actors’ efforts to subvert democracy – or as a byproduct of such efforts. The threat narrative that helped to subvert democracy in selected countries, and which was a clear form of divisive and polarizing discourse, seems to confirm this.

The existence of conditions that can trigger human suffering, such as an economic crisis, is regarded as another contributing factor to democratic backsliding (Matkovski Reference Matkovski2021). Turmoil, dysfunction, and injustice make people more susceptible to the political elites’ narrative justifying their authoritarian rule as necessary to successfully address these challenges (Matkovski Reference Matkovski2021). Resolving an acute crisis can transform an aspiring autocrat into a “savior of the people,” facilitating their assault on democracy (Weyland Reference Weyland2025, 8). In addition, economic crises also generate cultural discontent and in this why enflame conflicts over values and identities (Rhodes-Purdy, Navarre and Utych Reference Rhodes-Purdy, Navarre and Utych2023). Economic crises thus create anxieties that make citizens vulnerable to authoritarianism (Rhodes-Purdy, Navarre and Utych Reference Rhodes-Purdy, Navarre and Utych2023). Again, however, we cannot observe a clear pattern when we look at countries’ GDP growth prior to the onset of backsliding and during the most intense attacks on democracy. The Israeli and Polish economies were performing well, with stable and high growth, but so was the Turkish economy (World Bank 2024). Thus, it appears that economic crises help authoritarian actors gain power, as was indeed the case in Serbia and Hungary, but while they certainly contributed to the deterioration of democracy in selected cases, they cannot fully explain democratic backsliding (Carothers and Hartnett Reference Carothers and Hartnett2024).

2.2 Distinguishing Nationalism From Populism

Similar to the theoretical arguments presented in 2.1, populism alone cannot fully explain democratic backsliding. The populism argument also puts emphasis on the role of political actors and their narrative that arguably makes voters more receptive to undemocratic behavior. Accordingly, populists divide society into pure people and corrupt cosmopolitan elites who act against national interests that can be both cultural and economic (Mudde Reference Mudde2007; Enyedi Reference Enyedi2020; Vachudova Reference Vachudova2020). This anti-elitist narrative is then misused to target “the formal institutions of oversight and accountability in the name of bringing such institutions under popular control” as well as to eliminate opponents from political life by branding them illegitimate (Müller Reference Müller2017; Grzymala-Busse Reference Grzymala-Busse2019, 707). Hence, cosmopolitan elites as well, usually in the form of mainstream parties, must be prevented from gaining power at any cost as they act against the interests of the real people.

The authoritarian populism argument has many strengths as well, and in some of the cases under investigation one could clearly observe a malign influence of leaders’ populist rhetoric on democracy (Norris and Inglehart Reference Norris, Inglehart, Trump and Populism2019). Indeed, depicting cosmopolitan elites as enemies was an integral part of efforts to subvert democracy. However, these appeals often did not target elites as such (Bill Reference Bill2020), but rather because they allegedly endanger the nation’s identity (its ethnic and cultural composition). Yet despite their clear ethno-nationalist nature, these appeals have usually been attributed to populism because the radical right variety of populism defines people according to ascriptive and exclusionary ethno-cultural criteria (Mudde Reference Mudde2007; Milacic and Vukovic Reference Milacic and Vukovic2018; Brubaker Reference Brubaker2020). Although such features can in fact be found in this variety of populism, they are not inherent to populism (Rooduijn Reference Rooduijn2014; Bonikowski Reference Bonikowski2017; De Cleen and Stavrakakis Reference De Cleen and Stavrakakis2017). As already noted, the central feature of populism is the vilification of corrupt elites who act against people’s interests. And these elites can indeed be seen as illegitimate because they do not represent the ethno-cultural interests of the ordinary people or the majority, but rather of minorities (Caiani and della Porta Reference Caiani and della Porta2011; Bhanu Mehta Reference Bhanu Mehta2024). However, for populists, the interests of “the people” can also be political or ideological, invoking class struggle and economic antagonism, not just ethnic or cultural (Müller Reference Müller2021; De Cleen Reference De Cleen, Rovira Kaltwasser, Paul and Ostiguy2017).

Unlike populism, the question of who belongs to the nation is inherent to nationalism. Indeed, nationalism envisages the nation “as a limited and sovereign community” that “is constructed through an in/out opposition between the nation and its outgroups” (De Cleen and Stavrakakis Reference De Cleen and Stavrakakis2017, 9; Brubaker Reference Brubaker2020, 12). In its more inclusive form nationalism views the nation members’ shared civic values and their identification with the state as its main building blocks (Hobsbawm Reference Hobsbawm2012; Ignatieff Reference Ignatieff1993). In nationalism’s less inclusive or exclusionary form, however, in-group belonging derives from ethnic, linguistic, or religious ties (Smith Reference Smith1986), with religion being perceived as an especially important building block (Gorski Reference Gorski2003). This notion of nationalism furthermore often refers to the necessity of protecting the in-group and its homogeneity, which is threatened by “dangerous others” (the out-group) (Gellner Reference Gellner1983; Kohn 1944).

However, it is fair to say that populist discourse is also structured around an in-group and out-group differentiation. But there is an important difference between populism and nationalism in this regard. Unlike populists, who see elites as a threatening “outside” (Brubaker Reference Brubaker2020), the experience of cases under investigation confirms that for nationalists the out-groups can be of various origins: from domestic outsiders, such as secular elites or different communities that are seen as not belonging to the nation (LGBT, Kurds, and Israeli Arabs), to external actors, such as the West and immigrants from Muslim countries (more on this in Section 3). Moreover, they are perceived as out-groups precisely because they pose a threat to one of the two defining features of the nation: Firstly, they do not share the in-group’s ethnic, cultural or religious characteristics and values and thus do not belong to the “limited community”; secondly, they endanger the “community’s sovereignty” by infringing on its right to “self-rule over a distinct territory” (Mylonas and Tudor Reference Tudor2023, 23). This includes a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within its territory to ensure the nation’s territorial integrity and security (Taylor Reference Taylor1992; Weber Reference Weber1992).

Hence, populism and nationalism can be interconnected and combined, and very often they are. Nevertheless, we should not ignore their differences and conflate them. If political actors’ appeals are mainly rooted in the protection of nation’s identity (ethnic, religious, and cultural composition of the country) and sovereignty (territorial integrity and security), then nationalism is a more suitable analytical concept.

2.3 The Threat Narrative and the Subversion of Democracy

Democratic processes have often been shaped by nationalism. Fixed and permanent borders of a country, coupled with a sense of national unity, have been regarded as absolute prerequisites for democracy (Dahl Reference Dahl1989; Linz and Stepan Reference Linz and Stepan1996). In addition, democratic development was also affected by the decision on the concept of the national identity. The concept of civic citizenship is seen as favoring democracy for being inclusive, whereas the concept of ethnic citizenship is seen as opposing individual rights and being hostile to minorities (Nodia Reference Nodia2017). Indeed, in many countries exclusive, often religion-based, nationalism has legitimized the exclusion of minorities (Tudor and Slater Reference Tudor and Slater2021; Saiya Reference Saiya2023).

In recent years, we have furthermore witnessed political actors using nationalist appeals as a pretext and justification to attack key tenets of democracy, and this approach has proven effective. But does this then mean that political actors only need to use the “in the name of the nation” argument in order to succeed? That it can work everywhere and in all circumstances? I strongly disagree. It would be too easy to claim that in order to succeed, elites need only say we seek to curtail civil liberties because these liberties are not in sync with national identity or accumulate power in order to protect the nation’s sovereignty.

In other words, while previous work has found that appeals to safeguard the nation seem to have resulted in a minimized resistance of citizens to power grabs, it has not addressed the question of “why this approach works.” I argue that the threat narrative of political entrepreneurs is precisely the reason. Political actors often develop strategic narratives to achieve their political objectives (Miskimmon, O’Loughlin and Roselle Reference Miskimmon, O’Loughlin and Roselle2013). Creating a story is important because it helps citizens to understand the phenomena in question and to persuade them of why particular political actions are right or necessary (Antoniades, Miskimmon and O’Loughlin Reference Antoniades, Miskimmon and O’Loughlin2010). Accordingly, political actors in the studied countries developed threat narratives to convince voters that their nation’s identity or sovereignty are threatened because this seems to make them more willing to accept the subversion of democracy that is done in the name of protecting the supposedly endangered national identity and sovereignty. But why do we see such an effect?

2.3.5 Plausible Mechanism

If we apply these findings to the political terrain and the relationship between the nation and democracy, it means that when voters perceive their nation to be under threat, they also become more attached and committed to the nation. All of this, in turn, makes them more willing to tolerate undemocratic behavior of political actors that is done in the name of protecting the supposedly endangered nation. Authoritarian-minded leaders thus get a free pass because their subversion of democracy is ignored amid the existence of a threat to the nation or rationalized away as having the function of minimizing a threat. In sum, the established mechanism (see Figure 2) that explains voter acquiescence to elite’s subversion of democracy is essentially a three-step procedure.

Figure 2

Plausible mechanism.

2.4 Resistance Options

The three-step-mechanism outlined helps us to better understand democratic backsliding. What, however, we know much less about is what matters for resisting it. Simply because a successful resistance to backsliding incumbents is not the norm. Nevertheless, the works of several authors have identified important sources of resilience and possible paths of resistance (Ding and Slater Reference Ding and Slater2021; Welzel Reference Welzel2021; Treisman Reference Treisman2023; Beatty Riedl et al. Reference Riedl, Paul Friesen, McCoy and Roberts2024; Milacic Reference Milacic2025a). Various actors of resistance are thereby involved – state institutions, political parties, civil society organizations, trade unions, independent media, and ordinary citizens – and they can opt for various strategies as well: within institutions (courts, parliament, bureaucracies, electoral arena) or outside of institutions (street protests); and they can develop specific emotional narratives, which is the least investigated resistance strategy (Tomini, Gibril and Bochev Reference Tomini, Gibril and Bochev2023; Gamboa Reference Gamboa2023; Selvin Korkmaz Reference Selvin Korkmaz2023; Beatty Riedl et al. Reference Riedl, Paul Friesen, McCoy and Roberts2024).

