Defects in Estonia's Democracy in the Face of a Global Deterioration in the Quality of Liberal Democracy

Abstract

The example of Estonia examines the compliance of the Baltic “young” democracies with the EU's liberal-democratic institutional and value standards. The quality of democracy is studied, the main defects of democracy that are characteristic of Estonia. It is emphasized that Estonia is not characterized by an illiberal turn, but there is stagnation in the quality of liberal democracy, and in some matters there is even a setback. It has been proven that the transition to a more conservative, nationalist agenda has occurred in Estonia, and the level of political and legal culture of the population has contributed to this. It is noted that liberal democratic values, rules of democratic coexistence are not yet firmly established in all socio-demographic groups of the population of the country. It is noted that a significant problem for Estonia's democratic perspective is posed by political actors interested in regime change (first, the EKRE Party and its Blue Awakening youth wing). With the rise of the EKRE party, democracy in Estonia is gradually losing its liberal core, increasing anti-liberal populism. It is stated that the ideology of The Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) is aimed at turning Estonia towards rejecting neo-liberal values, increasing hate speech, increasing intolerance and more. The reasons for the rise in popularity of radical political actors in Estonia are: structural changes in the Estonian party system (after 2012) and; legalization by the state of civil partnership for same-sex couples (2014); a pan-European migration crisis (from 2015); the formation of a new government as an alliance of ideologically opposed forces (2019). It has been proven that democracy in Estonia is not sustainable, the democratic political culture of the population is not strong enough, and the nationalist-conservative discourse has an upward trend.