Around the globe, democracies have come under pressure. At the same time, one of the most prominent research areas in political science is the question of which democratic designs generate the most stability. However, so far, one inherent part of democracies has not received much attention in this literature: the opposition. Although research has shown that there is a wide range of power granted to oppositions, little research exists investigating the consequences of these institutional differences. In this research note, I focus on the importance of mutual toleration for democratic stability and argue that this might manifest in institutionalized legislative opposition power, which, in turn, might affect democratic stability. Preliminary results indicate that instances of democratic decline are more likely to occur in countries with weak institutionalization of opposition power. These results have important implications and open up avenues for future research on questions relating to determinants of democratic stability.

How do European Union (EU) fiscal allocations affect the electoral performance of corrupt incumbent governments? While existing research links EU funds to governance quality and corruption, less is known about how these resources interact with domestic political incentives to shape electoral outcomes. This article advances a theory of corruption compensation, arguing that EU transfers provide politically vulnerable incumbents with discretionary resources that can be redirected to consolidate electoral support. Using data on EU fiscal allocations and electoral outcomes in twenty-six member states between 2000 and 2015, the analysis shows that higher levels of EU funding are associated with larger electoral margins for governing parties in countries with high executive corruption. These effects are absent in less corrupt contexts. The findings suggest that, under weak domestic accountability and limited enforcement, EU fiscal instruments unintentionally reinforce illiberal governance and weaken the regulatory objectives of cohesion policy. The article highlights the need to integrate political risk considerations more systematically into the design and implementation of EU spending conditionality.

Multiple rounds of European Union (EU) enlargement and the rise of the populist radical right have affected the organisation of political competition in the European Parliament (EP). This study probes how the EU’s efforts to redress democratic backsliding in several EU member states crystallise deepening divides between European lawmakers. Our empirical analysis examines 17 roll-call votes on rule of law issues and well over 900 discursive statements from corresponding parliamentary debates held between 2009 and 2019. Our unique approach enables us to analyse discursive and voting patterns both separately and jointly to understand how they affect each other. We find that behaviour across these different arenas is generally consistent and aligns with an ideological divide that pits Eurosceptic Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) against representatives from pro-EU European party groups. Once we account for ideological orientations and strategic motivations, the often-claimed East–West divide on rule of law issues becomes much less salient, emerging primarily under specific conditions of ongoing democratic erosion and national incumbency in Central and Eastern Europe. Our findings speak to the literature on EU responses to democratic backsliding as well as to the changing dynamics of political competition in the EU more broadly.

With the expulsion of the Central European University (CEU) and the establishment of public trust foundations, the academic world in Hungary has come under pressure unprecedented in the European Union (EU). The measures taken by the Orbán government have been decried as an assault on academic freedom, undermining the fundamental values of the EU. While the European Commission is obligated to uphold European values as per the treaties, its capacity to do so with regard to academic freedom has been underwhelming. In this paper, I argue that the EU is institutionally handicapped in its approach to protecting academic freedom because of, firstly, a lack of competences in the field of higher education and, secondly, an insufficient definition of academic freedom in EU law. By finding innovative ways to link the protection of academic freedom to its competences and by institutionalising an operational definition of academic freedom, the EU could better protect academic freedom and universities in general in its Member States.

This article examines the constitutional imagination of European policymakers and legal scholars in the 20th and 21st centuries who participated in key treaty drafting processes that led to the listing of a series of values central to Europe’s identity in the 2012 Treaty on the European Union (TEU) and the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, which established the League of Nations – or Société des Nations (SDN) –and the International Labour Organization (ILO). Based on this historical comparison, the article argues that the concept of a European ‘society’ characterised by a specific set of what I call ‘social-democratic values’ (listed in Article 2 of the TEU) should be read in continuity with the 20th-century civilizational project of modern international law scholars who shaped the working of the SDN in the interwar era. Many international legal scholars close to the SDN were inspired by the French sociological school and social-democratic ideals: they anchored the working of international legal rules on the solid rock of an ‘international society’ marked by a series of values which seemed ‘modern’ in the sense that they reflected the emergence of a ‘society of individuals’ whose freedom and social rights went beyond those granted by sovereign states at the time. When seen against this historical background, the introduction in Article 2 of the TEU of a concept of ‘society’ characterised by such social-democratic values, such as pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men, to ground the EU’s constitutional order, betrays less the influence of contemporary sociological thinkers on the EU constitutional framers, than that of socio-legal theories developed by interwar scholars who wanted to modernise the operations of European colonialism and internationalism.

