Mapping Democratic Systems in EU Member States - Anna Gora Pieter de Wilde - www.reconnect-europe.eu
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
Mapping Democratic Systems in EU Member States Anna Gora Pieter de Wilde www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 1 of 32
DISCLAIMER This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research & Innovation programme under Grant Agreement no. 770142. The information in this deliverable reflects only the authors’ views and the European Union is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein. DISSEMINATION LEVEL Public www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 2 of 32
Project: RECONNECT - Reconciling Europe with its Citizens through Democracy and Rule of Law
GA: 770142
Horizon 2020: H2020-SC6-CULT-COOP-2017-two-stage
Funding Scheme: Collaboration Project
Mapping Democratic Systems in EU
Member States
Work Package 5 – Deliverable 1
Due date: 30.04.2020
Submission date: 30.04.2020
Lead beneficiary: NTNU
Authors: Anna Gora, Pieter de Wilde
www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 3 of 32Content 1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 5 2. Theory ................................................................................................................................................ 6 3. Method............................................................................................................................................. 13 4. Findings ............................................................................................................................................ 15 5. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 23 6. Sources ............................................................................................................................................. 25 7. Annex ............................................................................................................................................... 30 www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 4 of 32
1. Introduction
Fifteen years since the first and largest of its eastern enlargements, the European Union (EU)
is witnessing concerning trends in the application of its founding principles of democracy and
the rule of law in several of its Central and Eastern European member states. There is a
consensus across both political and legal scholars that democracy and the rule of law in this
region are at risk (Kochenov 2008, Pech and Scheppele 2017, Sedelmeier 2014). In response
to these concerns, citing serious breaches against the rule of law, the European Commission
invoked article 7 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) against Poland in 2017. This article,
which outlines the procedure that the EU must follow in the case of a serious breach of one of
its founding principles, 1 was triggered again in 2018, this time against Hungary. On 11 January
2020, the ‘1000 Robes March’ featured judges from all over Europe marching in Warsaw to
protest infringements on the independence of the judiciary. Both official EU actions and
protests from within the legal profession reveal considerable concern about the rule of law in
Poland and Hungary.
In defiance of such criticisms, Hungary’s prime minister, Victor Orbán, has defended the quality
of Hungarian democracy whilst taking a stand against the liberal values that have been central
to Western democracy in the 20th century. In a well-known speech to the participants of the
2014 Summer Free University and Student Camp in Bálványos, Romania, Victor Orbán claimed
that Hungary under the Fidesz government is undergoing a change characterized by a reversal
of liberalism, but certainly not of democracy:
… a democracy does not necessarily have to be liberal. Just because a state is not liberal,
it can still be a democracy. … Meaning, that [the] Hungarian nation is not a simple sum
of individuals, but a community that needs to be organized, reinforced and in fact
constructed. And so in this sense, the new state that we are building is an illiberal
state, a non-liberal state (Orbán 2014, np.).
In claiming to reject liberalism but not at the cost of democracy, Orbán implies a
multidimensionality to democracy that challenges the uni-dimensional logics of democratic
backsliding claims against him. These situate Hungary somewhere on the continuum between
any one version of a gold standard for democracy and full autocracy (for direct criticism on this
claim, see e.g. Müller 2016: 31-34).
The main aim of this RECONNECT Working Paper is to map the state of democracy and rule of
law in all EU member states. 2 This mapping exercise is done in such a way as to assess the
1
Articles 7 of the TEU refers specifically to a breach of one or more of the founding values outlined in article 2 of
the TEU: ‘respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights,
including the rights of persons belonging to minorities’ (Article 2, TEU). Under Article 7, member states’ voting
rights can be suspended.
2
This RECONNECT deliverable provides a steppingstone for further fine-grained analyses of democratic systems.
The aim in this deliverable is provide a broad analysis of all EU member states and to identify the main components
of democracy shaping variation within the EU. Subsequent analysis with Work Package 5, particularly in
deliverable 5.4, will go in depth on a select number of EU member states using qualitative discourse analysis of
media and legal documents. This deliverable, 5.1., discusses how this selection of cases reflects against the
background of all EU member states, in order to gauge the representativeness of the case studies and the
www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 5 of 32dimensionality of democracy within the EU and the composition of found dimensions. This allows us to investigate the credibility of claims of the development of democracy in the absence of liberalism. That would imply that the liberal qualities of countries like Hungary have been decreasing since 2010 whilst their democratic qualities stay stable or improve. Empirical two-dimensionality is a precondition for any support for the claim that a non-liberal democracy can be built, yet no decisive evidence in favour of it. The core components of key democracy dimensions can subsequently tell us whether recent developments qualify primarily as rule of law backsliding. To this end, we not only analyse the dimensionality of democracy in the EU, but also compare recent trends in key components individually. This allows us to investigate the logics behind the EU’s response to developments in Poland and Hungary, which have strongly focused on a deterioration in the rule of law. 2. Theory The dominant discourse on the recent concerns with democracy in the EU revolves around the notion of backsliding on a continuous one-dimensional scale of stronger and weaker democracies that differ in their levels of commitment to a shared set of democratic features (Diamond 2015, 143, see Sedelmeier 2014). This is tied to observed decay of the liberal values enshrined in the EU’s understanding of democracy and the rule of law (e.g. Gibler and Randazzo 