In this regard, it has been argued that “the characteristics of the political regime in which autocratization takes place have a major impact on the types of resistance actors involved and their strategies” (Tomini, Gibril and Bochev Reference Tomini, Gibril and Bochev2023, 123). The regime type influences the paths of resistance because, in some regimes, certain actors have been captured and certain arenas closed off, while this is not the case in others. I offer a complementary theoretical argument by claiming that the mode of democratic backsliding impacts the mode of resistance. When faced with an autocrat’s protection of the allegedly threatened nation serving as a justification for the subversion of democracy, pro-democracy actors have three options: ignore the threat narrative and the issue of the nation; outflank the autocrat by portraying themselves as more (ethno-) nationalist; or develop a nation-related counternarrative, into which they integrate the regime cleavage between autocratic and democratic forces. I argue that the counternarrative, which links the nation and democracy, is the most promising resisting strategy in this regard. It can help political parties and civil society to mobilize pro-democracy citizens to fight back, both in the streets and at the ballot box. I regard such a counternarrative as a necessary but not sufficient condition for successfully resisting this particular path of democratic backsliding (the subversion of democracy in the name of the nation). For a counternarrative to be effective, it has to be disseminated, which is why the existence of independent media is important for this strategy of resistance to succeed (see Table 2).

Table 2Resisting the subversion of democracy in the name of the nation

Table 2 Long description

This table illustrates the most promising option for pro-democracy actors when faced with an autocrat who uses the justification of protecting the allegedly threatened nation to subvert democracy: developing a nation-related counternarrative that integrates the cleavage between autocratic and democratic forces. The existence of independent media to disseminate the narrative is a prerequisite.

3.1 Attacks on Liberal Components of Democracy

In order to successfully consolidate power, authoritarian incumbents must deal with those actors who might offer the strongest resistance to their autocratization. The goal is to weaken or eliminate them so that they cannot resist. In the five countries under investigation, this has been done by employing rhetorical attacks that delegitimized opponents; by adopting legislation that made it difficult or impossible for them to successfully act as a check on the government; by curtailing various civil liberties in practice; and by weakening or dismantling the system of checks and balances. In the name of the nation served thereby as a frequent justification.

3.2 Attacks on Electoral Component of Democracy

In the countries under investigation, the nationalist appeals were also used to unlevel the electoral playing field: foremostly by combining national identity politics and clientelism (widespread patronage networks and the provision of state jobs to loyalists) and by using nationalist justifications for changes in electoral legislation that favor the incumbent. However, electoral manipulation did not occur to the same extent in all five countries, meaning that there were significant differences in the extent to which this element of democracy was damaged.

National identity-based clientelism was most prevalent in Turkey and Serbia. Indeed, the misuse of state resources reached new levels under the AKP and Erdogan (Rogenhofer and Panievsky Reference Rogenhofer and Panievsky2020). Such widespread clientelism was made possible through Islamization of the bureaucracy (Somer Reference Somer2017) by purging state institutions of secularists (Esen and Gümüscü Reference Esen and Gumuscu2016). The captured state administration then implemented social assistance programs that privileged the “people” defined around conservative and religious values (Rogenhofer and Panievsky Reference Rogenhofer and Panievsky2020) who were AKP supporters (Aytaç Reference Aytaç2014). In addition, large-scale construction projects – such as the Third Bridge, a giant waterway connecting the Black Sea to the Marmara Sea, and a new Istanbul airport – not only projected “the self-confidence of the nation” (Yabanci Reference Yabanci2020, 11), but also served to maintain the party’s business counter-elite that in turn supported the AKP (Tas Reference Taş2015; Somer Reference Somer2016).

In Serbia, widespread clientelism and the misuse of state resources (European Commission Serbia 2020) were integrated into the narrative of a Serbia that was becoming stronger under Vucic’s leadership and could once again take care of its people (Milacic Reference Milacic2022). As in Turkey, major construction projects, such as the “Belgrade Waterfront,” which fed “into the nationalist claim of Serbia’s ‘awakening’ under his (Vucic’s) leadership,” served as a cover for the redistribution of public resources to businessmen close to the SNS (Günay and Dzihic Reference Günay and Džihic2016, 11), whereby patronage networks were maintained.

In the remaining three countries under investigation, there are also examples of the combination of nationalist appeals and clientelism. In Israel, the “welfare state” for Jewish settlers and certain Likud loyalists contrasts sharply with a “neoliberal state” for the rest of Israeli society (Gutwien Reference Gutwien, Handel, Allegra and Maggor2017; Rogenhofer and Panievsky Reference Rogenhofer and Panievsky2020, 1399). In Hungary and Poland, too, the misuse of state resources was frequently highlighted in ODIHR reports (Hungary 2018 and 2022; Poland 2019 and 2023) as one of the main reasons for the uneven playing field. This was enabled by a large-scale personnel exchange in the public administration and state-owned enterprises that were justified by the need to purge the state of the nation’s enemies (Sata and Karolewski Reference Sata and Karolewski2020).

Nationalist justifications have also been used to tilt the playing field further in favour of the incumbent by changing electoral legislation. In Israel, the ruling majority amended the “Knesset Law” and raised the threshold to 3.25%, which lowered the chances of parties representing the Arab population to enter parliament (Perliger and Pedahzur Reference Perliger, Pedahzur and Rydgren2018). In Hungary, Serbia, and Turkey, however, the most common practice in this regard concerned the voting rights of co-nationals living abroad who are considered members of the national community (Bozoki Reference Bozóki, Magyar and Vásárhelyi2017; BTI Turkey 2018; Danas 2023a). The motive behind this was not only to increase the vote share (BTI Hungary 2016; Wieder Reference Wieder2023), but also because the voting and counting process for these votes offered numerous opportunities for manipulation (Ilonszki and Varnagy Reference Ilonszki and Várnagy2014; CRTA 2023).

3.3 Comparison of the Degree of Erosion of Democracy

Although democracy has deteriorated in all of the countries under investigation, it has not deteriorated to the same extent. While Poland and Israel regressed to electoral democracies, democracy collapsed in Hungary, Serbia, and Turkey, and these countries are now classified as electoral autocracies (V-Dem 2024; see Figure 3). As the previous pages have shown, nationalism played an important role in this regard, as both electoral and liberal elements of democracy were attacked in the name of the nation. In some of the selected countries, the attacks were more frequent and serious than in others, contributing to different regime outcomes. Overall, more democratic spaces remained open in Poland and Israel: checks and balances were more severely dismantled in Hungary, Serbia, and Turkey; civil liberties were curtailed to a greater extent in them, particularly media freedom as authoritarian-minded leaders managed to capture almost all of the key media (BTI Turkey 2018; Stojanovic and Casal Bértoa Reference Stojanovic and Casal Bértoa2019; Sata and Karolewski Reference Sata and Karolewski2023); and the playing field was much less level amid widespread clientelism and electoral manipulations.

Figure 3

Democratic development.

Source: V-Dem (2024).

4.1 Fertile Ground

As the next pages will show in more detail, in the five countries under investigation the elites’ narrative mainly revolved around the threats to national identity (ethnic and religious composition). Because adherence to the dominant religion (Judaism, Islam, or Christianity) was considered a key marker of national identity, Arab minority,Footnote ⁶ Turkish secular elites, and Muslim immigrants were seen as threats. However, in Poland and Hungary, the religion was also used to portray the LGBT community as a threat. By posing a danger to Catholic family values and traditions, the LGBT community threatens the fabric of the nation (Ayoub and Stoeckl Reference Ayoub and Stoeckl2024). Moreover, the threats also concerned national sovereignty: This was the case with the Kurds in Turkey amid their secessionist demands;Footnote ⁷ the West in Turkey for supporting the KurdsFootnote ⁸ and in Serbia for supporting the independence of Kosovo, the former Serbian province;Footnote ⁹ and Muslim immigrants in Poland and Hungary as well as Arabs in Israel for posing a security threat (Brubaker Reference Brubaker2017; Levi and Agmon Reference Levi and Agmon2021).Footnote ¹⁰

These societies are a fertile ground for the development of such narratives because many factors elaborated in Section 1, which strongly determine threat narrative’s resonance, are present in them: from the historical loss of national territory or sovereignty and demographic decline to the existence of formative rifts, competing national narratives, and the narratives of a victimized nation and its exceptionalism (Hiers, Soehl and Wimmer Reference Hiers, Soehl and Wimmer2017; Feinstein and Bonikowski Reference Feinstein and Bonikowski.2019; Somer and McCoy Reference Somer2019; Tudor and Slater Reference Tudor and Slater2021; Ding, Slater and Zengin Reference Ding, Slater and Zengin2021; Carter and Pop-Eleches Reference Carter and Pop-Eleches2024).

The history of the Holocaust makes Israel’s context particularly specific. This experience is furthermore an integral part of the victimhood narrative that Jews have always been persecuted (Feinstein and Bonikowski Reference Feinstein and Bonikowski.2019). The existence of the Jewish state is thus regarded as necessary to prevent persecution and a second Holocaust (Auron Reference Auron2010). In addition, the belief that Jews are the “chosen people” with supreme culture and mission in the world also occupies a central position in Jewish collective memory (Abulof Reference Abulof2015).

In both Turkey and Serbia, there is a strong belief about the historical mistreatment by the West. In Turkey, the victimization narrative has its roots in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War and the ensuing loss of territory and military occupation by the victorious Allied powers, coupled with a more recent exclusion from EU membership (Ding, Slater and Zengin Reference Ding, Slater and Zengin2021). In Serbia, the West is blamed not only for being a midwife of Kosovo’s independence, but also for acting against Serbian interests during the break-up of the former Yugoslavia, thereby including the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia (Milacic Reference Milacic2022). As Zorana Mihajlovic, a former Serbian deputy prime minister from the SNS, told me, “Serbia cannot forget the bombing and the West’s lack of support regarding the Kosovo issue. It is a fact that the West wronged Serbia.” Moreover, in both Turkey and Serbia, there is a parallel belief about the nation’s chosenness. Erdogan and the AKP portray Turkey as a “unique” nation leading a powerful Islamic civilization with roots in the Ottoman empire (Ding, Slater and Zengin Reference Ding, Slater and Zengin2021), while Vucic often refers to Serbia as a country that has defied great powers throughout its history and has always remained independent and free (cited in Nezavisne 2025).

Poland’s “123-year disappearance from the world map” following the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the occupation by Nazi Germany in the Second World War, as well as a later loss of sovereignty to the Soviet Union, is an integral parts of Polish collective memory (Ding, Slater and Zengin Reference Ding, Slater and Zengin2021, 155; Hiers, Soehl and Wimmer Reference Hiers, Soehl and Wimmer2017). The insecure status of the state resulted in a stronger identification with ethnic identity markers, such as religion. As the 2019 PiS election program emphasizes, “it is impossible to accept that Polishness can exist without the heritage brought by the Catholic Church” (14). The depicted historical legacy also favoured the emergence of a narrative in the Polish public discourse that sees Polish history as undeserved victimhood (Sadurski Reference Sadurski2018) and the Polish people as heroic individuals who fought and suffered like no other nation, particularly in the twentieth century against Nazism and Communism (Jaskulowski and Majewski Reference Jaskułowski and Majewski2022).

