Beholding the Backsliders: European Media Coverage of Hungary and Poland

• In Event: Take On Me: Institutional Rejection in Europe

Abstract

Concern about democratic backsliding in the European Union has been rising for years, but EU institutions have been surprisingly reluctant (and slow) to respond. This is a puzzle, as authorities in Hungary, and to a lesser degree Poland, have unabashedly ignored and violated EU rules about democratic governance and the rule of law. In only the most recent instance of EU leaders' willingness to overlook such violations, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unfroze EU funds earmarked for Hungary in December 2023, based merely on promises by president Orban to respect the independence of the judiciary. This move by von der Leyen was roundly criticized by the leaders of the main four political party groupings in the European Parliament.

However, despite dissatisfaction in the European Parliament, there has been surprisingly little pushback from the individual member states. I argue that this is partially due to a lack of public pressure for action, which in turn is the result of patterns in media coverage that are key to shaping public perceptions of other countries. More precisely: most publics in most EU member states have continued to view Hungary and Poland as peer nations in comparatively good standing, and as a result are not inclined to push their governments for stronger action.

This paper analyzes how the image of Hungary and Poland has shifted over time in the print media of four key EU member states since the turn of the century. To do so, I generate semantic spaces, or word embeddings, that make it possible to locate the names of countries relative both to other countries and to relevant political concepts such as democracy and authoritarianism. Using the full output of leading newspapers in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain to generate such spaces, the data show that while media portrayals of Hungary and Poland in all four countries convey some movement of these countries towards autocracy, there is considerable variation in the degree to which these trends are criticized.

In particular, the German media are critical of backsliding but emphasize Hungary and Poland’s continuing status as important friends and allies, while the Italian and Spanish media are less critical of the backsliding. Only in France do the media both criticize the backsliding and portray Hungary and Poland in more adversarial terms over time. These cross-national differences are explained by a combination of political, economic, and geographic factors. The findings thus shed new light on the relative dearth of domestic political pressure in other EU countries to hold the backsliders accountable. While recent trends in Poland provide grounds for optimism, the Orban regime is unlikely to arrest its backsliding without firmer sanctions driven by its fellow EU member states.

Author

• A. Maurits van der Veen, College of William & Mary