2011, Kochenov 2008, Pech and Scheppele 2017). Liberalism is traditionally understood to focus on the protection of individual and minority rights. In the democratic context, this requires the existence of effective limits on the government (Coppedge 2011, 253). Both in contemporary democracies, and theoretical conceptualizations of the liberal variant of democracy (ex. Hamilton, et al. 1992, Mill, 1958) this is accomplished through the safeguarding of civil liberties and the rule of law. The independence of the judiciary, alongside checks and balances on government, is particularly important in achieving this. Liberalism, in association with democracy, is therefore intrinsically tied to the protection of the rule of law. In liberal democracies, it then follows, that a deterioration in the rule of law is often used as the first indicator of democratic backsliding. Indeed, even the European Commission’s decision to trigger article 7 of the TEU against Poland in 2017 was based on an assessment of violations exclusively concerning the rule of law despite similarly concerning actions against press freedom, for example. The European Parliament’s motion to invoke article 7 against Hungary in late 2018 singled out a wider range of violations touching on the erosion of additional traditionally liberal values including the freedom of expression and various civil liberties. Over the last few years Poland and Hungary, the two prominent examples of democratic backsliding in the EU, have been characterized as ‘semi-authoritarian regimes’ (Dawson and Hanley 2016), ‘diffusely defective democracies’ (Bogaards 2018), and ‘hybrid regimes’ falling somewhere on the continuum between full democracies and autocracy (Bozóki, and Hegedűs 2018; Krekó and Enyedi 2018). On a similar continuum, Hungary has also been labelled an ‘elected autocracy’ (Ágh 2015). Applying its own one-dimensional measures, the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy index for 2018 evaluates both as flawed-democracies, while Freedom House’s freedom index for 2019 continues to characterize Poland as free but situates relationship between the EU’s most important countries in terms of current democracy and rule of law developments vis-a-vis all EU member states. www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 6 of 32
Hungary within the partly-free position on the continuum. In its yearly report for 2020, the V- Dem institute characterized Hungary for the first time as no longer a democracy. It is now considered an electoral autocracy (Lührmann et al 2020) Despite the popularity of envisaging democracy and non-democracy as two ends of a single continuum, in a review of literature on democratic backsliding, Waldner and Lust (2018) warn researchers of the possibility of overestimating the degree of backsliding when using continuous one-dimensional indicators. They point out that such indexes, in failing to distinguish movement on individual components of democracy, tempt the overinterpretation of small changes. Others are also cautious of the degree of progress or change that is implied by the term ‘backsliding’. They argue that what we are witnessing is not the backsliding of healthy democracies but rather the consequences of the instability of democracies that never fully consolidated (Dawson and Hanley 2016, Dimitrova 2018; Levitsky and Way 2015; van Beek 2019). Antoaneta Dimitrova suggests that leading up to EU membership democratic institutions and the rules of the EU’s acquis communautaire were adopted and implemented in Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) as ‘empty shells’ while coexisting alongside their own informal parallel systems (Dimitrova 2010). Empirical work showing that the 2004 and 2007 EU accession states have been converging with the rest of the EU on the quality of governance over the last twenty years but not necessarily on democratic indicators seem to back these assessments (Börzel and Schimmelfennig 2017, 283). Despite such questions regarding the term backsliding, the emerging consensus amongst democracy scholars is that the EU is facing a deterioration of democracy. There is, however, quite a difference in the identification of what is going wrong. As mentioned above, the dominant focus of EU policymakers, legal scholars and political scientists is on problems relating to the rule of law, especially the establishment of constitutional norms that serve to undermine it. This fits in a broader school of thought that focuses on the institutional features of democracy, that further includes electoral rules and constitutional provisions for checks and balances amongst others. These may reflect the more encompassing understanding of the rule of law held by the EU itself that overlaps with some of its remaining foundational values. From this perspective, a focus on the rule of law is considered to particularly target ‘the more elusive (and difficult to create and maintain) qualities that characterize consolidated liberal democracies’ (Magen 2016, 1058). Contrary to this legal-institutional perspective on democracy and democratic backsliding, a cultural-discursive perspective focuses on norms and discourse beyond those captured by the EU’s foundational values as the decisive factor to explain the deterioration of democracy. Tracing back to Almond and Verba (1963), authors have argued that for democracy to thrive, a supportive ‘civic culture’ needs to be in place amongst citizens to support otherwise fragile institutions. Recent studies show the effect of public support for democracy for its survival (Claassen 2020). Beyond citizens, the norms and discourse among elites matter too. Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018) identify mutual toleration and institutional forbearance as the essential ‘guardrails’ of democracy. Mutual toleration is the norm amongst elites that competing elites are not the enemy to be destroyed, but rivals to be defeated. Institutional forbearance implies restraint by those in power not to use all legal means available to play ‘constitutional hardball’ against their opponents. Combined, they form a live and let live mentality amongst political elites. Rising populism within the EU brings charges against domestic rivals for being traitors and ‘betraying the people’ (Dawson and Hanley 2019, Enyedi 2016). In Romania, mainstream www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 7 of 32
