Exploring the Nexus between De-Europeanisation and Autocratisation in Contemporary Europe

The nature of the link between Europeanization and Democratization has been the object of a long and fruitful debate among scholars in the last two decades, in particular regarding Central and Eastern European countries, the Balkans and acceding countries. More recently, in light of recent political developments in some EU member states and candidates, opposite phenomena, in the form of de-Europeanization and autocratization started to receive increasing scholarly attention. The concept of de-Europeanization is understood as the progressive detachment of some countries from the political, administrative and normative influence of the European Union; whereas, the concept of autocratization has been used in reference to the political changes in an authoritarian direction that move away some countries from liberal democracy. While de-Europeanization and autocratization literatures broadened our theoretical and conceptual understandings related to these two specific phenomena mainly through detailed case studies, the theoretical causal link between these two processes remained largely unstudied. Although it is well-known that both de-Europeanization and autocratization are multi-causal in nature, there is ample empirical evidence to suspect the existence of a causal relationship between the two as they occur simultaneously not only in acceding countries (Turkey) or potential candidates in Western Balkans but also in some Member states such as Hungary. Against this background, this paper is an attempt to explore and question this supposed interaction and causal link between these two processes in times of declining democracies in Europe. In the first part, the paper discusses both concepts (autocratization and de-Europeanization) presenting their origin and tracing their development in the relevant scholarly literature. In the second part, the paper critically discusses the type of relationship existing between the two. In the third and final part, the paper uses two empirical cases, Turkey and Hungary, to illustrate the hypothesized causal relationship between the two phenomena.