Dismantling and Restoring Liberal Democracy by Legislative Norms? A Framework for Analysis and Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe

Illiberal actors in government frequently enact nativist and exclusionary economic and identity policies. At the same time, they seek to entrench such illiberal agenda by undermining the check-and-balance institutions of liberal democracy, a process known as democratic backsliding in the extant literature. In this paper, we explore a particular mechanism through which elected governments increase their power: legislative norms. The tracking of such ‘illiberal’ legislation helps us to understand the formal practices behind the attacks on the fundamental institutions of liberal democracy. In particular, it allows for the identification of the underlying process which may be more gradual or abrupt, as well as the tipping points at which liberal democracy is impaired. Despite its theoretical relevance, the politics and policies of democracy-related legislation have not been systematically explored. For this purpose, we first elaborate on a conceptual framework to identify the key areas which may be targeted by democracy-related legislation and devise a coding scheme to assess the relevant legal change compared to a status quo document. In a second step, we apply the coding scheme to 291 bills initiated by Polish governments between 2005 and 2019. In doing so, we identify whether formal changes expand or contract the powers of executive, and distinguish between small and large changes. Based on these findings, we reflect on the next steps of this ongoing project on mapping democracy-related legislation across CEE and explaining its initiation and success in the legislative process.