After a long period of stagnation and decline in democratic governance across the 29 countries of Nations in Transit, 2016 was marked with populist successes that raised fresh doubts about the fragile post–Cold War order. In Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans, years of populism and corruption have eroded once-promising democratic institutions. In Eurasia, personalist authoritarianism has gone from a burgeoning trend to an entrenched norm. This year, 18 of the 29 countries in the survey suffered declines in their overall Democracy Scores, the most since 2008, when the global financial crisis fueled instability and stalled political reforms. There have been more declines than improvements in each year of the survey since 2005, following the first big wave of EU expansion to the east. For the first time in the report’s history, there are now more Consolidated Authoritarian regimes than Consolidated Democracies.
The populist tide has been rising in Central Europe since 2010, when Viktor Orbán led the Fidesz party back to power in Hungary and then eviscerated the country’s checks and balances, changing the constitution and electoral code to ensure his party’s dominance while ignoring the EU’s reprimands. It gathered strength over the last six years as leaders in the Balkans rallied their bases with attacks on civil society and the press, hollowing out independent institutions even as they moved ahead with EU accession. And it surged forward in 2015, with nativist fear-mongering over migration across Europe.
With democratic values under attack in several Central European member states, the question of whether the EU is actually capable of consolidating democracy through harmonization has pushed its way to the top of the agenda. Continuing assaults on civil society and the media, grand corruption, and flawed elections across the Balkans show that despite the opening of chapters and progress on paper, democratic norms are not taking root.
Since the end of the region’s wars in the 1990s, the EU’s dilemma in the Balkans has been to balance the need for long-term reform with the priority of maintaining stability in the short term. In practice, stability has nearly always won out. But while the EU has been carefully working to keep the peace, its institutional crises and broken promises have eroded its own credibility. The window for the EU to push through transformative reforms in the Balkans may have already closed, unless the union can make a major recommitment to its principles and find the will to confront political leaders who attack its fundamental values.
The full Nations in Transit 2017 report by Freedom House is available here.
Key Findings
- In 2017, more than half of the 29 countries in the report had declines in their Democracy Scores: 18 countries’ scores dropped. This is the second biggest decline in the survey’s history, almost as large as the drop following the 2008 global financial crisis.
- For the first time since 1995, there are now more Consolidated Authoritarian Regimes than Consolidated Democracies.
- Hungary now has the lowest ranking in the Central European region. Poland’s score reached its lowest point in the survey. In these countries, populist leaders have attacked constitutional courts, undermined checks and balances, and have turned public media into propaganda arms.
- Kyrgyzstan fell back in to the category of Consolidated Authoritarian Regimes, a category it had left after competitive parliamentary elections in 2011.
- The bright spots in NIT 2017 were Ukraine, Romania, and Kosovo. Ukraine and Kosovo made modest gains due to gradual structural reforms, and Kosovo’s category improved to Transitional/Hybrid Regime. In Romania, a caretaker government addressed a number of outstanding issues, such as problems in the voting process during the previous elections.