Politicized Transnationalism: The Visegrád Countries in the Refugee Crisis

Abstract

Existing research on the evolution of European integration has pitted economic against identity issues. In the economic sphere, governments are arguably able to pursue their preferences more independently. If, however, identity issues become politicized this is supposed to suggest that governments lose their dominant position in integration and gradually become agents of Eurosceptic parties and/or electorates. This article looks at a phenomenon neither the intergovernmentalist nor the postfunctionalist perspective can fully explain: the emergence of the Visegrád Group (V4) as a collective actor in European politics in early 2016. This emergence occurred in the wake of the refugee crisis during which the identity issue of migration was politicized. However, there was no coherent partisan composition uniting V4 governments. Based on a sequence elaboration of all press statements of meetings of the V4 Prime Ministers since their EU-accession in 2004, we show that what at first sight appears to be informed by anti-immigrant and Eurosceptic sentiments may in fact display a more ambivalent position towards regional integration. The post-refugee crisis V4 appears as a case of politicized transnationalism—that is, cooperation to achieve transnational interests under the condition of politicization. This transnational interest not only comprised opposition to a relocation of migrants, but also the maintenance of a core transnational freedom within the EU, namely free movement under the Schengen acquis. We conclude that, under the condition of increasing politicization, identity issues help to forge government alliances of governments pursuing economic preferences.

“Refugees” as a Misnomer: The Parochial Politics and Official Discourse of the Visegrad Four

“…The slow yet constant decline of socialist and liberal parties in the 2010s in the four East-Central European countries opened a space for conservative, nationalist and populist forces, which either won popular support sufficient to form a government or mobilised a considerable proportion of the citizenry around a nationalist or populist discourse, exerting therefore intense pressure on the ruling parties and framing domestic politics in an ethnopolitical context (Agh, 2015;Bauerova, 2018;Czarnecka, 2018;Koß & Séville, 2020). Even though migration policies have accompanied the social and economic development of the four Visegrad countries in recent decades, they have been revised and modified by the nationalist-populist governments which took power in the 2010s (Bugaric & Kuhelj, 2018;Havlík, 2019;Sadurski, 2019;Vachudova, 2019).…”

Political Behavior in the EU Multi-Level System

“…As laid out in this introduction, this 'politics turn' is accompanied by an increased interest in research on political behavior of individual and collective actors in the EU multi-level system The various contributions in this thematic issue link research on party organization (Pittoors, 2020), electoral behavior (Braun & Tausendpfund, 2020;Schmitt, Sanz, Braun, & Teperoglou, 2020), interest groups (Berkhout, Hanegraaff, & Statch, 2020), party competition (Lefkofridi, 2020), responsiveness (Lefkofridi & Giger, 2020) as well as government politics and parliamentary behavior (Euchner & Frech, 2020;Heinkelmann-Wild, Kriegmair, & Rittberger, 2020) more broadly to the multi-layered systems within EU Member States, but also between EU Member States (Koß & Séville, 2020). Although the "European polity is a complex multi-level institutional configuration, which cannot be adequately represented by theoretical models that are generally used in international relations or comparative politics" (Scharpf, 2010, p. 75), the conceptual, theoretical, and empirical insights gained in this thematic issue shed light on various aspects of political behavior in the EU multi-level system beyond the predominant focus on electoral politics across multiple levels of government (see, e.g., Golder, Lago, Blais, Gidengil, & Gschwend, 2017).…”

Blackmailing and Identity Profiling? The Behaviour of Populist Radical Right Governments in EU Development Policy

“…In recent years, the EU has faced challenges from within as some member states have deliberately undermined EU decision-making processes or positioned themselves against EU values. In particular, governments led by populist radical right parties (PRRPs) have challenged the EU on migration and asylum, contested the EU's response towards Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and questioned trade, security, and climate policy, or the European integration process more generally (Biedenkopf et al, 2021;Costa, 2019;Csehi, 2023;Koß & Séville, 2020;Petri et al, 2020).…”