Liberal Democracy and its Current Illiberal Critique: The Emperor’s New Clothes?
Open Access
- 24 September 2020
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis Ltd in Europe-Asia Studies
- Vol. 73 (2), 273-290
- https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2020.1815654
Abstract
This article focuses on the challenge of illiberalism to democracy, even though the nature of this contestation is ambiguous. The illiberal critique of liberal democracy is contextualised using conceptual history and two major ‘political credit ratings’, namely the Democracy Index and the Freedom in the World Report. Empirically we concentrate on Hungarian politics, which we consider to be an example of soft authoritarianism, drawing on two key speeches by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán: his launch of the idea of the ‘illiberal state’ in 2014 and his emphasis on ‘Christian democracy’ after the 2018 election campaign.Keywords
Funding Information
- The Ella and Georg Ehrnrooth Foundation (-)
This publication has 26 references indexed in Scilit:
- On Democratic BackslidingJournal of Democracy, 2016
- Facing Up to the Democratic RecessionJournal of Democracy, 2015
- The Myth of Democratic RecessionJournal of Democracy, 2015
- The liberal in liberal democracyDemocratization, 2013
- Beyond the Radial Delusion: Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy and Non-democracyInternational Political Science Review, 2010
- How to classify hybrid regimes? Defective democracy and electoral authoritarianismDemocratization, 2009
- Elections Without Democracy: The Menu of ManipulationJournal of Democracy, 2002
- Elections Without Democracy: Thinking About Hybrid RegimesJournal of Democracy, 2002
- Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative ResearchWorld Politics, 1997
- The Rise of Illiberal DemocracyForeign Affairs, 1997