Exploring expertise-oriented lobbying in the context of post-communist democratic backsliding

Under populist governments of different colours, parts of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) once considered the new vanguard of pro-western liberal democracy have experienced new waves of “democratic backsliding” (Bermeo, 2016), the resurgence of national conservativism and “Caesarian” strongman politics (Sata & Karolewski, 2020). While much conceptual work has been carried out on the new illiberal counter-revolution, post-communist “Trumpism” and neo-authoritarian nationalism (Hanley & Vachudova, 2018), we still know little about the status of science and expertise in post-communist policymaking. Are illiberal post-communist governments less interested in expert information from civic groups or are they simply harder to reach than democratic governments more open to civil dialogue? Or does populism close the number of venues for expertise dissemination? These questions are all the more relevant, as the openness of the policymaking process to deliberation and social dialogue is in free fall in CEE. This article fills the research gap on how democratic backsliding affects the value of expertise provision for interest groups in influencing policymaking. The analysis is conducted on an original survey of Czech, Hungarian, Polish, and Slovenian energy, healthcare, and higher education interest groups active at the national level. All four countries experienced varying degrees and forms of populism and democratic backsliding in the past decade. Yet effective governance in all three policy fields still requires expert knowledge. Along with our guiding hypothesis that democratic backsliding decreases the importance of expertise for interest organizations when influencing policy, we expect populist and backsliding governments to be especially “executive-heavy”. Direct access to the inner circle of backsliding governments may be the most or only viable pathway for information-oriented lobbying. Hence, we posit that access to the governing party is of key importance to expertise provision as the policymaking process is increasingly insulated and politicized (i.e., the room for “neutral” bureaucratic-technocratic decision-making is shrinking). Nevertheless, the parliament may remain a pivotal venue for circumventing closed and politicized inner circles of executive policymakers and mitigate the effect of isolated policy-making in the context of backsliding. We also explore the group-specific factors enhancing their ability to engage in information-oriented lobbying despite illiberal backsliding. Besides standard factors such as organizational age, professionalization and size, intergroup cooperation is one of the most important tools that organizations employ to reduce ‘environmental uncertainty’ (Pfeffer & Salancik, 2003) and mitigate their risk of organizational failure (Hanegraaff & Pritoni, 2019). Besides learning effects, intergroup cooperation may boost the dissemination of expertise between organizations, potentially making them more attractive and credible addressees of government policy-makers. We find that de-democratization affects expertise provision negatively, indeed, but not uniformly: the stronger the backsliding, the more a close relationship with the governing parties matters for sharing expertise. Yet even in the context of de-democratization, participation in parliamentary hearings/committees are of pivotal importance for expertise provision. Moreover, intergroup cooperation is an important signal for expertise exchange: organizations with EU umbrella membership and active domestic networking activities attribute significantly higher importance to expertise in influencing policy than groups lacking these assets.