Two decades ago, in his controversial but prophetic article “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy”, Fareed Zakaria warned of the fragile and vulnerable character of democracy and pointed to the worrying rise in the occurrence of so-called illiberal democracies. Indeed, today we are witnessing an epidemic of passing “rotten”, restrictive laws that strive to narrow the scope of civil society action. Playing on emotions, under the guise of nationalism and feelings of false belonging, a new Berlin wall is being built (raised), the one between “us” and “them”. Authoritarian rulers who come to power begin the transformation of democracy in which the winner defines all the rules. As a product of this game of disguise, in numerous countries with democratically elected authorities, civil and political rights are often systematically neglected. With the aim of manipulating masses, pillars of democracy such as the rule of law, independent judiciary, respect for minority rights, freedom of speech, freedom of the media and freedom of assembly are systematically ignored or abused. In other words, the concept of democracy is reduced to a mere multiparty system, while at the same time all the remaining fundamental components needed for an adequate functioning of a democratic pluralistic society are being suppressed or institutionally marginalized. In order to raise awareness of this burning problem, the Human Rights House Zagreb (HRHZ) in cooperation with the Human Rights House Foundation (HRHF) and its partners from Croatia, Poland, Hungary and Serbia published the report “Resisting Ill Democracies in Europe: Understanding the playbook of illiberal governments to better resist them”, in which comparative case study conducted in Croatia, Hungary, Poland and Serbia is presented, in order to identify forms of political behaviour and practices that undermine the rule of law, human rights and fundamental freedoms and marginalise minorities, as well as to present examples of best practices in combating illiberal democracies.
