Much of the scholarship investigating the resilience of the Ukrainian society since 2014, and especially since February 2022, focused on strengthened local and national identity, enhanced central state capacity, popular sentiment and the development of civil society organisations. Although very important, these explanations should be integrated with the focus on the preferences and actions of regional and local political and economic elites, especially in those regions that have been traditionally considered closer to Russia in terms of geography, economic integration and public opinion. As a matter of fact, since February 2022 far from switching side regional elites showed a remarkable alignment with national authorities, working closely together to resist the Russian invasion.

The article seeks to investigate the nature and impact of the process of decentralization started in 2015 and supported by the European Union, and how these dynamics affected centre-region relations and subnational politics in Ukraine. It argues that assessing formal and informal incentives of decentralization - including possible negative consequences such as a greater concentration of resources in the hands of local power brokers – is an important element to understand the cohesion and resistance showed by local elites and the future development of democratic institutions at the national and subnational level.

Hungary and Poland have since 2010 and 2015 respectively moved in an illiberal and authoritarian direction. Ever since, the EU has struggled to find an appropriate response. Kelemen (2020) has described how the EU has even facilitated autocratization, creating an 'authoritarian equilibrium.' The inadequate responses of the EU have been harshly criticized in the literature with reference to legal possibilities. Yet political obstacles have often not been taken equally seriously. Europe's responses have varied over the years and differed between cases. What explains these differences? In this theoretical contribution, I argue that the EU faces three fundamental problems in the rule of law crisis. First, it must recognize the authoritarian threat in member states; second, it must find an appropriate tool to respond; third, it must gain political support from other actors for the use of these tools. Breaking down the decision-making process into its components reveals its weaknesses, which were exploited strategically by the backsliding governments. This shows how Hungary and Poland have tried to mitigate, delay, and prevent sanctions both through the choice of autocratization instruments and communication strategies. I depict this as a 'Supranational Tug of War.' However, a combination of learning processes, new tools, and stronger political support for sanctions has strengthened the EU against authoritarian member states. This leads to an increase in the costs for anti-democratic governments and has the long-term potential to disrupt the authoritarian equilibrium.

Democracy is one of the founding values of the European Union (EU) and a guiding principle in its external relations. In the course of the Eastern enlargement, the Union emerged as one of the major democracy promoters. However, assaults on democratic institutions in Europe, most prominent in the cases of Hungary, Poland and Serbia, have undermined the assumption about the transformative power of the Union and sparked a discussion whether and how the Union can safeguard and promote democracy. Despite the growing body of literature, research on the impact of the Union lacks a strong comparative dimension and remains largely confined to the study of the effectiveness of the EU sanctions. Thirty years after the establishment of the Copenhagen criteria, the paper explores in a comparative perspective the debates about the impact of the Union on democracy before and after accession. Firstly, it traces the scope and evolution of EU democracy promotion and safeguarding across EU enlargement policy and EU internal policies. Secondly, it explores why ‘how the Union matters for democracy in enlargement countries’ remains contested by juxtaposing the literature on the Eastern enlargement with the research on the Western Balkans. Thirdly, the paper discusses blind spots and biases in the study of democratic backsliding in the EU. Finally, the paper concludes by reflecting on how the Union has influenced democracy in Central and Eastern Europe and on why democracy promotion and safeguarding have become integral to European integration.