From democracy to hybrid regime. Democratic backsliding and populism in Hungary and Tunisia

Democratic backsliding has become a global reality which in the past decade has curiously occurred together with populism and the polarisation of societies. How do these phenomena interact? Through a comparative study of two iconic cases of democratisation and democratic backsliding from different world regions, Hungary and Tunisia, we find that polarisation - typically instrumentalized by populists along the socio-cultural axis - harms social trust, setting a context in which societies accept democratic backsliding. Based on a most-different-systems design, our findings confirm the causal link between populism and democratic backsliding and represent a starting point for further analysis focused on the effects of the socio-cultural dimension on institutional change.