Democratic backsliding by country

Democratic backsliding, also known as autocratization, is the decline in democratic qualities of a political regime. The coinciding tenure from 2017 to 2021 of ANO 2011 leader Andrej Babiš and his ally, President Miloš Zeman, has been described by analysts Sean Hanley and Milada Anna Vachudova as a period of democratic backsliding, albeit to a less drastic degree than Poland or Hungary. However, other academics such as Elisabeth Bakke and Nick Sitter have disputed this, describing it as "conceptual stretching" and claiming that "exceptional factors" that existed in Hungary and Poland are not applicable to the Czech Republic. Georgia's governing party, Georgian Dream (GD), was accused of democratic backsliding in a 2019 report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, for failing to approve more representative electoral reform proposals. U.S. Senators Jim Risch and Jeanne Shaheen accused Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia of backsliding for not implementing the reforms. The electoral system was ultimately reformed ahead of the 2020 Georgian parliamentary election in a compromise between the Georgian government and the opposition. Iulia-Sabina Joja of the Middle East Institute has disputed allegations of democratic backsliding against the Georgian government, stating that "Georgia has fared well over the last eight years and GD has stayed on the path of democratization and reform" and drawing attention to Georgian improvements on corruption perception and press freedom indices. Fidesz Since 2010, Hungary under Viktor Orbán and his right-wing Fidesz party has been described as a prominent example of democratic backsliding. As in Poland, political interference by the legislative and executive branches of government threatens the institutional independence of the judiciary. In 2012, the legislature abruptly lowered the age of retirement for judges from 70 to 62, forcing 57 experienced court leaders (including the President of the Supreme Court) to retire.