Anti‐pluralist parties have come to power in democracies around the world. However, only a subset of them have induced democratic backsliding while in government, raising the question of why some anti‐pluralist governments subvert democracy while others are more reluctant. I argue that anti‐pluralist incumbents undermine democratic institutions most severely during times of weak citizen support for democracy. In such settings, anti‐pluralist parties in power face a low risk of voter punishment and public backlash. By contrast, in democracies where citizens' commitment to democratic rule is strong, the cost of attacking democratic institutions for incumbents is considerably higher, making democratic backsliding less likely. I test this theory by combining data from public opinion surveys, party systems and democratic downturns in 100 democracies and implement dynamic time‐series cross‐section models covering the period from 1990 to 2019. Consistent with expectations, periods in which anti‐pluralist parties are in government during times of weak citizen support for democracy predict episodes of democratic decline. These findings have implications for the potential of citizens to constrain anti‐pluralist incumbents in pursuing undemocratic reforms.

Ordinary citizens can serve as a critical defence against democratic backsliding. But beneath the surface, citizens' commitment to democracy is sometimes fragile, with crises exacerbating existing anxieties. We introduce ‘democratic persuasion’ as an actionable intervention to foster the resilience of citizens' commitment to liberal democracy. ‘Democratic persuasion’ seizes the opportunity of communicating with wavering democrats. ‘Democratic persuasion’ entails actively making the case for democracy and discussing democracy's inherent trade-offs while engaging existing doubts and misperceptions. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which stirred frustrations with democracy and highlighted democratic trade-offs, we invited citizens via Facebook to participate in one of sixteen Zoom town halls to engage in discussions on pandemic politics with members of German state and federal parliaments. Each representative hosted two town halls, with random assignment to a condition of ‘democratic persuasion’ in one of the two town hall meetings. The field experiment yielded mixed results, demonstrating significant effects on some indicators of democratic commitment but not on others. This study contributes to the nascent body of research aimed at reinforcing the societal pillars of liberal democracies.

This article asks whether the willingness of partisans to condone democratic backsliding is a uniquely American phenomenon and explores why partisans would tolerate a party leader subverting democratic norms. We focus on executive aggrandizement as a key mechanism through which democratic backsliding occurs and develop three potential explanations for why partisans would accept the weakening of checks on the power of the executive. First, in a context of affective polarization, partisans may condone executive aggrandizement in order to advantage their party and disadvantage the opponent. Second, partisans may be willing to trade off democratic norms in pursuit of their ideological agenda. Third, partisans may take cues from the behaviour of party elites. These explanations are tested using a candidate‐choice conjoint experiment administered to Americans and Canadians in 2019 that involved respondents choosing between hypothetical candidates in intra‐party contests. Regardless of party, partisans in both countries proved willing to choose candidates who would loosen legislative and judicial restraints on the executive. While the partisan advantage explanation only held for strong Republicans in the United States, partisans in Canada and the United States alike were apparently willing to weaken restraints on the executive for the sake of their ideological agendas, at least in the case of abortion. Finally, Republicans who approved of the Trump presidency were much less likely than other Republicans to punish undemocratic candidates, lending support to the cue‐taking explanation.

Partisan‐based affective polarization has been posited as a key explanation for citizens' tolerance towards democratic backsliding, with voters more likely to overlook democratic violations conducted by in‐party candidates. Our study theorizes and empirically explores the reverse perspective on this relationship: focusing on the role of the opposition, we submit that backsliding may crystallize an affective dislike among opposition supporters towards the governing party and its supporters that stems from a regime divide over democracy itself. To probe the plausibility of this argument, we leverage original survey data collected in Hungary, where democratic backsliding under the Fidesz government has resulted in an extensive remodelling of the political system since 2010. Our results point to a government–opposition divide in partisan affect and show how liberal democratic attitudes, especially among opposition party supporters, play into this dynamic. We suggest that where backsliding persists over a longer period, this process can shift even multi‐party systems towards increasing bipolarity along what we term a ‘democratic divide’. Ultimately, our study proposes a novel lens on the dynamics of democratic backsliding by suggesting that affective polarization may play a positive role in backsliding contexts by uniting the opposition around the defence of democracy. Our findings point to a number of future research avenues to further analyse the interactive relationship between democratic backsliding and affective polarization.

