Dossier
Illiberal democracies
The concept of “illiberal democracy” was first put forward by journalist and political scientist Fareed Zakaria in 1997. But while back then it was used to describe countries such as China and Russia, the term is now reserved for states in Central Europe, where authoritarian regimes began to emerge from 2010, when Viktor Orbán came to power in Hungary. Orbán himself has drawn on the concept to define his regime.
In 2019/10 Volume 3
1 The concept of “illiberal democracy” was first put forward by journalist and political scientist Fareed Zakaria in 1997. But while back then it was used to describe countries such as China and Russia, the term is now reserved for states in Central Europe, where authoritarian regimes began to emerge from 2010, when Viktor Orbán came to power in Hungary. Orbán himself has drawn on the concept to define his regime, which is characterized by respecting the principle of elections while subjugating the judiciary and the media.
2 Although two of the articles presented in this dossier were only published a short time ago, they have already been superseded by recent events in Slovakia, where democracy has reasserted itself following the election of Zuzana Čaputová to the presidency in spring 2019. This illustrates how difficult it is to make predictions, a problem that is further emphasized by two of the political scientists featured in this dossier: Jacques Rupnik and Georges Mink.
3 The demographic anxiety highlighted by the authors of the other articles in this dossier, Roman Krakovsky, Ivan Krastev, and Stephen Holmes, must also be set in the context of Poland, which is the largest of the countries in the area and whose population has remained stable in recent years despite every indication of an imminent downturn.
4 The importance of these articles lies in showing the convergence of perspectives on the combination of factors that might explain the emergence of these illiberal democracies. But the authors do not accord the same weight to these different factors. Setting their analyses side by side also demonstrates the differences between them, and reveals the challenges of interpretation: the fact, for example, that while Orbán came to power on the back of an economic crisis, Kaczyński was elected amid an economic boom. The radical pessimism of some of the authors is tempered by the measured optimism of the others.
5 Interestingly, however, all appear to agree on the definition of illiberal democracy itself, despite the apparent contradiction of continuing to call a regime that gags justice and the media a democracy. This oxymoron is pointed out rather succinctly by Hungarian political scientist András Bozóki, to whom we give “carte blanche.”
7 Our selection:
8 Roman Krakovsky, Ivan Krastev, Stephen Holmes, and Jacques Rupnik.
9 And also: Georges Mink.
10 Carte blanche given to András Bozóki.
A combination of factors
11 What explains the recent rise of authoritarian democracies in central Europe? The economy does not appear to hold the key, as most of these countries have experienced sustained growth in recent years. In his article for the journal Études, Roman Krakovsky, a historian working in Switzerland, sets out a combination of factors that in his view have jointly produced the central phenomenon of “fear for the existence of the nation.”
12 The first such factor is the emergence from communism, which imposed on a poor but sheltered population the “principle of every man for himself” and the forces of globalization. These countries, which have become the “cheap workshops of the West,” are affected by increasing levels of inequality.
13 The second factor is a “dramatic demographic crisis” produced by the combination of a very rapid decline in fertility and a mass exodus. Since 1989, Romania has lost 14% of its population, Bulgaria and Lithuania 21%, and Latvia 25%, and all the countries in the region are set to lose at least another 15% of their population by 2050.
14 The third factor is the declining image of the West and of liberal democracy precipitated by the 2008 financial crisis, and the fourth factor the 2015–16 migrant crisis, which has become “the primary subject of political debate,” stoking a fear of the “great replacement” that has been exploited by populist leaders.
15 These various factors coexist with an older reality: these are “small nations” that have been humiliated by history. Roman Krakovsky goes on to set out the doctrine of “illiberal democracy” primarily developed by Viktor Orbán: a “national-Christian ideology” that rationalizes the rejection of Europe and the subjugation of the judiciary and the media. He also shows how this rhetoric conceals the establishment of a tightly knit oligarchy in which a small number of businessmen close to the government are those who benefit.
