info@woodslane.com.au
Contact us on (02) 8445 2300
For all customer service and order enquiries

WOODSLANE

Popular Subjects

Woodslane Online Catalogues

9781498599610 Add to Cart Academic Inspection Copy

Central Europe Thirty Years after the Fall of Communism

A Return to the Margin?
Description
Author
Biography
Table of
Contents
Reviews
Google
Preview
This book examines the politics and international relations of Central Europe (the Visegrad 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.
Aliaksei Kazharski is researcher and lecturer at Charles University in Prague and Comenius University in Bratislava.
Preface Introduction Chapter 1: Central Europe as a Counter-Hegemonic Concept Chapter 2: "The End of Central Europe?" The European Migration Crisis and the Contestation of Identities in the Visegrad Four Chapter 3: An ad hoc Region: On Central Europe's Embedded Revisionism Chapter 4: Czech Republic and Slovakia: The Post-Crisis Core-Periphery Debate Chapter 5: Poland: Heroic Failures and Tragic Resistance Chapter 6: Hungary: The Freedom Fight of an Ideological Entrepreneur Chapter 7: The Pandemic is What the Populists make of it? The Virus Signifier and Identity Politics in the Visegrad Four Conclusion: Did the Return to Europe Become a Return to the Margin? References About the Author
What is the meaning of the idea of 'Central Europe' in the twenty-first century? How have European crises of the last two decades transformed this meaning? How important is post-communist trajectory of the 'Visegrad Four' in understanding the political future of the EU? These are only some of the questions that Aliaksei Kazharski discusses in his important and provocative book. -- Ivan Krastev, Chairman, Center for Liberal Studies, Sofia
Google Preview content