TRAJECTORIES OF DEMOCRATIC TRANSITS IN THE VISEGRAD GROUP: BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICE
TRAJECTORIES OF DEMOCRATIC TRANSITS IN THE VISEGRAD GROUP: BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICE

Summary/Abstract: With Visegrad’s accession to the Euro-Atlantic structures, bold predictions of leading Western comparative political scientists (Samuel Huntington, Philippe Schmitter, Larry Diamond, Zbigniew Brzezinski) about a former autocracies’ successful democratic transit over a short 10–15 years’ period came true to life. In the Visegrad Group, establishment of a normative consolidated democracy was not too complex, whereas maintaining a high-quality democracy in the countries proved more problematic. In the first decades of the 2000s, each country faced up to own integral problem of democracy: Hungary suffered from “Orbanism”, Poland – from conservative sentiments and a growing number of Eurosceptics, the Czech Republic also increased its Eurosceptic potential, and Slovakia ended up amidst a political crisis and looking for “new faces” in politics. The abovementioned phenomena stipulate democracy deviations in the electoral process, the growing level of political corruption, and the party space radicalization, hence populism has become an effective political tool. There are various modifications of Central European democracy, such as illiberal democracy (Fareed Zakaria), deconsolidated democracy (Roberto Foa & Yascha Mounk), declining democracy (Attila Ágh), democracy with adjectives (David Collier & Steven Levitsky). The quality of democracy is measured by means of empirical calculations (indexing). At the level of the political system, these are the following: the world rankings such as “Nations in Transit” adapted to the group of transitive countries.

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