Civic Mobilization against Democratic Backsliding in Post-Communist Europe

Abstract

In this thematic cluster, we explore why and how democratic erosion in post-Communist Europe has led to widespread civic mobilization. We set out the goals and motivations of citizens who choose to protest in defense of liberal democracy. We also compare across cases what pro-democracy protestors believe they have achieved by protesting—and what kinds of changes they believe are needed to end or attenuate the democratic erosion that sent them into the streets. The different contributions to this special section highlight variation in the role of elections: while protestors in some countries expect electing a new government to bring substantial, positive change, protestors in other countries consider that long-term structural reforms are needed. Still other protestors choose to back an electoral boycott as a way to express their opposition to the regime. Even when protests do not achieve short-term goals, such as spurring policy reversals, policy reforms, or changes in government, protestors believe that they raise awareness in society about democratic processes and the role of citizens in them. We also explore how democratic backsliding has impacted the rights of the LGBTQ+ community, which has generally benefited from democratization over the last three decades in post-Communist Europe.

In June 2019, the Czech movement “Million Moments for Democracy” filled Letná Park in Prague with hundreds of thousands of protestors—the largest demonstration since the culmination of Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution brought nearly a million citizens to the park in November 1989. Waving Czech and EU flags, the protestors called for the resignation of the Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, accusing him not just of far-reaching corruption but also of attacking the institutions that anchor the Czech Republic’s liberal democratic government, including the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary. What was striking on that day was how the organizers interspersed entertaining performances with speeches explaining the building blocks of liberal democracy—and why they are worth fighting for. Many of the homemade signs carried by the protestors also invoked the urgency of protecting liberal democratic institutions. It was clear that for the organizers and for at least some participants, this was not a protest against economic issues or corruption, but rather in defense of liberal democracy. ¹

In cities and towns across the post-Communist region over the last decade, citizens have filled the streets to oppose democratic backsliding by authoritarian-minded incumbents. These incumbents have used the levers of government to attack liberal democratic institutions to augment their power and prevent political turnover. The study of democratic backsliding has theorized closely the methods that authoritarian-minded incumbents use to win elections; to justify the concentration of power; and to enfeeble if not destroy liberal democratic institutions. As we sketch out below, scholars have chronicled how incumbents accomplish backsliding by dismantling counter-majoritarian institutions, creating an uneven playing field for the opposition, and reducing institutional constraints on the executive. Scholars have also charted how incumbents vilify opposition parties, civic groups, minorities, journalists, and other targeted groups to legitimize their power. Our contributions add to this debate by identifying some of the differences in how incumbents subvert liberal democracy, and how these attacks in turn reshape the strategies that citizens and groups use to mobilize in defense of democracy.

What has often been underplayed in debates on democratic backsliding is the vibrancy of civil society across the region. ² Incumbents who erode democracy are often challenged by widespread mobilization and protest in the streets. As Antoaneta Dimitrova argues, these protests “should not be seen only as evidence of state capture and corruption, but also of the fact that substantial numbers of citizens are prepared to contest corrupt patterns of governance and formulate clear demands for democratic improvement.” ³ Alongside the many studies of incumbent behavior, few studies analyze how citizens, civil society groups, and protest movements have mobilized against democratic erosion of different kinds. Our contributions shed light on the multiple ways in which individuals and groups mobilize against backsliding, on their motivations, and on the strategies they use. We follow the calls of Dorota Pietrzyk-Reeves and other scholars for a dynamic approach to the study of civil society that looks beyond associational membership and explores the ebb and flow of protest and contestation in post-Communist states, giving a fuller picture of the diversity and changing intensity of civic participation in the region. ⁴ We also build on an emerging debate about social movements in the context of cases of democratic decline around the globe. ⁵

Across the contributions to this special section, we explore which groups of citizens choose to protest in defense of liberal democratic values and institutions—and what has motivated them to do so. We also compare across cases what pro-democracy protestors believe they have achieved by protesting—and what kinds of changes they believe are needed to end or attenuate the democratic erosion that sent them into the streets. The different contributions to this special section highlight variation in the role of elections: while protestors in some countries expect electing a new government to bring substantial, positive change, protestors in other countries consider that long-term structural reforms are needed. ⁶ Still other protestors choose to back an electoral boycott as a way to express their opposition to the regime. ⁷ Even when protests do not achieve short-term goals, such as spurring policy reversals, policy reforms, or changes in government, protestors believe that they raise awareness in society about democratic processes and the role of citizens in them. ⁸ We also explore how democratic backsliding has impacted the rights of the LGBTQ+ community, which has generally benefited from democratization over the last three decades in post-Communist Europe. ⁹

The remainder of this introduction is divided into three parts. In the first part, we take a step back and consider the variation in political outcomes across the countries of post-Communist Europe over time to put into perspective the authoritarian threat in the region. In the second part, we explore how incumbents degrade democratic institutions in different ways to understand the political space in which citizens, civil society groups, and protest movements can mobilize. To this end, we fine tune distinctions among the related but distinct phenomena of democratic backsliding, conservative backlash, and democratic stagnation. In the third part, we consider the different goals and strategies of citizens who take action in defense of liberal democracy.