Similarly to Poland, Hungary also suffered from historical occupation and a loss of territory. The domination by Austrians within the Habsburg monarchy and a loss of three quarters of its territory after the First World War were followed by the loss of sovereignty to the Soviet Union after the Second World War. Besides the notion of historical victimization, this historical legacy also strengthened an ethnic concept of the nation at the expense of a civic one (Hiers, Soehl and Wimmer Reference Hiers, Soehl and Wimmer2017). As Orban has said: “Hungary will be Christian, or it will cease to exist” (cited in Brubaker Reference Brubaker2017, 35). What is more, for Orban and his allies, religion has become a focal point of the narrative according to which Hungary is a chosen nation destined to defend Christian Europe from Muslim invaders (Boffey Reference Boffey2018). Polish collective memory is also marked by a similar belief amid the essential role of Poles in defending Vienna against Ottoman conquerors in the seventeenth century. In addition, the population of both Poland and Hungary has been steadily shrinking over the last few decades (World Bank 2023b), causing nation-related anxieties (Krastev Reference Krastev2020). The same is true for Serbia (World Bank 2023b).

Some of the countries under investigation are also characterized by a dispute over national borders or the definition of the nation and thus by competing national narratives. In Poland, “true Poles” are opposed by “Poles of the worse sort,” as Kaczynski put it, with the former incorporating traditional national and religious values (Fomina Reference Fomina, Carothers and O’Donohue2019, 128). In Hungary, Fidesz used its supermajority to enshrine in the Fundamental Law the criteria for belonging to the nation, which the opposition disputes: being a heterosexual Hungarian who belongs to the Hungarian ethnic nation and the Christian community (Majtenyi, Kopper and Susanszky Reference Majtényi, Kopper and Susánszky2018; Halmai Reference Halmai2018). In the AKP’s “new Turkey” (Tas Reference Taş2015), the majority is defined by conservativism, nativism, and Islamism and only considered as the people, while the “old” Turkey is dubbed secular and not in sync with Turkish traditions (Aytac and Elci Reference Aytaç, Elçi and Stockemer2019). The identity dispute is accompanied by contested borders amid Kurdish separatism. In Israel, the governing majority promotes an ethno-religious definition of national identity (Filc Reference Filc, Steiner and Önnerfors2018; Perliger and Pedahzur Reference Perliger, Pedahzur and Rydgren2018; Talshir 2022), which, in the words of Netanyahu, is opposed by a coalition of Arabs and leftists who have forgotten what it is to be a Jew (cited in Filc and Pardo Reference Filc and Pardo2021, 103). As in the Turkish case, the identity dispute is accompanied by unclear borders due to the occupation of Palestinian territories (Talshir 2022). Serbian borders are contested as well amid the Kosovo issue. Often referred to as the “Jerusalem of Serbia,” Kosovo is regarded not only as a territory, but also as a symbol of Serbia’s national consciousness, statehood, history, and mythology (Milacic Reference Milacic2017). It, therefore, does not come as a surprise that Serbia did not recognize Kosovo’s independence, which was unilaterally proclaimed in 2008. In fact, the Serbian constitution considers Kosovo a part of Serbia, and there is no relevant political party that recognizes its independence. A strong rejection of Kosovo’s independence is present in the Serbian population as well (Mladenovic Reference Mladenovic2021).

4.2 Nation Under Threat

The political entrepreneurs’ narrative of an endangered nation was the first step in the attack on democracy. A similar narrative was used in all selected countries, though the choice of threats varied and depended on the local context. In cases marked by formative rifts (Israel, Turkey, and Serbia), the threats revolved around this endogenous factor, whereas in Hungary and Poland, contingency and exogenous factors – such as the wars in Syria and Iraq, the closure of the Balkan immigration route, and COVID-19 pandemic – played a more important role.

In Poland, the threats to the Polish national identity and sovereignty were strategically fabricated. This was confirmed to me by the spokesperson of the Polish Foreign Ministry, Lukasz Jasina, in the last PiS-led government. He told me in an interview that the PiS used focus groups, professional analysts, and polls to identify issues that would fit the threat narrative, with Kaczynski himself ultimately deciding which issue to choose. Afterwards, according to Jasina, the threat narrative was disseminated in various forms and by various actors, including himself, who was involved in preparing and disseminating the anti-German narrative in 2023.

However, for the Polish political dynamic, the selection of the threat in 2015, Muslim immigrants, and later in 2019, sexual minorities, was more consequential. As the European refugee crisis intensified in 2015, Kaczynski and the PiS quickly recognized the political potency of the Muslim refugee issue and started tapping into it. While the 2014 PiS party program was silent on Islam and immigration (Meyer Resende and Hennig Reference Meyer Resende and Hennig2021), by mid-September 2015, an anti-Muslim immigration discourse began to dominate the PiS’s political agenda. Kaczynski and the PiS vehemently opposed the agreement between the Polish government and the European Commission on the resettlement of refugees, claiming it to be against Polish national interests. Although triggered by the influx of refugees from war-torn Syria and Iraq, Kaczynski and the PiS’s anti-immigrant discourse quickly encapsulated all immigrants from Muslim countries (Skowronska Reference Skowronska2021).

Indeed, the narrative was based on “the construction of a Muslim other” (Skowronska Reference Skowronska2021, 955) that poses an “existential threat” to Poland (Fomina and Kucharczyk Reference Fomina, Kucharczyk, Kucharczyk and Mesežnikov2018, 198) and was, furthermore, skillfully deployed in an orchestrated move (Krzyzanowski Reference Krzyzanowski2018). In this sense, Kaczynski claimed that Muslim immigrants would not respect Polish laws and rules, but only Sharia Law, and would attempt to impose their customs on the local population (cited in Kinowska-Mazaraki Reference Kinowska-Mazaraki2021, 8 and Krzyzanowski Reference Krzyzanowski2018, 86). The developed narrative depicted Poland as being “flooded” by Muslim immigrants, who openly oppose Polish culture and endanger Christianity (Krzyzanowski Reference Krzyzanowski2018, 89). In addition, Muslim immigrants were portrayed as “conquerors” and as a security threat, bringing terrorism and diseases (Fomina and Kucharczyk Reference Fomina, Kucharczyk, Kucharczyk and Mesežnikov2018, 188–190).

However, the lack of Muslim immigrants in Poland (less than 0.1% of the total population), as well as the closure of the Balkan route in 2016 and the ensuing reduction in the flow of immigrants to Western Europe, meant that the issue of Muslim immigration would eventually lose its great politicization potency. In the following years, therefore, the issue of LGBT rights became the most prominent feature of Kaczynski’s and his PiS allies’ narrative on the endangered Polish national identity. The politicization of LGBT rights in 2019 thus served to maintain the sense of threat among the population. Kaczynski warned that Poland must “defend children and normal families” from “imported LGBT” that “threatens our identity, our nation, its continued existence, and therefore the Polish state” (cited in Tilles Reference Tilles2020a). According to him, it is necessary to defend values and combat ideas hostile to Polish traditions so that Poland does not end up as a society “without any identity” or another Ireland – a “Catholic desert with LGBT ideology out of control” (cited in TVP 2020). Kaczynski’s narrative was supported by prominent party allies. During his re-election campaign in 2020, Polish President Andrzej Duda published a so-called “Family Charter” that included pledges to “ban the propagation of LGBT ideology in public institutions” and opposed the rights for same-sex couples to marry and adopt children (cited in Tilles Reference Tilles2020a). In line with this, other PiS officials described LGBT rights as threatening “the unity and homogeneity of the Polish people” (Yermakova Reference Yermakova2021, 16).

As Ayoub and Stoeckl (Reference Ayoub and Stoeckl2024) argue, in countries like Poland (and Hungary, as the following pages will show), the LGBT community is portrayed not only as a threat to the family, but also to the nation itself. The threat is twofold. By posing a danger to Polish Catholic family values and traditions (Korolczuk Reference Korolczuk2020), the LGBT community threatens the country’s cultural composition. Accordingly, the LGBT issue was not about the civil rights of a few, but about the character of the Polish national identity that concerns all Poles: “a choice between a white-and-red Poland and a rainbow Poland” (Patin Reference Patin2020). In addition, demographic anxieties were also invoked as the LGBT community poses an existential threat to the nation for not having children (Ayoub and Stoeckl Reference Ayoub and Stoeckl2024).

Hungarian Fidesz used a very similar approach. Deep dissatisfaction with a previous government, coupled with a lack of knowledge about the authoritarian playbook at the beginning of the last decade, left many Hungarians unaware of the magnitude of Orban’s undemocratic project. This allowed Orban to initially undermine democracy without fear of punishment by voters. If, however, Orban had counted on the eternal ignorance of the citizens, he wouldn’t have bothered to develop and spread effective threat narratives. As several interviewees from civil society and politicsFootnote ¹¹ told me, polls and focus groups were used to select the issues around which a threat narrative was developed. The whole work was coordinated in the Prime Minister’s Office and, according to former opposition MP Zsuzsanna Szelenyi and media reports (Marantz Reference Marantz2022), was advised by the late consultant Arthur Finkelstein, who also helped Netanyahu in the same way. “The threat narratives reflected both a strategy and a Hungarian reality amid historical fears for its survival,” as Bence Bauer from the Fidesz-close Mathias Corvinus Collegium told me. However, Fidesz was initially unsuccessful. The narrative of protecting the Hungarian nation and Christian culture and values from the Roma minority and the homeless people did not resonate particularly well with the Hungarian population (Köves Reference Köves, Kucharczyk and Mesežnikov2018; Sagi Reference Sagi2023). The situation changed in Fidesz’s favor when it started to stir up fears about immigrants.

