Political support and democratic backsliding trends. The strange case of Central and Eastern European countries

Abstract

ABSTRACT During the last decade, democratic backsliding (DB) has become a worrying phenomenon worldwide. This article addresses this topic by focusing on Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). An overview of the literature on DB in this region has identified a relevant lacuna: the lack of attention to the role political support indicators (democratic satisfaction, government trust) may play in DB processes. Testing several hypotheses through different random regression models applied to CEE countries for the period 2005–2021, an unexpected puzzle emerges: contrary to the expectations, we find that a greater government trust contributes to DB. Building on several consolidated findings of the system support theory and the classic democratisation literature, we address this puzzle, identifying temporal phases, mechanisms and causal relations and stressing the relevance of interaction processes among a complex set of causal factors to explain DB processes in CEE.