Explainer: What is democratic backsliding, indices for Hungary
In the first post of this series, I talked about Hungary’s Euroscepticism and how democratic backsliding in the country is directly related to its Euroscepticism. Here we will establish what democratic backsliding is, and have a first cursory look at the state of democracy in Hungary. One of the following posts will put the democratic backsliding in Hungary into perceptive and try to explain how we got there.
Whereas in the previous post we looked at the Euroscepticism of the Hungarian government a bit, here we elaborate on what democratic backsliding constitutes and how it is measured. We will then link that back to the strategic approach of Fidesz towards European integration and “the EU”, often simply referred to as “Brussels”.
What is democratic backsliding?
Most of us have an intuitive idea of what democratic backsliding is. The backsliding part implies that it is a process. So, therefore, it should be a kind of process of becoming less democratic. That also means that the starting point for backsliding is (some level of) democracy. The process then describes the worsening of the quality of democracy in this state. But how can we measure the quality of democracy? Through indicators, like those put together by the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (figure below). But more on that later.
There is quite a lot of academic literature about what democratic backsliding is. Going into that would probably guarantee that you will stop reading very quickly. So, let’s keep it focused.
- There appears to be agreement over the idea that democratic backsliding is a process of small steps —“piecemeal, often in baby steps” — and does not happen in one go.
- I find Waldner and Lust’s description of this process, in the quote below, to be on the spot. They refer to subtle changes in the democratic structure of a country, like the rules of the electoral process, but also clarify the developments that are actually more difficult to determine, like eroding norms.
Backsliding makes elections less competitive without entirely undermining the electoral mechanism; it restricts participation without explicitly abolishing norms of universal franchise seen as constitutive of contemporary democracy; and it loosens constraints of accountability by eroding norms of answerability and punishment, where answerability refers to the obligation of officials to publicize and justify their actions, and punishment refers to the capacity of either citizens or alternative governing agencies to impose negative consequences for undesirable actions or violations of sanctioned procedures.
Democratic backsliding seems to me to be some kind of shock therapy, whereby every shock further dislocates the foundations of healthy democracy.
What does a healthy democracy need? And how can you spot backsliding? These are some of the things to consider:
- Press freedom — The slogan of the Washington Post nicely captures the relevance of the media in maintaining a healthy democracy: Democracy Dies in Darkness. I consider the most noble aim in journalism, to tell the represent the happenings in the world truthfully. Because it would be naive to believe that the media is unbiased in its representation of world events, media plurality is crucial. It remains the role of a journalist to not take issues out of context or to be selective in the coverage of events.
- The rule of law (How I wish I’d also studied law!)—Checks and balances. The independence of the judiciary (courts). Equality before the constitution.
- A strong parliament — As the elected representatives of citizens/voters, members of parliament should be able to hold the government accountable for its actions and policies, and the government should take responsibility for those same actions and policies.
- An active civil society — By safeguarding the rights of specific groups or minorities, civil society organisations also hold government accountable. They speak up in cases where they consider the rights of individuals violated. But for those injustices to be overcome or corrected, the judiciary needs to be independent too.
Indicators and indices of quality of democracy for Hungary
The above factors are rather branches of governance where deficiencies can occur, and there are many more dimensions to consider. Fortunately, there are indices which provide an overview of the state of democracy in countries around the world. These indices are compiled of indicators, sometimes dozens of them, that translate mostly qualitative data into measurable units. Let’s have a look at several of these indices for Hungary to get a first idea of the state of democracy and the country’s democratic backsliding.
What does this figure show? Firstly, it is a comparison of Hungary’s performance of three macro indicators (democracy, market economy and governance) in 2010 and in 2018. It visualises how Hungary has performed on some 17 indicators, which the Bertelsmann’s Stiftung’s Transformation Index considers the important dimensions of state performance.
Important to note is that the values of these indicators are not set in stone, and their methodology may be subject to criticism. For instance, the methodology section of the Bertelmann’s Index states the following about their approach:
Guided by a standardized codebook, country experts assess the extent to which a total of 17 criteria have been met for each of the 129 countries. These experts ground the scores they provide in assessments that comprise the country reports, all of which are available online. A second country expert then reviews these assessments and scores. In a final step, consistency is assured by subjecting each of the 49 individual scores given per country to regional and interregional calibration processes. Standardizing the analytical process in this way makes targeted comparisons of reform policies possible.
In this case, the Bertelmann’s Index uses two country experts. One might argue that it continues to be a subjective evaluation, since these two individuals who evaluate country performance might be biased or partial. By the way, this is exactly what Justice Minister of Hungary, Judit Varga, did after the publication of the World Justice Project.
The numbers, you see, are based on public opinion surveys and expert opinions. In other words: purely subjective indicators.
In fact, the data collection process of the World Justice Project is rather thorough and seems to go through a very thorough evaluation process. Other organisations try to increase the reliability of the data by increasing the amount of country experts (V-Dem mostly used 5 country experts). Let’s put the indicators to work!
Descriptive results democratic backsliding in Hungary
In order to present some first results on the state of democracy in Hungary, which will prepare us for the more explanatory story to follow soon, I decided to use existing indices to get an overview of the state of democracy in Hungary. First of all, I collected the data of 10 democracy-related indices, including an index on individual freedom (Freedom in the World) and a corruption index (Transparency International). We are looking at the scores of these indices for Hungary from 2010 to 2019. All of the indices have a maximum positive value of 1, perfect scores if you wish. In the graph below, the Freedom in the World index shows a perfect score; that is because Hungary was in the top tier and until 2014 the index only gave ranges and not exact scores.
Except for the Corruption Perceptions Index, all other indices show consistent and gradual drops in the democracy scores for Hungary, indicating a process of democratic backsliding. According to Freedom House, Hungary is the first EU member state to have become only partly free; whereas the Bertelmann’s Institute labels Hungary as a defective democracy.
Next, I decided to compile an aggregate of 9 democracy-related indices, we that we can visualise the democratic backsliding of Hungary over the years. Again all of the indices have a maximum positive value of 1. So with 9 indices, the maximum score would be 9. In the case of Hungary, the aggregate score went from 6.39 to 4.41, a 31% drop in the score for the period 2010-2019.
Such an aggregate better shows the changes of these indices over time. If you question the reliability of one index, comparing that index to others can help to generalise the overall results. Here they all point in one direction: downward. With that, I would like to conclude this part. The context of these developments will be discussed in future posts! We will have a look at the regional explanations for democratic backsliding and national explanations for the process in Hungary. The link between Hungary’s Euroscepticism and democratic backsliding will also be addressed in one of the next posts.
Links to the indices
- Freedom in the World
- V-Dem Indices
- BTI Transformation Index
- Corruption Perceptions Index
- WJP Rule of Law Index
- EIU Democracy Index