political parties increasingly refer to each other as ‘criminals’ (Mungiu-Pippidi 2018). While the rule of law focus does target some non-procedural qualities of consolidated democracy, for example, freedom of the press, it does not effectively capture these cultural and discursive qualities. Thus, we face the question of what is at the core of democratic backsliding. Is it a change in the constitution, independence of the judiciary, and other institutions that we should worry about, or rather changes in norms and elite discourse? If democracy does indeed exist as a multidimensional space, then these changes can be but do not necessarily need to be correlated. Distinct from both rule of law backsliding and decreasing norms and discourse, democratic backsliding, the hollowing of democracy, as defined by Peter Mair (2006), refers to a process that is not necessarily symptomatic of democratic deconsolidation or backsliding towards autocracy, but nevertheless concerning for its effects on the quality of democracy. It refers to an emptying out of democracy’s popular components 3 characterized by growing disenchantment with the political system which leads to withdrawal from political participation both electorally through falling voter turnout and declining participation in political and civic organizations 4. While most analyses of democratic quality in the CEECs have focused on one- dimensional ‘backsliding.’ such a decline in the participatory quality of democracy is a dominant theme in the literature on crises of consolidated, mostly ‘old’ Western democracies (see Macedo et.al. 2005, McCaffrie and Akram 2014, Putnam 2000, Stoker 2006). Mair characterizes hollowing as a two-sided process, defined by a withdrawal of both citizens and governments from participatory politics. Rather than engaging in solutions that foster political engagement, he argues that governments react with further depoliticization and ‘shielding’ of political decisions from participation (Mair 2006, 45) whilst turning to ‘“technical” (or technocratic) solutions’ (Cianetti 2018, 321). The most dramatic assessments claim to witness a transition to ‘post-democracy’ whereby the institutions are in place and functioning as they should but devoid of any democratic substance (e.g. Crouch 2004; Heartfield 2013). Bringing together these notions of democratic hollowing and backsliding in the context of the CEEC member states, Béla Greskovits posits that challenges to democracy are not one- dimensional, but instead appear on two dimensions as varying combinations of different degrees of hollowing and backsliding (Greskovits 2015, 32). This opens the possibility that movement along one dimension might not necessarily be correlated to movement along the other. Based on hollowing data from 2000-2007, pre-dating Orbán’s current consecutive terms as prime minister, 5 and backsliding data from 2009 to 2013/14, he observes evidence of backsliding, but not hollowing in Hungary and Slovenia, offering some initial evidence to undermine Orbán’s claim to democracy without liberalism. This pattern is not symptomatic of the entire region, however, as Poland ranks low on both hollowing and backsliding while Romania ranks highly on both. While some see a degree of optimism in the positive participatory indicators (Ágh 2015, Dimitrova 2018) others warn against interpreting them as positive indicators for democracy. Morlino (2009, 212) cautions that the tendency of populist 3 As opposed to the liberal and electoral features of democracy. 4 This overlaps with Robert Putnam’s original warnings of the implications of a retreat from public life on democracy in Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000). 5 Victor Orbán also previously served as prime minister from 1998 to 2002. www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 8 of 32
governments towards more participatory and even direct democratic tools are merely symbolic attempts empty of democratic depth. Bearing the above warnings in mind, we can expand the notion of hollowing to encompass additional ‘components’ of maximalist understandings of democracy, such as liberalism. A two- dimensional vision of democracy can then still provide a basis on which we can question the validity of Orbán’s claim of progression towards a new type of democracy in Hungary and possibly other CEECs: the ‘workfare state’ of his 2015 speech to the Summer Free University and Student Camp, or the ‘Christian democracy’ of his 2018 speech. Could Orbán’s Hungary really be an experiment in democratic regime building that, while rejecting liberal norms and practices (i.e. removing the liberal element out from liberal democracy), is no less procedurally democratic? Are the patterns of backsliding and hollowing since 2014 in Hungary, and possibly its political allies such as Poland, different than those in other member states? If so then we would expect to see the emergence of a new regime-type in a multidimensional democratic space. The alternative is that this claim of a no less democratic but illiberal democracy is just another name for conventional backsliding, not only of the liberal component but also of other features associated with democracy, such as its participatory, egalitarian and deliberative elements, that to various degrees holistically define the character of democracy for EU member states. Warnings of democratic backsliding among the EU's newer member states such as Hungary, Poland, Romania and others, refer to a decline in the stability and quality particularly of liberal democracy which has been the dominant iteration of consolidated democracy across much of the world. The operationalization of liberal democracy, in opposition to its non-liberal or illiberal cousins, has varied widely. However, it is consistently characterized by an emphasis on representation which it favours over participation, protection of civil liberties, the separation of power, and the rule of law (for examples, see Diamond 1999, 2008; Lührmann et al. 2018, Møller and Skanning 2013; Zakaria 1997). Despite being almost universally accepted as the normative benchmark to which real-world democracies are held, the liberal variant is certainly not the only one and it has not been without criticism. For example, proponents of more participatory or direct forms of democracy have argued that liberalism’s emphasis on individual liberties and representation exists in conflict and contradiction to participation and popular sovereignty (Mouffe 2000; Schmitter 2018; Schmitt 1926), whereby the emphasis on representation limits opportunities for participation to regularly held elections and in some instances, occasional referendums. The backsliding versus hollowing dichotomy which separates participation from other measures of democracy coincidentally reflects this contradiction. Typologies that use liberal democracy as a normative benchmark belong to what is known as maximalist typologies. They include not only what are deemed to be necessary institutions and practices, but also assurances guaranteed by additional components such as the rule of law that the institutional side of democracy will function effectively, efficiently, and fairly. To know if we are indeed witnessing the emergence of a regime type that is not liberal, yet no less democratic, we need to disentangle liberalism from a more minimalist understanding of democracy. In one example, Schmitter and Karl (1991, 9) set the minimum bar for democracy in alignment with Dahl’s polyarchy (1971) with the added caveat that popularly elected officials www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 9 of 32
are not overruled by unelected ones and that the political system is self-governing. 6 They argue
that other commonly used indicators, such as consensus, participation, responsiveness,
majority rule, pluralism, checks and balances etc. are not essential but should instead be
treated in evaluating specific democratic regimes (Schmitter and Karl 1991).
