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Playbook of Subnational Illiberalism: Autocrats Face the Opposition-led Local Governments

Recognizing the growing tensions between autocrats in the center and opposition-led local governments in Hungary, Poland and Turkey since 2018–2019 local elections, the article contributes to existing literature on illiberal democracies with a subnational portion of illiberal playbook. Tactics ident...

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Autor principal: Begadze, Mariam
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer International Publishing 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9676784/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40803-022-00184-8
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author Begadze, Mariam
author_facet Begadze, Mariam
author_sort Begadze, Mariam
collection PubMed
description Recognizing the growing tensions between autocrats in the center and opposition-led local governments in Hungary, Poland and Turkey since 2018–2019 local elections, the article contributes to existing literature on illiberal democracies with a subnational portion of illiberal playbook. Tactics identified through the detailed study of the European context and brief review of Latin American experience leaves us with the following categories in the playbook: abuse of (existing) supervisory and accountability mechanisms; generating of financial vulnerability; centralization (outright and indirect) and deconcentration. Each of these categories assemble various means evolving through application and reinterpretation of traditional rules pertaining to local government, as well as crisis-induced innovations. While the Polish account carries the optimism still that antecedent robust guarantees and popular support matter even when illiberals rule the center, the playbook proved successful in Hungary and Turkey. Although certain incrementalism stayed as the most vulnerable actors were the first victims of soon-to-be normalized measures, crisis in Hungary and Poland did stretch the limits to the point that ulterior motives of undermining opposition-led local governments became publicly observable. Reflecting on this phenomenon, in the end, the article poses a theoretical question whether such pretextual instrumentalization of law can itself be judicially manageable, at least in situations when clear political opponents are targeted.
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spelling pubmed-96767842022-11-21 Playbook of Subnational Illiberalism: Autocrats Face the Opposition-led Local Governments Begadze, Mariam Hague J Rule Law Article Recognizing the growing tensions between autocrats in the center and opposition-led local governments in Hungary, Poland and Turkey since 2018–2019 local elections, the article contributes to existing literature on illiberal democracies with a subnational portion of illiberal playbook. Tactics identified through the detailed study of the European context and brief review of Latin American experience leaves us with the following categories in the playbook: abuse of (existing) supervisory and accountability mechanisms; generating of financial vulnerability; centralization (outright and indirect) and deconcentration. Each of these categories assemble various means evolving through application and reinterpretation of traditional rules pertaining to local government, as well as crisis-induced innovations. While the Polish account carries the optimism still that antecedent robust guarantees and popular support matter even when illiberals rule the center, the playbook proved successful in Hungary and Turkey. Although certain incrementalism stayed as the most vulnerable actors were the first victims of soon-to-be normalized measures, crisis in Hungary and Poland did stretch the limits to the point that ulterior motives of undermining opposition-led local governments became publicly observable. Reflecting on this phenomenon, in the end, the article poses a theoretical question whether such pretextual instrumentalization of law can itself be judicially manageable, at least in situations when clear political opponents are targeted. Springer International Publishing 2022-11-21 2022 /pmc/articles/PMC9676784/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40803-022-00184-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Begadze, Mariam
Playbook of Subnational Illiberalism: Autocrats Face the Opposition-led Local Governments
title Playbook of Subnational Illiberalism: Autocrats Face the Opposition-led Local Governments
title_full Playbook of Subnational Illiberalism: Autocrats Face the Opposition-led Local Governments
title_fullStr Playbook of Subnational Illiberalism: Autocrats Face the Opposition-led Local Governments
title_full_unstemmed Playbook of Subnational Illiberalism: Autocrats Face the Opposition-led Local Governments
title_short Playbook of Subnational Illiberalism: Autocrats Face the Opposition-led Local Governments
title_sort playbook of subnational illiberalism: autocrats face the opposition-led local governments
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9676784/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40803-022-00184-8
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