EU and Democracy Promotion in Hybrid Regimes: The Struggle to Promote Trust and Resilience in the Neighbourhood

The EU’s democracy promotion agenda is at a critical juncture. Amid intensified geopolitical competition and war on its borders, the EU faces the dual challenge of renewing its enlargement policy and defending democracy within and beyond its frontiers. The challenge is that much of its neighbours—both in the Western Balkans and Eastern Europe remain governed by various contours of hybrid regimes—systems that combine democratic institutions with authoritarian practices. These regimes are neither fully autocratic nor genuinely democratic; rather, they represent a grey zone where both democratic aspirations and authoritarian entrenchment coexist. This thematic issue brings together empirical and conceptual contributions that critically examine how the EU and other external actors engage with hybrid regimes in the EU’s immediate neighbourhood, focusing on trust, social cohesion, and democratic resilience. It argues that understanding the EU’s limited success in democracy promotion requires moving beyond institutionalist approaches to include the societal dimensions of resilience—trust in institutions (vertical) and trust among citizens (horizontal) and understanding the durability that gives hybrid regimes. This is not just a passing phase but seems much more entrenched and long-lasting. Together, the contributions demonstrate that the persistence of hybrid regimes in the EU’s neighbourhood reflects both the limitations of EU policies and the agency of domestic actors, including patron-client relations, civil society movements, protest dynamics, and local narratives of legitimacy and belonging. The thematic issue is structured around three interrelated themes:

1.      Theoretical and conceptual perspectives on hybridity, regime complexity, and the EU’s evolving democracy-promotion toolkit in a geopolitical era.

2.      Empirical analyses of trust, social cohesion, and civic agency in countries caught between democratic aspirations and authoritarian drift.

3.      Comparative lessons on how the EU can adapt its enlargement and neighbourhood policies to better support democratic resilience in hybrid settings.

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