However, ranging from the barebones Schumpeterian (1942[1950]) conceptualization to the
more substantive ‘Polyarchy’ there is little consensus on what the minimum criteria to classify
as a democracy, from which different equally valid democratic typologies might be built, should
look like. In his attempt to make sense of recent and sometimes conflicting reports of
democratic backsliding, Larry Diamond describes this ongoing debate that leaves room for
those like Hungary’s Fidesz government, and the Law and Justice (PiS) government in Poland
to claim legitimacy for activity that others might label as undemocratic:
The debate about whether there has been a decline in democracy turns to some extent
on how we count it. It is one of the great and probably inescapable ironies of scholarly
research that the boom in comparative democratic studies has been accompanied by
significant disagreement over how to define and measure democracy. I have never felt
that there was – or could be – one right and consensual answer to this eternal
conceptual challenge (Diamond 2015, 142).
Such ambiguity makes room for seemingly endless operationalization of democratic
typologies. It is these debates that through defending the democratic quality of his illiberal
version of democracy, Orbán himself is claiming to have joined and that he uses to turn the
argument back on Europe: ‘…liberal democracy has been transformed into liberal non-
democracy. The situation in the West is that there is liberalism, but there is no democracy’
(Orbán 2018). If there is any truth to his claim, then we can assume that he understands
democracy in a different sense than the European Union, which adopts a classically liberal
understanding with an emphasis on individual rights, human dignity and the rule of law (Article
2, TEU).
Therefore, to test whether we are witnessing the birth of a new illiberal yet democratic regime
type, or finally uncovering such previously unseen parallel systems in certain member states
(Dimitrova 2010), we need to further unpack procedural democracy from liberalism and other
possibly co-existing non-procedural and supplemental procedural components. Hollowing, as
understood by Mair and others (Cianetti 2018, Greskovits 2015) is marked by a decline in
participation. However, to account for the empirical possibility of a new ‘illiberal’ or another
alternative type of democracy, hollowing can also be extended to reflect a reversal in other
‘components’ of democracy, including liberalism, so long as minimal procedural requirements
remain enshrined. For the analysis that follows, we use five indices for components of
democracy from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) dataset: polyarchy, liberalism,
participation, deliberation, and egalitarianism. These five components, which form the basis of
V-Dem’s ‘varieties of democracy,’ are described in greater detail in the discussion on
methodology below. Together, they summarize a consensus on the central distinguishing
features of the various theoretical conceptions of democracy that co-exist today (Coppedge
6
In addition to free and fair elections and universal suffrage, Polyarchy also requires freedoms of the press,
speech, and assembly, as well as a government and parties that are responsive and accountable to voters (Robert
Dahl 1971).
www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 10 of 32et. al. 2011, Lindberg et. al. 2014). They also cover but are not limited to, the varying foci that are characteristic of the hollowing (i.e. participation and deliberation) and backsliding (i.e. polyarchy and liberalism) debates. We choose to keep the egalitarian component in the analysis to keep open the possibility that democratic decline might be characterized by changes also to additional elements that are not captured by the hollowing and backsliding perspectives. Echoing Diamond’s (2015) remarks on the consequence of disagreements in defining democracy over assessments of its quality, we accept that if various types of existing democracy are found to exist, then the core democratic features of each of these already established conceptualizations will likely form their components. Heading Morlino’s warnings that participatory and discursive tools do not necessarily indicate a healthy democracy (2009), we assume the empirical possibility that the remaining four components can also exist in the absence of polyarchic democracy. To disentangle a minimalist idea of democracy from other possible democratic components ultimately starts with a normative choice regarding the minimal accepted parameters for democracy, which are aligned with V-Dem’s operationalization of polyarchy. The conceptualization of what actual democracy in Europe looks like is determined by the degree to which these five components are comparably present across the EU. It is against this background that the divergence of any of its members is assessed and the possibility of a one- dimensional, two-dimensional or even multi-dimensional democratic space is explored. We seek to assess the dimensionality of democracy in the EU rather than measuring member states’ democratic regimes against a single liberal democratic benchmark. In other words, while we explore the empirical possibility of multiple democratic regimes in the EU, of which liberal democracy may be just one, this paper does not contribute to the theoretical debate on the normative desirability of these regimes. We treat the concept of polyarchy, which Dahl (1971) developed as a realistic normative measure of existing democratic regimes, as the procedural minimal bar for democracy. Polyarchy has been widely used as a minimum benchmark by institutionally focused literature on democratic consolidation (Herman 2016, 254) and forms the democratic foundation of V- Dem’s high-level democratic indices. Each of V-Dem’s high-level indices is calculated based on the individual indicators of polyarchy with the addition of the indicators of one of the additional four components. Each high-level index, therefore, corresponds to one of V-Dem’s theoretical varieties of democracy. While V-Dem’s theoretical varieties of democracy form distinct democratic ideal-types where these components are not combined, we propose that the addition of the other four components to polyarchic democracy in different combinations and varying degrees builds separate democratic typologies supplementing polyarchy’s institutional procedural minimums. Conceptually, we treat each component as existing along its own one- dimensional continuum. Some, like participation, can theoretically exist without polyarchic democracy, while others such as egalitarianism largely exist as a normative addition to it when combined with liberalism. Polyarchic democracy supplements the most minimal (Schumpeterian) operationalizations of democracy as an electoral regime, for example, Diamond’s (2008) notion of a ‘pseudodemocracy’, with a set of institutions deemed necessary for such a procedural democracy to operate in a meaningful way: freedoms of the press, speech and assembly, and www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 11 of 32