Three Decades of Democracy and Authoritarian Threat

After 1989, states of post-Communist central Europe exceeded expectations in laying the foundations for liberal democracy while also transitioning to a market economy. This was an enormous political, economic, and social undertaking that—three decades later—has transformed the region and enabled the enlargement of the European Union to encompass eleven new member states from post-Communist Europe. While there is great variation among countries and within them, overall the gains in human well-being are substantial, as measured in greater democratic rights and freedoms, economic prosperity, and security.

Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine is a stark reminder of the existential, geopolitical, political, and economic benefits of a successful “return to Europe” that has included EU and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) membership for many post-Communist states. Ukrainians are fighting today for the existence of their country as a liberal democracy with a functioning economy and a European perspective. ¹⁰ Russia’s war has killed tens of thousands of people, caused great human suffering, and destroyed many Ukrainian towns and cities. ¹¹ As we reflect on mobilization in this special section, we recall what triggered Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014, which since February 2022 has become a full-scale war of conquest: tens of thousands of Ukrainians mobilized in 2014 as part of the “Revolution of Dignity” (also known as Euromaidan) in support of liberal democracy in Ukraine and eventual membership in the European Union. ¹²

Even as Ukrainians were mobilizing for the freedom to choose liberal democracy and EU membership, citizens in post-Communist countries already in the European Union were mobilizing to defend their own hard-won liberal democratic institutions from authoritarian-minded incumbents. For many, it has been a shock to watch the slide toward authoritarian rule in Hungary since 2010 and in Poland since 2015—two countries that had previously been among the standard bearers of liberal democracy in the region. Backsliding in Hungary and Poland has shaped regional and European politics in striking ways and dominated comparative politics research on the region. In this short section, we highlight four dynamics that help put this authoritarian threat into perspective.

First, this is not the first time that citizens in the region have mobilized to counter a threat from democratically elected incumbents with illiberal agendas. The first era of authoritarian threat was in the 1990s, when, in some countries, political entrepreneurs sought to subvert democratization and capture the state. They used ethnic nationalism to appeal to voters, promising to defend against threats from ethnic minorities and adjoining nations as well as against rapid economic reform. While these governments claimed to be building democracy and working to join the European Union, their domestic policies were instead designed for rent seeking and state capture. ¹³ Across the region, diverse civil society groups and opposition parties mobilized to defeat illiberal incumbents in watershed elections—for example, in Romania in 1996, in Bulgaria in 1997, in Slovakia in 1998, and in Croatia and Serbia in 2000. ¹⁴ The expectation was that civic groups would help accelerate and design domestic reforms that would put them on course to follow regional democratic and market frontrunners on the road to the European Union. While many scholars have focused on the storied role of Poland’s Solidarity ¹⁵ or Czechoslovakia’s Civic Forum in easing out the Communist regimes in 1989, civic movements and large-scale protests continued to play a central role in political change in many other post-Countries for the rest of the 1990s. ¹⁶

Second, the current era of authoritarian threat misses the diverse forms of participation by citizens and the considerable variation in political outcomes among post-Communist states. The overall picture has been distorted by the actions of authoritarian-minded incumbents in Hungary and Poland. This era is tied closely to Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party, which have been in power in Hungary since 2010. Orbán has succeeded in coloring the perception of all of post-Communist Europe with his illiberal and authoritarian rule. He has actively encouraged generalizations about how all post-Communist countries are following in his footsteps and building “illiberal democracy.” ¹⁷ He has also coached authoritarian fellow travelers in the region, such as the Action of Dissatisfied Citizens (Akce nespokojených občanů, ANO) party in the Czech Republic and the Direction (Smer) party in Slovakia in a bid to help them win power. In addition, he has amplified domestic and transnational groups with illiberal and hateful agendas. This has played into “Western” European stereotypes about “Eastern” European backwardness.

