Authors

Discussion

This article examines how the rise of radical conservatism within EU member states is reshaping the Union’s external democracy-support policies, using Belarus as a key case. While the EU traditionally framed democracy assistance as a values-based endeavour grounded in liberal universalism, several member states, most prominently Hungary, but also others (tbc) are recoding it through nationalist, civilisational, and strategic narratives. Drawing on recent work on Autocracy Inc. and radical conservatism (Williams et al., 2025), the article argues that this ideological shift externalises illiberal norms, producing a hybrid form of “illiberal democracy support.” In this approach, stability, sovereignty, and moral order often trump human rights and liberal pluralism. Through discourse and policy analysis, the article traces how this illiberal turn affects EU coherence on Belarus and aligns certain European and North American actors with the broader authoritarian ecosystem. The Belarus case thus reveals how internal ideological struggles within liberal democracies increasingly shape their external engagement with autocracies.