17 Roman Krakovsky is associate researcher at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) (School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences) and lecturer at the University of Geneva. His most recent work translated into English is State and Society in Communist Czechoslovakia: Transforming the Everyday from WWII to the Fall of the Berlin Wall (London: Bloomsbury, 2018).
A central paradox
20 While Roman Krakovsky’s article was in the works, Ivan Krastev and his American colleague Stephen Holmes were writing on the same subject for their book The Light That Failed: A Reckoning (New York: Allen Lane, 2019). Part of an earlier version of their work was published in French in the journal Le Débat’s March–April 2019 issue. Their analysis is broadly similar, but highlights a central paradox: the fact that these new “illiberal” democracies are entirely obsessed by the fear of migrants despite being “in a region essentially without immigrants.” They see this as “a defence mechanism by which [. . .] minds unconsciously blot out a wholly unacceptable threat and replace it with one still serious but conceivably easier to manage.” “Hysteria [. . .] represents the substitution of an illusory danger (immigration) for the real danger (depopulation and demographic collapse) which cannot speak its name.”
21 As imagined as it may be, this response is based on two highly tangible realities. The first of these is the undeniable existence of a widespread phenomenon of “transnational migration,” which the authors, along with Viktor Orbán, see as “one of history’s largest tides of people.” The second is the impact of information disseminated by television and social media: the images of immigrants, whether refugees or otherwise, arriving in large numbers and their equally large presence in some neighborhoods in towns and cities in Western Europe (notably alongside a million Poles in the United Kingdom). This results in an “anxiety” that is easy for populist leaders to exploit. Western Europe no longer represents a model to follow, but rather serves as a deterrent, allowing Viktor Orbán to paradoxically present the countries of Central Europe as the new European model that the Western countries would do well to emulate. This also acts as an argument in support of reduced emigration: “Citizens will stop leaving for the West only if the West loses its allure.”
22 Contrary to popular belief in Europe and the United States, write Krastev and Holmes, in “illiberal democracies,” “populist rage is directed less at multiculturalism than at post-national individualism and cosmopolitanism”—the inheritance of the Enlightenment—in the name of which the countries of Western Europe have allowed themselves to be invaded en masse by immigrants who are “the gravest threat to the survival of the white Christian majority.”
23 This article presents extracts from the newly published book by Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes, The Light That Failed: A Reckoning (New York: Allen Lane, 2019).
25 Ivan Krastev is chairman of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria and permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences, IWM Vienna. His publications include After Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017).
26 Stephen Holmes is Walter E. Meyer Professor of Law at New York University. His most recent book, co-written with Moshe Halbertal, is The Beginning of Politics: Power in the Biblical Book of Samuel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017).
Carte blanche given to András Bozóki
“An oxymoron”
29 Roman Krakovsky writes that “illiberal democracies” are still democracies. Do you agree?
30 No, not at all. The term “illiberal democracy” is an oxymoron: it cannot denote a democracy because all existing democracies are liberal democracies. Illiberal democracies belong to the group of hybrid regimes that sit between democracies and dictatorships.
32 Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes write that the main unsaid factor behind the emergence of illiberal democracies is demographic panic. How central is this factor?
33 It depends on which country we are talking about. I would approach this on a case-by-case basis. But it is true that millions of people have left East-Central Europe over the past twenty years. It is a more or less common characteristic, but not all countries have gone down the road toward an illiberal regime.
35 Krastev and Holmes say that populists’ anger is directed more against individualism and universalism than against multiculturalism. What do you think?
36 Since neither universalism nor multiculturalism (only individualism) really exists in East-Central Europe, we do not know the real cause of their anger. I would say that it has many causes.
37 András Bozóki is professor of political science at the Central European University in Budapest. He was the Hungarian minister of culture from 2005 to 2006. Several of his works have been translated into English, including Intellectuals and Politics in Central Europe (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999). One of his articles, on Viktor Orbán’s cultural policy, is available to read in English on Cairn.info: “Mainstreaming the Far Right: Cultural Politics in Hungary,” Revue d’études comparatives Est-Ouest, 47, no. 4 (2016): 87–116.
