ABSTRACT Montenegro is at the same time considered both a success story as the leader of European integration in South-Eastern Europe and a country with severe democratic deficiencies. This paper builds upon the theory of democratic backsliding and uses theory-building process tracing to detect and analyse systematic patterns in the illiberal policies that the governing party uses to maintain its position in power. The three typical cases examined here reveal that assuring external control and maintaining the pretence of legality seem to be important elements of illiberal policies and that independent institutions and European standards are often used to assert and maintain control.

中文翻译：

---

房间里的大象：黑山的自由政治

摘要黑山同时被视为东南欧欧洲一体化的领导者和一个民主严重不足的国家的成功典范。本文建立在民主倒退理论的基础上，并使用理论构建过程追踪来检测和分析执政党用来维持其执政地位的非公开政策中的系统模式。这里考察的三个典型案例表明，确保外部控制和维护合法性似乎是非法政策的重要组成部分，并且通常使用独立机构和欧洲标准来主张和维持控制。