Illiberal Regimes Research Articles

El desafío iliberal a la independencia judicial: la contribución de los tribunales internacionalesThe illiberal challenge to judicial independence: the contribution of international tribunals

Abstract This article explores how international courts can contribute, albeit in a limited way, to defending the independence of national judges against the onslaught of illiberal governments. Structurally, we will first provide a characterisation of the illiberal phenomenon in order to map the literature. We will show how international and supranational courts have developed a standard for preserving the independence of domestic judges, and the limits to the application of this standard. In the final part of the article, we will develop some critical considerations based on the results of our analysis.

(Cautiously) Embracing pro-Palestinian activism in Singapore: civil society in illiberal regimes

ABSTRACT This paper explores the rise of pro-Palestine activism in Singapore. In illiberal regimes like the city–state, the political opportunities for activists to assert themselves are limited, though not non-existent. It is thus instructive to witness how the new surge of pro-Palestine activism in the country, and indeed, worldwide, has been dealt with by the government. I make the following claims. First, while the overall thrusts of Singapore’s foreign and domestic policies remain the same with regard to the Israel–Palestine conflict, especially on Singapore’s special relationship with Israel, the People’s Action Party (PAP) government has given clear concessions to the pro-Palestinian camp. Second, this balancing act is done with domestic electoral and political goals in mind. The issue has special resonance among younger Singaporeans and the Muslim community, and the government is well-aware of that. Politically, if not dealt with properly, the matter could also be a potential racial-religious fault-line, which is why political sophistication was needed to appease the various sides in society. The implication is that even in less democratic polities like Singapore, activists can make significant gains in the realm of both public opinion and policy. This study is situated within the literature on civil society-state relations.

China and Russia as service providers for illiberal governance

China and Russia as service providers for illiberal governance

Modesty, toleration, and persuasion

Lucia Rafanelli's analysis of reform intervention is both timely and philosophically powerful. This paper asks two questions about the limits, and proper implications, of her methodology – both of which have to do with the notion of modesty, understood as a moral virtue. The first asks whether or not principled illiberal regimes have a moral right, on her account, to reform intervention against the liberalism of liberal democratic states. The second asks about the extent to which persuasive and discursive modes of reform intervention are rightly understood as respectful, when such intervention begins with an unshakeable moral commitment held by the intervenor and used as justification for the intervention itself.

The Evolution of Illiberalism: Necropolitical Economies and a Democratic Antidote

ABSTRACT: Illiberal regimes exhibit a political economy in which people's continued access to welfare protections depends on loyalty to incumbent politicians. Their politicians' invocation of xenophobic tropes suggests a clear boundary between loyal lives that matter to the regime and those that do not, yet some illiberal regimes have come to promote a materialist necropolitics, devaluing human life not only outside the imagined boundaries of the demos, but also within it. By adopting approaches that explicitly recognize the value of individual human life, democracies can successfully hold on to societal buy-in to democratic forms of government even amid the spread of illiberalism.

Authoritarian innovations in the Polish industrial relations: From liberal to illiberal illusory corporatism?

The article addresses the problem of ‘authoritarian innovations’ in labour governance in Poland, understood as new government practices that maintain the semblance of social dialogue while limiting the influence of unions. Unlike most studies that analyse authoritarian practices since the right-wing Law and Justice Party came to power in Poland in 2015, this analysis takes a longer historical perspective. Drawing from Ost's thesis of ‘illusory corporatism’, it argues that a fundamental element of neoliberal transformation in Poland after 1989 was the introduction of weak tripartite institutions used to suppress social conflicts while complying with international standards. Based on documentary analysis and 37 expert interviews with social partners, the article shows how authoritarian innovations introduced in the 1990s have undermined worker participation and tripartite social dialogue in the context of two crises: the global financial crisis of 2008–12 and the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020–22. Comparing the role of social dialogue in shaping the responses of liberal and illiberal governments to these different external shocks, the analysis demonstrates the continuity and evolution of authoritarian innovations in labour governance in Poland and their implications for theoretical debates arounds corporatism.

