Just ineffective or intentionally constrained? Explaining the long-term opposition in Latvia, Poland and Hungary

Why do opposition parties remain incapable of regaining power, even though incumbents fail to address urgent issues, overtly break democratic rules and provoke conflicts with the European Union? PiS-led Poland (2015-2023) and Fidesz-led Hungary (since 2010) have been regarded as paradigmatic examples of "democratic backsliding", "autocratization" or "illiberalism at power" (Dresden & Howard 2016; Lührmann & Lindberg 2019, Pirro & Stanley 2022). However, even a cursory look at the state of political, societal and media pluralism in both countries unveils quite a different picture of their political systems, which has been confirmed in the recent parliamentary elections in Poland. Latvia, in turn, has been considered a consolidated democracy, even though its strongest political party – the "Harmony" – was excluded from the government for almost 17 years. Revisiting the assumptions about executive aggrandizement and its adverse side effects, I posit that the current approaches blur the substantial differences between the political systems of the new EU member states. The paper therefore adopts a different, "functionalist" perspective. While looking at the political "opportunity structure" of domestic opposition parties, it examines whether and how the opposition can fulfil its functions of alternative, control and critique. It argues that once the opposition is deliberately hindered in performing its most important function – presenting a programmatic and personnel alternative – the system change towards authoritarianism is likely to occur. The paper builds on empirical material including interviews and documents collected in Latvia, Poland and Hungary. It leverages a comparative approach to show that despite the existence of long-term opposition, the strategies of incumbents to stay in power differ decisively across these three cases. This way, the study elucidates the phenomenon of "permanent opposition" in liberal democracies and draws the line between the deterioration of democratic quality and an outright system change.