the requirement that governments and parties are both responsive and accountable to voters. 7 The liberal component reflects the key features of a classic understanding of constitutional liberalism as applied to liberal representative democracy by early thinkers such as John Steward Mill. This is backed by the protection of civil liberties including human rights, limited government and the rule of law. This is the component that we expect to see perform strongly across EU member states if the EU’s understanding of democracy is enshrined and upheld in practice. We do not break liberalism down further into its individual parts as we consider them a package that together represents the liberalism tied to liberal varieties of democracy. A decline in anyone of them (ex. human rights, rule of law etc.) represents an overall decline on the liberal continuum. The operationalization of the liberal component aligns with the V-Dem project’s understanding. Liberalism, like democracy, is a contested concept whose meaning has shifted throughout history. This paper has a narrower understanding than some others, such as that of Diamond (2008, 22-23), for whom liberalism in relation to democracy also includes additional indicators such as ‘pluralism in sources of information’ and ‘a vibrant civil society’ which here are included in polyarchic democracy and the participatory component respectively. Most contemporary liberal democracies include each of the components included here to some degree. However, to distinguish between more procedural-institutional and more cultural-normative features of consolidated democracies, we have disentangled them in our analysis. In this context, egalitarianism concerns the equal distribution of resources, both material and immaterial, to the extent that this ensures equal opportunity for all citizens to participate in democratic life and the civil liberties that liberalism guarantees. It is one of the core values heralded by proponents of the welfare state and social democracy. The final two components are characteristics of conceptualizations of democracy held by proponents of the hollowing thesis (ex. Greskovits 2015, Mair 2006). The deliberative component relates to the quality of ‘throughput’ processes of democracy. It values public reasoning concerned with the common good that is inclusive of competing interests and diverse opinions over decision-making that is driven by coercion, emotion and sectoral interests. Transparency of these processes is essential for deliberation to be effective. The highly deliberative models of democracy characteristic to the work of Jürgen Habermas (1991, 1998) and Hannah Arendt (1958) sit at the normative high end of this continuum. Finally, the participatory component reflects the degree to which citizens can directly engage in democratic decision-making through citizen’s initiatives, plebiscites and referendums. Models envisaging citizens' direct participation in policy decisions, such as those advocated by Carole Pateman (1970), sit at the upper end of the participatory continuum. The core electoral and procedural elements of democracy and their basic guarantees are captured by polyarchic democracy. The remaining components provide additional institutional and non-institutional guarantees for consolidated democracy aligned with thicker, more 7 The European Commission applies a broader understanding of the rule of law that includes not only the elements found under the liberal component but also under polyarchic democracy. This is because for the Commission, rule of law and democracy are intrinsically connected. Because we account for the theoretical possibility of non- liberal democracy, we choose to apply a narrower definition. For more on the European Commission’s definition of the rule of law see Magen (2016). www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 12 of 32
maximalist benchmarks for consolidated democracy. Each of these may be considered either more or less necessary by different maximalist operationalizations. For example, Diamond’s liberal democracy (2005) and Merkel’s embedded liberal democracy (2004) may be, for the most part, captured by the polyarchic democracy and liberal components. However, accounting for Diamond and Morlino’s (2005) eight measures of democratic quality, which include government responsiveness as a results-oriented measure, additionally brings in elements of the deliberative component. 3. Method The debate between the democratic divergence thesis against the backsliding thesis becomes empirically assessable through the analysis of the dimensionality of democracy in the EU. We proceed to conduct a principal component analysis of a range of democracy indicators in one of the most renowned and elaborate comparative databases on democracy: V-Dem (Coppedge et al 2019). V-Dem contains a range of indicators on democracy which are measured annually in over 200 countries. Beyond its elaborate and comparative measurement of democracy, its key strength lies in being coded by national experts, who draw on all kinds of sources for their assessment, ranging from formal legal documents to interpretations of media and parliamentary discourse. In our analysis, we only focus on EU member states in order to contribute to the current debate about democratic backsliding and possible counter actions on behalf of the EU. The limited amount of countries involved means that a full factorial analysis on all indicators of democracy contained in the V-Dem dataset would lead to unstable measurements. As a rule of thumb, we employ the standard to have four times as many cases as variables contained in principal component analysis. 8 Besides the basic indicators, V-Dem also contains high-level indices and mid-level indices. We make the empirical assumption that polyarchy may coexist both in combination with other democratic components or without them and that changes in each do not necessarily need to move in the same direction. However, the five high-level indices all contain polyarchy components, meaning they are not independent measurements. This also violates a key assumption of principal component analysis. Hence, we resort to the mid-level indices. Of the 21 mid-level indices, several are again not independent from each other. Others, like the share of population with suffrage (v2x_suffr) are excluded due to a lack of variation or due to advisement by the V-Dem team not to include it in such analyses (i.e. v2x_elecoff). We end up with five key indicators for democracy to include in the principal component analysis which measure the five core components of democracy described above: 1) the multiplicative polyarchy index (v2x_mpi) 9; 2) the liberal component index (v2x_liberal); 3) the participatory component index (v2x_partip); 4) the deliberative component index (v2xdl_delib); and 5) the egalitarian component index (v2x_egal). In addition to accounting for institutional and procedural observations, the researchers tasked with producing each of these indices were required to rely on both structured and unstructured analysis of political discourse. In one example, freedom of expression and 8 Five democracy indicators are included in all years from 1990 to 2018. Note that this means we have more reliable results for the EU after the 2004 enlargement, when the surpassed 20 member states, than before. 9 The multiplicative polyarchy index and the additive polyarchy index are so highly correlated that the results are not affected by including the one or the other. www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 13 of 32
