From Democratic Deficit to Democratic Backsliding: What Conception of Democracy for Europe?

In Europe, three conceptions of democracy – majoritarian, liberal and social – compete to define how we should understand, assess and address democratic backsliding. Rarely articulated explicitly yet entirely consequential, these conceptions offer divergent – indeed oppositional – answers to all the pertinent dimensions of the issue, theoretical as well as practical: what democracy requires, what forms of power it rejects; whence it draws its normative political value; and what fundamental human danger it seeks to avert. This paper will offer a rational reconstruction of these three positions, their philosophical roots and outlook, their shortcomings and promise, seeking in the first instance to contribute to the conceptual clarity of a discourse that too often relies on definitional slogans like “popular sovereignty”, “free and fair elections” or “a community of free and equals”. The paper will then draw three key implications. First, considering the question of democratic resilience, it will reframe the debate on whether an illiberal democracy can remain democratic by situating the two sides squarely within the first two conceptions (majoritarian and liberal) and positing a social third, to critically examine the conditions under which even a liberal democracy can remain democratic. Second, it will revisit the question of the democratic deficit of the EU in order to deepen our understanding of why EU institutions have been unable effectively to handle the autocratic (anti-democratic on all three accounts) regimes in Hungary and Poland. Third, it will argue that a real counterforce to autocratic populism calls for a robust social conception of democracy which goes beyond the first two, specifically by shifting the ideal paradigm from a democratically-elected government that rests on legitimate authority, to a democratic society that aspires to justice.