While there is evidence of a general deterioration in the quality of democracy in Europe’s post-Communist democracies, according to democratic indices such as Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), there is substantial variation in outcomes across the different cases. ¹⁸ We need to pay attention to the role of civic mobilization in countries that have avoided backsliding, those that have struggled with democratic erosion of different kinds—and those that have come back from the brink. This also means building more varied and nuanced understandings of democratic erosion—and democratic progress—that build on the work of comparative politics scholars who are engaging critically with the concept of backsliding. ¹⁹ The 2023 elections in Slovakia may help us understand whether some post-Communist states have a democratic advantage, thanks to mobilized citizens and also mobilized ethnic minorities that may fortify states against democratic erosion. ²⁰

Third, while democratic backsliding in Hungary may seem, for now, like a one-way street, that has not been the case elsewhere. Since 2010, there have been protests in Hungary against the concentration of power by successive Orbán governments as Fidesz won four elections in a row. Over time, the democratic playing field has been more and more grotesquely distorted to favor a Fidesz victory—and the scope for mobilization has been curtailed. ²¹ Other states, such as Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia, have had periods of substantial and widespread mobilization even as the hold of authoritarian-minded elites has also not been loosened. ²² Elsewhere, however, authoritarian-minded incumbents have been voted out of power—for example, in North Macedonia in 2016, ²³ in Slovakia in 2020, ²⁴ in the Czech Republic in 2021, ²⁵ and in Slovenia in 2022. ²⁶ In each case, elections were preceded by sustained and widespread mobilization against the incumbents. ²⁷ Citizens protested in the streets and civil society groups called on voters to oppose the incumbents in light of their attacks on democratic institutions and other abuses of power. Meanwhile, in Poland, the Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS) ²⁸ party won two elections in a row, in 2015 and 2019, even as the streets of Poland’s towns and cities were regularly filled with large numbers of protestors opposing its policies. ²⁹ The October 2023 elections in Poland were a turning point: a coalition of opposition parties ousted the PiS party and vowed to restore liberal democracy. By early 2024, the challenge for Poland’s new government, led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk of the Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska, PO), was how to rebuild Poland’s liberal democratic institutions, especially an independent judiciary. The Polish elections have helped shift the narrative about political outcomes in post-Communist Europe—from democratic decline at the hands of authoritarian-minded incumbents to democratic renewal, thanks to civic mobilization in the run-up to a new round of watershed elections. This new narrative has been subdued, however, by the victory of Robert Fico’s ethnopopulist and authoritarian minded Smer party in both parliamentary and presidential elections in Slovakia in early 2024. Emulating the Fidesz party in Hungary, Smer has moved swiftly to attack Slovakia’s independent media and capture state institutions while ending support for Ukraine and adopting pro-Kremlin positions. Yet also in early 2024, Slovaks took to the streets to protest the Fico government’s policies even as a sudden wave of protest against the Fidesz regime swept through Hungary, demonstrating that across the region citizens are persistently responding to democratic backsliding by mobilizing in defense of liberal democracy.

Fourth, the focus on democratic backsliding often misses the variation in outcomes across different levels of government—and the work that civil society groups and opposition parties do, usually in urban areas, to oppose the policies of authoritarian-minded incumbents who control the central government. ³⁰ A visible example of resistance by local governments has been the cooperation among the mayors of the capital cities of Budapest, Warsaw, and Prague, whose elected city governments opposed strongly the ethnopopulist and anti-democratic policies of the parties in power at the national level. ³¹ (In the Czech Republic, these parties were voted out in the fall of 2021). The Pact of Free Cities, originally composed of Budapest, Warsaw, Bratislava, and Prague, has in the meantime grown to comprise progressive city governments both in the west and in the east, including Barcelona and Paris, as well as Vienna, Zagreb, and Podgorica. In 2022, the Pact of Free Cities sent out an invitation to Vitali Klitschko, the Mayor of Kyiv, to join in the alliance of pro-democracy mayors. To give another example, across Poland, where the PiS government attacked and vilified the LGBTQ+ community, city governments responded by showcasing their commitment to equality and support for the LGBTQ+ community. Indeed, Warsaw’s mayor, Rafał Trzaskowski, has lent his patronage to each Pride since winning office. He has also signed an LGBTQ+ Charter, committing him to introduce policies that support sexual and gender minorities. ³²

Democratic Backsliding in Post-Communist Europe: The Context for Mobilization

Mobilizing against backsliding is a challenging area of comparative politics research because the goals and strategies used by authoritarian-minded incumbents differ from country to country—and so do the goals and strategies of the citizens and civic groups who oppose them. Yet there are also important similarities—and in some cases, transnational learning appears to occur as incumbents and civic groups learn from one another. In this section, we explore how incumbents degrade democracy and capture the polity to understand the political space in which civil society groups and protest movements are mobilizing against them. We sketch the existing literature and explain how our contributions in this thematic cluster offer new insights into understanding how this political space varies from country to country.

When citizens attend a protest in defense of liberal democracy in post-Communist Europe, they are taking part in a global phenomenon: mobilization against governments that are democratically elected but, once in office, attack institutions that safeguard a level political playing field. One of the fastest growing debates in comparative politics today is about incumbents who erode democracy to amplify their power. ³³ Democratic backsliding is defined as “the state-led debilitation or elimination of any of the political institutions that sustain an existing democracy” ³⁴ and as a “deterioration of qualities associated with democratic governance.” ³⁵ Around the globe, “authoritarian populism” ³⁶ has been associated with democratic backsliding and constitutional engineering ³⁷ by incumbents that position themselves on the economic left (Venezuela, Ecuador) and, more often, on the cultural right (Turkey, India, Brazil, Israel, the United States).

