Europe’s Other Democratic Deficit: National Authoritarianism in a Democratic Union

This paper argues for a radical recasting of the democratic deficit debate concerning the European Union (EU). Critics have long argued that the EU suffers from a democratic deficit and that growing EU power undermines national democracy. The recent slide toward autocracy in Hungary – and the EU’s efforts to stop it – remind us that, whatever the EU’s flaws, democratic deficits can also exist at the national level and the EU may have a crucial role to play in safeguarding democracy and the rule of law. This issue of Europe’s “other democratic deficit” is not confined to Hungary, as other EU member states have also experienced backsliding on democracy and the rule of law. This paper will place the EU’s struggles with democratic deficits in its member states in comparative perspective, drawing on the experience of other democracies that have struggled with pockets of subnational authoritarianism. Comparative analysis suggests that legal levers alone are unlikely to safeguard democracy at the subnational (or in EU’s case, national) level: so long as political leaders are willing to put partisan interests above democratic values, they may allow local pockets of autocracy to persist for decades within otherwise democratic political systems.