Cooperation among the European Parliament (EP) and European Commission has often driven deeper integration. However, it has notably faltered in the realm of Rule of Law (RoL) enforcement. This breakdown culminated in the EP’s decision to initiate legal proceedings under Article 265 TFEU against the Commission for its failure to activate the RoL conditionality mechanism concerning the Polish and Hungarian governments in 2021. Parliament’s legal action marks a significant departure from its previous interactions with the Commission and from its earlier complicity in the underenforcement of RoL standards. As follows, this paper tests the prevailing view that Commission’s forbearance typically fails to provoke substantial institutional responses. Relying on a case analysis of internal documents, parliamentary debates, and semi-structured interviews with MEPs, officials from the EP’s Legal Service, and Commission representatives, this paper evaluates key ideological and strategic factors behind the EP’s decision. In so doing, it examines whether the EP acted out of a renewed commitment to safeguarding RoL, or whether the legal action resulted from other strategic interests that coincidentally aligned with protecting RoL principles. This distinction is crucial for anticipating future EP actions, as strategic motivations may not always align with RoL protection. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of how institutional forbearance shapes inter-institutional dynamics and influences RoL protection within the EU. They also shed light on what drives shifts in EU bodies’ behaviour and illustrate the evolving role of the EP in RoL enforcement mechanisms.

In many countries, asylum offices are subject to political influence and, like other administrative bodies, are affected by shifting paradigms of public administration. Asylum offices are staffed with bureaucrats who possess considerable discretion in their day-to-day activities. The proposal argues that the amount of discretion can sometimes conflict with the organization's institutional logic, potentially compromising the asylum office's functioning. A considerable body of research has examined administrative behavior during the asylum procedure and the institutional habitus in which the bureaucrats operate. However, there remains a paucity of research addressing the interaction between these two aspects and their potential impact on the functioning within an asylum office.

The proposal examines the asylum decision-making process in two countries. First, it draws on institutional logic as an analytical framework. Institutional logics are understood as a "supraorganisational pattern of activity", following a central logic that guides organisations and individuals in their behavior and decision-making. It is deemed to be useful to examine how actors are influenced by their situation in multiple social locations in an inter institutional system. Second, through the lens of street-level-bureaucracy, the proposal seeks to analyse the ways in which bureaucrats’ discretionary practices mediate institutional logics, structuring the implementation of asylum policies and influencing organizational outcomes. It is a useful lens to detect where conflict between institutional logic and administrative discretion manifests and can cause inconsistent decision-making, policy drift, and/or diminished organisational legitimacy.

To this end, the institutional logic theory focuses on the meso-level of the asylum offices, seeking to explain how case-workers are influenced by their setting, and street-level-bureaucracy as a theoretical angle to detect how caseworkers deal with this institutional logic within their behaviour at micro-level.

Cleavage theory presupposes that the political parties adapt to changes in their environment. The crises can potentially affect or even transform the political landscape, eventually leading to the emergence of new cleavages at both national and transnational levels. Within the EU context, scholars have observed new transnational cleavage the core of which lies in a cultural conflict. In this article, the aim is to find out whether the rule of law crisis in general and individual democratic backsliding episodes in particular have led to the formation of new transnational cleavage in EU politics. In fulfilling that aim, I look at the policy agenda of the national and EU political parties. More specifically, this article answers the following two sets of questions: (a) Do the political parties at both levels accent the quality of democracy and the rule of law in the EU member states? If so, how do they frame the rule of law issues in the EU in their electoral manifestos?; (b) Are the political parties responsive to the democratic backsliding in the EU or particular member states? In other words, is it possible to observe any patterns between changes in parties’ policy agendas and democratic backsliding in reality taking place in the EU? This article builds on analysis of electoral manifestos for the EP elections and national parliamentary elections in selected member states in the period starting with the first post-Lisbon EP elections in 2009.

In response to democratic backsliding, the EU has repeatedly implemented its safeguard mechanisms against Poland and Hungary, aiming to protect its democratic processes from disruption and non-compliance and to redirect these states toward liberal democracy. However, the erosion of democracy in both countries continues and is even spreading to other EU member states. This raises the question: ”Under which circumstances, and for what reasons, are EU safeguard mechanisms effective against democratic backsliding?"

Drawing on a novel institutionalist approach, I argue that member states attempt to pursue their interests while observing EU norms, engaging in a strategic three-level game to balance national and European stakeholders’ concerns. However, the interests of backsliding states directly oppose the EU norms and values, leading to discontent either at the domestic or EU level.

Similarly, the EU is a rational actor, and member states' compliance with EU norms is among its core interests. Consequently, the EU conducts a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether to implement its safeguard mechanisms and, if so, whether to opt for soft or strong ones. Acting in this multi-level game, the EU weighs the potential effectiveness of its measures, their associated costs, and the reactions of other member states.

In response to EU safeguard mechanisms, backsliding member states make strategic decisions about their behaviour. Applying their cost-benefit analysis within the three-level game, they may choose to realign with EU norms and rules, or to continue deviating from them, deflecting blame onto other actors while continuing to maximise their own benefits.

Recent scholarship suggests that there is variation in how populist parties in the EU talk about democracy. Parties like the Netherland’s Party for Freedom (PPV), for example, focus on promoting more direct democracy in party manifestos, including calls for binding referendums, direct elections of government representatives, and less bureaucracy. Poland’s Law and Justice Party (PiS), on the other hand, has emphasized their commitment to more liberal democratic norms in its manifestos, including the recognition of opposition parties as full and equal participants in politics.

As democratic backsliding continues in the EU, the way that parties talk about democracy is becoming more important. This language shapes voter perceptions and sets expectations for democratic governance, potentially influencing the institutional stability of democracies.

Building on existing research, we analyze the framing of democracy in over 130,000 written questions from the European Parliament to the Commission. Our preliminary findings reveal a statistically significant correlation between inquiries about rule of law violations and instances of democratic backsliding—indicating that as backsliding rises, so too do concerns expressed in these questions. However, this statistical link does not clarify the motivations behind these inquiries or their implications. This paper aims to unpack the content of these questions, examining how different parties frame democratic issues within the EU, and what this variation means for the future of democratic governance.