Work package 1:

This work package (WP) focuses on the macro-institutional and legal-constitutional aspects of exclusionary populism seeking to answer two research questions.

RQ1: To what extent is there a decline in the private-public divide and the Rule of Law; and to what extent are they related to the rise of exclusionary populism?

RQ2: What factors make states vulnerable or resilient to the strategies of exclusionary populist parties and movements that have acquired significant power?

To address these questions, WP1 seeks to establish the extent to which different countries have experienced a decline in the RoL and what factors may explain cross-country variation in these trends.

Anecdotal evidence and previous research suggest that the extent of the erosion of the RoL and the resilience of their institutional systems vary with different histories of populist actors as well as different economic paths (e.g. Cianetti et al., 2018; Cianetti, 2018; Greskovits, 2015; Ekiert, 2012). However, there is no agreement on the assessment of these trends and the extent to which backsliding has indeed taken place and how it relates to ‘democratic hollowing’ (Cianetti, 2018). Thus, Eikert (2012) underscores the relative resilience of many post-socialist EU countries despite the strong impact of the Euro crisis; while others underscore the far-reaching decline of democracy and the RoL even before the crisis hit (Krastev 2007; Rupnik 2007). Recent electoral trends and reversals in Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and other countries further blur the picture of where the region is headed (Cianetti et al., 2018; Greskovits, 2015).

To make a comprehensive assessment of the extent of these trends possible and thus address RQ1 and RQ2, we combine various datasets capturing different levels:

 1.   Level 1: the evolution of the RoL norm as incorporate in countries’ constitutions;

2.   Level 2: the evolution of the legal rights of two key stakeholder groups namely capital (shareholders and creditors) and labour;

3.   Level 3: political, macro-, and socio-economic factors (e.g. inequality) that may be causally related to changes observed at the first two levels.