Already in 2014, Fidesz began to target Kosovars because the largest number of asylum applications came from this country (IOM 2024). However, in 2015, thanks to the migration crisis and the influx of refugees from the Middle East, the threat narrative became very effective. Fidesz and government officials, state media, as well as news portals and newspapers associated with the ruling party, portrayed immigration as the greatest threat to the nation and its Christian culture (Köves Reference Köves, Kucharczyk and Mesežnikov2018). In the words of Orban, the influx of immigrants is “an invasion” (Walker Reference Walker2018) and Hungary is the last bastion in the fight against the “Islamization” of Europe (Boffey Reference Boffey2018). However, as in Poland, the Muslim immigrants were not only not welcome because of their different cultural background, but also because they were labeled as a security threat and accused of importing terrorism (Köves Reference Köves, Kucharczyk and Mesežnikov2018). Moreover, with its activities, the government ensured that the topic of immigration remained salient even after the closure of the Balkan route in 2016 and the subsequent reduction in the influx of immigrants. In addition to the so-called national consultation on immigration in May 2015 (Szabo Reference Szabó, Kucharczyk and Mesežnikov2018), the government also launched billboard campaigns (first in May 2016, then in mid-June 2016), and proposed a referendum on the EU’s proposal for quotas for the distribution of refugees among its member states (Soltesz Reference Soltesz, Kucharczyk and Mesežnikov2018).

Although Fidesz and Orban, unlike their Polish counterparts, managed to prolong the salience of the immigration issue, the border closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic made the issue less opportune (Gera Reference Gera2023). Therefore, a new threat was fabricated to complement the immigration threat. As in Poland, the threat of Muslim immigration was followed by the narrative of the threat posed by the LGBT community. As stated by Orban, after trying to weaken Hungarian identity through mass immigration, the same forces want to impose their way of life on the majority of the population (cited in Gera Reference Gera2023, 122). This narrative was then echoed by other government and Fidesz officials. Indeed, as in Poland, allowing sexual identities outside of traditional norms was presented as a threat to the nation and its Christian identity (Ayoub and Stoeckl Reference Ayoub and Stoeckl2024). To prevent this, the Hungarian parliament passed the so-called “anti-gay-propaganda law” in 2021 that bans the distribution of information on sexual orientation and gender identity to minors. In addition, the same tools were again used to disseminate the narrative and ensure that the issue remained salient: national consultations with questions such as “Do you agree with the principle that a child has a right to a mother and a father?”; campaigns in media outlets and billboards; and an anti-LGBT referendum (Sagi Reference Sagi2023).

Unlike Orban and Kaczynski, whose strategies were very much shaped by contingency and different exogenous factors, the actions of Erdogan, Vucic and Netanyahu were much less affected by them. This is because Serbia, Israel, and Turkey are characterized by a dispute over national borders or the status of an ethnic/religious minority. These open issues were then strategically politicized for the development of threat narratives. Kosovo has always occupied a central spot in Serbia’s vision of its national identity (Cohen Reference Cohen2001). Unsurprisingly, Vucic and his SNS used the Kosovo issue as a tool to portray the West (the USA and the EU), a key supporter of Kosovo’s independence, as a threat to the Serbian national identity and sovereignty. Vucic has been constantly claiming that the country was under heavy pressure from the West to recognize Kosovo’s independence (cited in Novinar 2019; Borba Reference Borba2021), which was further intensified after the Russian 2022 aggression against Ukraine (cited in B92 2022). In line with this, the image of Serbia as a martyr nation, which has been persecuted by the West that wants Serbia to be weak and dependent, has been established. In the words of Vucic, “only a humiliated Serbia is a final solution for them” (cited in RTV 2020), adding “they all (the West) are doing it together because they have to support Kosovo and break Serbia” (cited in Danas 2023b). The anti-Western narrative was coupled with the portrayal of Vucic as a champion of national interests who will never recognize Kosovo’s independence even if, in his words, “they beat me on the head with the sticks” (cited in RTRS 2018). The new narrative was clearly reflected in an increase in anti-Western reporting of pro-government media outletsFootnote ¹² (see Figure 4).

Figure 4

Anti-Western reporting.

Source: Unpublished analysis by Belgrade-based CSO CRTA (private communication).

In order to maintain the salience of the Kosovo issue for the local political dynamic, the claims on Western pressure were accompanied by claims of an alleged imminent threat from Kosovo with the support of the West and of an endangerment of Kosovo Serbs (cited in RTRS 2018). For this reason, Vucic mobilized the Serbian army on several occasions (Aljazeera 2021) and encouraged violence and disobedience by Kosovo Serbs (Lukiv Reference Lukiv2023). In an interview with Jovana Radosavljevic, a prominent civil activist from northern Kosovo, where the majority of Serbs live, she confirmed to me that Belgrade has been telling Kosovo Serbs that “Kosovo’s independence is not a done deal” and therefore they should not integrate into Kosovo’s institutions. According to her, Kosovo Serbs’ dependence on Serbia to maintain the economy and institutions (pensions, jobs, and health care) also meant that Belgrade made the decisions in most cases and that Vucic could raise and lower tensions as he pleases.

However, for the Serbian opposition, the reality looks much different. MP and deputy leader of the oppositional Democratic Party (DS), Nebojsa Novakovic, told me in an interview that Vucic has not been under pressure from the West at all. “In fact, Vucic has been favored by the West and the West has been showing a lot of patience and understanding for him, thinking that he will resolve the Kosovo issue.” A German Foreign Ministry official responsible for the Balkans, who wished to remain anonymous, also told me in an interview that “Vucic is under no pressure to recognize Kosovo’s independence. The EU is only asking him to fulfill the points of the official agreements. Nothing more than that.” For MP Novakovic, “the whole theatricality about Kosovo has the purpose of Vucic presenting himself as the protector of the nation.” Zoran Lutovac, until recently one of the opposition’s leaders and head of the DS, agrees, stating during our interview that “Vucic, like Slobodan Milosevic (former Serbian strongman), is opportunistically using the Kosovo issue that is central to Serbian national identity.”

In Israel, there has always been a sense of threat in the society due to the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as prominent civil society activist Raluca Ganea pointed out in our interview. What is new, however, is that Netanyahu and his allies have amplified the existing sense of threat within the Israeli Jewish population by regularly depicting Israel’s Arab citizens as “the enemy within” (Del Sarto Reference Del Sarto2022). Indeed, over the past decade, Netanyahu has made much greater use of Jewish ethno-religious appeals (Talshir 2022), which have been accompanied by an intensified narrative of the threat to the nation posed by Israeli Arabs. Accordingly, they pose a threat primarily because they are “non-native ‘other’” (Filc and Pardo Reference Filc and Pardo2021, 104), who do not belong to Israel’s rightful native group – the exclusively defined Jewish people (Perliger and Pedahzur Reference Perliger, Pedahzur and Rydgren2018).

Since 2015, however, in the statements made by Netanyahu, his ministers, and his Likud allies, the Arab population has also been branded as a supporter of terrorism and as disloyal to the state (Smooha Reference Smooha2019). Such attacks on Arab citizens have even intensified and become more severe since 2019 (Smooha Reference Smooha2019). In fact, Likud leaders have built most of their political discourse around the exclusion and marginalization of Israeli Arabs (Filc Reference Filc, Steiner and Önnerfors2018), publicly portraying them as a “Trojan horse,” and thus as a security threat to Israeli Jews (Rogenhofer and Panievsky Reference Rogenhofer and Panievsky2020), as well as a threat to the Jewish character of the country (Makovsky Reference Makovsky2019). In addition to using inflammatory rhetoric, Netanyahu and his allies stoked interethnic violence to increase the salience of the Palestinian threat (Akkoyunlu and Sarfati 2024).

Connecting Arab citizens with terrorism and radical Islamization, as well as their portrayal as a fifth column, was particularly visible during election campaigns. For example, during the 2015 election campaign, Netanyahu portrayed the voting of Israeli Arab citizens as a danger (Mordechay and Roznai Reference Mordechay and Roznai2017), warning that “anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state today and evacuate lands is giving attack grounds to the radical Islam against the state of Israel” (cited in Rudoren Reference Rudoren2015). Four years later, Netanyahu publicly stated that “Israel is not a state of all its citizens,” and that “Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people – and it alone” (cited in Alexander and Teibel Reference Alexander and Teibel2019). Unsurprisingly, such a narrative was accompanied by the narrative of Netanyahu defending Israel against those who seek to transform it into a “state of all its citizens” (Talshir 2022). According to an official of the opposition party Democrats, Uri Zaki, and civil activist Eran Schwartz, this playing of the nationalist threat card was strategic and served to advance the Likud’s and Netanyahu’s political agenda. Schwartz described it in our interview as “Netanyahu’s poison machine.”

In Turkey, too, the threat narrative was based on the country’s two formative rifts related to national identity and territory (Somer Reference Somer2019). With respect to the disputes over what it means to be a Turk, Erdogan and his AKP allies saw “the Kemalist secular elite” as a threat to the nation for imposing its foreign lifestyle and values on the pious majority consisting of ordinary “Muslim-Turkish people” (Dincsahin 2012; Somer Reference Somer2017; Aytac and Elci Reference Aytaç, Elçi and Stockemer2019). Interestingly, such a narrative “only” considered secular elites as a threat and was inclusive of minorities and their religious and cultural identity. In fact, the narrative emphasized the common religion (Islam) as the basis of unity, thus including the Kurdish and Alevi minorities, and it pitted this pious and devout people against the secular elites (Dincsahin 2012). Moreover, as MP of the Turkish main opposition party CHP, Yüksel Taskin, pointed out in our interview, Erdogan capitalized on the past anti-democratic behavior of secular elites, such as the military, which the CHP did not strongly condemn.

However, as the AKP increasingly captured the state, the strategy of vilification of state institutions, as symbols of Turkish secular identity, was no longer opportune (Somer Reference Somer2019). In addition, by 2015, the AKP was losing support among the Turkish electorate, culminating in the loss of its parliamentary majority. Such circumstances necessitated the development of a new threat narrative, and this time it was built around the second formative rift related to the community’s borders, namely the threat posed by the secessionist attempts of the Kurdish minority. To this end, military interventions against the Kurds were launched to bolster the government’s narrative of a renewed Kurdish threat, which strongly contributed to the dramatic outburst of ethnic violence (Akkoyunlu and Sarfati 2024).

