Why are people abandoning democracy for the nation, and what can we do about it?

Filip Milačić is a senior researcher at the “Democracy of the Future” office of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, visiting professor at the Central European University (CEU), and research affiliate at the CEU’s Democracy Institute. He is the author of Abandoning Democracy for the Nation (CUP Elements, Politics of Development Series, 2026).

Why do voters support politicians who subvert democracy? This has been a burning question for more than a decade in democracies across the world. Instead of focusing on the usual explanations such as polarization or populism, Milacic breaks new ground by focusing on the interplay between democracy and nationalism. By relying on the experiences of five countries  (Serbia, Poland, Hungary, Israel, and Turkey) and using exclusive data obtained through surveys and interviews with actors involved, he answers three key questions: (1) How the subversion of democracy in the name of the nation unfolds, (2) Why many voters acquiesce to the subversion of democracy by nationalist elites, and (3) What matters in resisting the attacks on democracy with nationalist appeals. The answers to these questions reconcile demand-side and supply-side findings on democratic backsliding and shed new light on how to fight back more successfully by demonstrating an important role of a national counter-narrative. In addition to the five countries under investigation, the presentation will also include insights about compelling counter-narratives from the surveys in established Western democracies.