Contesting the EU’s Legitimacy over the Refugee and Rule of Law Crises: Insights from Turkey and Hungary

Abstract

This paper studies how the representatives of illiberal governing parties in two illiberal regimes (Hungary and Turkey) challenge the EU from within (Hungary) and without (Turkey). Is there a variation in their contestations against EU legitimacy? Which issues do they converge or diverge about? What do their similarities and differences imply for the EU’s policies, external relations as well as European integration? To address these questions, the paper uses a bottom-up approach and brings into the analysis the perspectives of Hungarian and Turkish governing political actors in the context of two relevant EU crises which have arisen in recent years: the rule of law crisis and the refugee crisis.