The Wind of “Illiberalism” that is Blowing Around Post-Communist Countries: Solutions Must Come from Within

By, Florian Çullhaj

Abstract

A peculiar phenomenon that characterizes today’s Illiberal governments is that their advent to power is a legitimate process within the democratic rule; particularly, in post-communist countries like Hungary or Poland where constitutions and functional institutions stabilize and promptly certified by the European Union. In this paper, we set the scene for an ongoing theoretical debate developed between authors who stand for the liberal values priority and others who stand for democratic values priority. We think that the widespread eruption of illiberalism ensues from the decoupling of liberalism from democracy. Drawing on existing studies, the paper traces the essence and the unfolding of illiberalism, focusing the discussion towards other non-EU countries like Albania; to explore to what extent the country’s internal developments fit patterns of Hungarian-Polish model. We argue that the best solution to overcome illiberalism must come from within, similar to the Macedonian example.

How to cite: Çullhaj, F. (2019). The wind of “illiberalism” that is blowing around post-communist countries: Solutions must come from within. Polis, 18(1), 39–58.

https://doi.org/10.58944/wmfc9037