From Revolution to ‘Counter-Revolution’: Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe 30 Years On

Abstract

The essay explains the origin, scope and forms of the anti-liberal surge taking place in Central and Eastern Europe. Why have voters across the region deserted the liberal politicians who managed to secure peace and prosperity on the ashes of communism? Does the erosion of democratic values and institutions lead to autocracy, or something novel? Special attention will be devoted to the issue of order and chaos in the broader European setting. Can order be maintained without shared values across EU member states? The conclusions will point to the variety of hybrid regimes in Central and Eastern Europe and assess their impact. CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE IS AGAIN MAKING HEADLINES, but for very different reasons than was the case in the years following 1989. After years of impressive progress in which communist states were transformed into liberal ones, the region now has taken another turn, this time towards a new version of authoritarian politics. After dismantling the walls dividing states and societies, Central and Eastern Europe is now erecting new walls, albeit in different forms and places. After making enormous efforts to join European institutions, the region is now undermining these institutions. After struggling for the human and civil rights denied by communism, the region now promotes exclusive versions of national and religious communities. The pandemic has only reinforced the authoritarian tendencies in the region, with some of the governments using the emergency powers for their partisan political ends (Martin 2020). At the helm of this 'counter-revolution' against the fruits of the liberal revolutions of 1989 are not old communists trying to regain power but people who were among those who initiated the region's 'return to Europe' three decades earlier; Viktor Orbán and Jarosław Kaczyński are the most prominent among them. The revolutions of 1989 progressed through mass mobilisation and negotiation; the counter-revolution currently taking place is being forged through the ballot box. Populist politicians do not organise strikes or build barricades: they simply win elections. The revolutions of 1989 caused disruption and economic pain, whilst the current counter-revolution can pride itself on enjoying economic growth. The revolutions of 1989 were about 'catching up' with Europe, sometimes in demeaning conditions. The current counter-revolution is about restoring local pride and

Populist politics of representation and foreign policy: evidence from Poland

“…Since the 1990s, the incrimination of a collusion—and continuity—between communist and post-communist liberal elites has been at the heart of Kaczynski and other PiS ideologues’ political message, leading them to equate, and equally oppose, communism and liberalism (see, for instance, Legutko 2018 ). The denunciation of post-communist liberal elites and, relatedly, of the West as a vector of technocratic liberalism found resonance among an important share of the population due to the resentment fuelled by the transition period, the humiliation of political imitation, and the denial of any political alternatives (Zielonka and Rupnik 2020 ; Krastev and Holmes 2019 ). While the discrepancy between a ‘rhetorical commitment to liberal-democratic pluralism’ and a ‘benignly neglectful monism in the form of technocratic government’ (Bill and Stanley 2020 , 379) provided a favourable terrain for an anti-liberal backlash, PiS mobilized these grievances in the sense of its own ideological and political agenda.…”

“…Since the 1990s, the incrimination of a collusion-and continuity-between communist and post-communist liberal elites has been at the heart of Kaczynski and other PiS ideologues' political message, leading them to equate, and equally oppose, communism and liberalism (see, for instance, Legutko 2018). The denunciation of post-communist liberal elites and, relatedly, of the West as a vector of technocratic liberalism found resonance among an important share of the population due to the resentment fuelled by the transition period, the humiliation of political imitation, and the denial of any political alternatives (Zielonka and Rupnik 2020;Krastev and Holmes 2019).…”

The Curious Case of Slovakia

“…In comparison, in democracies of the Western type the inclination was to define common identity in civic rather than in ethnic terms, so belonging to a nation is defined in terms of jus soli, being born in a territory. In Central and Eastern Europe, the non-inclusive ethno-nationalist definition of the in-group feeds into the contemporary support for neo-authoritarian populists, who promote exclusive versions of national and religious communities (Zielonka and Rupnik 2020). An increasingly polarized identity politics (Mesežnikov and Gyárfášová 2018) of playing upon standard preexisting ideological cleavages (Catholic conservative vs. liberal attitudes) are combined with ethno-nationalist exclusivity (against minorities, migrants, and refugees).…”

Editorial

“…In that sense, the crisis of liberalism is a part of a cultural counterrevolution (cf. Krastev 2019;and Zielonka and Rupnik 2020) ongoing in the region of Central Eastern Europe-a region that in three decades underwent changes more rapid and more drastic than any undergone by Western societies. In the words of Timothy Garton Ash (2020), the former Eastern world post-1989 underwent a historically unique process of attempting to convert a fish soup back into an aquarium, while nobody could empirically know whether that was even possible.…”