The role of populist parties and movements in transitions to hybrid regimes in Europe

This chapter examines the role that populist parties and movements played in the establishment of so-called hybrid systems that is authoritarian forms of government, which maintain the formal procedures and institutions of representative democracies that however are subordinated to the whims of a predominant executive. The analysis of the developments in Turkey, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Poland and Hungary – where hybrid regimes were or are being established – show, that in no single case, populist parties resisted autocratic tendencies, but instead either acted as forerunners in the dismantling of representative democracy or jumped on the bandwagon of other parties, who embarked on building hybrid regimes.