Your editorial on the politics of central Europe (28 April) rightly notes the collapse of many traditional centre-left parties. But its explanation is incomplete and oddly exceptionalist.
Much of what you describe – the erosion of social democratic parties after market liberalisation, the political aftershocks of the financial crisis, migration-driven cultural conflict and the drift of older and less metropolitan voters towards variegated forms of populism – is visible across much of western Europe. These are not uniquely eastern pathologies.
What was distinctive in central Europe was that many post-communist left parties were additionally weakened by corruption and clientelism, and weaker party roots. Voters often abandoned them not simply because they embraced liberal economic orthodoxies, but because they appeared self-serving and exhausted.
Central Europe is not just a “breeding ground” for Orbán-style populism. More often, it has been an early and particularly stark laboratory for political trends visible across Europe as a whole.
Dr Sean Hanley
Associate professor, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UCL
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