Hence, the initial policy of inclusion toward the Kurds and other minorities was replaced by a narrative that saw the Kurdish population as “the enemy within,” with Sunni Islam and Turkish ethnicity now serving as the basis of national identity (Yabanci Reference Yabanci2020). In an interview, Enver Cevik, international secretary of the Kurdish Dem Party, told me that this change happened very quickly: “In April 2015, just before the election, there was one step left to conclude a peace agreement. But the Turkish government delegation did not show up for the negotiations. They suddenly changed their mind and we never found out why. We found out about the change of mind on television.” According to CHP MP Taskin, Erdogan and the AKP have escalated and instrumentalized the Kurdish issue for their political gains. He also sees pure political opportunism as the motivation for other threat narrative of Erdogan and the AKP related to the West. The non-Muslim West has been accused of promoting values, such as LGBT rights and pluralism, which are seen as an attack against Turkey’s national identity (Yabanci Reference Yabanci2021, 20). In addition, the West has been accused of “standing by Kurdish terrorists” (Erdogan cited in France 24) as well as of interfering in Turkish internal affairs in order to delay Turkey’s development (Yabanci Reference Yabanci2021) or, in Erdogan’s words, “enslave the Turkish nation” (cited in Al Jazeera 2018).

The depicted use of nationalist discourse in the countries under investigation has been captured by various measures. According to the data of Jenne, Hawkins and Castanho Silva (Reference Jenne, Hawkins and Castanho Silva2021), who measured the nationalist discourse of state leaders in thirty European and North American countries between 1998 and 2018, Erdogan is the most nationalist leader in the sample, Orban is the third most nationalist leader, and Kaczynski is among the ten most nationalist leaders. In Serbia, the period between 2017 and 2018 was marked by the highest degree of nationalist discourse in this century, which coincides with the increased use of the Kosovo-related discourse by Vucic and the SNS (Milacic Reference Milacic2022).

Moreover, the data from the Comparative Manifestos Project (CMP) (Volkens et al. Reference Volkens, Burst and Krause2021), which measures the positions of political parties, found an increased emphasis on “the national way of life” by Polish PiS for the 2015 election, which increased further in 2019, thus coinciding with the PiS’s decision to target immigrants and later the LGBT community; a strong increase in the Serbian SNS’s “the national way of life” discourse for the 2020 election, while such discourse was absent in the 2016 election, coincides with the party’s shift toward the nationalist (Kosovo-related) politics; in 2014, Hungarian Fidesz increased its emphasis on “the national way of life” sevenfold compared to the 2010 election, while for the 2018 election the emphasis was increased fivefold when compared to 2014, capturing the party’s increased targeting of immigrants and the LGBT community; for the 2015 election, the Turkish AKP increased its emphasis on “the national way of life” by 2.3 times compared to 2011, followed by a 1/3 decrease in 2018 – a development that coincides with the development and intensity of the narratives against secular elites and Kurds. According to the Chapel Hill Survey, which placed Israeli parties in relation to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Likud, once a mainstream party, now takes “a far-right stand on the Israel-Palestine variable” (Zur and Bakker Reference Zur and Bakker2023, 9).Footnote ¹³

4.3 The Resonance of the Threat Narrative

The previous section provided evidence for the existence of a nationalist threat narrative in selected countries. It is not uncommon for political actors to play the nationalist card for personal gain. But has their narrative resonated with the population? In other words, is the out-group perceived as a threat and are both out-group resentment and in-group sentiment reinforced? In this section, I provide evidence that the narrative has resonated with the population. Specifically, I provide evidence for the presence of a sense of threat in the population and for the strengthening of in-group thinking and out-group resentment as well. This allows me to conclude that many voters perceive the nation, as defined by the political entrepreneurs, as endangered and that they show a stronger attachment to it. What is more, I demonstrate that these shifts in voters’ perceptions coincide with the emergence of the threat narrative, thereby illustrating the pivotal role of leaders in this development. I thus demonstrate the success of political entrepreneurs’ efforts.

The Muslim immigration was a marginal issue in Poland (Fomina and Kucharczyk Reference Fomina, Kucharczyk, Kucharczyk and Mesežnikov2018). However, after the PiS began employing threat appeals, it became a salient one for a significant number of Poles. According to the Pew Research Center surveys in 2016 and 2017, 73% and 60% of Poles saw Muslim refugees as a “major threat” to Poland, with PiS supporters more likely to see the issue as a threat (see Figure 5). Moreover, an Ipsos survey from 2019 shows that Kaczynski and the PiS have later succeeded with their second threat narrative as well. According to it, all Poles saw “gender ideology and the LGBT movement” as the second most important threat to the country, whereas 54% of PiS supporters saw this issue as the greatest threat to Poland, with concerns about Russia being far behind in the second place (26%) (see Figure 6) (Oko Press 2019).

Figure 5

Perception of Muslim immigrants (all Poles).

Source: Pew Research Center (2017).

Figure 6

Perception of LGBT (PiS voters).

Source: Oko Press (2019).

By fabricating threats to the Polish national identity, Kaczynski and his allies strengthened out-group resentment and in-group (ethnic Polish) sentiment as well. The percentage of Poles who opposed the entry of refugees from the Middle East and Africa rose from 48% in September 2015, when the narrative against Muslim immigrants began, to 64% in December 2015 and reached 71% in April 2016, with PiS supporters showing the strongest opposition among the Polish parties (CBOS 2016). The percentage of Poles who disagree that lesbian, gay, and bisexual people should have the same rights as heterosexual people (marriage, adoption, and parental rights) increased from 45% in 2019, when the anti-LGBT narrative began, to 54% in 2023 (Eurobarometer 2023). In addition, Polish ethnic identity has been reinforced, evidenced by the sharp increase in the number of Poles who would allow none or few immigrants of different race/ethnic group: from 41.5% in 2014 to 59.8% in 2016 and 63.9% in 2018 (ESS 2014, 2016, 2018) (see Figure 7).

Figure 7

In-group strengthening in Poland.

Source: ESS (2014, 2016, 2018).

A very similar development can also be observed in Hungary. Orban’s threat narrative turned a marginal issue into a salient one for many Hungarians. According to the Pew Research Center surveys from 2016 and 2017, 69% and 66% of Hungarians, respectively, saw Muslim refugees as a “major threat” to Hungary (see Figure 8). This sense of threat has also been captured in other surveys. For example, in 2016, 60% of Hungarians worried “a lot both about the realistic and symbolic threat of migration related to Hungary,” with Fidesz supporters more likely to have such feelings (Tarki 2016, 63).

Figure 8

Perception of Muslim immigrants (all Hungarians).

The strengthening of out-group resentment was visible as well. Between 2014 and 2015, when Orban and Fidesz began to portray Muslim immigrants as a threat, and 2016–2017, the rejection of refugees increased by 14% (Szabo Reference Szabó, Kucharczyk and Mesežnikov2018). In addition, the percentage of Hungarians who disagree that lesbian, gay, and bisexual people should have the same rights as heterosexual people (marriage, adoption, and parental rights) increased from 46% in 2019 to 51% in 2023 (Eurobarometer 2023) (see Figure 9). Thus, thanks to the anti-LGBT narrative that started in 2021, the majority of Hungarians, just like Poles, became opposed to LGBT rights. Moreover, and again similar to Poland, the ESS surveys also showed that ethnic Hungarian thinking was reinforced. The percentage of Hungarians who would allow none or few immigrants of different race/ethnic group increased from an already very high 80.8% in 2014 to 87% in 2016. However, if we count only those who would not allow any immigrants, the strengthening of in-group sentiment is even more visible as their share increased from 33.3% in 2014 to 48.4% in 2016 (see Figure 10).

Figure 9

Anti-LGBT resentment in Hungary.

Source: Eurobarometer (2023)

Figure 10

In-group strengthening in Hungary.

Source: ESS (2014, 2016)

Since 2017, Vucic and his allies have increasingly promoted an anti-Western narrative in Serbia. Unsurprisingly, the USA, as the main representative of the West and the main supporter of Kosovo’s independence, is perceived as the main threat. Indeed, in both FES surveys conducted in 2018 and 2021, the USA is seen by Serbs as the main threat to the country. Such a perception of the West has been recorded in other surveys as well. For example, 70% of Serbs agree that the West is “working to destroy our national identity, traditional values, and way of life” (see NATO 2021). Moreover, that the out-group resentment against the West took deeper roots in the Serbian electorate after the onset of the threat narrative has also been confirmed by surveys (see Figure 11): In 2017, 52% of Serbs said the USA have a bad influence on Serbia, whereas in 2020 this percentage rose to 59%; in 2017, 23% said the same for Germany and 36% for the EU. In 2020, then, this percentage more than doubled in the case of Germany (55%), while it increased significantly (68%) in the case of the EU (BCSP 2017, 2020).

Figure 11

Anti-Western resentment in Serbia.

Source: BCSP (2017, 2020)

The threat narrative also strengthened in-group (ethnic Serb) sentiment, and this is most clearly visible in the shift in the priorities of Serbs. According to the FES survey from 2018, joining the EU was seen by Serbs as the country’s top foreign policy priority. The FES survey conducted three years later recorded a clear shift in priorities. The Serbs now see the country’s top foreign policy priorities in the protection of the territory (mainly related to the Kosovo issue) and the interests of all Serbs in the region.

As noted above, Erdogan and the AKP have used different objects to build their threat narrative around. Initially (until 2015), it was the secular elites whose lifestyle posed a threat to the “real” Turkey. It is, therefore, not surprising that the 2014a KONDA barometer concluded that “the respondents who perceive AKP opponents as distant from themselves believe that AKP opponents pose a threat at high rates” (23) and that the conflict between the AKP supporters and opponents “originates primarily from lifestyles” (24–25). Two years later, when the Kurdish threat narrative was dominant, the KONDA barometer from March 2016a (18) registered that for 67% of ethnic Turks, the Turkish-Kurdish dispute is the social tension that scares them the most. A later increase in the use of anti-Western appeals by Erdogan and his allies has also been captured by surveys: In 2017, 72% of Turks saw the USA as “a major threat,” 28% more than in 2013 (Pew Research Center Reference Center2017).

The resonance of the threat narrative is also visible when it comes to resentment toward Kurds as an out-group. In February 2016, the percentages of those who did not support the right of Kurds to receive education in Kurdish and those who supported this minority right were the same. However, when asked again in January 2019, when the narrative of the Kurdish threat was much less dominant in AKP’s discourse, the percentage of those who support the right of Kurds to receive education in their mother tongue was 8% higher than the percentage of those who deny it (KONDA 2019, 14). Even more striking, in 2012, 36% of AKP voters supported the radical solutions to the Kurdish question, such as deportation, eradication of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party), capital punishment, no compromise, war and slaughter, and so on, while in 2015, when the Kurdish threat narrative began to dominate the AKP’s discourse, their share rose to 47% (KONDA 2015, 42) (see Figure 12).