At the same time, as Conor O’Dwyer argues in the article “Backsliding versus Backlash” in this thematic cluster, democratic backsliding and conservative backlash are not two sides of the same coin, in that they need not necessarily go together. ³⁸ Democratic backsliding refers to state-led weakening of key liberal institutions, such as free and fair elections and the independence of the judiciary. Conservative backlash refers to a societal re-traditionalization owing to the political power of ethnopopulists and conservatives. A compelling way of capturing why these should be conceptualized as two distinct phenomena is that, in the absence of backsliding, institutional avenues to defend minority rights remain. In the context of post-Communist Europe, it is important to maintain this distinction, because it goes counter to the generalized pessimism that stems from the cases of Poland and Hungary dominating scholarly research on the post-Communist region.

However, it is also true that, across Europe, populism associated with democratic backsliding has come from the cultural right: Politicians cast “the people” as part of an ethnicity, culture, nation, religion, race, or even civilization that is under threat. They adopt an exclusionary view of who belongs to “the people” deserving of “better” representation. ³⁹ These parties are called right-wing populist parties, ⁴⁰ exclusionary populist parties, ⁴¹ nativist parties, ⁴² paternalist populist parties, ⁴³ ethnonationalist populist parties, ⁴⁴ and ethnopopulist parties. ⁴⁵ We use the concept of ethnopopulism because it helps us identify how party leaders define “the people” based on categories of identity that are broader than nationalism; how they adjust the intensity of their exclusionary appeals more readily than the far right; how they support economic policies that are increasingly anchored in chauvinistic redistribution; and how they choose a convenient cast of friends and enemies to achieve their political goals. ⁴⁶ Ethnopopulism is a strategy for appealing to the voters and also for justifying democratic backsliding. It is anchored in the notion that the true people are under threat from culturally harmful “outsiders” in the form of domestic groups and transnational external actors. Compared to traditional far-right parties, ethnopopulist parties are much more flexible political entrepreneurs. As such, they have helped define and intensify competition on the cultural dimension. ⁴⁷ Ethnopopulist parties use authoritarian language and a majoritarian logic in their promises to fight for the interests of the so-called “authentic people.” But party leaders make clear that only the “authentic people”—which they define ethnically, religiously, and/or racially—deserve representation. Ethnopopulist incumbents set about dismantling liberal democracy and concentrating power because, at its heart, ethnopopulism is a strategy to end political turnover and expand opportunities for rent seeking. ⁴⁸

Across Europe, there has been a rise in support for ethnopopulist parties. Scholars debate whether these parties have expanded their electoral base in a durable way or whether support for them is more fleeting, the result of voters casting a protest vote or responding to the appeal of a new party. ⁴⁹ In Italy and Austria, the Freedom Party and the Lega party took part briefly in coalition governments during the 2010s. After winning the fall 2022 elections in Italy, the ethnopopulist and far-right Brothers of Italy party has formed a coalition government with the like-minded Lega and Forza Italia parties. In France, the National Rally received 40 percent of the vote in the spring 2022 presidential elections. Across the channel, the British Conservative party, in power since 2010, has been remodeled using ethnopopulism and has openly attacked counter-majoritarian institutions and the rule of law while also exiting the European Union. ⁵⁰

Yet it is in post-Communist Europe that authoritarian-minded parties have wielded enough power to degrade severely liberal democratic institutions. Post-Communist countries may be more susceptible to democratic backsliding than older democracies because of more weakly established institutions and less entrenched norms. As a consequence of Fidesz rule since 2010, Hungary has brought an authoritarian regime into the European Union. In Poland, the PiS party, in power from 2015 to 2023, eroded liberal democracy, especially the independence of the judiciary and the media. ⁵¹ In the Czech Republic, coalition governments led by the ANO party captured state administration and policymaking for oligarchic and criminal interests until “democratic” opposition parties won the elections in 2021. ⁵² In Slovakia, the 2023 elections were a close-run competition between authoritarian-minded ethnopopulist and far-right parties, on one hand, and an assortment of “democratic” parties, on the other. ⁵³

In the Western Balkans, Serbia stands out as a case where an authoritarian-minded incumbent successfully uses the levers of power to dominate and skew the political playing field. Attacks on civil society, independent media, and counter-majoritarian institutions have all intensified during the years when the Serbian Progressive Party (Srpska napredna stranka, SNS) has held total power. ⁵⁴ The article “Against Dictatorship, against Backsliding?” by Karlo Kralj, Indraneel Sircar, and Danijela Dolenec, in this thematic cluster contributes to the backsliding literature by explaining the unprecedented concentration of power in the hands of the SNS under the leadership of Aleksandar Vučić since 2012. By studying how two anti-government protest waves in contemporary Serbia influence turnout, they provide a fascinating perspective on the strategic choices of opposition parties in competitive authoritarian contexts. When democratic backsliding by the incumbent creates a playing field that is highly skewed—elections are no longer free and fair, opposition parties are harassed, and the media are controlled—parliamentary opposition parties resort to extra-institutional strategies with the goal of highlighting regime illegitimacy and compelling the international community to act.

