Foreground Liberalism, Background Nationalism: A Discursive-Institutionalist Account of EU Leverage and ‘Democratic Backsliding’ in East-Central Europe

This paper argues for a fresh approach to debate on democratic backsliding and EU influence in Central and Eastern Europe drawing on the Discursive Institutionalism (DI) of Vivien Schmidt. Underlying assumptions about backsliding in CEE largely reflect a set of ideas derived from the Rational Institutionalist and Historical Institutionalist schools. Moreover, the same theoretical assumptions were previously deployed to explain the apparent success of democratization and EU leverage in CEE. A DI perspective, stressing the role for actors and their discourses in constituting and unconstituting institutions, suggests that democracy in CEE was always less secure than assumed. It also highlights the key role of liberal mainstream parties in embodying democratic institutions. Case studies of the liberal centre-right in Bulgaria and social democrats in the Czech Republic highlight the way ‘background ideas’ of ethnically exclusive titular state have increasingly impinged on ‘foreground ideas’ of liberal pluralism.