Legal and Practical Aspects of Autocratization. Lessons from Central and Eastern Europe

This panel offers a broad view of Central and Eastern Europe’s evolution of political regimes, with emphasis on the rule of law. After the collapse of communism, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe adopted the standards and principles of a democratic state. As the years passed, a disturbing phenomenon of a retreat from the rule of law to quasi-authoritarianism became apparent in some of them. This panel aims to examine autocratization determinants in selected Central and Eastern European states. The panel proposes two aspects of discussion: empirical and practical. It discusses legal (in particular constitutional) aspects of autocratization as a few autocratic elements in Eastern European constitutions – even nowadays - can be observed. The panel focuses also on describing non-democratic actions that have been (in)effectively stymied by courts and tribunals, including European ones. The contributors discuss the possibilities of restoring the standards of the rule of law in the judiciary. The discussion's practical aspects are devoted to analyzing case studies in selected countries: Bosnia and Hercegovina at the crossroads of political regime, the phenomenon of populism in Czechia, and the German perspective of European Parliament elections.
Contributions are theoretical, empirical, and methodological, using qualitative, quantitative, or mixed-methods approaches. Legal analysis and comparative methods are the dominant research methods.