Figure 12

Anti-Kurdish resentment (AKP voters).

Source: KONDA (2015).

There is also evidence that the threat narrative has affected in-group (ethnic Turkish) sentiment. For example, the KONDA barometer registered that in May 2016, only 25% of Turks said that “the equality between all kinds of people such as the Turkish, the Kurdish, Sunnis or Alevis should be emphasized to a greater extent than other principles.” The fact that Turkey has been marked by an escalation of the Kurdish issue since July 2015 – including terrorist attacks, the declaration of a state of emergency in the eastern provinces, and military operations – has certainly contributed to a low regard for a more inclusive principle. However, only three months later, in August 2016, when the July coup attempt rather than the Kurdish issue dominated the agenda, their share increased to 32.6% (KONDA 2016b, 65), and thus a weakening of the in-group sentiment could be observed (see Figure 13).

Figure 13

In-group sentiment in Turkey.

Source: KONDA (2016b).

The ever-present Israeli-Palestinian tensions meant that the Israeli Jews’ perception of Israeli Arabs as a threat has always been high and fairly constant. Indeed, in the years between 2013 and 2019 a solid majority of Israeli Jews expressed “fear of Arab citizens endangering the state because of their struggle to change its Jewish character” and “because they may start a popular revolt” (Smooha Reference Smooha2019, 59): 59.4% and 60.6% respectively in 2013, 61.2% and 63.4% respectively in 2015 or 60.1% and 62.8% respectively in 2017 (Smooha Reference Smooha2019, 59). Therefore, the strong effect of the threat narrative by Netanyahu and his allies, which has been intensified since 2015, is mainly visible in the strengthening of the resentment against Israeli Arabs and in the strengthening of the in-group (Jewish) sentiment as well. And there is ample evidence of this.

The percentage of Israeli Jews who agree that “most Arab citizens of Israel want to integrate into Israeli society and be part of it” fell from 66% in 2018 to 40% in 2022 (Israeli Democracy Index 2022, 121). Moreover, the percentage of Israeli Jews who were “personally wishing/ready to let Arabs live in their Jewish neighborhoods” also dropped sharply from 54.1% in 2015 to 39.6% in 2019 (Smooha Reference Smooha2019, 35). The same trend can be observed among those who agree that “the state should allow Arab citizens to manage their own educational, religious and cultural affairs.” Their share fell from 55.8% in 2015 to 40.2% in 2019 (Smooha Reference Smooha2019, 122). It thus does not come as a surprise that the rejection scale, which measures Jews’ rejection of Arabs, also captured this negative development: it increased from 5.43 in 2015 to 5.99 in 2019, on a scale from 0 to 13 with 0 meaning total acceptance and 13 total rejection (Smooha Reference Smooha2019, 132). The increase in rejection is particularly visible among those for whom “Jewish people” is the most important affiliation: from 6.29 in 2015 to 7.5 in 2019 (Smooha Reference Smooha2019) (see Figure 14).

Figure 14

Jews’ rejection of Arabs on 0–13 scale.

Source: Smooha (2019, 132).

As already noted, Israel is defined as both a Jewish and a democratic state, and both components were considered important. However, there is evidence that the former, and thus the Jewish in-group identity, is becoming more salient for many Israeli Jews, corresponding to Netanyahu’s increased employment of a threat narrative. Comparing the years 2017 and 2022, we see that the share of Israeli Jews who said that the Jewish component should be the dominant one increased from 23% to 43%. Among those on the Right of the political spectrum, who are the main audience for the threat narrative, the increase is from 40.5% to 60% (Israeli Democracy Index 2022, 107) (see Figure 15).

Figure 15

In-group strengthening in Israel (the Jewish component should be the dominant).

Source: Israeli Democracy Index (2022, 107).

4.4 Nation First, Democracy Second

In the previous section, I provided evidence for the resonance of the threat narrative in the population. In all of the countries under investigation, we could observe the existence of a sense of threat, accompanied by the strengthening of the resentment against the out-group portrayed as a threat, as well as the strengthening of in-group sentiment. These shifts in voters’ perceptions correspond to the onset of the threat narrative of political entrepreneurs. Following my mechanism, if the threat narrative resonated, it should also have led to voters’ willingness to sacrifice democracy for the issues related to the nation. Therefore, my aim is to provide sufficient evidence for the plausibility of such a claim. Hence, in this section, I present empirical facts that should plausibly establish the existence of voters’ willingness to tolerate undemocratic behavior for the sake of the nation.

In the cases of Poland, Hungary, and Serbia, this is established with the data from the experimental surveys that my colleagues and I have conducted. The experimental survey in Poland, conducted in November 2021, showed that Poles would only sacrifice democracy for the LGBT issue. Indeed, they would reward an undemocratic candidate who advocates for their favorite policy on same-sex couples’ rights, and this candidate would win an electoral contest against the democratic one. Yet as Figure 16 shows, this does not apply to all Poles, but only to those Poles who would ban same-sex couples from marrying and/or adopting children. Only they would reward such a candidate with an 8.5% and 1.4% vote share increase, respectively. I argue that this is likely the effect of the narrative of the PiS and Kaczynski that Polish national identity is threatened by the LGBT community. Accordingly, those Poles who are receptive to this kind of message are willing to make such a trade-off, prioritizing national identity, which is allegedly endangered by the extension of LGBT rights, over democracy. As noted above, those Poles who support same-sex couples’ rights would not trade off democracy for this issue. For them, the stakes are not as high.

Figure 16

Change of vote share (%) of undemocratic candidate on LGBT issue (Poland).

As already noted, Poles would not sacrifice democracy for other issues examined in the survey, such as the environment, education, national sovereignty vis-à-vis the EU, and immigration. If Muslim immigrants have also been portrayed as a threat by Kaczynski and the PiS, why are Poles not willing to trade off democratic principles for this issue as well? This finding clearly demonstrates the power of the political entrepreneurs’ narrative. As already emphasized in the section on the emergence of the threat narrative, immigration was the main focus of the Polish political entrepreneurs in the years between 2015 and 2018, after which it was replaced by the narrative that portrayed the LGBT community as the main threat to Poland’s identity. It appears that this shift also affected the mood of the Polish electorate.

The example of Hungary, where the same experimental survey was conducted in 2023, seems to provide further confirmation of the power of elite narrative. The Hungarians showed the greatest willingness to sacrifice democracy for two issues: LGBT and immigration (see Figures 17 and 18). Moreover, as both figures show, the willingness to reward an undemocratic candidate is stronger among those who oppose both LGBT rights and immigration, the very people we would expect to be susceptible to Orban’s and Fidesz’s threat narrative. Their greater willingness is likely the effect of the narrative according to which the LGBT community and the immigrants are a threat to Hungary. But why are Hungarians willing to trade off democracy for interests related to immigration, while Poles are not? As emphasized in the section on the emergence of the threat narrative, Orban and Fidesz, in contrast to Kaczynski and PiS, have continued to successfully portray immigrants as the major threat and have thus been able to prolong the salience of the immigration issue for local political dynamics. This seems to have had an impact on the attitudes of Hungarian voters.

Figure 17

Change of vote share (%) of undemocratic candidate on immigration issue.

Figure 18

Change of vote share (%) of undemocratic candidate on LGBT issue (Hungary).

The case of Serbia, where we also conducted an experimental survey in 2021, appears to confirm the aforementioned assumption about an increased willingness to tolerate undemocratic behavior for matters of the nation. Given the salience of the issue for political competition, in Serbia we investigated the respondents’ willingness to sacrifice democracy for their favorite foreign policy: pro-EU vs. pro-Russia. According to our data, pro-Russian Serbs are ten times more willing to sacrifice democratic principles for their preferred policy on this issue than pro-EU Serbs. Indeed, as Figure 19 shows, an undemocratic pro-Russian candidate can increase her vote share by 12%, while an undemocratic pro-EU candidate by “only” 1.2%. I argue that this is likely the effect of the narrative of the SNS and Vucic that Serbia is threatened by the West. In the context of the alleged threat to the nation from the West, pro-Russian Serbs are more inclined to see democratic principles as a necessary sacrifice to protect the nation through closer relations with Russia. Contrary to it, the stakes are not as high for pro-EU Serbs because there is no established narrative that Serbia is threatened by Russia.

Figure 19

Change of vote share (%) of undemocratic candidate on EU vs. Russia issue.

In the cases of Turkey and Israel, I do not rely on the experimental survey data to plausibly establish a willingness to trade off democracy for the nation. However, data from other surveys using direct questions seem to confirm that many voters are open to such trade-offs. What is more, the link between the willingness to trade off democracy and the threat narrative can be plausibly established as well.

According to the 2014b KONDA barometer (21), which was the period marked by Erdogan’s and the AKP’s portrayal of secular elites as a threat to Turkey and its identity, 40% of Turks agree that the “use of force may be necessary to preserve our traditional lifestyle,” with groups who are expected to be more receptive to the threat narrative, such as traditional and religious conservatives, anti-secularists, and AKP voters, showing more support for it. Moreover, according to the 2019 KONDA barometer (47), which was conducted after the renewal of the Kurdish threat, 56% of Turks agree that “State security comes before the rights of the people.” Their share is even higher among AKP voters (76%), the very people we would expect to be susceptible to Erdogan’s and the AKP’s threat narrative, while it is significantly lower among voters of the main opposition party, CHP (34%) (KONDA 2014b, 115).

However, the effect of the elite narrative on the population’s willingness to engage in trade-offs at the expense of democracy is perhaps best illustrated by analyzing the data on whether rights and liberties can be restricted in the fight against terror, which is mainly related to the Kurdish issue. The KONDA barometer of March 2016b (4) registered that 50% of Turks agreed with such a restriction of rights. Only five months later, when the Kurdish threat is no longer dominating Erdogan’s and the AKP’s discourse, but the failed coup attempt, their share has dropped to 30% (KONDA 2016b). This shift is particularly visible among AKP voters: from 62% in March to 38% in August (KONDA 2016b, 54) (see Figure 20).

Figure 20

Rights and liberties can be restricted in the fight against terror.

Source: KONDA (2016b).

