Nations Conquering States? Nationalist Persuasion, Legacies of Transition, and Democratic Backsliding in Europe

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Christina Isabel Zuber
• Subject Area: Political Science
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 523633539

In recent years, a number of European democracies have begun to move towards authoritarianism. Despite a growing number of contributions on ‘democratic backsliding’, a core question remains unanswered: How do illiberal elites continue to generate support in elections, even as they undermine democratic institutions? The present project hypothesizes that illiberal elites generate such support through the strategic use of nationalist appeal. First, nationalism is a persuasive platform in its own right, since it taps into both voters’ interests and their social identities. Second, nationalism with its inherent majoritarianism helps legitimise illiberal reforms as necessary for promoting the sovereign self-determination of the nation as a collective, arguing that this goal is better realised in a majoritarian than in a liberal democracy. However, nationalism is unlikely to resonate equally well across contexts. Legacies of transition matter: Where democracy once overcame a fascist, ultra-nationalist dictatorship, voters should be more sceptical of nationalism today. Conversely, where democrats once fought regimes with a communist, anti-nationalist ideology, nationalism can likely attract even pro-democratic voters today. Ceteris paribus, illiberal elites should gain more from the strategic use of nationalist appeals in post-communist than in post-fascist societies. The project employs a multi-method design to test these expectations. Regression models probe associations between the content of electoral platforms and the electoral success of illiberal elites both before and after episodes of backsliding for all European post-fascist and post-communist democracies between 1992 and 2019. This is followed by in-depth analysis of the mechanism of nationalist persuasion in three pairs of similar cases with different legacies: Spain and Poland (fascist vs. communist), West and East Germany (fascist vs. fascist-communist compound legacy), Croatia and East Germany (fascist-communist). Focus groups with ordinary citizens and qualitative content analysis of elite speeches reveal how citizens and elites understand democracy, and how they connect it to their understandings of the nation and their memory of the democratic transition. Survey experiments in all five contexts add a rigorous test of whether nationalist justification increases individuals’ support for backsliding, and whether the effect of nationalism is indeed conditional on the transition context. By raising awareness of the different ideological legacies of democratisation from a fascist, as opposed to a communist, regime, the project hopes to lay the basis for a deliberation on European values that is as much informed by the shared experience of overcoming totalitarianism, as it is sensitive to the diverse ideological legacies and memory cultures that developed in the aftermath of post-fascist and post-communist transitions.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Croatia, France, Poland, Spain
• Cooperation Partners: Dr. Michal Kotnarowski; Professor Jordi Munoz, Ph.D.; Professor Dr. Viseslav Raos; Professor Jan Rovny, Ph.D.