Undermining liberal international organizations from within: Evidence from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe

AbstractInternational organizations promoting democratic governance and human rights are increasingly challenged by some of their own member states. To better understand this dynamic, we propose a distinction between the illiberal ideology of political parties and their regime environment, aiming to examine the international behavior of actors extending beyond autocratic governments. We argue that the domestic regime environment plays a pivotal role in influencing the extent to which illiberal parties engage in contestation to undermine liberal norms on the international stage. We expect contestation behavior to be primarily driven by illiberal parties seeking to diminish the influence of liberal international politics on domestic power structures. Moreover, we contend that government participation moderates illiberal parties’ contestation behavior. To test our expectations empirically, we study roll call votes in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), one of the most powerful international parliaments promoting liberal values. Drawing on an original dataset that records approximately 500,000 individual votes cast in PACE decisions, we find evidence for substantive contestation by illiberal parties, especially those representing illiberal regimes. Only illiberal governments in liberal systems moderate themselves at the amendment stage. Our study has implications for the potential threat that emerging illiberal actors pose to international liberal institutions.

Illiberal regimes and international organizations

Illiberal regimes and international organizations

Militant Rule of Law and Not-so-Bad Law

The article provides intellectual arguments and tools from legal dogmatics that can help to counter the rule of law backlash. It argues that resilience can be boosted by a systemic militant rule of law approach. When it comes to restoring the rule of law, legal theory turns to the Radbruch formula (supra-statutory law). This approach remains contested by lawyers who are convinced – following the tradition of positivist legal theory – that invoking this formula is unacceptable because it violates a fundamental requirement of the rule of law, namely that of legality. Irrespective of the value of this concern, Radbruch’s formula is not applicable to the current demise of the rule of law, as the law resulting from cheating and abuse in illiberal regimes does not result in evil law (though it may facilitate such developments). Instead of evil law, we face not-so-bad law. Legal imperfections exist in every legal system, and militant rule of law necessitates the systemic revision of these shortcomings in order to preempt the abuses of an anti-formalistic populist regime. In illiberal regimes, the self-corrective mechanisms of the rule of law are gradually eliminated, but the name of the game remains the rule of law. It means that judges still have (some) power to counter the backlash using extant interpretive techniques (for a while). This article will begin by introducing the concept of not-so-bad (NSB) law as an imperfection of the rule of law. In Part Two, the validity of NSB laws is discussed by relying on the source theory. It argues that even if validity is a matter of conformity to the source, the source can be understood to contain a legal merit component as determined by the rule of law, and falling short on this legal merit component can constitute a ground for declaring the norm’s invalid. Part Three describes the abuses of the rule of law in illiberal democracies and describes how the NSB law of illiberal regimes does not satisfy the validity requirements of legal positivism. Part Four discusses the opportunities open to judges for resisting or undoing NSB law using existing techniques of legal interpretation and without violating rule of law principles.

Referendums as extended arms of the government: evidence from an illiberal regime

ABSTRACT Public support for referendums has been analysed extensively in established democracies, but the topic is investigated less in illiberal settings. This article aims to explain why citizens in an illiberal country (Hungary) support referendums. We argue that in such political regimes, referendums may serve as extended arms of the illiberal government rather than as providing people with direct access to decision-making. Our study uses individual-level data from a survey conducted in May 2022 on a national representative sample. The evidence indicates that those citizens in favour of referendums are characterized by anti-democratic attitudes and support for the initiator.

Nationalism, Pronatalism, and the Guild of Gynecology: The Complex Legacy of Abortion Regulation in Hungary

Abstract By tracing the history of abortion politics in Hungary since World War I, this article covers a century of conflict with particular attention to gynecologists’ self-serving professional jockeying and lobbying under very different political regimes. It suggests that nationalism has been a pivotal element of the abortion debates that both government actors and gynecologists have shaped over the last hundred years and argues that abortion rights were differently recognized in eastern and western Europe during the Cold War because of the legacy of mass wartime rapes committed by the Soviet troops in Hungary, among other countries, which determined those countries’ postwar legislation on abortion and reproductive rights. The article introduces the rarely researched contribution of the gynecologist lobby to the debates by examining how they could represent their own interests independently of political regime. Today, Hungary's illiberal regime questions the legitimacy of abortion by normalizing US fundamentalist-Christian discourse because anti-abortion policy fits into its nation-building course.