As mentioned above, the main debate in Israel concerns the country’s character: Is Israel predominantly Jewish or predominantly democratic (Shamir and Arian Reference Shamir and Arian1999; Talshir 2022)? Netanyahu’s and Likud’s narrative of the nation as endangered seems to have increased the willingness of many Israelis to choose Jewishness over democracy. In 2015, when the heightened threat narrative began, 25% of Israelis agreed that Jewish citizens of Israel should have more rights than non-Jewish citizens (Israeli Democracy Index 2022, 51). Seven years later, their share rose to 49% (Israeli Democracy Index 2022). Unsurprisingly, those who identify with the Right, and who are expected to be receptive to the narrative on endangered Jewishness, were much more likely to agree with this notion (62%) than those in the Center (around one-third) and on the Left (11%). Further evidence of the likely impact of the threat narrative on the willingness to compromise on democracy is visible when one compares the year 2022 with the multi-year average: “Whereas on the Left the two are virtually identical, in the Center current support for this position is eight percentage points higher than the multi-year average, and on the Right 14 percentage points, indicating growing endorsement of this undemocratic attitude in the latter two camps” (Israeli Democracy Index 2022) (see Figure 21).

Figure 21

Jewish citizens of Israel should have more rights than non-Jewish citizens.

Source: Israeli Democracy Index (2022, 51).

Other questions also registered an increased willingness among Israeli Jews to trade off democracy for the nation, particularly the question “In the event of a conflict between democratic principles and halacha (Jewish religious law), should priority be given to democratic principles or to the precepts of Jewish law?” While between 2003 and 2013 an average of 45% of respondents said that democratic principles should be prioritized, in 2022 only a third chose this response (Israeli Democracy Index 2022, 107).

5.1 The Power of Counternarrative

When the attacks on democracy began in 2015, Polish civil society was able to quickly organize popular protests (Fomina and Kucharczyk Reference Fomina and Kucharczyk2016). This was also possible due to the existing vibrant civil society and its developed infrastructure (CSO Sustainability Index 2024; interview with Kinga Lozinska, former deputy head of the Committee for the Defense of Democracy (KOD)). Popular mobilization helped to slow down the attacks on democracy, but not to halt them or reverse the trend. What the Polish opposition initially failed to develop was a counternarrative to the PiS’s threat narrative. This changed later. As both civil society and the then-opposition representatives told me in interviews, they deliberately began to use emotions and developed a counternarrative that revolved around Poland’s EU membership. Indeed, Jakub Kocjan from the prominent CSO Akcja Demokracja, and Bartosz Machalica, chief strategist of the party Lewica, told me that they began appealing to emotions by portraying the PiS as a threat to Poland because its authoritarian policies would lead to a so-called “PolExit,” meaning that the EU would kick Poland out because of the PiS’s policies.Footnote ¹⁴ Kinga Lozinska from the KOD and Krzysztof Izdebski from the Stefan Batory Foundation, another prominent CSO, also confirmed to me that they were deliberately appealing to emotions related to EU membership. KOD did not directly mention the role of the PiS in a possible “PolExit,” but rather how important the EU membership is for Poland and warned that it would be terrible for the country to leave the EU. The Stefan Batory Foundation’s message was based on the importance of the EU membership for Poland’s security.

This new “we are the guardians of Poland” approach was crowned with the campaign of Donald Tusk and his party PO for the 2023 parliamentary election. They reclaimed the narrative of patriotism, with the Million-Hearts-March, the highlight of the campaign, serving as the best example for it (Wojciechowski Reference Wojciechowski, Brändle and Szelewa-Kropiwnicka2023). The red-and-white hearts and the red-and-white Polish flag have become a symbol of the campaign (Walker Reference Walker2023), coupled with the change of the party symbols. Indeed, instead of the previous yellow smiley, the PO has chosen the heart in the national colors of Poland as its new party logo, reflecting its new patriotic message. Dorota Loboda, MP and spokesperson of PO’s parliamentary group, confirmed to me that such a counternarrative was deliberately developed. According to her, “national symbols, including the flag, were stolen by the PiS. For years we did nothing, and for years only PiS talked about community. For the 2023 election we decided to organize campaign based on emotions, to reclaim national symbols, and refill them with new content.” In her view, the party had to propose an alternative platform, and not just one that was anti-PiS, which is something that former PO spokesperson, Piotr Kolomycki, also pointed out in our interview. According to Loboda, they then settled on “a patriotic message based on the EU membership and an emphasis on building community around democratic values.” The counternarrative based on EU membership (keeping Poland anchored in the West) resonated with the Polish electorate because it is in line with both the authentic Polish identity, which sees Poland as belonging to the West, and with the pro-Western orientation of Polish society, as Loboda pointed out.

All interviewees agreed that the patriotic emotions were essential for the electoral mobilization that defeated the PiS in 2023. However, the precondition for this success was the existence of strong independent media. Indeed, the existence of private media such as TVN and Gazeta Wyborcza prevented the PiS from fully controlling the narrative. The representatives of the opposition and civil society told me that the role of these media was essential for their voice to be heard and for them to spread their counternarrative because the public broadcaster was only spreading the PiS narrative.

Poland thus serves as an example of successful mobilization at the ballot box, to which a compelling nation-related counternarrative contributed greatly. But this success is also due to the PiS’s mistake. The party, which is said to be “very good at recognizing Polish fears” (interview with Jakub Kocjan), miscalculated with its choice of a threat for the 2023 election. The narrative according to which Germany threatens Poland’s existence and Germans are Polish enemies (Romaniec Reference Romaniec2023), coupled with the official demands for reparations for the losses in the Second World War (Dettmer Reference Dettmer2023), did not resonate with the Polish population. According to the German-Polish barometer from 2023, as in previous years, the majority of Poles surveyed expressed a positive opinion of Germany, with only 15% expressing an aversion to it (Kucharczyk and Lada-Konefal Reference Kucharczyk and Lada-Konefal2023). What is more, there is no clear negative image of Germany among PiS voters, as the distribution of positive and negative statements is balanced (Kucharczyk and Lada-Konefal Reference Kucharczyk and Lada-Konefal2023).

However, the example of another success story, Israel, shows that the counternarrative is indeed important for mobilization and successful resistance. Israel, like Poland, has a vibrant civil society and independent media that gave civil society a voice. The government’s announcement of the judicial “reform” was followed by the longest and most massive protest in Israel’s history (Ziv Reference Ziv2023), initiated by a new organization called Mate Hama’avak (i.e., Resistance Headquarters). The counternarrative, which did not shy away from patriotism, but emphasized it, played an important role in this. The counternarrative was based on the role of democracy for Israel’s national identity and had its source and inspiration in the Israeli Declaration of Independence that envisioned Israel as a liberal democracy (Ariely Reference Ariely2023). Therefore, the protesters saw themselves as the true and authentic guardians of Israel because they were fighting “for a democratic and Jewish country that Israel was founded to be, while the government is trying to impose authoritarianism that is alien to Israel’s identity” (Beckerman Reference Beckerman2023). This was accompanied by the efforts to reclaim national symbols from the right and the far-right, most notably the national flag that eventually became the symbol of the protest. In fact, there has never been a protest movement so completely dominated by the Israeli flag (Ziv Reference Ziv2023), in stark contrast to previous similar protests where the use of the Israeli flag was exceptional (Stein and Strömbom Reference Stein and Strömbom2023). In addition to waving the flag in the name of democracy (Ziv Reference Ziv2023), the protests always began with the singing of the national anthem, as Yaniv Roznai, who was directly involved, told me.

That all this was no coincidence but a clear strategy was confirmed to me by the operation leader of Resistance Headquarters, Eran Schwartz. According to him, the challenge was not only to mobilize enough people, but also to make the protests last, and the nation-based counternarrative, which included reclaiming the national symbols that, in his words, “the ruling parties stole from us,” greatly helped. The protest organizers saw such a narrative as being in line with Israel’s tradition, that is, as building on the history of Israel as both a democratic and Jewish state. It was particularly helpful for mobilizing previously skeptical conservative voters and uncommitted citizens (Ziv Reference Ziv2023; interview with Raluca Ganea, whose organization was involved in the protest movement). In the words of Uri Zaki, an official of opposition party Democrats and former civil activist, “it made them immune to Netanyahu’s narrative that opposition is unpatriotic” as well as to the narrative that the protests were an Ashkenazi left-wing demonstration.Footnote ¹⁵ Eran Schwartz told me that their internal polling of protest participants confirmed to them that they were indeed able to reach voters across the political spectrum. Hence, with such an approach, they were able to unite many different subgroups – from those opposed to the occupation of Palestinian territory to veterans’ organizations, as civil activist Dan Sobovitz told me – but at the expense of Israeli Arabs who found it difficult to join in, as Ganea and Schwartz confirmed to me.

The success of such a popular mobilization organized by civil societyFootnote ¹⁶ was not only in raising the costs for the authoritarian government. According to all of my interlocutors, the massive popular mobilization encouraged the Supreme Court to react and not to defer to the executive branch. The protests provided the court with the support and legitimacy to strike down the judicial reform law (BBC 2024), as Roznai told me. They all agreed that without such strong public support, the court’s intervention would have been unlikely and the autocratization would not have been halted in its initial stage.

Contrary to Poland and Israel, pro-democracy actors in Hungary, Turkey, and Serbia failed to develop an effective nation-based counternarrative, that is, to frame the struggle for democracy as a struggle for the nation. In Serbia and Turkey, pro-democracy CSOs were too weak to fight back (CSO Sustainability Index 2024; BTI Turkey 2014, 2020), whereas independent media were quickly captured by the government (BTI Turkey 2014; ODIHR Turkey 2015; Milacic Reference Milacic2022). In addition, the opposition parties also struggled to find the right response to threat narratives. As civil activist Vukosava Crnjanski told me, Serbia has not confronted its past regarding the breakup of Yugoslavia, concretely the role of the ethno-nationalist “Greater Serbia” project in the Yugoslav wars. As a result, ethno-nationalism is still legitimate across the Serbian political spectrum. In fact, the stances of some of the Serbian opposition parties on the Kosovo issue are even more radical than Vucic’s, as another civil society activist, Igor Bandovic, pointed out to me. The Serbian far-right opposition, unlike Vucic’s SNS, officially opposes Serbia’s EU membership because, in their view, this would imply the recognition of Kosovo (Danas 2023c; Novi DSS party program). They also vehemently rejected the Franco-German plan on the normalization of the relationship between Serbia and Kosovo (Danas 2023d), and call for the return of the Serbian army to Kosovo (Novi DSS Reference Novi2024; Dveri party program).

