Conspiracy Theories Mask the Real Threat to Eastern European Democracy

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, attention focused on executive aggrandizement as the main democratic threat in Eastern Europe. That focus, however, risks overlooking a deeper danger: the region’s longstanding problem of state capture, which has been intensified by the spread of conspiracy theories and COVID misinformation.

🧭 The Argument and Puzzle

State capture—private interests controlling the state—represents a structural, political threat. Rising conspiratorial beliefs, amplified during the pandemic, blur the line between that real political conspiracy and empirically unsupported conspiracies (for example, COVID denialism, a secret "world government," or the idea that political correctness is a tyrannical plot). Voters’ difficulty in distinguishing these types of conspiracies enables state-capture actors to both:

• Divide and demobilize reformist opposition,
• Portray themselves as competent managers and defenders of European values.

📊 Surveys from Bulgaria and Europe

Evidence draws on two survey sources used to test this hypothesis:

• An original national survey conducted in Bulgaria,
• The GLOBSEC 2020 cross-national survey covering multiple Eastern European countries.

These surveys are employed to explore how conspiratorial beliefs interact with perceptions of state capture and political competition.

🔑 Key Findings

• Conspiracy theories have become more salient in Eastern Europe and were further reinforced by COVID-related misinformation.
• Many voters struggle to separate a real, empirically grounded political conspiracy (state capture) from baseless conspiratorial claims.
• This conflation helps state-capture aligned actors fracture reformist coalitions and sustain their hold on power, while claiming legitimacy and alignment with European norms.

❗ Why It Matters

The findings suggest that democratic backsliding in Eastern Europe cannot be understood solely as executive aggrandizement. The interaction between an existing state-capture problem and a growing conspiracy cleavage reshapes political competition and resilience. Future research is urged to treat the conspiracy cleavage as a distinct and important factor in processes of democratic decline.