“Against Dictatorship, against Backsliding?” compares two recent protest waves in Serbia. While the first observed protest wave, in 2017, called “Against Dictatorship,” was for the most part uncoordinated, leaderless, and attracted ideologically diverse participants, the second observed protest wave, called “One of Five Million,” in late 2018 and early 2019, largely relied on opposition party infrastructure. The spark that ignited the protest wave was violence against a prominent opposition figure. A series of protests in Belgrade were followed by protests in 71 municipalities in Serbia. Protestors rallied against abuses of power, including control of the media. Opposition party leaders mobilized citizens across Serbia to protest against the harassment of members of the opposition and against the absence of media freedom—signature ills of competitive authoritarian regimes. In the middle of the protest wave, the opposition parties announced a boycott of parliament, and soon after that they called for a boycott of the 2020 parliamentary election. These boycotts were extensions of the strategic choices made by opposition leaders to use extra-institutional tactics to mobilize citizens against an unjust regime. As the study suggests, when a democracy slides into a hybrid regime, political party opposition forces sometimes pivot their efforts toward the international community in hopes that external pressure will help shore up democratic institutional safeguards at home. For Serbia and other candidate countries, however, the European Union is no longer the steadfast pro-democracy actor that it was in the 1990s, during the initial transitions to democracy in post-Communist Europe. ⁵⁵ That the European Union has lost its widely recognized role as a force furthering democratization is also supported by the article “Mobilizing against Democratic Backsliding,” by Courtney Blackington, Antoaneta Dimitrova, Iulia Ionita, and Milada Anna Vachudova, in this thematic cluster. It shows that protesters in Bulgaria, Romania, the Czech Republic, and Poland do not perceive the European Union as actively supporting pro-democracy protests.

The context for mobilization in backsliding cases includes the vilification of opposition parties and groups. Ethnopopulist incumbents, including Serbia’s SNS, Hungary’s Fidesz, and Poland’s PiS, use a majoritarian conception of democracy to justify attacking democratic institutions and controlling the space for civic activism. The logic of majoritarian democracy helps ethnopopulist incumbents portray themselves as the sole protectors of the interests of the so-called “authentic” people against groups and elites that they portray as predatory and culturally harmful. This Manichean language helps legitimize maneuvers to keep allegedly dangerous opposition elites out of power at all costs. ⁵⁶ It can also legitimize efforts to suppress protest, especially when protester groups are depicted as a danger to traditional values. ⁵⁷ By dividing citizens, civic groups, and even political parties into two camps—the pro-regime camp and the pro-democracy one—it has a profound impact on mobilization. This kind of division has marked mobilization in Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic, especially in the run-up to recent elections. Incumbents use state-funded media and also institutions—ministries, museums, historical institutes, universities, and cultural institutions—to spread illiberal narratives and conspiracy theories throughout society. ⁵⁸

The context for mobilization in backsliding cases is therefore often very unfavorable for opposition forces, as incumbents use ethnopopulism and state power to persecute certain civil society actors; to eliminate independent media; and to control the cultural, academic, artistic, and economic life of the country as it suits them. Articles in this thematic cluster contribute to our understanding of how authoritarian-minded incumbents seek to capture the civic space by using the levers of power to sideline and attack civic groups fighting for liberal values while amplifying the reach and the resources of civic groups that support the regime. ⁵⁹ To do so, we draw upon work by Patrice McMahon and Łukasz Niparko that shows how Poland’s PiS government worked between 2015 and 2023 to shrink the space for liberal, progressive organizations and expand the space for “traditional” organizations. ⁶⁰ In particular, their study of recent civic activism in Poland echoes the findings of earlier studies that show that civic groups under attack tend to band together and fight back, leading to denser activist networks and greater mobilization. ⁶¹ In particular, O’Dwyer’s article, “Backsliding versus Backlash,” in this thematic cluster builds on McMahon and Niparko’s call to disentangle the sometimes-conflicting influences of backsliding and ethnopopulism on civil society, which they portray as a complex field that is in some ways shrinking, but in other ways shifting and even strengthening. O’Dwyer uses a region-wide survey of a single-issue area, LGBTQ+ empowerment, to probe the multifaceted impact of backsliding, ethnopopulism, and intervention by international institutions in a research design that complements the insights of McMahon and Niparko’s case study of Poland.

