The Resilience-Security Nexus in the EU Periphery: Populist Instrumentalization of Energy Policy and Green Transformation in the Visegrad Four

Over the past decade, the Visegrad Four (V4) countries have emerged as a critical laboratory for studying the intersection of populist governance and democratic backsliding (e.g. Huber et al., 2021; Guasti & Bustikova, 2023; Sata & Karolewski, 2024). As some V4 countries gradually pivot toward authoritarian governance, the discourse on energy and green transformation has been increasingly reframed through a nationalist and protectionist lens. This paper examines yet under-researched dimension of this shift: the evolution of the concept of "resilience" within the EU’s eastern periphery’ s political and policymaking reality. Drawing on a systematic content analysis of strategic policy documents from 2010 to 2025 in the V4 countries, this study investigates how right-wing populist actors have reconfigured the concept of "resilience" from a technocratic, EU-led paradigm into a tool for state-centric security and risk management. We argue that this shift represents a form of "environmental populism" (Buzogány & Mohamad-Klotzbach, 2021) that weaponizes energy infrastructure projects to consolidate domestic power while challenging EU-level climate objectives. By tracing these national-level documents, the paper assesses whether such "nationalist resilience" serves as an anchoring mechanism for illiberalism or a pragmatic adaptation to a changing geopolitical environment (Weyland, 2024). Ultimately, the study highlights how populist challenges to the European Green Deal threaten the cohesive functioning of the Union, offering broader implications for the future of democratic resilience in peripheral EU member states. Bibliography Buzogány, A., & Mohamad-Klotzbach, C. (2021). Populism and nature—The nature of populism: New perspectives on the relationship between populism, climate change, and nature protection. Zeitschrift Für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft, 15(2), 155–164. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-021-00492 -7 Guasti, P., & Bustikova, L. (2023). Varieties of Illiberal Backlash in Central Europe. Problems of Post-Communism, 70(2), 130–142. https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2022.2156889 Huber, R. A., Maltby, T., Szulecki, K., & Ćetković, S. (2021). Is populism a challenge to European energy and climate policy? Empirical evidence across varieties of populism. Journal of European Public Policy, 28(7), 998-1017. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2021.1918214 Sata, R., & Karolewski, I. P. (2020). Caesarean politics in Hungary and Poland. East European Politics, 36(2), 206–225. https://doi.org/10.1080/21599165.2019.1703694 Weyland, K. (2024). Democracy’s resilience to populism’s threat. Cambridge University Press