Towards Illiberal Constitutionalism in East Central Europe
In October 2021, the Institute of Contemporary History joined a multidisciplinary team of scholars in a new research endeavour, “Towards Illiberal Constitutionalism in East Central Europe: Historical Analysis in Comparative and Transnational Perspectives”. The four-year project, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation’s ‘Challenges for Europe’ program brings together the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, the University of Erfurt, the University of Warsaw, the CEU Democracy Institute and the Institute of Contemporary History to study illiberal constitutionalism in CEE.
According to a Western understanding of politics, the word “illiberal” is difficult to associate with a democracy: liberty (individual freedom) is an essential element of constitutional democracy. Yet, some democratically elected governments in Eastern Central Europe (above all, Hungary and Poland) aggressively promote an illiberal version of democracy — and transform states and societies accordingly.
What is the underlying constitutional imaginary of such an understanding of democratic order? Are there longer-term traditions in the region that enable it? And what does that mean for Europe and its democratic project? The Volkswagen Foundation supports this project with almost 1.5 million euros. Next to historians, researchers from sociology, law and political science are also involved.
Michal Kopeček, the PI of the ICH team, will trace down the various critiques of “juristocracy” and “judicialisation” of politics in the political discourses of two liberal democracies, Czechia and Hungary, throughout the 1990s. The underlying question is why the intra-systemic evolved into the extra-systemic critique of liberal democracy and later illiberal constitutional practice only in one of the countries. The junior research member, Matěj Slavík, will analyse transfers and adaptation of western liberal constitutionalism in Czechia and East Central Europe since the early 1990s. He will study the involvement of western-based constitutional scholars in deliberations framing new constitutional structures following the Velvet Revolution with a focus on their role not only in the debate regarding the “settings” of checks and balances but also, for instance, the structures of the democratic welfare state. In his research, attention will also be paid to the role that Constitutional Courts in the region and a new generation of local legal scholars played in the process of “westernisation” of East Central Europe.