Authoritarian footprints in Central and Eastern Europe

ENCentral and Eastern Europe is the last world region to transition towards democracy. Today, it shows alarming signs of deconsolidation, most prominently in Hungary, Poland, and Serbia. This article assesses whether these observations form part of a systematic pattern across the region. It relies on newly-updated objective data from the Democracy Barometer for the period between 1990 and 2016. It revisits evidence for the three most prominent explanations of democratic backsliding in the region: the rise of populist parties, the incapacity of the European Union to secure democracy once pre-accession incentives weaken, and the global financial crisis.