ABSTRACT The article concludes the Special Issue, Illiberal Politics in Southeast Europe, on the retreat of liberal democracy in the region. It focuses on the central themes that link all the papers together: free and fair elections, media freedom, judicial independence, privileged access to public resources and the role of civil society. It seeks to disentangle the causes and consequences of illiberal politics in the region and explores the similarities in the illiberal practices and strategies incumbents use with the aim of staying in power indefinitely. The main argument is that democratic backsliding in Southeast Europe is deeply rooted in the unfinished transitions of the 1990s, which gave rise to new political and economic elites and that blending those two into one resulted in the dominance of the executive over the judiciary and legislature. These new elites became entrenched during the wars and conflicts that affected the region. The enabling factors were of societal origin – clientelist practices, corruption, nepotism and mistrust in politics accompanied by external factors – as well as international pull and push factors (from the EU and Russia) along with a domino effect of democratic backsliding in the region.

中文翻译：

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迈向加入欧盟并摆脱自由民主制

摘要本文总结了关于该地区自由民主的退缩的特刊，《东南欧的自由政治》。它着重于将所有文件联系在一起的中心主题：自由公正的选举，媒体自由，司法独立，享有公共资源的特权以及民间社会的作用。它试图弄清该地区非政治性的原因和后果，并探讨了现任者在无限期执政的情况下所采用的非常规做法和策略的相似之处。主要论点是，东南欧的民主倒退深深扎根于1990年代未完成的转型，这就产生了新的政治和经济精英，并将这两者融合为一，导致行政部门在司法和立法机关中占主导地位。这些新的精英阶层在影响该地区的战争和冲突中变得根深蒂固。促成因素是社会起源的–客户行为，腐败，裙带关系和对政治的不信任，并伴有外部因素–以及国际上的推拉因素（来自欧盟和俄罗斯）以及该地区民主倒退的多米诺骨牌效应。