When incumbents use the logic of majoritarian democracy to privilege the will of the “deserving” people over the rights of minorities, they often vilify groups that challenge traditional values, including women and members of the LGBTQ+ community. ⁶² O’Dwyer tests empirically whether democratic backsliding in post-Communist Europe has led to deterioration in “LGBTQ+ empowerment,” defined as the rights and well-being of the LGBTQ+ community. As previously mentioned, O’Dwyer draws an important distinction between the concepts of backlash and backsliding. Backlash is the rise in support for political parties that oppose LGBTQ+ rights, among other progressive causes. In contrast, backsliding is the actual legislative and institutional attacks on counter-majoritarian institutions and minority rights, including those of the LGBTQ+ community. By studying fourteen east central European countries over three decades, O’Dwyer can compare how LGBTQ+ empowerment fared in moments of backlash, moments of backsliding, and moments of both together. He finds that different combinations produce different results for LGBTQ+ empowerment and, further, that the magnitude and direction of their impact depend on the degree of EU leverage at a given historical moment.

Another contribution of our thematic cluster is to highlight how protests in post-Communist Europe have taken place in opposition to different kinds of democratic shortcomings. The article “Mobilizing against Democratic Backsliding,” by Blackington, Dimitrova, Ionita, and Vachudova, shows that protesters are responding to two different kinds of democratic erosion—recent backsliding and long-term stagnation—and that this distinction, to some extent, shapes the motivations and goals of protestors. Backsliding is characterized by the sudden and severe deterioration of counter-majoritarian institutions and minority rights discussed above. Stagnation, in contrast, is characterized by continued and gradually deepening practices of rent-seeking at the hands of (different) incumbent governments. In several post-Communist countries, including Bulgaria and Romania, democracy has exhibited persistent weaknesses, which have become gradually worse over time. Government after government has failed to curb state capture, as privileged links with business and oligarchs have become a core feature of a model for office holders to use state institutions to enrich themselves and stay in power. Gradually, the alignment between many political elites and oligarchic circles has undermined the rule of law, weakening constraints on rent-seeking politicians. ⁶³ Blackington, Dimitrova, Ionita, and Vachudova show that protesters experiencing different types of democratic backsliding frequently explain their motivations for protesting in different ways. They also understand the solution that would resolve the problem motivating them to protest in different ways. Both are closely tied to the kind of democratic challenges their countries face. At the same time, in all four countries where data were collected, protesters shared a commitment to raising public awareness, to modeling civic engagement, and to defending democratic institutions.

Alongside domestic factors, there are also external factors that shape the political space in which citizens are mobilizing against backsliding. ⁶⁴ Over the last decade, studies examining responses to democratic backsliding have focused on top-down interventions by EU institutions and major EU governments, seeking to deter and sanction backsliding by incumbents in EU member states and candidate countries. ⁶⁵ EU leaders have struggled, however, to forge the political consensus to apply consequential sanctions to backsliding states—and EU responses have also faced challenges on normative grounds and the risk of domestic backlash.

Recent studies have shed light on a different kind of external influence on political change: the extensive cooperation and learning that has taken place among ethnopopulist parties in and out of office. Hungary stands out because of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s ambitions to export his model of authoritarian rule to other countries and to decouple the European Union from liberal democracy. ⁶⁶ Orbán has served as a model for authoritarian-minded political party leaders across Europe and even mentored them directly. Aleksandar Vučić, the leader of the SNS in Serbia, appears to have learned from and emulated Orbán most extensively. Other ethnopopulist incumbents such as the PiS party in Poland, the ANO party in the Czech Republic, and the Smer party in Slovakia, have also learned from the Fidesz playbook. ⁶⁷ Orbán styles himself as a mentor and a leader of all of Europe’s ethnopopulist and far-right forces. He has also worked to decouple European integration from liberal democracy while making deals with authoritarian powers that subvert the EU’s foreign and economic policies. ⁶⁸ Orbán has quipped that “We used to think Europe was our future; now we think we are Europe’s future.” By “we,” he means Europe’s ethnopopulist, racist, anti-immigrant political leaders. It is an open question, however, to what extent Orbán is succeeding in exporting his model of authoritarian rule or fundamentally changing the European Union to create a more welcoming regional environment for authoritarian rule. In 2022 and 2023, the European Union finally developed and used financial leverage on Hungary and Poland in response to the deterioration of the rule of law.

