The domestic politics of EU action against democratic backsliding: public debates in Hungarian and Polish newspapers

Abstract

Democratic backsliding in Hungary and Poland has inspired a growing literature on EU actions to enforce the rule of law at the member state level. Some researchers have warned against possible unintended consequences of EU interference, but systematic research on the domestic politics of EU rule of law protection in target countries is largely absent. We develop a set of theoretical expectations regarding the positions of domestic political actors towards backsliding governments and EU actions. We test our hypotheses with original data from news articles in Hungary and Poland. We find that governing parties, rather than blaming ‘Brussels’ for illegitimate interventions in domestic affairs, spend considerable effort defending their own actions. Similarly, opposition parties and civil society actors focus on criticising their country's governments instead of supporting EU actions. EU actions thus provide domestic actors opportunities to discuss democratic backsliding, but EU actions receive little support in public (newspaper) debates.