alternative sources of information (v2x_-freexp_altinf) is one of five indicators used to calculate the multiplicative polyarchy index. The observations used to measure this include an analysis of media bias (v2mebias), the media’s criticism of the government (v2mecrit), self- censorship (v2meslfcen) in political news media reporting, as well as an account of the diversity of voices represented in news coverage (v2merange). Likewise, legislative constraints on the executive (v2xlg_legcon), one of three indicators of the liberal component index, includes an analysis of legislative debates (v2lgqstexp and v2lginvstp) to check for political discourse questioning the behaviour of governing officials. Similar degrees of discoursive analysis of the media, speeches, legal documents, interviews and press conferences, are built into indicators of each of V-Dem’s mid-level indices. Our quantitative analysis based on V-Dem data is additionally augmented by illustrative examples of the discursive struggles that uncertainty about democracy’s dimensionality enable, particularly about the relationship between liberalism and democracy. The steps taken here highlight the importance of deliberation in public discourse to democracy and democratic backsliding within the EU and provide the stepping-stone for in-depth qualitative analysis of media and legal discourse in RECONNECT Deliverable 5.4. Staying loyal to Dahl’s definition, V-Dem’s multiplicative polyarchy index is built from indicators measuring the freedoms of association and expression, the share of the population with universal suffrage, the degree to which elections are free and fair, and whether the head of state and legislature are popularly elected. The liberal component index is calculated based on indicators of the presence of individual liberties and equality before the law, and judicial and legislative constraints on the executive. V-Dem operationalizes participation into four sub- variables: availability and each of access to direct popular vote, citizen participation in civil society paired with its degree of access to policy-making, whether local governments are elected and operate independently from unelected bodies, and whether regional governments are elected and operate independently from unelected bodies. Excluding the demand side of citizen participation this index, for instance, the extent to which citizens choose to partake in the opportunities for participation, diverges from how it is understood in earlier research on democratic hollowing (Mair 2013, Greskovits 2015, Cianetti 2018). The deliberative component index considers whether political elites defend their positions on public policy issues by offering reasoned justifications, as well as justifications based on the common good. It also considers the range of parties that are consulted, the degree to which counterarguments are respected, and the breadth and depth of deliberation in the public sphere (i.e. media). Finally, V-Dem’s egalitarian component is constructed from indicators on the protection of rights and freedoms equally across all groups, equal opportunity for all groups to participate in politics, and the equal distribution of resources such as wealth, education and healthcare. We conduct standard principal component analysis with varimax rotation for the period 1990- 2018 per year. Thus, we conducted 28 separate analyses and report components with >1.00 Eigenvalue to reach standard acceptable norms of a total of at least 60% explained variance by all components. To assess the dimensionality of democracy in the EU, we look at the total identified components that satisfy the criteria above. In addition, we plot the explained variance of the first component by year. This is because, in a multidimensional democracy space, the explained variance by the dominant dimension may vary. The higher the explained variance of the first component, the more the empirical variation in democracy within the EU approximates a one- www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 14 of 32
dimensional space. So, if we would find an increase in the explained variance of the first component over time, we would conclude that democracy in the EU is becoming more one- dimensional, which would count as evidence against Orbán’s claim. On the other hand, if the explained variance of the first component is decreasing over time, then our evidence does not allow us to refute his claim. There might be some truth to it. Principal component analysis simultaneously allows us to assess which components of democracy stand at the heart of observed underlying dimensions, thus speaking to the second research question on which developments – if any – are the key drivers of democratic backsliding in the EU. Subsequently, we rerun the principal component analysis for all yearly data to plot developments over time, keeping dimensionality stable. This allows us to assess member states’ development trajectories and see whether they display improvement or backsliding on any of the components. If a component had not been consolidated, to begin with, or consolidated at different rates, we would see this here particularly on non-institutional discoursive dimensions. Finally, we plot the average development of the five key indicators within CEEC member states to get yet another perspective on ongoing developments. 4. Findings The principal component analysis reveals a two-dimensional space of democracy in the EU. While there is variation from year to year, the first component’s core is primarily composed of the deliberation and egalitarianism indexes (see Annex). In most years, the polyarchy and liberalism indicator also squarely load onto this component, although liberalism starts loading on both the first and second component of democracy in later years. Besides the fact that various indicators of democracy load onto this component, it also explains the majority of variance (see Figure 1 below). Before Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU in 2007, the variance explained by this first component hovers around 50%. Afterwards, it reaches 60-65% of variance. In 2018, the explained variance of the first component reaches a record high of 67.7%. Given the fact that multiple indicators load on this dimension, it would be inaccurate to label this dimension the liberal part of liberal democracy. Rather, it is much more encompassing. Deterioration along this dimension can thus be considered general democratic backsliding. The core of the second dimension is formed by the component index of participation. After Eastern enlargement, the liberalism component also loads onto this dimension, albeit to a lesser extent than on the first dimension. Deterioration along this dimension is thus essentially a restriction in opportunities to engage with politics as citizen. Initially, then, the empirical existence of a two-dimensional space in democracy allows some leeway to Orbán’s claim of building an illiberal democracy. He could theoretically be reducing the liberal aspects of democracy without damaging – or even increasing – the participatory dimension of democracy. Had we found democracy in the EU to be one dimensional, this claim could have been dismissed out of hand. www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 15 of 32
Table 1: Principal Component Analysis
Initial Eigenvalues
Component Total % of Variance Cumulative %
1 3,026 60,514 60,514
2 1,069 21,388 81,902
3 ,400
Table 2: Rotated Component Matrixa
Component
1 2
Multiplicative polyarchy index ,869
Liberal component index ,831 ,319
Participatory component index ,981
Deliberative component index ,907
Egalitarian component index ,858
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Loadings reported >,299
Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.
a. Rotation converged in 3 iterations.
To further assess the validity of the possibility to build an alternative – but not lesser –
democracy, we inspect the explained variance of democracy’s main dimension in more detail.