O’Dwyer’s article, “Backsliding versus Backlash,” establishes that LGBTQ+ disempowerment occurs only when backlash and backsliding coincide under low international leverage. More surprisingly, O’Dwyer finds that the largest gains in LGBTQ+ empowerment occur not in contexts where both backsliding and backlash are absent, but where both are present—in conditions of high international leverage. This finding is highly dependent on the case of Serbia, a candidate state. In theorizing the relevance of international leverage, it echoes the contribution of the article “Against Dictatorship, against Backsliding?” by Kralj, Sircar, and Dolenec. Taken together, the two studies suggest that addressing the European Union remains a very important strategy for both the governing SNS and the opposition parties. Their strategies are different, however, in that the SNS is tactically, not to say cynically, making valuable concessions on minority rights in exchange for remaining in the EU’s favor. In contrast, the opposition is genuinely pleading that the European Union use its power to safeguard democratic institutions and help bolster the opposition’s chances of ousting the authoritarian-minded incumbents. In the case of Poland, an existing member state, we saw in 2022 and 2023 similar tactical moves on the part of the PiS government, seeking to unblock EU funding by making concessions in the area of the rule of law.

Mobilizing against Backsliding

Alongside studies identifying how authoritarian-minded incumbents erode democracy, scholars have begun to investigate how civil society responds to government actions to build democratic resilience and resist illiberal trends. ⁶⁹ In this special section, in addition to unpacking the different political contexts that spur mobilization, we explore the goals and motivations of citizens who choose to protest in defense of liberal democracy. We are especially interested in what motivates citizens to join a protest movement, how they characterize the purpose of mobilization, and what political changes they believe would improve the quality of the polity. In addition, in Courtney Blackington’s article “In Defense of Liberal Democracy” we explore the profile of protesters, including previous experience with protest mobilization and the impact of political socialization under state socialist regimes.

In looking at civic mobilization in opposition to different kinds of democratic erosion, we are studying just one aspect of civil society—one that is episodic by nature and that varies substantially across countries and over time. Other aspects of civil society include associations with citizen members and non-governmental organizations with advocacy roles. ⁷⁰ Many studies have focused on these more institutionalized parts of civil society, known as NGOs and civil society organizations (CSOs). Although it may pull in various institutionalized actors, civic mobilization against powerholders is more spontaneous, dynamic, and diffuse—and it opens up many avenues for comparative research that we take a small step to showcase in this thematic cluster.

Theories of democracy and democratization characterize civil society as a place to generate and uphold democratic political discourses. ⁷¹ Scholars who have studied the density of associational memberships as a measure of the vibrancy of civil society have generally concluded that civil society in post-Communist Europe is “weak.” ⁷² In turn, scholars who have argued that a “strong” civil society as measured by associational memberships is indispensable for the consolidation of democracy have held this up as evidence of the weakness of democracy in the region. ⁷³ But these arguments miss two important points. First, there are many other ways for citizens to participate in civil society besides becoming members of an association. One is the intense if ephemeral experience of protesting against those who hold the levers of power. Jan Kubik and Grzegorz Ekiert have long argued that spontaneous collective action in the form of elite-challenging protests represents a powerful form of civil society that can shape political change. ⁷⁴

Second, civil society is not by definition an engine of democratic consolidation. ⁷⁵ Civic activism may strengthen liberal democracy by promoting accountability, transparency, and citizens’ interests. But, as discussed above, it may also strengthen the hand of illiberal contenders for power and advocate for closing down democratic political discourse. Mobilization in defense of liberal democracy is frequently mirrored by illiberal mobilization in support of political and social forces that oppose pluralism and minority rights. ⁷⁶ Scholars have explained the grassroots activities of “uncivil society” and how such groups have been nurtured and empowered by the leaders of ethnopopulist and far-right political parties. ⁷⁷ Indeed, in some countries in the region, like Bosnia and Herzegovina, conservative citizens are disproportionately more engaged in civil society than liberal citizens. ⁷⁸ In other countries in the region, conservative issues have a higher mobilizing potential than liberal issues. ⁷⁹ Further, civil society actors fighting for liberal democracy have also found themselves under pressure from new laws designed to silence them and to give their illiberal counterparts the upper hand.

Mobilization against incumbents that are dismantling liberal democracy can also be understood as a race against time—and elections play a pivotal role. Authoritarian-minded political parties that have been the architects of backsliding over the last decade have all come to power in regular democratic elections. Once in power, incumbents can use state power to tilt the electoral playing field in their favor—a race against time for opposition parties who must try to win elections before they are so disadvantaged by incumbent media control and gerrymandering that their victory is all but impossible. For these reasons, “all but impossible” is how many described the chances of Hungary’s opposition parties to dislodge Fidesz rule in the 2022 elections that Orbán won so handily. In countries where the political playing field is not as skewed against the opposition, protestors have recently mobilized against democratic backsliding—sometimes in collaboration with opposition parties and sometimes independently of them. In the Czech Republic, for example, the independent Million Moments for Democracy Movement organized a series of protests from 2018 until 2021, demanding the resignation of then-Prime Minister Babiš and the removal of policies that deconsolidated the Czech Republic’s democracy. As the 2021 elections approached, this protest movement drafted a list of “democratic” and “anti-democratic” parties as a guide for citizens as they went to the ballot box to elect a new government. In Bulgaria, the mobilization of protesters helped create a movement to protect democratic institutions that was elected to parliament, led a coalition government, and has recently returned as a moderating force in another coalition government. Even as it has been attacked by clientelist and pro-Russian politicians of the established order, this government has succeeded in shoring up democratic institutions in some important ways while in office. ⁸⁰