How do politicians in advanced democracies get away with violating political norms? Although norm violators confront a powerful establishment that can penalize them, norm violations currently occur in many advanced democracies. This article analyzes the conflicts between norm‐violating challengers and established politicians and parties as norm defenders in multiparty systems to contribute to the discipline's understanding of norm erosion processes. Based on diachronic and synchronic comparisons of conflicts over norm violations in Austria and Germany, the article reveals how political challengers can already damage democratic norms from a position of institutional weakness. Norm violators that make ambiguous provocations and can leverage their previously acquired democratic credentials, can more credibly dispel attempts to stigmatize them as undemocratic. In doing so, they turn the tables on the political establishment and portray its sanctions as a form of ‘excessive retaliation’ that constitutes a norm violation in itself. The article concludes with the unsettling finding that (verbal) norm protection can facilitate norm erosion.

Radical‐right parties have gradually penetrated the political mainstream in many liberal democracies, marking a trend of ‘democratic backsliding’. We propose that women's increasing visibility as representatives of radical‐right agendas makes democratic backsliders, their policies and their parties seem more legitimate, and may help explain their growing public acceptance. Our studies provide the first systematic examination of this hypothesis in three countries – Israel, Germany and the United States (N = 7203). In Studies 1a‐c, we show that voters perceive democracy‐eroding policies through a gendered lens – they attribute gender stereotypes to the parties promoting these policies and to the public supporting these policies. In Studies 2a‐c, we experimentally demonstrate the effect of politicians’ gender on public acceptance of democracy‐eroding policies, politicians and parties, and demonstrate the role of gender stereotypes in mediating this effect. Finally, we show that the audiences susceptible to the mainstreaming effect of politicians’ gender are precisely those that are often particularly repelled by radical‐right agendas and their perceived masculine image: Women and left‐wing voters.

In this commentary, we discuss some possible effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in both established and newer democracies. We expect that the pandemic will not have grave long-term effects on established democracies. We assess the future of democracy after COVID-19 in terms of immediate effects on current democratic leaders, and speculate on the long-term effects on support for democratic institutions and principles. We also discuss possible implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global trends in democratic backsliding. We predict that, in the short term, the repercussions of the pandemic can aggravate the situation in countries that are already experiencing democratic erosion. However, the long term economic effects of the pandemic may be more detrimental to non-democratic governance.

The article investigates the extent to which EU conditionality and domestic factors have determined the Europeanisation path of Serbia, in light of its democratic backsliding and stalemate in its EU accession process. To explore this dynamic, the external incentives model (EIM), a widely recognised rationalist theoretical model analysing Europeanisation in candidate states, forms the theoretical basis of this study. Building on a rich literature applying this model, including EIM’s revisions by its original authors and subsequent improvements by other scholars, the study first aims to elucidate certain aspects of the model. Special attention is given to the dynamic nature of the EU accession process and the uncertainty faced by actors in EU candidate states regarding the prospects of EU membership, recognising that top-down and bottom-up factors often operate in concert rather than isolation. Process tracing and Bayesian reasoning are then employed to assess the contribution of these factors in explaining the observed democratic regression in Serbia. The analysis reveals mechanisms related to Serbia’s geostrategic interests, including its territorial integrity, and the overall decline in the credibility of the EU accession process, which have contributed to the deadlock in the accession process. Data are drawn from a number of primary and secondary sources including in-depth semi-structured interviews with EU and Serbian actors, EU, national, and international organisations’ documents and reports, the V-Dem and Freedom House databases, local and European media, and relevant scholarly literature.

Despite the normative origins of our discipline, political scientists often embrace our role as objective scholars, to the point of teaching our students to undertake research without also helping them to become public-spirited citizens. This essay argues that this restrained approach is inadequate to maintain political science’s relevance in an era characterized by heightened partisan polarization, rising authoritarianism, and democratic backsliding. To help our students sustain democratic systems of government going forward, political scientists must not only recognize our normative roots, but must also extend our normative agenda to a reinvigorated civic engagement pedagogy that is timely, intersectional, and internationalized. In short, how and what we teach our students is the key to our discipline’s relevance in difficult political times.

Two maladies that have been incipient in Liberal Democracy since its birth have finally struck at once. The “tyranny of the majority” and “administrative despotism”—first identified by Alexis de Tocqueville almost two centuries ago—have combined in the form of a new, much more threatening democratic mutation. We are witnessing the rise of “despotic majoritarianism,” in which citizens are simultaneously given less and less say in the political process, just as more and more is being done in their name. This new strain of democratic disease threatens not just the United States but societies across Europe, Latin America, and South Asia. This article explores the nature of despotic majoritarianism, its manifestation today, and how we might combat it.