Visegrád four political regionalism as a critical reflection of Europeanization: deciphering the “Illiberal Turn”

Abstract

This paper discusses the significance and potential consequences of illiberal politics for the Visegrád Group's (Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia) role as a regional integration platform. Moreover, links between Europeanizationand V4 geopolitical identity will be explored as part of investigating discursive framings of Central Europe's "illiberalism." I suggest that illiberal regionalism is a useful concept in that it problematizes political and popular narrations of East-West difference as competing projects of Europeanization. I will also argue that instead of a fundamental regional illiberalism what we find is an unstable, temporally limited and contingent constellation of political and social agendas. Illiberal regionalism can thus be read as strategic, aguably opportunistic, contestations of EU policies that reflect economic, political, and social uncertainties. Tensions involved in this regionalist shift are exemplified by "revolutionary" Hungarian and Polish national conservative agendas and their interaction with the more measured pragmatism of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It is also clear that illiberal regionalism reflects the reciprocal and interdependent nature of the V4's political relations within the EU. Benefits of EU membership, such as leveraging and enhancing national status, continue to act as powerful counter-currents to more radical projects that would, for example, contest Euro-Atlantic alignments.

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The reception and integration of refugees from Ukraine in Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary – the New Immigration Destinations of Central Europe

“…Only recently, international migration turned into a contentious and frequent subject of public debate in the region. Such a change was driven by the right wing governments coming to power in Central Europe, capitalising on xenophobic fear and using it as a fuel for their "illiberal turns", particularly around the 2015 refugee crisis (Scott, 2021). As a result of those changes, in the following years the development of V4 countries' policies addressing refugees shifted towards securitisation, even if the door for voluntary, labour migration were being opened wider and wider (Androvičová, 2016;Klaus et al, 2018;Klaus, 2017;Legut & Pędziwiatr, 2018;Pancevski, 2019;Bures & Stojanov, 2022).…”

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