Democr Erosion Orban to Putin

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

In recent years, challenges to the liberal democratic order have mounted as civil liberties around the world have deteriorated to their lowest point in more than a decade: 2021 marked a 16th consecutive year of decline in global freedom (Freedom House, 2022). But while democratic decline has occurred all over the world over the last decade, Central and Eastern Europe have been particularly affected by this trend: by 2020 democracy scores there fell to a record low since the breakup of the Soviet Union. The great optimism of the 1990s and the jubilation over the “transition paradigm” are now things of the past. How did this become possible? This course will explore the factors that contributed to the ongoing erosion of democracy with a particular focus on post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. We will look at countries ranging from the quick failures (Russia and Belarus) to those that recently started backsliding even though they were once the front-runners of democratization (Hungary and Poland). We will explore commonalities and differences among these countries' dynamics while also drawing parallels from consolidated democracies from the West, and will try to understand which factors are driving this democratic erosion, as well as ways to counter the democratic backsliding in the region.