Central Europe Thirty Years after the Fall of Communism

This book examines politics and international relations in Central Europe three decades after the fall of communism. It analyzes some of the most recent trends, including the European disagreements on migration and multiculturalism, and the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on political discourses in the region.

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This book examines the politics and international relations of Central Europe (the Visegrád Four) three decades after the fall of communism. Once bound together by a common geopolitical vision of "returning to the West," the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia now find themselves in a more ambiguous position. The 2015 European migration crisis exposed serious normative differences with Western Europe, leading to a collective V4 rebellion against the European Union's migration policies. At the same time, as this book demonstrates—despite this normative rift with Western Europe and despite the democratic backsliding in some of the V4 states—they remain deeply dependent on the West in both symbolic and material terms. Furthermore, ways in which individual Central European states position themselves vis-a-vis the West exhibit notable differences, informed by their specific political and cultural legacies. The author examines these in separate country chapters. This book also contains a chapter that analyzes the effect of the COVID-19 crisis on political discourses in the V4.