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- Political support and democratic backsliding trends. The strange case of Central and Eastern European countriesPublication . Castaldo, Antonino; Memoli, VincenzoDuring the last decade, democratic backsliding (DB) has become a worrying phenomenon worldwide. This article addresses this topic by focusing on Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). An overview of the literature on DB in this region has identified a relevant lacuna: the lack of attention to the role political support indicators (democratic satisfaction, government trust) may play in DB processes. Testing several hypotheses through different random regression models applied to CEE countries for the period 2005–2021, an unexpected puzzle emerges: contrary to the expectations, we find that a greater government trust contributes to DB. Building on several consolidated findings of the system support theory and the classic democratisation literature, we address this puzzle, identifying temporal phases, mechanisms and causal relations and stressing the relevance of interaction processes among a complex set of causal factors to explain DB processes in CEE.
- Populism and competitive authoritarianism in TurkeyPublication . Castaldo, AntoninoThe main goal of this paper is to explain the rise of competitive authoritarianism in Erdoğan’s Turkey. The recent literature has mainly focused on the taxonomical debate about the type of regime established by Erdoğan, dealing only rarely with the factors explaining the Turkish autocratization. Building on Levitsky and Loxton’s framework, which underlines the catalyst role played by the election of populist leaders for the rise of competitive authoritarianism in Latin America, the analysis identifies the interactions among Erdoğan’s populism and threats and opportunities provided by both domestic and international environments as the major cause explaining Turkish autocratization.