A Coup of Democracy Against Liberalism: Legitimating Illiberal Rule in Hungary and Turkey

Abstract

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, policymakers and academics shared a sense of optimism regarding the victory and future expansion of liberal democracy. Constitutional consultants and aid agencies developed initiatives to promote democratization and the rule of law abroad, while scholars such as Fukuyama wrote in grand terms of the ideological “end of history.”

Viewed from the vantage turbulent point of 2017, it is apparent that history’s obituary was premature. Illiberal leaders and anti-system parties seeking to upend the prevailing liberal order are ascendant around the globe, while liberal democracy and its defining institutions (e.g. the European Union) are on the defensive. Intriguingly, many of the most prominent challengers to liberal democracy are not fully authoritarian countries but instead hybrid regimes which merge electoral democracy with markedly and often avowedly illiberal policy agendas. Further, the rise and overt nature of these regimes runs counter to contemporary scholarship assuming that liberal democracy is synonymous with democracy writ large, and that legitimacy accrues solely to liberal democracy in the post-Cold War era.

This thesis examines the rise and legitimation of these illiberal democracies, reconsidering the theoretical relationship between democracy, legitimacy, and law and investigating the way in which modern illiberal democracies assert legitimacy claims. From a theoretical perspective, I argue that contemporary scholarship on illiberal democracy is weighed down by the assumptions of the “end of history” narrative as well as a conflation of normative and descriptive terminology. Integrating the literature on democratization with scholarship on the rule of law and sociological research on legitimation, I argue that illiberal democracies wield electoral and legal institutions as means of legitimation that coexist with nationalist, religious, and performance-based warrants to rule.

Following a case study approach, I test this argument by assessing the evolving relationship between state and society in Hungary and Turkey—two early adopters of illiberal democracy that were once considered paragons of the end of history paradigm. By examining the discourse, policies, and use of law in each country, I find that in both illiberal democracies pursue substantively similar strategies of legitimation despite their divergent cultural and societal contexts. Illiberal leaders in each country lean on their democratic credentials and adherence to the formal procedures of rule of law to assert legitimacy claims while attempting to delegitimize their opposition. By pursuing what I call modes of “positive legitimation” and “negative legitimation,” modern illiberals wield democracy as a cudgel against liberalism.

This study finds that illiberal democracy constitutes a genuine competitor to liberal democracy at the ballot box and marketplace of ideas, contrary to the claims of contemporary scholarship. This finding in turn suggests that practitioners working to promote the rule of law or build liberal democracy face a steeper task than it may initially appear. Though this thesis does not conclude with specific policy recommendations, discarding the shibboleths of past “end of history” and “transitology” narratives is necessary if policymakers and scholars hope to understand and combat the rise of illiberal democracy abroad and at home.