Just Ineffective or Intentionally Constrained? How the Weakness of Opposition Parties Contributes to Democratic Backsliding 

27th World Congress of Political Science in Buenos Aires, Argentina, 15-19 July 2023

Panel: “People against Pluralism? Sources of Public Support for Illiberal Regimes.”

Paper Proposal:

Solska, Magdalena: "Just Ineffective or Intentionally Constrained? How the Weakness of Opposition Parties Contributes to Democratic Backsliding"

Why have opposition parties failed to act as effective safeguards against democratic backsliding in Poland and Hungary? Backsliding appears as a gradual process that leads to a decline in democratic quality. With time, it can also reduce the power of domestic actors to hold a government accountable. Revisiting the assumptions about the adverse side effects of executive aggrandizement as the main drivers of ongoing democratic backsliding, I posit that the current explanations fail to account for the quality of domestic responses to illiberal tendencies. Even though scholars have started to investigate democratic resilience and strategies of “resistance” to illiberal trends. Most studies, however, have tended to focus on top-down intervention by the European Union.

The examination of domestic opposition appears relevant as its unimpeded functioning sustains liberal democracy on the one hand and the deliberate constraints imposed on it by the ruling parties fuel the autocratization process on the other. The paper explores therefore the sources of apparent weakness of opposition parties in Poland and Hungary, and highlights their strategies and tools. It claims that opposition parties’ (partially) self-inflicted weakness is conducive to explaining the enduring public support for the incumbents despite their overt violations of democratic standards. The paper builds on empirical material including interviews and documents collected in Poland and Hungary. It leverages a comparative approach to show that in spite of significant differences in political and institutional “opportunity structure” under PiS-led and Fidesz-led government, the opposition in both countries has been ineffective in presenting a programmatic and personnel alternative to challenge the incumbents.