Political Support and Democratic Backsliding Trends. The Strange Case of Central and Eastern European Countries

Although democracy has made considerable progress during the third wave, democratic backsliding has emerged in the last decade as a worrying phenomenon in both new (i.e., Eastern Europe), weak (i.e. Balkans) and even old and consolidated democracies (i.e., USA). Two major explanations of this phenomenon are gemming up reproposing the classic agency/structure divide: on the one hand the ‘backsliding paradigm’, focusing on the role played by populist leaders, on the other, a set of structural conditions among which is emerging the role of political support (satisfaction with democracy and trust in government). Three hypotheses elaborated on the ground of this literature has been tested on 6 Central and Eastern European countries in the 2005-2020 period. Using Eurobarometer data and applying a linear regression model, we find support for the hypotheses focusing on the role of populist actors and satisfaction with democracy but, contrary to the expectations, we find that a greater trust in government contribute to democratic backsliding.