The rule of law in new democracies

Syllabus

Course outline: The course on the Rule of Law and Democratic Challenges in the ECE deconstructs the timeline of the currently entrenched conflicts referring to the understanding of the Rule of law and democratic values in the new MS. It does so by investigating the following four themes and questions:

1.                 Rule of law: a conceptual reappraisal. What are the classical definitions of the ‘rule of law’? How are the basic features of the rule of law recodified/challenged by the increasing standardization of good practices in supra-national contexts (the EU-level benchmarks and operationalization of the judiciary, the anticor­ruption, media pluralism, and checks and balances)? What are the contemporary political instruments that can be used for properly defending the rule of law in the EU?

2.                 Rule of law and democratic decline. Is there a complete overlap between democratic backsliding and the attacks on the rule of law? What are the additional proxy measures of the rule of law in contemporary politics? (e.g., anti-corruption reforms, identity politics, etc.). This session will start with the general trends and current rankings of the new democracies. Please also check: CPI (https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2022), V-DEM report (https://www.v-dem.net), but also the basic indicators from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD

3.                 Conflictive normative constellations: Rule of law as a political discourse. Are different regime types conditioning different forms of backsliding (and why)? What are the main political narratives and conflicts surrounding the rule of law? How do local political polarizations redefine, distort or instrumentalize the meanings of the rule of law in the MS? (Case studies primarily from Poland, Hungary, and Romania). What are the main dividing lines – if any- amongst the European party families in reference to RoL and democratization? (e.g., EP debates)

4.                 Romania: overcoming the ‘laggard of the transition’ symptom. What is the political significance of the end of the post-accession conditionality (the CVM lifting)? Is Romania – after all - a success story of the EU conditionality? What are the local forms of political polarization concerning the rule of law definitions? (Reforms of the judiciary/anticorruption, etc.)

Annotation

Successive EU crises and enlargement conditionalities have brought about a new politicization imperative: the codification of the rule of law and democratic values. For the last decade, the European Commission’s activism, the EP resolutions, and debates scrutinizing the political situation in some of the new member states (MS) gradually bootstrapped the EU scrutiny to bear on a wider range of principles and values, stretching well beyond the scope of the rule of law mechanism (Müller 2015).

By thoroughly recording political downfalls in the new member states, through negation – the rhetorical indictments of local practices – they set implicit and consensually settled democratic benchmarks. At the same time, against the backdrop of conflicts between governmental majorities of some Eastern European EU member states and the EU institutions, a new form of sovereignism emerged, in opposition to the EU and its institutional demands.

This conflict provided CEE leaders with the opportunity to question the principles and meanings of the ‘rule of law’ and to advance alternative understandings of the proper role of the EU and its fundamental principles.