Corporate Human Rights Responsibility in Illiberal Regimes: The Example of the Ukrainian Refugee Crisis in Hungary

Abstract Following the first-ever rule of law conditionality procedure in September 2022, a resolution was adopted by the European Parliament which declared that Hungary could no longer be considered a full democracy, as it had turned into a ‘hybrid regime of electoral autocracy’. Against this background, this article explains the business and human rights (BHR) gap in Hungary and presents its consequences for the Ukrainian refugee crisis. We first provide a general overview of the role of business in the development and consolidation of the Orbán regime over the past 13 years, highlighting how businesses are both agents and victims of legal and political developments. The paper distinguishes four types of ‘business’: multinational and foreign companies that are direct beneficiaries of the regime; local companies that are direct beneficiaries of the regime; multinational companies that are targets of restrictive and repressive populist rhetoric and economic policies; and the ‘rest’, the remainder that try to avoid becoming targets of oligarchic takeovers. The article also documents how the state and other stakeholders are failing to meet their commitments under the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). The next part of the article assesses how companies are responding to the refugee crisis caused by the war in Ukraine, Hungary’s neighbour. If the government does not adopt Pillar I and Pillar III of the UNGPs, what room for manoeuvre do companies have? The focus here is on how companies, domestic and foreign, multinational enterprises (MNEs) and small and medium enterprises (SMEs), engage in humanitarian (and human rights) crisis management.

Visible critique/critical visibility

AbstractArtists based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are pressured by international art elites to critique the illiberal regime under which they live. But doing so is illegal. It can lead the state to retaliate with harassment, detention, cancellation of residency visas, and expulsion. Nonetheless, gatekeeping curators and critics validate UAE‐based artists’ work as worthwhile and good if these artists critique the UAE state. How do these artists balance the perils of retaliation and deportation with an exhortation to critique the state for the sake of career success and international visibility? They do so by deploying a form of critique predicated on omission and ambiguity; I term it conspicuous omission. This practice reveals norms of critique, and the normative expectations placed on contemporary artists based on their place of residence or origin.

Sanctioning democratic backsliding in the European Union: transnational salience, negative intergovernmental spillover, and policy change

ABSTRACT In 2021, the European Union (EU) started to use material sanctions to punish democratic backsliding in Hungary and Poland. This policy change presents a puzzle for the existing literatures on international responses to backsliding. We theorise two distinctive processes that can account for why EU policy changed from inaction to enforcement. First, once the issue of backsliding in a member state has attained public salience across the other member states, their mainstream parties face domestic electoral incentives to support sanctions against illiberal governments abroad. Second, once backsliding governments also disrupt intergovernmental policy cooperation and threaten common policies at the EU level, even those actors who had been reluctant to defend EU values become more inclined to use sanctions. We demonstrate the plausibility of our explanation with evidence, first, of the increasing public and electoral salience of backsliding in other EU member states, and second, of the occurrence of a negative intergovernmental spillover through increasing attacks by backsliding member state governments against common policies.

Liberal and illiberal industrial policy in the EU: the political economy of building the EV battery value chain in Sweden and Hungary

In the context of an increasingly ambitious European Union (EU) industrial policy and the transition to electromobility, the main objective of the article is to uncover the interaction between the supranational level and domestic policies through examining the buildup of the electric vehicle (EV) battery value chain in illiberal Hungary and liberal Sweden. The study analyses these diverse cases through the lenses of comparative political economy. How do European industrial policy objectives translate into national policies under widely different political conditions? How do the different translations impact on the original objectives of EU policy? Through using a structured-focused comparison, the paper argues that the building of the EV battery industry implies the entrenchment of existing models of capitalism in both cases. Liberal democracy is only compatible with the coordinated market economy model of Sweden, while in Hungary the illiberal regime and the dependent market economy model reinforce one another in face of growing public recognition of the disadvantages of dependency—misallocation of resources, environmental damage, and limits to upgrading. EU strategic objectives are served only by the Swedish model, while the Hungarian model leads to deepening institutional cleavages within the EU and implies growing dependence on Russia and China.

