Seán Hanley

Seán Hanley is associate professor in comparative Central and East European politics at University College London. He is coeditor (with James Dawson and Licia Cianetti) of Rethinking “Democratic Backsliding” in Central and Eastern Europe (2019).

January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1

The End of the Backsliding Paradigm

Like the “transition paradigm” before it, the concept of democratic backsliding threatens to flatten our perceptions of complex political realities. Examples from East-Central Europe illustrate the ambiguous dynamics at play in many troubled democracies.