Understanding the illiberal turn: democratic backsliding in the Czech Republic

Democratic backsliding in Central Europe has so far been most acute in Hungary and Poland, states once considered frontrunners in democratisation. In this paper, we explore to what extent developments in another key frontrunner, the Czech Republic, fit initial patterns of Hungarian/Polish backsliding. Our analysis centres on the populist anti-corruption ANO movement, led by the billionaire Andrej Babiš, which became the largest Czech party in October 2017 after winning parliamentary elections. We find that while ANO has more limited electoral support than illiberal governing parties in Poland and Hungary and lacks a powerful nationalist narrative, common tactics and forms of concentrating power can be identified, albeit with crucial differences of timing and sequencing

Regional integration and free-trade agreements in the Balkans: opportunities, obstacles and policy issues

The Balkan states are engaged in a complex and contradictory process of simultaneous regional integration and disintegration. The main instrument of regional integration has been a network of bilateral Free Trade Agreements which the Balkan countries have adopted under the guidance of the Stability Pact for South East Europe, and more recently the extension of the CEFTA free trade area to the region. The bilateral FTAs have been criticised for creating a ‘spaghetti bowl’ of differentiated trade relations, and creating risks of trade deflection and trade diversion. At the same time other arrangements, including the contractual relations of individual countries with the EU, cut across the region and fragment their mutual trade relations. Moreover, Croatia is likely to become an EU member within the next few years, at which point it will suspend its trade agreements with the non-member Balkan states. Therefore, soon after having established a new mechanism of integration, the region will once again be split apart, leaving a rump association of five or six poverty-stricken and politically unstable countries to pursue the vision of regional cooperation. This paper focuses on the prospects for regional integration among these remaining countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia. It explores the patterns of their mutual trade, and the opportunities and obstacles to increasing trade between them

A model of 'contested' Europeanization: the European Union and the Turkish-Cypriot administration

This article investigates the European Union’s (EU) relevance to the Turkish-Cypriot (TC) administration, pegged to the Europeanization debate. The study contributes to the discussion on Europeanization and the EU’s international role, especially in cases of contested states, which constitute an important element of the EU’s current global agenda but remain an under-researched topic. The argument advanced is that the Europeanization of the TC administration, although similar to previous cases of EU Enlargement, is importantly mediated by the conditions of contested statehood that exist in northern Cyprus. In this respect, the TC example holds strong comparative value for the study of Europeanization of contested states and the wider debate on international role of the EU, in variety of contexts and in relation to a diverse range of actors, beyond conventional states that dominate discourse