Democratic regression
38 Historian and political scientist, former adviser to Czechoslovak president Vaclav Havel, Jacques Rupnik also seeks to explain what he calls a “democratic regression.” In his article for the journal Esprit, he insists however that it would be “a misreading” to summarily compare Western Europe and Eastern Europe in this regard. He sees this as a “trans-European phenomenon” that simply has “specific or more acute features in the Eastern part of the continent.” In his view, this is explained by the long history of these countries: “East-Central Europe experienced closed societies prior to 1989 and has not been exposed to migrations from the South since then.”
39 He shows that these countries “transposed this ‘German’ cultural/civilizational concept of Kulturnation to Europe at the very moment when Germany abandoned it and became universalist.” Rupnik asks whether this illiberal turn will last, but cannot provide a definitive answer. Independently of their nationalist and xenophobic discourse, populist governments in these countries draw their strength from opting for a left-wing approach to the economy, alongside various social measures.
40 But Rupnik also sees an opposition between people living in large urban areas, graduates, and young people, who are “supportive of the liberal course,” and rural, less educated, and older members of the electorate. In this respect at least, demographic change could therefore play in favor of democracy. He also notes, at least in Poland, the emergence of a “powerful protest movement,” the KOD (Committee for the Defense of Democracy).
42 Jacques Rupnik is a historian and political scientist. He served as an advisor to president Václav Havel from 1990 to 1992 and since 1998 has been director of research at the CERI (Centre d’études et des recherches internationales) (Center for International Studies and Research) at Sciences Po Paris.
Further reading on Cairn.info
An uncertain future
45 In his article for Politique étrangère (in French on cairn.info), Georges Mink recalls the illusions held by many following the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the idea that “the march toward democracy was as secure as it was natural.” No-one heeded Bronisław Geremek in 1990, when he warned that: “The path to freedom is open, but that to democracy is uncertain.” Mink shows that the authoritarian regimes in Hungary and Poland have emerged under very different circumstances: “Orbán came to power on the back of an economic crisis, facing a discredited and fragmented opposition, while Kaczyński conversely exploited an economic boom.” Orbán has also aligned himself with Moscow, while Poland remains fundamentally anti-Russian.
46 The sociologist describes how the two regimes have subjugated the judiciary and the media, and changed electoral laws to their own benefit. In Poland, civil service entrance examinations have been abolished, and Mink explains how history is being rewritten, in both Budapest and in Warsaw. But he takes exception to the idea that Orbán’s power rests on a poorly educated electorate, arguing that his support base consists of “urban classes who have often taken advantage of purges to move into civil service posts.”
47 He also believes in the possibility of the authoritarian regime in Poland being overturned, and finally points to a source of potential weakness for the two regimes, which both rely on a single man. At the same time, he is alarmed to see that young people, who were previously liberal, appear to be increasingly critical of the democratic ideal.
Further reading in Eurozine
Explaining eastern Europe: Imitation and its discontents
48 In an article first published in Journal of Democracy and available in the online magazine Eurozine, Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes discuss illiberalism in central and eastern Europe as a reaction to ‘Westernization’. For countries emerging from communism, the post-1989 imperative to ‘be like the West’ has generated discontent and even a ‘return of the repressed’, as the region feels old nationalist stirrings and new demographic pressures. The origins of illiberalism in central and eastern Europe are emotional and pre-ideological, rooted in rebellion at the humiliations that accompany a project requiring acknowledgment of a foreign culture as superior to one’s own.
49 Read more on 1989 in Eurozine's focal point The legacy of division.
Journal article
Populisms in Eastern Europe: A demographic anxiety
- By Ivan Krastev
- and Stephen Holmes
In Le Débat (2019/2 No 204)
