How opposition parties politicize democracy during autocratization

Abstract

How do democratic actors rhetorically politicize their own disempowerment? Autocratization as a gradual process not only erodes democracy, but also progressively reduces the power of domestic actors to oppose this erosion. Often, incumbent governments disable the institutions meant to hold them accountable, such as parliaments. Drawing on the case of Hungary, we study how (opposition) parties rhetorically politicize democracy within the institution of parliament. As a case of rapid autocratization, Hungary saw far-reaching changes, including the transformation or abolition of many democratic institutions over the past years. New laws also restricted the rights of parliament itself, thereby narrowing the opportunities for public debate around democratic procedures. We address two questions related to this: To which extent do opposition parties politicize democracy and its procedures in a context of autocratization? And how does the way they talk about democracy differ from that of the government? The paper uses text-as-data methods – namely a dictionary of democratic principles and a word-embedding-based analysis of democracy rhetoric – to study parliamentary debates between 2010 and 2022. We find that democracy is highly salient for both the government