Nation before democracy? Placing the rise of the Slovak extreme right into context

ABSTRACT

Focusing on the People's Party Our Slovakia (ĽSNS), the article systematically explores the political environment in Slovakia in order to best explain the parliamentary breakthrough of this extreme right party that is hostile to representative democracy and is ideologically rooted in wartime authoritarianism. It is argued that the success of the ĽSNS ought to be viewed from the perspective of persistent ethno-nationalist trend in Slovak politics which runs through Slovakia's national development from precommunist times to the present. While migration crisis was an additional catalyst, ethno-centricism and illiberalism have a longer tradition in post-1989 Slovakia than the ĽSNS.

KEYWORDS:

• Slovakia
• extreme right
• ethno-nationalism
• post-communism
• mainstream parties
• far right

Notes on contributor

Erika Harris is Professor of Politics and director of the “Europe and the World Centre” at the University of Liverpool. She is the author of Nationalism Theories and Cases (Edinburgh University Press 2009), Democracy in the New Europe (with C. Lord, Palgrave 2006) and Nationalism and Democratisation Politics of Slovakia and Slovenia (Ashgate 2002). She has published article in Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Europe- Asia, Nations and Nationalism, and other journals, and is a frequent contributor to Slovak and international media.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Erika Harris http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9284-0215

Notes

1 Special issue. 2018. “Rethinking 'democratic backsliding' in Central and Eastern Europe” East European Politics 34(3); Journal of Democracy 29(3), 2018, particularly articles by Jacques Rupnik, Péter Krekó, Wojciech Przybylski, Jiri Pehe and Grigorij Mesežnikov and Oľga Gyárfášová.

2 The run-off presidential election on March 30th was won by Zuzana Čaputová, a female liberal lawyer. Her victory, according to an article by Erika Harris in Social Europe should be seen within the continued battle for Slovakia’s political future – moving towards more autocratic populist governments, or sustaining the premise of liberal-democratic institutions and values (https://www.socialeurope.eu/zuzana-caputovas-victory-slovakia)

3 Interview with Tomas Nagy, Senior Researcher at Globsec, Bratislava March 31, 2017.

4 In Slovakia, the radical right usually refers to the parliamentary Slovak National Party (SNS) known for its explicitly nationalist agenda. The ĽSNS is referred to as extreme in the press and by political analysts.

5 The majority of 130,000 Slovak Jews (90,000) remained in the Slovak State and 40,000 were living in the territory which was annexed by Hungary and came under its jurisdiction. Approximately, 12,000 returned from the concentration camps (Jurová and Šalamon 1994).

6 For example, the book Zamlčaná Pravda o Slovensku (Partizánske: Garmond 1996), consists of contributions of a number of revisionist historians, under the collective name “Friends of President Tiso in Slovakia and abroad”, defending the Church and its role in deportations of Jews.

7 Interview with Vladimír Bilčík, senior researcher at the Slovak Foreign Policy Association (SFPA) March 31, 2017 in Bratislava.

8 Interview with Tomáš Stražay, senior researcher at the SFPA, April 6, 2017.

9 Interview with Tomas Nagy, senior researcher at the think-tank Globsec, March 31, 2017.

10 Interview with Oľga Gyárfášová, analyst at IVO (Inštitút pre verejné otázky) April 7, 2017.