In Poland, several protest organizations emerged after 2015 to oppose attacks on liberal democratic institutions by the PiS government. Using a mix of regular protest, civil disobedience, creative protest performances, online petition campaigns, and more, activities in the Polish pro-democratic protest sphere have increased in recent years. Blackington’s article “In Defense of Liberal Democracy” in this thematic cluster analyzes what motivates people to take part in these protests in defense of liberal democratic institutions. Through an original protester survey and semi-structured interviews with 82 Polish protesters, this study stresses the lived experience of Communism, especially belonging to anti-Communist dissident networks, as important drivers of participation in recent pro-democratic protests. In addition to establishing the presence of older age cohorts in the role of defenders of liberal institutions in Poland, this study shows that the character of the Polish transition to democracy, led by the strong Solidarity movement and mass participation in establishing multi-party democracy, serves as a key bulwark against the erosion of the rule of law in Poland today. The findings also suggest that countries where the transition to democracy was the result of elite compromise without mass participation may lack an important safeguard against backsliding, namely citizens with experience protesting against authoritarian rule and the social networks that endure as a result of those previous pro-democracy protests. Blackington shows that living through authoritarianism and struggling to establish democracy motivates some older people to reengage in the political system when the institutions they fought so hard to establish come under threat decades later.

Our thematic cluster also examines the motivations, perceptions, and goals of protesters living in countries that experience different kinds of democratic erosion. “Mobilizing against Democratic Backsliding,” by Blackington, Dimitrova, Ionita, and Vachudova, shows that while protesters in countries experiencing democratic erosion generally protest out of a concern with the quality of their democracy and believe that their protests are most useful in changing public awareness and engagement, the goals of their protest participation vary based on the context of democratic erosion. In particular, protesters in countries experiencing democratic backsliding prioritize changing the government or changing the political practices that have developed over the last decade. By contrast, protesters facing democratic stagnation emphasize the need to change long-standing institutions and practices that have existed since the country transitioned to democracy in 1989.

Finally, our contributions show the impact of protests on electoral behavior. While we know that in some countries protest organizations, such as the Czech Republic’s Million Moments for Democracy, have endorsed political parties, our collection of studies shows that protests can also powerfully encourage people to withdraw from electoral engagement. “against Dictatorship, Against Backsliding?” by Kralj, Sircar, and Dolenec, shows that in places where more protests occurred, a greater number of voters stayed home after protest organizers called for a boycott of the elections. These findings illustrate how protest movements can substantially influence electoral behavior in countries experiencing democratic backsliding.

Conclusion

The articles in this thematic cluster address the still under-studied role of civic mobilization in defense of liberal democracy, both as an agent of resistance and a target of authoritarian-minded incumbents. Sometimes protests are unstructured, diffuse, and ephemeral eruptions of civic discontent, but they nevertheless represent important warning signs that incumbents are crossing democratic red lines. As authoritarian-minded governments tilt the playing field more and more in their own favor, building an effective oppositional front becomes increasingly challenging, leading opposition political parties to adopt new strategies. Opposition parties often turn to protest movements—organizing them, amplifying them, or just trying to win their support. This may be a strategy to build stronger alliances and strengthen their electoral chances, or to signal the illegitimacy of the regime to international actors, or both at the same time. Indeed, the variation in how opposition parties respond to authoritarian encroachment is a fascinating avenue for future research comparing cases across post-Communist Europe and beyond.

For their part, citizens across the region, as the studies in this special section show, have joined protest movements and demanded access to justice, free media, fair elections, and better governance. They have created new social movement organizations and used a variety of strategies to counter attacks on liberal democracy. Though sometimes they work with opposition parties, at other times keeping all political parties at arm’s length is a source of legitimacy for the movement. Regardless of their approach to institutional actors, hundreds of thousands of citizens have gone into the streets in defense of democracy. This is certainly encouraging as we reflect on the durability of liberal democracy in Europe and around the globe. In her seminal study, Nancy Bermeo forcefully argues that the main culprit for democratic failure is not the changing political preferences of ordinary people, but the actions of elites. Our collection of studies helps show that while the strength of civic resistance to backsliding varies, “ordinary people” across the region are ready to mobilize in myriad ways and fight for liberal democracy in the streets.