Resisting Democratic Backsliding: Tentative Lessons from Slovakia

Democratic backsliding has been considerably present in the CEE region over the last decade. Yet, Slovakia remained immune to any systemic efforts to hamper the quality of democracy, unlike its neighbors, Hungary and Poland (Bakke&Sitter 2020). In the last fifteen years, there have been at least two opportunities for such a development – a nationalist coalition led by Robert Fico in 2006-2010, and a one-party government of SMER in 2012-2016. We aim to address the role historical experience with semi-authoritarian regime to better understand why Slovakia has not yet fallen victim to the backsliding trend observed in the region. We focus on institutional constraints which decreased probability of success of such attempts, particularly those pertaining to vertical and horizontal separation of powers, while paying attention to the role of media and civil society in reinforcing these institutions. We analyze the effects of the reform of local and regional governments, direct presidential elections, and major reforms and developments concerning the rule of law institutions which made efforts at democratic backsliding more costly and eventually prevented from undue concentration of power. We trace these developments as the counter-reactions to Mečiar-initiated executive measures in the post 1998 period.