Figure 1 below shows the development of explained variance of the main democracy
dimension in the EU over time. Given the relatively low number of observations per year –
identical to the number of member states – our analysis contains significant uncertainties as
modelled in Figure 1. That said, note that in the 1990s, explained variance hovered around
50%. Interestingly, the eastern enlargement of 2004 did not have noticeable effects on the
dimensionality of democracy in the EU. Some of the new member states scored relatively low
on the main democracy dimension, which should increase the explained variance of the first
component. Yet, it also included some member states that scored exceptionally high on
participatory democracy, particularly Slovenia. This increased the explained variance of
participatory democracy at the same time. The increased variance on the main democracy and
on the participation potential dimensions balancing each other off. As variation in both
dimensions increase, the relative explained variance of either dimension hardly changes. In
other words, the diversity in democracy within the EU was expanded on both dimensions.
According to our data, the 2007 enlargement with Bulgaria and Romania, on the other hand,
has a clear effect on the dimensionality of democracy in the EU. The explained variance of
polyarchic democracy shoots up from just below 50% to around 60%. Since then, we can more
clearly argue that the EU is composed of more democratic and less democratic member states.
www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 16 of 32Figure 1: Explained variance of primary democracy dimension in the EU over time 10
80
70
% explained variance of first component
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
That becomes a more valid statement over time between 2007 and 2010. Between 2010 and
2016 the explained variance of the primary democracy dimension decreases. To be sure of
how to interpret the changes between 2010 and 2016, however, we need to look at the
individual locations of member states in the two-dimensional democracy space.
Figure 2 below plots EU member states on factor loadings resulting from the principal
component analysis in 2018. In other words, it portrays the result of the PCA and visualizes
how high each member state scores on the polyarchic and participatory democracy
dimensions. Lines are drawn through the mean on both dimensions, dividing the EU
democratic space into four quadrants. In the top-right corner, we see full democracies that
perform comparatively highly on both the main and secondary democracy dimensions. In the
bottom-left corner are hollow states that score comparatively low on both dimensions. Note
that these are relevant, rather than absolute, quadrants. Countries in the bottom-left quadrant
are not necessarily undemocratic. They are rather not as democratic as the ones in the top-
right quadrant.
10
The blue line shows the explained variance, where the grey lines show the 68% confidence interval.
www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 17 of 32Figure 2: Two-dimensional democracy in the EU in 2018 www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 18 of 32
Figure 3: Developments in the EU two-dimensional space 2008 – 2018. www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 19 of 32
Table 3: Democracy indicators in compared
RECONNECT Case Studies
No Yes
(all other EU member (Germany, France, Italy,
states) Spain, Netherlands,
Poland, Hungary)
Mean Mean
Multiplicative polyarchy index ,78 ,79
Liberal component index ,91 ,92
Participatory component index ,65 ,67
Deliberative component index ,89 ,89
Egalitarian component index ,90 ,90
Democracy (main dimension) -,03953 ,09600
Participation (secondary dimension) -,07729 ,18771
To relate the overall development in dimensionality over time with the most recent map of
2018, Figure 3 plots the development of four key CEEC member states between 2008 and 2018.
None of the Western-European member states in the RECONNECT sample show any major
changes along either dimension in this decade. We have therefore not plotted their change in
the graphs. Changes in CEEC are more pronounced, Figure 3 shows the trajectories of
RECONNECT’s two focus countries – Poland and Hungary – in comparison to two other CEEC
EU member states – Bulgaria and Romania.
The top left graph shows Bulgaria’s development. It reveals a deterioration of democracy in
general whilst the potential for participation is increased. If anything, this indicates a
development towards illiberal democracy, with the understanding that the cost of increasing
participation potential is not just a reduction in liberalism – including rule of law – but also in
basic electoral democracy, the quality of deliberation and equality. For Hungary (at the top
right), a steady deterioration on both democracy dimensions is clearly discernible. On the
participation dimension, the vertical axis, the deterioration between 2008 to 2016 from about
+1 standard deviation to the overall mean, to -0.5. A negative change of 1.5 standard
deviations. On the main democracy dimension, the horizontal axis, the deterioration is much
more pronounced: from about -1.5 to -5. A negative change of 3.5 standard deviations. This
evidence refutes Orbán’s claim of building an illiberal democracy. At the same time, we see
Romania (bottom right) incrementally improve along the main democracy dimension between
2008 and 2016, followed by a dramatic drop in the most recent years toward unprecedented
low levels since EU enlargement. Finally, like Hungary, Poland (bottom left) features a diagonal
deterioration of both democracy dimensions. The difference to Hungary is that the process
starts later and has of yet not resulted in similarly low levels of democracy. We do not have
space to discuss the developments in each individual member state here. Suffice it to say that
the development within the EU between 2008 and 2018 is far from unidirectional. Member
states are developing in various and to some extent opposite directions in the two-dimensional
democratic space.
www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 20 of 32Turning now to the most recent data from 2018 and interpreting that in light of the
developments of key states described above, the most extreme development is not continued
democratic backsliding in Hungary or the start of it in Poland, but rather the massive
deterioration of democracy in Romania. This mostly concerns the degree of deliberative
democracy in this country, which has seen a massive decrease from .94 in 2016 to .31 just two
years later, on a scale from 1.00 to 0. Even if the 2016 result was a positive outlier, this is still
an incredible development in such a short period of time. This change can be interpreted as
the effect of the politicization of anti-corruption in the country. Anti-corruption actions against
the government where prevalent in the years before 2016. Yet, since that time, anti-corruption
efforts have been directed both at government and opposition members. What is more, the
salience of anti-corruption measures entered elite political discourse, as political opponents
started discrediting one another as ‘criminals’, playing into the public perception that no
political party had clean hands (Mungiu-Pippidi 2018). While participation does not change
notably in Romania in these two years, the liberal component also sees a drop from .85 to .59.
