Democratic Erosion and Academic Freedom in Hungary and Poland

• In Event: Democratic Backsliding and Academic Freedom I: A Macro-Perspective

Abstract

Democratic erosion is understood as a process implemented by legally elected incumbents who purposefully change the ‘rules of the game’. The method consists in the incremental dismantling of democratic institutions and principles, using apparently legalistic means, undertaking gradual piecemeal steps, and providing a narrative legitimizing these steps, often disguised as a laudable public mission (Bermeo 2016; Haggard and Kaufman 2021; Kneuer 2021; Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018; Lust and Waldner 2015; Lührmann and Lindberg 2019). These erosion agents – as we call such incumbents driving democratic erosion – also are interested in creating an illiberal public sphere challenging free press, scientific organizations, or even curtailing political freedoms and civil rights (Bennett & Kneuer 2023: 5). So far, studies have focused strongly on the connection between democratic erosion and press freedom, but less on the effect on academic freedom. To what degree do political leaders engage in limiting academic freedom? How do they implement such limitations? Which motives are driving this engagement? What is the temporal sequence between the restrictions on academic freedom and the other steps of undermining institutions?

These are the questions that lead our paper as we are interested to understand if there is a correlation between democratic erosion as an overall process and curtailing academic freedom as one important element within this process, and what are the driving motives of the erosion agents in doing so. Moreover, we examine where the curtailment of academic freedom occurs within the gradual process of erosion. Following the argument that the predominant logic of action within the process of democratic erosion is sequencing, that means, that the transformation of the rules of the game is neither carried out synchronously nor in an arbitrary way, we hypothesize an evolutionary sequencing where the limitation of freedoms takes place after the erosion agents had changed the institutional rules and after they secured persistence in power (Kneuer 2021: 1450f).

Our analysis follows the method of focused comparison selecting the two cases of democratic erosion in the European Union: Hungary and Poland. Within the EU both countries show a clear movement away from democracy; Hungary under the Orbán government (2010-today) developed from a liberal democracy to an electoral democracy and finally an electoral autocracy (Regimes of the World 2022). Poland under the PiS-government (2015-2023) which was defeated in the 2023 parliamentary election, moved from a liberal democracy to an electoral democracy (Regimes of the World 2022). For the analysis, we use the Academic Freedom Index by the Varieties of Freedom Project as well as qualitative data. As we are interested in the evolutionary character, the perspective is longitudinal, comparing the path of academic curtailing in both countries and at the same time identifying critical road marks. We expect this to deepen the understanding of the role of academic freedom for erosion agents and when and why they engage with it in the overall process of dismantling the democratic system.

Authors

• Marianne R. Kneuer, TU Dresden

• Ellen Bos Bos, Andrássy Universität Budapest