A social causal mechanism of regime autocratisation: comparative test in Central and Eastern Europe

Existing research has predominantly explained democratic backsliding through elite strategies or institutional weaknesses. While these accounts have generated important insights, they often treat societal dynamics as secondary conditions. This study shifts the analytical focus by testing two mechanism-based explanations which link societal divisions to regime autocratisation in democratic and hybrid regimes. The mechanisms, suggested by McCoy et al. (2018, 2020), Somer et al.(2018, 2021), and McCoy and Somer (2019, 2021), theorises how and when affective polarisation produces institutional autocratisation. The first focuses the consequences of variation in the level of polarisation: increases in affective polarisation heighten social conflict and societal tolerance of practices that undermine liberal democratic constraints, thereby facilitating processes of democratic erosion. The second focuses on the consequences of polarisation intensity: episodes of severe affective polarisation are associated with a more pronounced deterioration in democratic quality. Empirically, the study focuses on Central and Eastern Europe during the period 2010–2025. The region constitutes a critical testing ground for the theories, having experienced some of the most pronounced episodes of polarisation and institutional autocratisation in recent years while remaining comparatively underexamined from a socially grounded comparative perspective. Methodologically, we assess whether the proposed causal mechanisms work by contrasting cases where regime autocratisation occurs with cases where it does not occur. Hence, we use a Most Similar Systems Design (MSDS) for case selection. Given the configurational and time-sensitive character of our theoretical claims, the research design complements Time-Differencing Qualitative Comparative Analysis (TD-QCA) by the Two Approach QCA. The main contribution of this study is to test whether different patterns of affective polarisation (its variation and intensity) actually operate as proximate causal factors – as the theory posits – or whether they act as enabling contexts for the regime’s drift towards autocracy . In doing so, the article advances a socially grounded explanation of regime autocratisation that complements predominantly elite-centred and institutionalist approaches. This work is conducted as part of the R&D and innovation project ‘Political polarisation and its impact on the constitutional framework (PORECO)’ (PID2023-157037-NB-100), supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, and benefited from Guadalupe Martinez’s international research mobility, funded by the Salvador Madariaga grant.