Politics of Democracy in Central Europe: Crisis as Open-ended Repoliticisation

This paper examines the often-proclaimed crisis of democracy in Central Europe, focusing specifically on Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. We go beyond the narrow reading provided by the ‘democratic backsliding’ thesis and instead open up to the broader politics of democracy, which we understand as a social struggle over the meanings and relationships between ‘democracy’, ‘Europe’ and ‘market’. We argue that the current crisis in Central Europe is above all an open-ended process of repoliticisation, with the participation of whole range of different actors - political parties, civil society, social movements. Our perspective aims at giving voice to the plurality of actors and alternatives which have been all too often neglected.