Political Ethics in Illiberal Regimes: A Realist Interpretation : Zoltán Gábor Szűcs (2023). Political Ethics in Illiberal Regimes: A Realist Interpretation. Manchester University Press

Hardball politics becomes a fundamental, everyday experience for hundreds of millions of people living in illiberal regimes. The perception, insight, understanding, interpretation, treatment and coping with the ‘ethics for playing hardball’ becomes a practical challenge for political actors (elected officials, MPs, mayors, policy experts, journalists, political commentators, political advisors, civil servants, civil activists, citizens) and a theoretical challenge for political scientists living in illiberal regimes. Acknowledging the author’s ambition, we can say that Szűcs perceives, undertakes, and in his monograph carries out this scholarly task, filling an important hiatus in the Hungarian political science discourse.

Civil társadalom magyarországi kontextusban

Mikecz, Dániel (2023): Civil Movements in an Illiberal Regime. Political Activism in Hungary. Central European University Press, Budapest–Vienna–New York

The Global Resistance to LGBTIQ Rights

Abstract: This essay explores the troubling global pattern of illiberal governments weaponizing the issue of LGBTIQ rights. We argue that the fluidity of sexual orientation and gender identity makes LGBTIQ people susceptible targets for antidemocratic forces, allowing autocratic and illiberal regimes to contrast these identities with the perceived stability of tradition, national sovereignty, and conventional notions of "nature." Political homo- and transphobia are used by illiberal governments as tools to mobilize constituencies by framing LGBTIQ rights as incompatible with traditional values. Based on interviews and observations of participants at international forums, we also chart the global movement opposing LGBTIQ rights and explain how it undermines liberal democracy and threatens human-rights egalitarianism, weakens international institutions, and weaponizes democratic pluralism in divisive culture wars. The essay calls for a nuanced understanding of the complex interplay between illiberalism, homo- and transphobia, and the challenge posed to the foundational values of liberal democracies. We also offer ideas for how actors in liberal democracies can respond to and defend LGBTIQ rights effectively.

Illiberal Constitutionalization and Scholarly Resistance: The Cases of Israel and Hungary

This paper explores the role of constitutional scholars in resisting illiberal constitutionalization attempts or combating existing illiberal constitutional systems. I use Israel as a case study for the former and Hungary for the latter scenario. In Israel, following the initiation of a judicial reform by the new government of Benjamin Netanyahu in early 2023, supported by far-right nationalist and ultra-Orthodox parties with the aim of dismantling the separation of powers and establishing an unbound executive, constitutional scholars, alongside street protesters, voiced their opposition to illiberalism. Since the start of the war in Gaza, triggered by Hamas’ attack on Israel in October 2023, it became evident that the Palestinian issue also calls for a constitutional solution. In stark contrast, Hungary has seen minimal resistance after the enactment of the Fundamental Law in April 2011, Viktor Orbán’s new constitution for an illiberal regime. The paper investigates the role of constitutional scholars in both countries in seizing or missing the constitutional moment.

Smart for Whom? Africa’s Smart Cities and Digital Authoritarianism

The predicament of digital authoritarianism is particularly grievous for Africa because democratic institutions have been gradually eroded in several countries throughout the region. Illiberal regimes, in particular, exploit digital technologies to undermine such fragile democracies as Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. Moreover, surveillance technology is expanding throughout the region as national and local governments seek to increase their capacity to monitor and control their populations—a trend that has been aggravated with the COVID-19 pandemic. This article assesses the risks posed by smart cities to democratic institutions and processes by identifying the main models of smart city development and how they conceive of the state and citizens’ relationship, then assessing how smart cities can potentially foster and consolidate digital authoritarianism, with a particular focus on the technology that a regime can exploit to pursue illiberal goals. I provide cases to illustrate how smart city systems promote digital authoritarianism and conclude by discussing proposals to mitigate the technological risks and promote democratic smart cities.