The importance of the deliberative component is further underlined if we study the spread
along these five key indicators of democracy, as displayed in Table 4. Of these five key
indicators, the deliberative component shows both the absolute lowest number (,28) and the
highest spread within the EU (standard deviation of ,155). The quality of deliberation is the key
to what sets EU member states apart from each other, dividing member states into high and
low-quality democracies, and it is where Romania – the least democratic member state – is
performing the worst.
Table 4: Divergent democracy within the EU 28 in 2018 11
Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation
Multiplative polyarchy index ,54 ,90 ,81 ,094
Liberal component index ,41 ,87 ,72 ,122
Participatory component index ,32 ,68 ,56 ,084
Deliberative component index ,28 ,86 ,69 ,155
Egalitarian component index ,40 ,84 ,71 ,116
Taking a closer look at developments within the Central and Eastern European EU member
states, we see in yet another way how decreasing quality in deliberation stands at the heart of
current democratic backsliding within the EU. Deterioration of democracy starts immediately
after enlargement and across all five indicators. Figure 4 shows Lowess lines of the five key
democracy indicators for CEES EU member states from 2004 to 2018. Note that recent years,
starting in 2013, show a rapid decrease in the quality of deliberation as the most noticeable
development.
11
Five mid-level V-Dem indexes discussed in the method section.
www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 21 of 32Figure 4: Developments in CEEC EU member states along five key democracy dimensions since 2004 A detailed overview of changes per democracy component per country are given in table A.3. in the appendix. This includes changes between 2008 and 2018 on all five indicators for each of RECONNECT’s case study countries: Germany, France, Italy, Hungary, The Netherlands, Poland and Spain. We should not overinterpret minor changes, which may simply be the product of coding error. If we concentrate on changes of >,05, three observations stand out. First, all major changes are negative. There is no major improvement in any indicator in democracy in any of these countries within the time period. Second, Poland and Hungary clearly stand out with strong deterioration. Third, in these two cases of democratic backsliding, the strongest deterioration of all five indicators takes place in the deliberative component index. To summarize, we have documented here that the EU’s democratic space is structurally two- dimensional. The nature of the dominant democracy dimension and secondary participatory potential dimension is rather stable over time since the early 1990s, despite substantial changes in the EU, most notably enlargement from 12 to 28 member states. The main 2004 Eastern enlargement did not coincide with a change in the dimensionality of democracy in the EU, but the 2007 entry of Romania and Bulgaria did. Since then, the dominant polyarchic dimension of democracy has become even more dominant as seen in the risen explained variance by this dimension. Its core, however, is not minimal electoral democracy, rule of law or checks and balances. Rather, it primarily distinguishes EU member states with high levels of deliberation and egalitarianism from those with low levels. Developments in Romania since 2016 have elevated the importance of member state differences within the EU on this dimension to unprecedented levels. www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 22 of 32
5. Conclusion Developments in Central and Eastern Europe since 2010 have regularly been described as democratic backsliding. Defying this label, Victor Orbán has argued he is building an illiberal democracy. While the first claim builds on a one-dimensional understanding of democracy, the second rests on the assumption that democracy is two or multidimensional. That it is possible to make a state less liberal without it becoming less democratic. Could it be that recent developments in the EU constitute democratic divergence – the creation of a larger variety of democracies – rather than democratic backsliding? We empirically investigate this question and the validity of these two mutually exclusive claims on what is currently going on in Hungary and other Central and Eastern European EU member states. Through systematic analysis of the dimensionality of democracy within the EU, we find it to be consistently two-dimensional throughout the period 1990 – 2018. The first dimension contains a range of democracy indicators. It evolves primarily around how deliberative and egalitarian these systems are, as factor analyses by year revealed. The deliberative component is not only the most central to this primary democracy dimension, it is also the democracy indicator featuring the greatest difference between EU member states and the lowest overall score in 2018, in Romania. Whether the country constitutes a polyarchy in Dahl’s understanding and how well liberal checks-and-balances, rule of law and individual rights are protected also loads onto this main democracy dimension. The second dimension concerns participation, which includes the possibilities for citizens to engage in democratic politics at local and national levels. To a lesser extent, the liberalism component also loads onto this dimension. This means there are theoretically four ideal types of democracy in the EU currently, in each of the corners of a two-dimensional space. The purest form of democracy would be one that is highly deliberative and egalitarian, which strong electoral freedom and fairness, robust liberal checks and balances and individual rights and high participation. Denmark approximates this ideal type in the latest measurements of 2018. A second form of hollow democracy features low participation potential while the other indicators of democracy remain strong. Luxembourg is the clearest example of this within the EU at the time of writing. The third ideal type is a participatory state, without the necessary institutions in place to call it a democracy. Bulgaria is moving in this direction. The final ideal type is a state scoring low on all five key components of democracy: a hollow state. Here, we find Romania as an extreme case. While the analysis presented here does not in any case support Orbán’s claim, it allows the theoretical possibility that he has a point. The fact that democracy is two dimensional allows the possibility to increase participation potential while decreasing liberalism. In fact, we observe this happening in Bulgaria. But our study provides no evidence that this is happening in Hungary. When we study the location of EU member states in this two-dimensional space empirically, we see that the vast majority of states score high on both dimensions. It will come as a surprise to few, that the EU is mostly composed of strong or ‘full’ liberal democracies. We also document how the main democracy dimension explains considerably more variance among the member states than the second and that the explanatory power of the main democracy dimension has increased over time, particularly after the 2007 enlargement with Romania and Bulgaria. It has reached its highest point in 2018. In other words, democracy in the EU has never been as one dimensional as it is now, ranking member states from more to less democratic makes more sense today than it did at any other point in time since 1990. www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 23 of 32
You can also read
