Populists’ stunning electoral victories in Europe and the United States have shaken the post–Cold War order in Europe and Eurasia, but they could ultimately reinvigorate liberal democracy.

In 2016, populist successes at the polls in Western Europe and the United States rocked the world, not least the countries of postcommunist Europe and Eurasia covered by Nations in Transit. The April 2016 referendum in the Netherlands against recognizing Ukraine’s Association Agreement with the European Union, the United Kingdom’s vote to withdraw from the EU, and the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States all raised fresh doubts about the fragile post–Cold War order.

These external shocks came after a long period of stagnation and decline in democratic governance across the 29 countries of Nations in Transit. In Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans, years of populism and corruption have eroded once-promising democratic institutions. In Eurasia, personalist authoritarianism has gone from a burgeoning trend to an entrenched norm. This year, 18 of the 29 countries in the survey suffered declines in their overall Democracy Scores, the most since 2008, when the global financial crisis fueled instability and stalled political reforms. There have been more declines than improvements in each year of the survey since 2005, following the first big wave of EU expansion to the east. For the first time in the report’s history, there are now more Consolidated Authoritarian regimes than Consolidated Democracies.

https://freedomhouse.org/report/nations-transit/nations-transit-2017