'The End of Cheap Labour': Discursive Opportunity Structure and Economic Protest in Post-Communist Settings

Post-Communist countries, e.g. Poland, Hungary or Czech Republic are well known for their specific discourses on economic themes in relation to ideology and politics. Being opposed to neoliberal economics or promoting active role of the state in the economy in these countries has meant denying the results of democratic transitions in the end of 1990s as well as recalling and restoring nondemocratic communist regimes. This concerns not only the discourse on economy, but any protest activities related to economic problems or challenges such as wages rise, pension reform or austerity policies. Based on the case study of the Czech Republic, the relation of the discourse on economy and protest related to economic themes is explored in this text. Discursive opportunity structure is used to identify what kind of economic discourse is accepted as the mainstream one and creates the basic framework for understanding what is legitimate in the broader political culture and what kind of discourse is understood as alternative and not widely recognized as acceptable and legitimate. These findings are supplemented with the data from protest event analysis comprising all events related to economic themes to show how the above-mentioned protest events are related to the discursive opportunity structure. In terms of the theory the paper contributes to the discussion on frame resonance, discursive opportunity structure and the role of discursive fields in relation to successful mobilization.