Lenka Bustikova

Focusing on the rising support for the populist right in Eastern Europe, this book examines how anger and resentment towards minorities is being utilized in politics. Bustikova details the process by which the acquisition of political power and demand for rights by ascendant minority groups precipitates a backlash of mobilization from the radical right. However, this book also argues that prejudice against minorities is not a sentiment exclusive to right-wing voters and is not the root cause of increasing support for the radical right. Rather, this study reveals variation in how minorities are accommodated by the government and explains the electoral successes and failures of radical right parties. By examining the capitalization on these feelings of discontent towards politically assertive minorities and with the governmental policies that yield to their demands, Bustikova exposes volatile, zeitgeist-dependent conditions under which once fringe right-wing parties have risen to prominent but precarious positions of power.

Radical Right Mobilization in Eastern Europe

Extreme Reactions

Petra Guasti

Abstract: Scholars are coming to terms with the fact that something is rotten in the new democracies of Central Europe. The corrosion has multiple symptoms: declining trust in democratic institutions, emboldened uncivil society, the rise of oligarchs and populists as political leaders, assaults on an independent judiciary, the colonization of public administration by political proxies, increased political control over media, civic apathy, nationalistic contestation and Russian meddling. These processes signal that the liberal-democratic project in the so-called Visegrad Four (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) has been either stalled, diverted or reversed. This article investigates the "illiberal turn" in the Visegrad Four (V4) countries. It develops an analytical distinction between illiberal "turns" and "swerves", with the former representing more permanent political changes, and offers evidence that Hungary is the only country in the V4 at the brink of a decisive illiberal

Lenka Bustikova

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