How to Break a State: How Populists Challenge Liberal Democracy in Post-Communist Central Europe

Abstract

Why are some populist challenges more successful than others? Theorizing that a successful challenge occurs from a combination of demand, opportunity, and activation, I examine these conditions in the Visegrad Countries (Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia) and how the challenger party in each country utilized these conditions to stage their challenges. Using a mix of public opinion surveys, secondary literature, and qualitative textual analysis, I find that parties that use identity-based appeals (e.g. to religion or nation) are better able to establish hegemonic electoral positions and delegitimize their opponents than parties that either coincidentally or by design fail to do so. This study contributes a review of populist challenges in post- communist Central Europe and a qualitative textual analysis of party literature that is largely unavailable in other languages. In considering why some challenges result in monolithic state capture (e.g. Poland and Hungary) while others founder (e.g. Czechia and Slovakia), we gain a broader picture of how parties instrumentalize identities and values, and a clearer picture of the structural weaknesses in liberal democratic regimes that facilitate democratic erosion and breakdown.