Conversation #81

As early as 2019, Lührmann and Lindberg wrote about the third wave of democratic backsliding as a worldwide problem. Unfortunately, since then we have experienced further anti-democratic developments in numerous countries.

Slowly but surely, local government and urban researchers have started to notice and analyze the linkage between democratic backsliding and “subsidiarity backsliding” – i.e. the fact that sliding towards any kind of authoritarian regime usually implies limiting the power of local governments, as potential rivals for political influence. In these cases, not only does democratic backsliding limit cities’ competence and ability to undertake local democratic action, it also restricts their political agency and power to co-create democratic decentralized statal systems.

The recentralization trend has become clearly visible not only in Hungary since 2010, but also in Poland under Law and Justice (2015–2023), and in Turkey especially since 2019. Some signs of this process are also being reported in other European countries. Looking at the political strategies of central governments trying to exert centralization, we may distinguish various types of actions (Aksztejn et al., 2022; Begadze, 2022; Drapalova, 2023; Heinelt, Lackowska, 2026).

First, among the centralizing actions we may find not only a classical scenario of taking away competence from sub-national tiers (like the case of many policies taken away from Hungarian municipalities), but also less direct strategies like (Lackowska et al., 2026):

• financial weakening – as seen in Hungary, where from 2010 on, the financial autonomy of local government has been reduced severely;
• overburdening with unfunded tasks – as experienced in Poland, where in 2018 municipalities had to perform a reform of the education system at their own expense;
• abuse of control and supervision – exemplified in Turkey, where in December 2021, the Ministry of the Interior launched a criminal investigation into the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, alleging that numerous municipal personnel were linked to “terrorist organizations”;
• clientelisation of central-local relations – such as financial tutelage in Turkey, easily possible due to the revenue structure relying mainly on central transfers; and, to a smaller extent, in Poland in 2015–2023, where some central donations were dependent on the mayor’s political affiliation;
• blaming – in the very aggressive form undertaken by Erdoğan’s apparatus against metropolitan authorities.

The diversity of those strategies teaches us to be watchful for the signs of centralizing power – they may take on a different form than one would expect.

Second, looking at the political discourses created to justify recentralization, we may distinguish (Heinelt and Lackowska, 2026):

1. conventional populist narratives undermining local governments as ineffective and posing an unnecessary bureaucratic burden to taxpayers; this line of argumentation can be strengthened by a vision of a strong centralized state (as opposed to a weak decentralized one; Hungarian case);
2. a harsher version of the former, where local governments (and their leaders) are accused of corruption or even terrorism and imprisoned (the case of Turkey in 2025);
3. a disguised anti-municipal narrative allowing central government to bypass local authorities as the enemies of local communities (Poland), accompanied by the first strategy of criticizing local authorities.

Under such circumstances, local governments, especially cities and large metropolises, have started to resist in defense of democracy. And again, it turns out that those actions take on diverse forms.

Some of them refer directly to the loss of competence or financial resources as a result of recentralization and include legal actions (like the lawsuit of Budapest against the government in relation to the extremely increased solidarity tax in 2023), or political lobbying to reverse legal changes unfavorable for municipalities (exerted strongly by urban corporations in Poland, which presented many reports on the negative impact of new regulations on local governments and their finances). Others are less straightforward and may include:

• taking action in critical policy areas like climate change, affordable housing, LGBTQ+ rights, and social welfare (like Budapest, Istanbul, Ankara), and repudiating a worldview promoted by a far-right illiberal regime (e.g. Polish cities supporting a strike against anti-abortion law);
• informing citizens about the misleading elements of central discourse (as undertaken by Budapest, but also stressed by the representatives of Polish cities);
• coalition building and political lobbying – either on the domestic scene (like the Italian cities working from within the association of Italian municipalities, ANCI, in 2023 to preserve urban programmes in the Recovery Plan) or on the international arena (as manifested in the Pact of Free Cities launched in 2019 by the mayors of Budapest, Bratislava, Warsaw and Prague).

A recently published volume on Cities against democratic backsliding takes us on a journey through eight countries in Europe and beyond experiencing centralistic pressure of various intensity. For Italy, the UK, Poland, Hungary, Turkey, El Salvador, USA and China, the authors examine both (re)centralization strategies used by central government and urban responses to this pressure. In so doing, they describe how cities draw their power and desire for liberal democracy, remembering the words of Harvey saying that given prevailing neoliberal impulses and democratic decline, “revolution in our times has to be urban or nothing.” (2012, p. 25).

Cities against democratic backsliding tells a story of how cities in eight selected countries fight to change the world into a more democratic and inclusive place.

References:

Lührmann, A., & Lindberg, S. I. (2019). A third wave of autocratization is here: what is new about it? Democratization, 26(7), 1095–1113. Aksztejn, W., Lackowska, M., Krukowska, J., & Mikuła, Ł. (2022). The multiple faces of recentralization: A typology of central-local interactions. Journal of Urban Affairs, 46(7), 1329–1349. Begadze, M. (2022). Playbook of subnational illiberalism: Autocrats face the opposition-led local governments. Hague Journal on the Rule of Law, 14, 309–330. Drapalova, E. (2023). Thorns in the side: Strategies of populist parties against local public administrations. Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration and Institutions, 37(S1), 83–99. Lackowska, M., Nguyen Long, L. A., Aksztejn, W., & Tosics, I. (eds.) (2026). Cities against democratic backsliding: Evidence from Europe and beyond. Bristol: Bristol University Press. Heinelt, H., & Lackowska, M. (2026). Studying recentralisation in countries experiencing an illiberal turn – from a new framework to comparative lessons drawing. Urban Research & Practice, 1–19.