On Crisis, Values and Competencies. Party Political Framing of EU Actions Against Backsliding in Six EU Member States Between 2010 and 2024.

This paper analyzes how government and opposition parties frame democratic backsliding in general and EU counter-actions in particular in domestic parliamentary debates. We are interested in three key dimensions: how parties conceptualize backsliding measures a political challenge to the existing political order ((non-)crisis), how parties politically and normatively evaluate the challenge (values) and if they consider the EU as a formally competent and politically legitimate to pursue actions against backsliding (governance). Our comparative analysis covers three (at least temporarily) backsliding countries (Hungary, Poland, Slovakia) and three (so far) non-backsliding countries (Austria, Germany, Netherlands). To account for variation of frames used in domestic parliamentary debates on (EU actions against) democratic backsliding within and across member states as well as over time, we rely on variables accounting for the party ideology of MPs, their respective parties’ government or opposition status, (hard and soft) EU counter-actions and a country’s (non-)backsliding status. This research contributes to emerging scholarship on the domestic and multilevel dynamics of democratic erosion within the EU.