While these opposition parties wanted to outflank Vucic and presented themselves as more nationalist than him and his SNS, the others decided to ignore the matter of the nation, including the concerns about Kosovo, as Zoran Lutovac, who was one of the leaders of the pro-European opposition between 2018 and 2024, told me. They are also against Kosovo’s independence, but they did not try to outflank Vucic because they also advocate for Serbia’s European integration. Normalizing relations with Kosovo is one of the key conditions for Serbia’s EU accession. Hence, such an ideologically heterogeneous Serbian opposition was unable to develop a compelling nation-related counternarrative that would also integrate the regime cleavage between autocratic and democratic visions of society. This in turn allowed Vucic and the SNS to successfully use the Kosovo issue and related nationalist appeals to subvert democracy.

In Turkey, for the far-right MHP, which was in the opposition until 2018, hostility to the Kurds was more fundamental than the ongoing autocratization under the AKP (Akkoyunlu and Sarfati 2024). Moreover, as Enver Cevik, international secretary of the Kurdish Dem Party, told me, when Erdogan initiated his anti-Kurdish narrative and started attacking Kurds, the main opposition party, CHP, also supported Erdogan and did not find his behavior problematic. This was in line with the party’s Kemalist nationalist politics that saw Kurdish rights as a danger to the national unity (BTI Turkey 2018; Somer Reference Somer2022). Accordingly, while some in the CHP tried to outflank Erdogan and the AKP with a more nationalist approach, the others were silent about the government’s nationalism, as civil activist Ulas Tol told me. Hence, the CHP’s traditional exclusionary nationalism was an obstacle to the development of a compelling counternarrative that would link nation-related appeals and democratic values.

There is, however, an important difference between Turkey and Serbia. In recent years, the CHP has transformed itself into a more inclusive social democratic party (Selvin Korkmaz Reference Selvin Korkmaz2023; Akkoyunlu and Sarfati 2024), which has made it more aware of Erdogan’s misuse of the Kurdish issue to undermine democracy. This was confirmed to me by its MP, Yüksel Taskin, who emphasized that a learning process took place within the CHP: “In the CHP, many learned later about Erdogan’s real intentions regarding the Kurdish issue.” He admitted that different visions on the Kurdish issue still exist in the CHP, but argued that the ethno-nationalist and anti-Kurdish discourse is not as strong as it used to be. As someone who has long been a critic of Turkish nationalism and was expelled from university for advocating Kurdish rights, he also pointed to himself as “a living example of the party’s shift.”

This shift, in turn, has made the party more open to a cross-ethnic democratic approach to the Kurdish question (Somer Reference Somer2022). MP Taskin told me that they realized that ethnic outbidding was not working, so “we started to focus on countering Erdogan’s nationalism with concrete social policies and how to solve problems and make the system work,” which manifested itself already in the 2019 local election campaign. Indeed, the CHP’s campaign was marked by inclusive and hopeful campaign slogans that focused on local politics (Selvin Korkmaz Reference Selvin Korkmaz2023). The same approach was used for the 2024 local election campaign as well. The CHP’s candidate for the mayor of Fatih municipality in Istanbul province, Mahir Polat, confirmed the change in strategy to me: “The Kurds are a part of Turkey and not a threat to it. We (CHP) now have a less abstract and a more solution-oriented approach that promises to solve the country’s problems. Our integrative strategy for the society is based on this.” It seems that this new approach strongly contributed to a surprising victory in the 2024 local election (Kirby and Kasapoglu Reference Kirby and Kasapoglu2024). However, it is questionable whether a counternarrative, which sees the output of the system and good governance as the basis of the nation’s identity, will resonate with voters in the campaign for the national election. Such a narrative does not seem to solve, but rather only ignores, a key identity dilemma emphasized by Somer (Reference Somer2022, 286): How to ensure that ethnic Turks are not concerned about their own identity, while also recognizing Kurdish identity?

Unlike the opposition in Turkey and Serbia, the Hungarian opposition (with the exception of the far-right Jobbik) was not supportive of ethno-nationalism. As Klara Dobrev, who was one of the opposition’s leaders, told me, “the failure to develop a counternarrative was not due to different principles as we were against ethno-nationalism,” which was confirmed to me by a senior official of the Hungarian Social-Democrats, Gabor Harangozo. The Hungarian opposition parties simply struggled to identify an issue around which to create a nation-related counternarrative, so they decided not to address the matter of the nation and to focus on other issues, Dobrev emphasized. Zsuzsanna Szelenyi, former opposition MP and co-founder of liberal party Together, told me a similar story. According to her, the opposition was “paralyzed” in 2015 when Orban started his threat narrative against immigrants and did not know how to react: “There were strategic discussions within the opposition about how to respond, but they were not fruitful, so it was decided not to talk about the issue,” allowing Fidesz to dominate the discourse, which has been the case ever since.

Hungarian civil society did not manage to find the right tone either. Civil society’s resistance was, in the words of Marta Pardavi, head of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, “an elite affair” and not properly communicated to the general public. CSOs addressed individual deficiencies of democracy, and there was thematic cooperation between them, as I was told in the interviews, without the resistance being framed in a nation-related narrative or CSOs having a coordinated message, as seen in Poland and Israel. There was also no coordination on the narrative with the opposition parties, while some CSOs, such as the HCLU, deliberately kept a strict distance from the opposition parties (interview with its head, Dalma Dojcsak). According to Pardavi, it was only later that they realized that judicial reform, media reform, amendments to the Constitution, and attacks on LGBT, Roma, homeless people, and immigrants were not separate issues, but all integral parts of the larger project: “We are now more aware that this is a battle of narratives and we need our positive vision.” However, the current Hungarian context, described to me by Klara Dobrev as a “communication jail” amid the absence of an opposition’s voice in the media, makes it much harder for the opposition to develop an effective counternarrative.

5.2 Key Lessons for Building a New Electoral Coalition

As already noted, when faced with the subversion of democracy in the name of the nation, pro-democracy actors have three options. Although the five countries under investigation show that a nation-related counternarrative seems to be the most promising resistance strategy, their experience also tells us that the opposition’s response is conditioned by several factors:

Firstly, the existence of the formative rifts. In an environment lacking formative rifts, the counternarrative should be centered on a nation-related topic that is salient to the local political dynamic and not already owned by an authoritarian incumbent, as the Polish experience demonstrates. The opposition can draw inspiration from contemporary debates or available historical narrative sources.

On the other hand, where formative rifts exist, given their societal salience, they are likely to be misused by authoritarian incumbents for the development of a nationalist narrative, as Turkish, Serbian, and Israeli cases demonstrated. Hence, when nationalist and threat appeals revolve around formative rifts, it is difficult for pro-democracy actors to ignore them. In a context marked by the disputed national identity or borders, it is unlikely that a counternarrative, which solely focuses on democracy and ignores these open issues, can bring success. Israel, however, offers an exception here. Israeli pro-democracy actors were able to develop a counternarrative without addressing the Israeli-Palestinian issue thanks to the above-mentioned specific role of democracy in Israeli nation-state building.

This is, however, not to say that the formative rifts will always play a decisive role. If an open territorial issue turns into a frozen conflict, it may lose some of its salience to voters and thus its potency, as we could observe in Serbia and Turkey. This provides the opposition with a time-limited opportunity to craft a counternarrative that does not focus on the formative rift, which is important because the formative rift often poses an obstacle to building a broad democratic coalition. The political entrepreneurship of Vucic, Erdogan, and also Netanyahu had, therefore, a purpose of maintaining the salience of the Kosovo, Kurdish, and Palestinian issues, respectively. Moreover, we cannot exclude contingency as a factor, as demonstrated by the recent Serbian experience. Serbian students managed to mobilize hundreds of thousands of Serbs in the streets with an approach that included the use of the Serbian flag, the singing of the national anthem, and a patriotic counternarrative based on good governance rather than the Kosovo issue (Congradin Reference Congradin2025). This counternarrative, revolving around the rule of law, seemed to resonate because the protests were triggered by a tragic incident involving the deaths of sixteen people and the government’s reluctance to hold those responsible to account (Le Monde Reference Monde2025). However, the question remains whether such a narrative can be sustained in the long term.

Secondly, the country’s demographic situation. Pro-democracy actors in ethnically and religiously heterogeneous countries face a certain dilemma. The Turkish and Israeli experiences tell us that, as the opposition was building an electoral majority to defend democracy, they deliberated the extent to which their narrative should be inclusive toward Kurds and Israeli Arabs, respectively. The existence of many Kurdish voters was an incentive for the CHP to partially shift from trying to outflank Erdogan to developing a counternarrative that is more inclusive toward the Kurds. Although the size of the Israeli Arab population is similar to that of the Kurdish population in Turkey, the counternarrative of Israeli civil society largely ignored Israeli Arabs and was only more inclusive toward conservative Israeli Jews. Hence, the dilemma in heterogeneous societies seems to be whether to develop a counternarrative that is more appealing to minority voters or to moderate voters of the authoritarian incumbent. Against the backdrop of Turkish and Israeli experiences, this decision appears to depend heavily on the local context, that is, the intensity and scale of the conflict between the majority and minority. In cases where the conflict is ongoing or recurring and highly violent, with no cross-cutting links between the majority and minority, such as a shared religion, a more inclusive approach toward the minority appears less promising. However, the precondition for the aforementioned dilemma is that minorities are fully committed to democracy, which is not always the case. In many countries, they have sided with authoritarian nationalists who promised to protect their particularistic rights in exchange for turning a blind eye to violations of democratic rules (e.g., North Macedonia) – something that Erdogan is trying to achieve with his recent overture toward the Kurds.

Thirdly, ideological homogeneity of the opposition. In Serbia, the ideological heterogeneity of the opposition conditioned its response to the incumbent’s nationalist appeals. The ethno-nationalist opposition tried to outflank an incumbent, while the pro-European ignored the incumbent’s nationalist rhetoric. This prevented a joint response, from which the incumbent greatly profited. Ideological homogeneity of the opposition thus facilitates a more successful resistance.

Fourthly, the role of political agency. My interviews with political actors in Turkey, Hungary, and Serbia revealed that the absence of a counternarrative was also due to the opposition’s lack of skill and creativity. Although ideologically rather homogeneous, the Hungarian opposition was unable to identify a suitable topic for the counternarrative. As already noted, the Turkish opposition managed to learn from its mistakes and strike the right tone at the local level, but still not at the national level. In Serbia, the pro-European opposition ignored the incumbent’s nationalist appeals because they were neither able to develop a politically profitable counternarrative around the Kosovo issue, nor to identify another nation-related topic around which to build a counternarrative. Contrary to them, my interviews with actors from Poland and Israel revealed internal debates about strategy, readiness for reinvention, and the courage to try a specific counternarrative.